Craters Within Craters

U.S. planes punctuated the election victory in the South with the heaviest raids to date against the North. On one clear day last week, the skies were scorched with a record 171 missions.

"It's getting mighty hard to tell the new craters from the old," remarked a pilot returning from the battered Panhandle. Cratered anew were the Quang Khe missile complex, the Due Tho storage area, and a spread of staging areas, oil dumps and antiaircraft sites. Though flak has thinned considerably in the region, two U.S. planes were shot down. As one pilot's parachute was buffeted by tricky wind currents, his anxious wingman radioed to ask him how he was doing. "Swinging, man," came the reply.

For the eighth time in the war, Guam-based B-52s roared in to plaster the Demilitarized Zone above the 17th parallel, this time in support of a 1,500-man Marine sweep south of the DMZ. Storming ashore from amphibious landing craft and coming to earth in choppers, the Marines met no significant contact, by week's end had killed only 30 Reds--a sharp contrast to their operation in the DMZ last July when 824 Communists were cornered and killed.

Far to the north near Hanoi, Red MIGs made a rare appearance, jumping a flight of Phantoms in a ten-minute fight over Dap Cau railroad bridge. The MIGs missed; a Phantom's Sidewinder missile did not, and down went the 19th MIG kill of the war. It was a bang-up end to a heartening week.

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