Escalation in the Air, Ordeal on the Ground

SUDDENLY, it seemed almost like 1968 all over again. Once more, waves of U.S. aircraft--B-52s and carrier-based fighter-bombers--swept into the heart of North Viet Nam on heavy bombing raids. Their main target this time: the port of Haiphong, which had been off limits for U.S. planes since President Lyndon Johnson cut back the bombing of North Viet Nam four years ago. The planes dropped their bomb loads on fuel dumps, warehouses and, as the U.S. command in Saigon put it in an all-embracing phrase, "other activities which are supporting the invasion of South Viet Nam by North Vietnamese forces."

It was a major new escalation of the war, and a high-risk gamble by President Nixon--one that he had been reluctant to take. Inescapably, it was a blow of retribution; the U.S. said that its new thrust northward was prompted by North Viet Nam's "mass invasion" of the South. The military justification was that Haiphong, is the North's: entrepot for war supplies. But those supplies cannot affect the war between now and the start of the rainy season next month, when military activity slows down anyway. Thus the only strictly military advantage of the bombing was to slow the movement of supplies southward for any new North Vietnamese offensive seven months from now, when the rainy season ends.

The diplomatic impact was strong. The main target of U.S. diplomacy last week had been the Soviet Union, which has furnished Hanoi with its missiles, its artillery and its 500 tanks (about 200 of them in use in the South). In a speech delivered in Ottawa earlier in the week, Nixon had given Moscow an oblique warning that "great powers cannot avoid the responsibility for the use of arms by those to whom they give them." In fact, it is unlikely that the Soviets deliberately equipped Hanoi for an invasion of South Viet Nam; most of the arms were apparently intended for North Viet Nam's defense. There is little reason to believe that Moscow could force North Viet Nam to curb its offensive, even if it wanted to try. As the U.S. has learned after more than a decade of war, Hanoi has a mind of its own.

Now, by ordering the bombing, Nixon has acutely embarrassed the Russians, who have no choice but to react with indignation. Whether they would go so far as to revoke the President's invitation to visit Moscow in May was far more doubtful--and the essence of Nixon's gamble. In effect, the President was betting that both sides want the summit enough that the Kremlin will still welcome him on schedule.

Tank Duels. On the ground in South Viet Nam, the North Vietnamese offensive was in its third bloody week, and was also beginning to look like old times --very old times. In the craggy, sandy wastes of South Viet Nam's northern provinces, where the Communist drive began, whole platoons of tanks dueled for the first time in this war. Farther south, in Binh Long province, where the main fighting flared, columns of troops and vehicles crawled along a sun-baked highway on their way to aid a garrison under siege by the Communist regiments and artillery of General Vo Nguyen Giap. "This battle is a very conventional one," said an American adviser, Colonel J. Ross Franklin. "Giap's battle plan could have come from a German, a Frenchman or an Englishman. They're leading with their infantry, supported by artillery and tanks. They have everything but air."

While airpower alone could not make ARVN (the South Vietnamese army) a winner against the Communists on the ground, it could be crucial in staving off defeat. Last week that proposition was tested again as U.S. and Vietnamese aircraft fought to save an outgunned ARVN force from what would be Giap's first important victory of the campaign: the capture of An Loc (pop. 40,000), the capital of Binh Long province, which is 60 miles north of Saigon via the French-built Highway 13.

To the Saigon government, it was imperative that ARVN prove itself able to defend a city that in normal times and good weather, is only a two-hour drive from the capital. The Communists have so far been frustrated in their attempts to capture the old imperial capital of Hue or the city of Quang Tri farther north, and it is believed that An Loc was to have been the seat of a provisional Viet Cong government. It should not have been a difficult target. In Binh Long province, the chief ARVN force was the 10,000-man 5th Division, a weak outfit that had been badly bloodied by the North Vietnamese a year ago in Cambodia. Opposing it, were two battle-tested North Vietnamese divisions, and an artillery regiment (some 20,000 to 30,000 men) equipped with Soviet heavy weapons, including as many as 50 tanks.

Early on, the Communists had cut a wide swath through Binh Long, "liberating" several hamlets and overrunning the 5th Division logistics base at Loc Ninh. Backed by their Soviet-made artillery and tanks, several thousand regulars of the North Vietnamese 5th and 9th Divisions then surrounded An Loc and its 12,000 defenders, who included a ranger battalion and remnants of two battered 5th Division regiments.

