Jets to Ashes -As the Yanks Saw It

Item

derivative filename/jpeg

363-04737.pdf

Digital Object Identifier

363-04737

Title

Jets to Ashes -As the Yanks Saw It

Description

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

Transcript

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- Page 1
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Jets to Ashes-As the Yanks Saw It
By Beverly Deepe
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 de-
stroyed them in a surprise at-
tack at 26 minutes after mid-
night Friday.
"The Viet Cong have been
mortaring villages near here,
and we've been fired on while
landing at the field," ex-
plained 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 go-
ing to sleep with my hard
hat (steel helmet) on my
toes so I know where it is
in case they attack again."
"I feel like Custer," la-
mented Maj. H. F. O'Neill of
Knoxville, Tenn., commander
of the 8th Tactical Bomb
Squadron of the 2d Air Divi-
sion, to which the wrecked
bombers belonged. "I don't
have much of a command
left."
Recalling the attack, Capt.
Johnson said "I had just
gotten my bed warm when
the first burst hit the billet-
ing area. Something started
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 Amer-
icans slain in the attack and
most of the 31 U. S. wounded
were billeted there. Seven
huts were hit by the mortars.
Rain fell through the de-
molished roof of one of the
huts yesterday, soaking a
stack of mattresses and paper-
back books lying on the floor.
One of the books was "The
Guns of August." Another was
titled "Promise at Dawn."

Date

1964, Nov. 2

Subject

Biên Hòa (Vietnam); Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Guerilla Warfare, Mặt trận dân tộc giải phóng miền nam Việt Nam; Guerrilla warfare; Security systems

Location

Biên Hòa, South Vietnam

Coordinates

10.9574; 106.8427

Container

B4, F6

Format

newspaper clippings

Collection Number

MS 363

Collection Title

Beverly Deepe Keever, Journalism Papers

Creator

Keever, Beverly Deepe

Copyright Information

These images are for educational use only. To inquire about usage or publication, please contact Archives & Special Collections.

Publisher

Archives & Special Collections, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries

Language

English