Air, Water, Nuts & Bolts

The three Phantoms were flying northwest, into the evening sun, escorting a slow, radar-laden RB-66 reconnaissance bomber close to the Red Chinese border. To Major Wilbur R. Dudley, 34, of Alamogordo, N. Mex., the first hint of trouble was the wink of cannon fire beneath his Phantom fighter. It came from four "silver, swept-wing and well-kept aircraft"--Communist MIG-17s, presumably Chinese. "I broke to the right," recalled Dudley after last week's action, "and pickled [dropped] my fuel tanks, and then I came up on this MIG just as it was making a firing pass on the rear of the RB-66."

Thus--if Peking could be believed--began the first tangle between American and Chinese airplanes since Korea. The outcome was predictable. "He seemed to be a pretty good pilot," said Dudley of his adversary, "but he apparently had a case of tunnel vision when he bore in on the RB-66 and never knew we were behind him. And one mistake is all you get." Dudley dropped the MIG with a heat-seeking missile up the tail pipe.

Myopic SAM. To Peking's claim that the dogfight took place over Chinese territory, the U.S. replied that the RB-66 was at least 50 miles south of China. And it was there for a reason: last week U.S. aircraft mounted a record 135 missions in one day over North Viet Nam, plastering targets from Dienbien-phu to Vinh and striking to within ten miles of the strategic port of Haiphong. The RB-66s help far-flying U.S. fighter-bombers to find their targets over the jungle-masked rivers and roads of North Viet Nam. They also aid them in avoiding the SAM missiles, which Ho Chi Minh had hoped would wipe American aircraft from his skies.

Last week SAM proved as myopic as ever. In the biggest daily barrage of the war, eleven SAMs were fired--and not one hit its mark. When SAMs tried to strong-arm Navy jets near Haiphong, the "airdales" roared in and struck the site, sending up spiraling smoke from a secondary explosion--probably a missile. Even when two SAMs were fired near Vinh at night, Air Force Phantoms could avoid them. "They looked like Roman candles," said one U.S. pilot, "lighting up the night sky." All told, only 14 of the 243 U.S. planes lost over North Viet Nam have fallen to missiles.

Sad Debacle. Still, U.S. air action did little to hamper Red infiltration. Heavy pounding of North Vietnamese roads and bridges has only driven the Communists to sea or else to Cambodia. Over the past month, U.S. jets have been sinking sampans, junks and other vessels at record rates--1,000 in the past month alone. But the biggest prize last week fell to the U.S. Coast Guard, which has been patrolling South Viet Nam's coast since last summer. The Coast Guard cutter Point Grey intercepted a 120-ft., 100-ton freighter--steaming without running lights and laden with ammunition--off Ca Mau Peninsula. When the freighter refused to heave to, Point Grey opened up with 81-mm. mortars, ran the suspect aground.

On the killing ground of South Viet Nam itself, very little of equal value was happening. In a panic-stricken debacle along Saigon's Hai Ba Trung Street U.S. military police opened fire on a truckload of civilian dockworkers and killed six of them. In Danang far to the north, Premier Nguyen Cao Ky made an even more quaking move: a group of Vietnamese marines "invaded" Danang and quietly established control over the major center of Buddhist political unrest, then lounged peacefully on the grass. That quietude may well be shattered by Buddhist riots. From Saigon to the Red Chinese border, the elements had inevitably conspired: air and water, earth and fire.

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