More Bombs Than Ever

THE contrast was surreal. After a weekend of pre-Christmas festivities at the White House, Richard Nixon flew to the Florida sunshine, Henry Kissinger in tow, with not a word to the country or the world about Viet Nam. But the President's message to the enemy was as unmistakable as it was brutal. First he ordered a new seeding of North Vietnamese harbors with mines. Then he launched the biggest, bloodiest air strikes ever aimed at the North. Nixon seemed determined to bomb Hanoi into a settlement that he is willing to accept. As the old year gave way to the new, the Nixon-Kissinger design that only a few short weeks ago had seemed to be irresistibly leading to a settlement was again in question, and hope was once again overshadowed by doubt (see MEN OF THE YEAR, page 13).

The order, in Air Force lingo, was "five by five" (loud and clear) to clobber the enemy's homeland as never before. The military was invited to hit targets previously off limits around Hanoi and Haiphong. From Guam and Thailand they came, wave after wave of green-and-brown aerial dreadnoughts. About 100 B-52s, flying in "cells" of three, were being used round the clock, supplemented by F-4 Phantoms, F-111s, and naval fighter-bombers from aircraft carriers. The missions reminded aviators of the last months of World War II in Europe, when bombers prowled the sky striking at "targets of opportunity," which meant everything.

The armada attacked factories and shipyards, roads and bridges, airstrips and antiaircraft sites, barracks and supply points. The upper part of the country had enjoyed a respite since Oct. 22, and the North Vietnamese had collected new stocks of ammunition, repaired bridges, railroad tracks and oil pipelines. These were among the priority targets. But the weather was uniformly bad, and the B-52 is better at saturation bombing than pinpoint attack; Hanoi's claim of high civilian casualties was propagandistic but plausible.

Radio Hanoi reported that a camp holding American prisoners was struck. The State Department apologized to Poland for the reported sinking of the freighter Josef Conrad and the killing of three seamen. One Soviet and one Chinese vessel were also said to have been damaged, along with some foreign embassies. "The way things are going," said one disillusioned State Department official, "we'll hit the cathedral in Hanoi on Christmas Eve." At week's end, however, the White House indicated that there would be at least a one-day bombing halt over Christmas.

Americans were paying a heavy price as well. Two sailors aboard the guided-missile destroyer Goldsborough died when shore fire hit the ship. The B-52s, with their six-man crews, suffered the worst losses. During the previous seven years, only one of the giant planes had gone down in combat. Last week at least eight were shot from the sky. After the first five days of strikes, the Pentagon acknowledged losing twelve aircraft. One airman was reported killed and 43 missing, 38 from the Air Force and five from the Navy.