DEFENCE MINES FIRED BY THUNDERBOLT

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30711, 29 March 1965, Page 11

DEFENCE MINES FIRED BY THUNDERBOLT

(N.Z. Press Assn. —Copyright) SAIGON, March 28.

Lightning yesterday triggered off a protective ring of mines round an Army camp, killing 14 South Vietnamese troops and wounding 73.

An American military adviser was also wounded. The incident occurred at a U.S. special forces camp in Plei Do Lim in South Vietnam’s central highlands. A screen of 40 elec-trically-operated Claymore mines ringed the camp’s inner defensive perimeter.

When lightning set off the mines, a hail of shrapnel blasted through the tents of hill tribesmen troops camped between the inner and outer defences.

Some women and children, families of the tribesmen, were among the injured.

Plei Do Lim is manned by locally recruited tribesmen and run by an American special forces team. Most similar camps are protected by Claymore mines. The boomerang shaped devices are fixed on trees and and a fence of posts around the camps. They fire an arc of missiles when an electric switch is activated. Helicopters lifted 40 of the most seriously wounded to an army hospital in nearby Pleiku. An American marine captain was killed today when the helicopter he was piloting was shot down by guerrillas south of Da Nang, 385 miles north-east of Saigon. All phases of U.S. policy in Vietnam will undergo another review next week in Washington with talks between Administration officials and the U.S. Ambassador to Saigon, General Maxwell Taylor.

General Taylor left South Vietnam yesterday amid reports he would urge still

’ heavier U.S. bombing raids i against North Vietnam. i Officials made it clear there was no intention of changing . the basic lines of U.S. policy, but operations in Vietnam, ' both military and economic, I will be reviewed in detail. On Friday, 40 U.S. Navy fighter-bombers made their deepest raid into North Vietnam. With bombs, rockets and cannons, they attacked four early warning radar installations. One of the targets, at Bac Long Island in the Tonkin Gulf, was only 80 miles from i China.

The other targets were coastal installations at Ha Tinh, Cap Mui Ron, and Vinh Son. Ha Tinh is only 50 miles south of Hanoi.

A CYCLONE centred over the Timor Sea has brought to the Northern Territory rains unprecedented for this century. The average rainfall for Darwin in March of 10.35 inches has been more than doubled.