Third Bombing Year Nears End

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31520, 7 November 1967, Page 6

Third Bombing Year Nears End

CN.Z. Press .Assn.—Copyright) SAIGON, Nov. 6. The third year of the air offensive against North Vietnam is drawing to a close, the “New York Times” News Service reports. Each day now the clouds and mists that drift down from the mountains lie heavier across the Red River delta, shielding Hanoi and Haiphong, their railway lines, canals and workshops, more effectively than anti-aircraft guns and missiles. During the next four months of generally poor flying weather, the attacks will continue, but fewer planes will be in the air, and a larger proportion of strikes will be directed against secondary targets in the coastal strip from Vinh south to the border. Combat losses over the north are put at 272 planes, bringing the total since the attacks began in February, 1965, to 724. In all, 218 fliers are known to be captured, 587 are listed as missing and scores have been killed. As a result, the three services that wage the air war —the Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps—are reliably said to be encountering shortages of pilots and of some aircraft models.

Among these are the A 6 Intruder, an all-weather bomber, and the workhorse FlO5 Thunderchief fighterbomber which is no longer being built. The air offensive has not achieved its major objective —to force Hanoi to withdraw her troops from the South. On the contrary, their number has increased in this period from a few hundred to an estimated 55,000, with another three divisions numbering about 30,000 men poised along the border and pinning down most of a marine division. Nor have the raids been able to prevent the supplying of these troops. All that senior officers will say, in fact, is that the continuous air attacks have made the North Vietnamese task immensely more difficult. While that seems undeniable, there are no indications of the anticipated cracks in North Vietnamese morale or progressive physical exhaustion brought on by increasing labour demands and a diminishing food supply. Heaviest Attacks This year’s attacks were the heaviest so far, striking at scores of targets that had previously been forbidden. Among these were the military airfields protecting Hanoi and Haiphong, power plants and factories less than a mile from the centre of the two cities and stretches of the vital north-east railway line less than a minute’s flying time from the Chinese border.

The only major targets that now remain are unlikely to be hit in any case. These are the Haiphong anchorages, filled with foreign flag vessels, the Gia Lam airfield outside Hanoi, which is used primarily by civilian planes, the dikes of the Red River and the major cities and towns themselves, which would constitute in the eyes of the world nothing less than terror bombing.

Facing this sort of apparent dead end, militap' officers are beginning to discuss for the first time the absurdity of risking “two-million dollar warplanes to try to destroy 1000-dollar trucks." While acknowledging with qualifications that a point of diminishing returns may have been reached in the air offensive, they see no way of halting it without giving Hanoi the opportunity to increase sharply the number and combat effectiveness of its forces in the South. Whether Hanoi would do this remains a moot point. It can be argued that the present stalemate, in which the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong lack the offensive power to inflict serious defeats while the American and South Vietnamese are generally unable to find major enemy units and bring them to decisive battle, is entirely satisfactory. For them, it is said, each day that the war continues indecisively, is a day of victory. In retrospect, it now appears to some observers that the lunar New Year truce last February may have been the last time in which the offer of an extended bombing pause by the United States might have had bargaining value. Winter Months During the four months of winter, Hanoi will he able to repair her battered roads and bridges, restock her warehouses and in all likelihood markedly strengthen her air fleet and anti-aircraft defences. As a result, there is a growing tendency to regard as more than propaganda Hanoi’s often-announced view that the worst punishment that United States air power can inflict has been endured and that peace talks can be begun only with the acknowledgement that North Vietnam has, for all practical purposes, won its war.