As the Communist artillery began taking the city apart, President Nguyen Van Thieu took a hand in the effort to break the siege. He called up the 21st ARVN Division from the Mekong Delta, then sent it up Highway 13 behind his own palace guard, a crack 400-man paratroop battalion. The would-be "relief column" ground to a halt twelve miles from An Loc (see box, preceding page). Far more effective was the relief from the skies. U.S. Navy fighters, Air Force B-52 bombers, and prop-driven Skyraiders, skillfully piloted by South Vietnamese stopped several Communist tanks dead in their tracks. When the ground attack began, the Communists lost 25 more tanks in one 24-hour period, including 18 in fierce combat inside the city. At week's end both sides were claiming victory, but the issue was still in doubt.

An Loc was not ARVN'S only problem last week. U.S. and South Vietnamese planes had to be diverted to the defense of the relief column, which was strung out helplessly over a 13-mile stretch of Highway 13. Farther north, in Military Region II (the vulnerable Central Highlands), a human wave of Communist troops swept an ARVN garrison from a fire base near Dak To, suggesting that an expected assault on the nearby city of Kontum was not far off. In Military Region I (the northernmost provinces), bloody fighting continued --as did the flow of Communist supplies through the DMZ. At Fire Base Bastogne near Hue, ARVN 1st Division troops ran so low on supplies after a long siege that they were fighting with arms and ammunition picked from enemy dead. Meanwhile, terrorist activity increased all over South Viet Nam. For the first time in two years, rockets were fired at Saigon's Tan Son Nhut airbase.

At week's end, the North Vietnamese had clearly demonstrated the weakness of South Viet Nam's border defenses. They retained the military initiative, and they continued to hold large swatches of South Vietnamese territory. But they had not been able to take permanent hold of any important cities. Nor had the NVA been able to bring about what the Hanoi daily Nhan Dan last week gloatingly described as "Nixon's biggest nightmare--a Saigon puppet army battered everywhere and crumbling irremediably."

Except around An Loc, ARVN commanders showed a reluctance to mount a sustained counteroffensive--a matter they left to the pilots. There were occasional scenes, too, of panicked soldiers rushing to grab the skids of helicopters as they pulled out of areas under fire. But to American military advisers present on the battlefields to provide logistical information and encouragement, most of the South Vietnamese troops seemed tough and professional.

In the north, Giap's 35,000 troops were stalemated by ARVN defenders around Hue and Quang Tri. North of the latter last week, a clever South Vietnamese marine commander simply evacuated his base after learning of an impending Communist night armor attack; when the North Vietnamese drove into the base, the marines opened fire from the perimeter, knocking out at least five tanks and killing scores of enemy troops. Another Communist armored force roared east on Highway 9 in the darkness, but missed the turn to its objective, Dong Ha. When the sun rose, the parked, puzzled Communists found themselves under the muzzles of heavier ARVN M48 tanks. Result: six more North Vietnamese tanks knocked out. Said a U.S. adviser: "Yes, we stopped them cold. The battle is not over, but I think that the crisis is past."

Or so Washington and Saigon hope, though they are not convinced that this is the case. In fact, both American and South Vietnamese commanders on the scene tend to agree that some major fighting still lies ahead. So far, the North Vietnamese have committed no more than half of their 100,000 troops in the South to battle, and they have yet to challenge ARVN where it is weakest, in the Central Highlands. For their part, the South Vietnamese have virtually no reserves to call on should the Communist drive spread to another front.

If the uncommitted North Vietnamese regiments enter the fighting, airpower would become more vital than ever, and last week the big U.S. buildup continued. Some 600 fighter-bombers were on hand at Danang and at bases in Thailand, as well as aboard the four carriers at Yankee Station. Two other carriers, the Midway and the Saratoga, were en route. As low clouds and drizzle kept U.S. Phantoms on the ground, South Viet Nam's own 700-plane air force took on an important role in the fighting; its ancient but effective Skyraiders, flown with daring by South Vietnamese pilots at treetop level, have accounted for a large portion of the more than 100 Communist tanks knocked out in the fighting so far.

Three Offensives. How long would the North Vietnamese drive continue? In Tet '68, the Communists pursued a series of three offensives, each of which faded after five or six weeks as supplies were exhausted and losses from U.S. counteroffensives mounted. Ranking U.S. officials in Saigon expect a similar pattern this time around. In their view, the current fighting will begin to fade in three to four weeks, as the North Vietnamese withdraw to their sanctuaries to regroup and resupply. Despite the onset of the monsoon rains, which are due to begin in most of the country next month, the Communists may well try to renew the fighting in August, in order to influence the U.S. election campaign. "Traditionally," says an American official in Saigon, "their first effort has been the strongest and most violent. According to our experience, the second will be less intense and so will the third, if there is a third."

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