Racing the Monsoon

With only a month of good weather left before the monsoons close in, U.S. flyers hammered at North Viet Nam with new urgency last week. They took off on a total of 1,102 bombing missions. And as the numbers mounted, so did the roster of lost planes. Fifteen were shot down, two over Red China. The total number of U.S. aircraft destroyed during the war rose to 662.

The week's air activity cost North Viet Nam far more. Bombing relentlessly as close as 18 miles from the Chinese border, the U.S. jets smashed rail depots, rolling stock and miles of track. They turned the two railroad lines that carry Red Chinese supplies to Hanoi into a smoking junkyard of twisted steel. Fanning out, they also clobbered bridges and power stations.

Sinister Escalation? Obviously hurting from the onslaught, the North Vietnamese wasted no time in releasing pictures of some of the planes that they shot down. Now that the U.S. is bombing the 30-mile-wide sanctuary that once stretched across the country just south of China's border, the North Vietnamese can no longer stock supplies there and ship them down to Hanoi under cover of night.

The increased pounding of the North evoked a flurry of stories that civilians had been wantonly killed and homes destroyed in Hanoi. There was talk that the raids signaled a new and sinister phase of escalation. And Hanoi authorities, who say that they have already dispersed almost half of the city's 600,000 population, ordered a new evacuation. All but essential workers were told to leave the city.

For all the talk of escalation, though, the targets were familiar: Hanoi's power plant, 1.1 miles from the city, for example, and the Canal des Rapides Bridge, about five miles away. The only new target on the list last week was the naval base at Port Wallut, about 30 miles south of China.

Strays over China. It was after hitting a railyard fully 75 miles from the Chinese border that two Navy A-6 Intruders strayed over China and were brought down by MIGs. They were attacked by Red fighters on their return trip to the carrier Constellation, and to evade pursuit they peeled off to the north. Thunderclouds and a foulup in their navigational instruments complicated their plight. Traveling at about 500 m.p.h., they probably reached China in about ten minutes. Now listed as missing are the four crewmen of the two planes: Lieut. Commander Jimmy Buckley, Lieut. Robert Flynn, Lieut. Commander Dain Scott and Lieut. J. Forrest Trembley.

The more fortunate pilots who did get back to their bases reported dodging some of the heaviest flak of the war. The Communists had taken ad vantage of last month's cloud cover to station more of their antiaircraft guns and SAM missiles just north of Hanoi. Air Force Ace Robin Olds noted that "there were also some MIGs to liven things up." Two of them were gunned down by Air Force Lieut. David Waldrop. The sky was so thick with planes that the North Vietnamese joined in the MIG-shoot too; they accidentally shot down one of their planes with a SAM missile.