Thirty Tons from 30,000 Feet

After every bombing by the B-52s, everyone, from cadre to soldier, became nervous, worried and afraid. This exerted a tremendous influence on the fighting morale. Because they fought the fear of the B-52s in their minds, they weakened after combat and were more tense. Many of them did not want to go far away from the trenches because by remaining in the trenches there was some hope of preserving their lives.

--Communist prisoner interrogation report

There is probably no more awesome weapon in use in Viet Nam today than the U.S. Air Force's high-flying B-52 Stratofortress. From the Demilitarized Zone to the Ca Mau Peninsula, the land shows countless scars--spots that look as if a giant rake had swept over them, long parallel lines of deep craters walking across the plains and over the mountains. The scars are the result of tons of explosives rained down in an "Arc Light" mission, a B-52 attack.

Since June 1965, when the giant, eight-engined jets first raided Viet Nam, B-52s have dropped an enormous 670,000 tons (equivalent to 25% of the total dropped by both the U.S.A.A.F. and the R.A.F. on Europe during World War II) in more than 26,000 sorties. Most of their bombs are aimed south of the DMZ, where few if any antiaircraft missiles exist to threaten the lumbering, relatively slow-moving attackers. Some 80 of the Strategic Air Command's older D and E models of the B-52, originally designed to haul nuclear weapons, have been converted for Viet Nam duty. They normally carry up to 84 conventional "iron" bombs of 500 lbs. each tucked inside their bomb bays and another 24 of 750 lbs. each slung under their swept-back wings.

Invisible and Inaudible. The B-52s wheel in from bases in Thailand, on Guam, Okinawa and Taiwan to dump their huge loads. They fly so high that they are virtually invisible, and their bombs detonate on the ground only seconds after the faint whine of their engines is audible--and by then it is too late. They concentrate on areas of Communist pressure--as last week in the Central Highlands near the Cambodian border, where waves of B-52s attempted to break down Communist troop buildups. For a pilot's view of a raid, Robert Wildau of TIME'S Saigon Bureau recently rode along on one of the missions from Guam. His report:

After a detailed mission briefing and a long preflight check, we finally took off from Andersen Air Force Base on Guam, leading a "cell" of three planes spaced two miles apart to avoid mid-air collisions. Three hours later, over the Philippines, the green-and-black camouflaged Stratoforts rendezvoused with three KC-135 jet tankers for a 40-minute ballet of mid-air refueling.

Day had almost gone by the time we were over Viet Nam. The setting sun bathed the clouds in orange as the pilot, Major John Thigpen, 38, of Windsor, N.C., banked his B-52 into the bomb run. Below him, on the lower deck, the bombardier-navigator, Major Leonard Harris, 39, of Atlanta, hunched behind his radarscope, adjusting the scanner, like a television cameraman, until it gave him a moving, living map of partially cloud-obscured plantation country northwest of Saigon. Under that cover was the target, a suspected troop concentration. Everything had to go right the first time. The slightest navigational error up here could mean a horrendous mistake on the ground.*

Seven Minutes to Hack. Harris lined up the target in the luminous cross hairs of his screen, threw two switches that opened the bomb bay and armed the load of 108 bombs. Over the radio, the impersonal voice of a SAC ground controller announced "seven minutes to 'hack' [bomb release point]." The count droned on until at hack, when Harris punched a black button and 30 tons of high explosives cascaded toward the ground more than 30,000 feet below us. There was no shock, no noise, no sight of explosions. Only the impersonal voice of the controller: "Bombs in the target area. That was a good run, fellows. Have a nice ride home and see you another day." Thigpen banked again and we were on our way back to Guam, six monotonous hours and 2,600 miles away. In a small oven in the cockpit the men began heating TV dinners. They had not seen their target, their enemy, or the effect of their mission.

* Earlier this year, 50% of a B-52 mission load landed outside a target box and killed 43 friendly South Vietnamese. SAC says it was the only such incident in three years of bombing and claims 100% accuracy inside a target box of 3,000 ft. by 6,000 ft.

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