Bombing Of North Intensified

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31317, 13 March 1967, Page 13

Bombing Of North Intensified

(N.Z- Press Association— Copyright) SAIGON, March 12. Further intensification of the aerial assault against North Vietnam was announced today by United States military headquarters, the Associated Press reported.

American officials said that in raids yesterday bombers from aircraft carriers struck the Lang Can missile base, 13 miles north-west of Haiphong, a North Vietnamese store for Sovietmade missiles.

Bombers also raided a thermal power plant and an ammunition depot.

The raids were carried out at the same time as the pre-viously-announced strikes on North Vietnam’s Thai Nguyen steel plant yesterday. The plant, the country’s biggest, is 38 miles north of Hanoi. Missiles Burning In the strike on the missile base pilots reported several of the 36ft long surface to air missiles—“flying telephone poles”—were left burning. Numerous secondary explosions and fires were seen in the area, military headquarters said. Planes from the aircraft carrier Ticonderoga in the Tonkin gulf dropped 2501 b, 5001 b and 10001 b bombs on the installation causing heavy damage. Carrier Planes Planes from the carrier Kitty Hawk struck at the Bac Giang thermal power plant 23 miles northeast of Hanoi with 10001 b bombs. Pilots reported heavy damage also and observed several secondary explosions. Planes from a third aircraft carrier, the Bon Homme Richard, attacked the Cam Ly ammunition depot 27 miles north-east of Haiphong, and pilots reported secondary explosions in the area, indicating hits on the munitions.

The planes also attacked missile sites and anti-aircraft sites surrounding the ammunition depot. In other air strikes over the North, pilots reported destroying or damaging 11 trucks, six bridges and nine cargo boats.

Pilots encountered North Vietnamese MiGs but there were no engagements reported. Military headquarters gave no report on any American planes shot down, although Hanoi claimed seven United States aircraft were shot down and a number of pilots captured. Reports on American planes lost normally are delayed if a search and rescue operation is under way for downed pilots. Military headquarters reported that 197 North Vietnamese troops were killed near the Cambodian border in two days of fighting in which American air strikes, artillery and ground forces repulsed a major attack. The battle broke out on Friday when a battalion of the United States Ist Infantry Division came under mortar fire in War Zone C, 19 miles north of Tay Ninh city. Mistaken Shelling Revised casualty figures were announced in a mistaken artillery shelling yesterday by a unit of the United States 9th Infantry Division. The artillery unit, through error, fired an undetermined number of rounds into the area of two

infantry companies of the 9th Division during an action 14 miles south-west of Saigon. The shelling killed six American troops, two South Vietnamese soldiers and an American freelance photographer, Donald Gallagher, aged 27. In addition, 10 American infantrymen were wounded. An earlier announcement from the military headquarters had listed four United States killed and eight wounded.