The New Targets

As the air war entered a new and hotter phase, the skies above North Viet Nam were thick with U.S. planes -- and with Communist flak. U.S. pilots flew an average of 243 sorties a day, hitting several targets that they had never be fore been permitted to bomb, but care fully avoiding throwing any knockout punches. As the monsoon rains cleared, U.S. jets blasted MIG airfields for the first time and hit new targets in the port city of Haiphong and around Hanoi. For the time being, they left un touched the large Phuc Yen strip north west of Hanoi, the base for nearly three-fourths of the North's 120 MIG fighters.

They also steered clear of the core of Hanoi and the docks at Haiphong, where most of the aid from Russia and China flows into North Viet Nam.

Carrier-based Navy jets screeched through MIG-cluttered skies to hit the MIG base at Kep, northeast of Hanoi, with 250-lb. bombs and cluster bombs that spray thousands of lethal metal fragments. In two raids, they scored moderate-to-heavy damage to the run way, control tower and oil-storage tanks, but apparently caught few, if any, MIGs in their hardstands; an orange cloud of billowing smoke was visible al most 20 miles away. Flying out of bases in Thailand, a dozen Air Force Phantom jets then scorched the new MIG base at Hoa Lac, damaged or destroyed at least seven of the dozen or so MIGs on the ground in one raid, and then returned later in the week for a second attack. All told, the U.S. lost eleven attack planes in the week's raids, but U.S. jets knocked down five MIGs and lost only two planes in several furious dogfights over the North's cities.

At least six of the 16 U.S. pilots who lost their planes were rescued, a few of them -- Navy Ensign James Laing for one -- after having ejected from their aircraft in midair.

Aggressive Pursuit. For almost two years, the Navy and the Air Force have been asking for permission to hit the North's jet airfields (it now has six such fields). Only 13 of the 521 U.S. planes thus far lost over Viet Nam have been brought down by MIGs; antiaircraft fire has downed most of the others. But MIGs frequently force a U.S. fighter-bomber to jettison its payload or to fly into a heavy curtain of flak in order to evade their pursuit, and lately they have been more aggressive in challenging U.S. planes. Red China last week claimed to have shot down three U.S. aircraft over its territories, including an automatically controlled reconaissance plane. But U.S. pilots report that they have so far chased no North Vietnamese MIGs to the Chinese border, and their generals feel that Hanoi is unlikely to exile its air force to China now that the U.S. has attacked two of its bases.

Running the Gauntlet. In the closest strike ever to the center of Hanoi, Air Force Thunderchiefs hammered the Gia Lam railroad yard, the North's largest railroad repair center. The U.S. has never chosen targets within Hanoi's city limits, though some critics of U.S. policy claim bombs have landed in the area. The Gia Lam yard is a little more than two miles from Hanoi's center, but is north of the Red River--Hanoi's northern boundary. The main station of the North's electric power grid, which was repeatedly attacked by Thunderchiefs last week, is seven miles outside Hanoi. Striking into downtown Haiphong, Navy fighter-bombers unloaded more than 140 tons of explosives on a sprawling cement plant that produces almost all of the North's cement.

In by far the most dramatic raid against a new target near Hanoi, Thunderchiefs highballed in against a heavily defended steel bridge over which flow all the arms and economic aid that come by rail from Russia and China. The 738-ft. bridge carries railroad track and a highway over the Canal des Rapides, well north of the Red River. "We ran the gauntlet of every weapon they had," said one pilot, Major Mike Tingelstad, 40. "But the strike force did not waver." Said Colonel Alan G. Nelson, 42: "I took a quick glance back and noticed the bridge light up like a Christmas tree."

Stopping the Flow. The stepped-up bombing was not merely a means of raising the cost to North Viet Nam of its participation in the fighting in South Viet Nam. The U.S. also aimed at countering the steady arrival of supplies from Russia and Red China, which are reported to have reached an agreement to speed the flow of such aid (TIME, April 21). U.S.-bombings of rail lines in the North have slowed down the supply flow but not stopped it; the next logical step was to hit the vital bridge through which all incoming equipment must funnel. Though the initial raids were not paralyzing blows, they were clear warnings that, in the increasing fierceness of the war, few targets could any longer be considered immune if they contributed substantially to the North's war effort.

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