Jets to Ashes -As the Yanks Saw It
Item
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derivative filename/jpeg
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363-04737.pdf
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Digital Object Identifier
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363-04737
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Title
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Jets to Ashes -As the Yanks Saw It
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Description
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Article published in the New York Herald Tribune containing an interview of soliders who were witnesses to the attack at the Biên Hòa air base, page 12
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Date
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1964, Nov. 2
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Subject
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Biên Hòa (Vietnam); Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Guerilla Warfare, Mặt tráºn dân tá»™c giải phóng miá»n nam Việt Nam; Guerrilla warfare; Security systems
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Location
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Biên Hòa, South Vietnam
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Coordinates
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10.9574; 106.8427
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Container
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B4, F6
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Format
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newspaper clippings
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Collection Number
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MS 363
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Collection Title
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Beverly Deepe Keever, Journalism Papers
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Creator
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Keever, Beverly Deepe
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Copyright Information
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These images are for educational use only. To inquire about usage or publication, please contact Archives & Special Collections.
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Publisher
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Archives & Special Collections, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries
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Language
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English
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extracted text
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✓
Jets to .Li\shes-As the Yanlis Saw It
By Beverly Qeepe
A- Special Correspondent
BIEN HOA, Viet Nam.
"I felt sooner or later this
would come, and sure enough
it has."
Capt. John Johnson of the
United States Air Force looked
out over the Bien Hoa airfield
at the heaps of ashes and
wreckage that only a few
hours before had been six
B-57 jet bombers. Communist
Viet Cong mortar fire destroyed them in a surprise attack at 26 minutes after midnight Friday.
"The Viet Cong have been
mortaring villages near here,
and we've been fired on while
landing at the field," explained Capt. Johnson, pilot
of a B-57. "We all feel very
fortunate it was not worse
than it was.
"I just hope they don't
come again tonight. I'm going to sleep with my hard
hat (steel helmet) on my
toes so 'r know where it is ·
in ca.se they attack again."
"I feel like Custer," lamented Maj. H. F. O'Neill of
Knoxville, Tenn., commander
of the 8th Tactical Bomb
Squadron of the 2d Air Division, to which the wrecked
bombers belonged. "I don't
have much of a command
left."
Recall!ng ti attack. Capt.
Johnson sai
"I had just
gotten my
ct warm when
the first burst hit the billeting area. Something itarted
to burn. There was a lot of
smoke.
"The next burst was closer.
My navigator and I started
toward the runway, and got
a burst of tracers. We crawled
up a ditch for 50 yards and
across a soccer field to the
line where the B-57's were.
The bombers were burning
fiercely,"
Several hundred yards from
the runway stand the long
wooden huts in which the
U. S. Army's 118th Aviation
Co. is billeted. All four Americans slain in the attack and
most of the 31 U.S. wounded
were bllleted there. Seven
huts were hit by the mortars .
Rain fell through the demolished roof of one of the
huts yesterday, soaking a
stitck of mattresses and paperback books lying on the floor.
One of the books was "The
Guns of August ." Another was
titled "Promise at Dawn."
