Friday, Feb. 11, 1966

Noise in the North

For 37 days the skies over North Viet Nam had been free of U.S. fighter-bombers, while the U.S. vainly probed Hanoi for some sign of willingness to talk peace. When at last patience was exhausted, the code message flashed out from the Pentagon via Pearl Harbor to Saigon, and last week American jets roared aloft to end the bombing pause.

First off the mark were Navy planes from the U.S.S. Ranger, which dropped a bridge twelve miles southwest of Dong Hoi and blasted a ferry landing near Quang Khe. Only minutes later, on target--a highway-ferry complex at Thanh Hoa--were Air Force F-105s, and another Air Force wing was soon battering a cluster of barges with 20-mm. cannon. The first day's bombing took a toll of three U.S. planes shot down by antiaircraft fire--one measure of the use to which Hanoi had put the pause.

Now, after the Communists' five weeks' grace, the flak flew thicker over virtually every target. Moreover, reconnaissance showed that Ho Chi Minh's men had hastily implanted ten new SAM sites, bringing to 60 the number of nests across the country able to cradle Ho's Russian rocket launchers. Even the North Vietnamese air force took advantage of the free skies to give its pilots some hasty refresher work in the MIG fighters that Hanoi has largely refrained from using so far. Hanoi also used the hiatus to pump perhaps 6,000 fresh troops down the Ho Chi Minh trail into South Viet Nam and put thousands of laborers to work round the clock feverishly repairing previous bomb damage to roads, bridges, ferries and supply dumps.

It was these limited targets that Washington began hammering again last week. No strikes were being permitted north of the narrow waist of North Viet Nam (see map)--thus sparing the enemy's industrial heartland around Hanoi and Haiphong.

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