World: New Bombing Strategy

If 31 months of bombing by the U.S. has not succeeded in breaking North Viet Nam's spirit, it has certainly taken an enormous toll of its national substance. Despite the dispute in the U.S. over extending the range of targets, there are so few major ones yet unbombed that U.S. pilots spend most of their time returning to plaster the same old places time and again. Last week the U.S. not only further shrunk the list of off-limit targets but employed a new aerial bombing strategy that threatens to paralyze completely North Viet Nam's transportation and supply arteries.

Flying through cloud-laden skies that signaled the approaching monsoons, Navy attack planes from the carriers Oriskany and Coral Sea rained bombs and missiles for the first time on the port of Cam Pha, which is only 46 miles northeast of Haiphong and serves as its auxiliary port. Under congressional pressure to hit North Viet Nam harder, President Johnson gave the go-ahead to bomb Cam Pha when no ships were at the piers, thus seeking to avoid hitting any Russian vessels. After Navy scouts found the right moment, the raiders demolished Cam Pha's wharves, badly damaged its rail facilities, destroyed its four giant handling cranes and set fire to huge piles of coal, North Viet Nam's only remaining money-earning export.

Chop & Smash. The Cam Pha raid, and raids on five other previously forbidden places in recent weeks, reduced the number of untouched targets in North Viet Nam to a mere 46. Most of those 46 are too insignificant (small factories, pint-sized petroleum dumps) to warrant the risk of U.S. lives; other potential targets, such as factories in downtown areas, are ruled out on humanitarian grounds. Of the major targets not yet hit, many will probably be bombed in time. The most likely remaining targets: the power station and railyards at Lao Cai, an important supply link with China; three MIG fields near Hanoi and one at Haiphong; and the dock facilities at Hon Gai, the only unscathed port.

The day after they hit Cam Pha, planes from the two carriers bombed Haiphong itself, penetrating closer to its center (eight-tenths of a mile) than ever before. Avoiding the Soviet and other foreign ships jamming the piers, the pilots smashed overcrowded warehouses, chopped up the railyards and knocked spans from both the rail and highway bridges over which supplies must pass to reach the rest of the country. U.S. strategists have decided that, for the time being at least, they will not try to deny access to Haiphong from the sea by bombing its dock areas or mining its harbor—and thus risking a confrontation with Russia if its ships are hit by a U.S. attack. Instead, the U.S. planners intend to seal off access to the port from the land side, hoping that Soviet and other materials will simply pile up on the docks.