Death by Starlight

In most of South Viet Nam, the night still belongs to the Viet Cong. Under cover of darkness, they infiltrate men down the mountain trails from Laos and North Viet Nam, move supplies, farm their paddyfields, build their bunkers, position their troops and launch many of their attacks. During the day, they generally disappear, sleeping and hiding beneath thick jungle canopies, taking refuge in hillside caves or melting back into the "peaceful" civilian population. The U.S. has long tried to interdict the Communists' nighttime movements by regularly shelling and bombing trails and camps where their presence was suspected. Now it has launched a new operation that is more precise and sophisticated in its nighttime harassment of the V.C.

"In We Go." The operation is carried out by "night hunters," teams of helicopters equipped with a new sniper's scope, called a Starlight, that can see in the dark and cannot be deceived by the enemy. Unlike the older infrared scope, which sought the enemy by heat detection but gave off a detectable beam of light, the new scope amplifies light from the stars or the moon, making its targets appear as pale white images on the scope's green, radarlike screen.

Two choppers go up on each mission--one carrying two Starlight snipers or spotters and the other loaded with rockets or miniguns. "We'll get an intelligence report that the Cong are likely to bring some goods down one of their supply routes," says the 1st Infantry Division's Sergeant Leonard Knipe. "So we go after them, zipping up and down the trail with our lights off, both scope men studying every inch of ground below us, as though it were day. As soon as we see something, the lead chopper informs the other ship, we wheel around, and in we go."

On a recent typical night-hunter run for the 1st Infantry Division, the lead chopper spotted a small group of Viet Cong on a heavily wooded hillside in Binh Dinh province, halfway down the coast of South Viet Nam. Before the V.C. could flee, it unleashed a stream of yellow and red tracer shells into their midst. A moment later, the second chopper, zeroing in on the tracers, sent a deadly volley of rockets thundering into the same spot.

Anything That Moves. Many U.S. helicopter units in Viet Nam are already equipped with the scope, and many of them fly four to seven missions a week. To avoid hitting innocent civilians, most missions are carried out in "free-fire zones" designated by the Vietnamese province chief and kept under strict dusk-to-dawn curfew. The U.S. forces also drop leaflets warning the people that anything moving outside of their village after dark will be fired upon.

Sometimes, the night hunters score a big kill. During Operation Junction City last March, they demolished a convoy of oxcarts carrying weapons and supplies and killed 50 Viet Cong. But the night run is more often a modest operation that catches smaller groups of Viet Cong at meetings or trudging along trails. Through such harassment, the Starlight snipers hope to cut V.C. troop and supply movements at night, and deny the Communists what has been virtually a nighttime sanctuary.

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