Article about Communist air attacks

Item

derivative filename/jpeg
363-06395 to 363-06403.pdf
Digital Object Identifier
363-06395 to 363-06403
Title
Article about Communist air attacks
Description
Original title: "weapons", Keever's title: "Communist MIGs Reportedly Attack in Laos and South Vietnam", Article draft about Communist air actions and rumored escalation, for the Chrisitian Science Monitor
AI Usage Disclosure
Draft transcripts were automatically generated via Google Document AI and are currently under review. Please report significant errors to Archives & Special Collections at archives@unl.edu.
Transcript
--------------------
- Page 1
--------------------
zczc sag
ᎩᎩ ljp
weapons 1 (normass/deepe)
SAI GON, January 23--Reported Communist air attacks in Laos
would dramatize, if true, a twist-up in the weapons
and South Vietnam,
escalation spiral in a rapidly expanding theatre of bitter combat.
The weapons escalation, ang signified by/x the reported
Communist air activity, appeared calculated for super-sonic psychological
impact.
Militarily, the air incidents accentuated the trends of
the war here without changing them; the air attacks changed the form
(or maybe altitude) of the war, but not its character.
The nutshell trends in the South indicate the war is
and has been becoming increasingly sophisticated and conventionalized.
On the personnel side, it is becoming increasingly more North Vietnamese,
rather than South Vietnamese. On the weapons-supply side, increasingly
more Communist-bloc rather than Vietnamese. (Even for rice, North Vietnam
is becoming increasingly dependent on Soviet and Chinese imports,
here report).
sources
==more reuter
--------------------
- Page 2
--------------------
zczc sag
ᎩᎩ ljp
weapons 2 (normass/deepe)
Militarily,
the alleged incidents involving sub-sonic MIG's
and antiquated bi-planes are considered comic here in the face of the
ofsens
preponderance of gene and defensive American airpower.
Even a sneak,
kamikaze air attack on a major American installation or Vietnamese
city might have high psychological value,
but little military consequence.
Politically,
the air incidents surface a pivotal fact, but
doesn't change it--that the boundary lines of South East Asian countries
WAR
are increasingly non-existent in e day-to-day a realities.
The
North Vietnamese have been violating the ground borders of Laos for
years a fact largly invisible or else commenti conveniently ignored outside
of Asia; now they are only violating the Laotian border at a higher
altitude and faster and speed--which graphically magnifies the
intrusion for the non-Asian world. Ironically,
this comes at a time when
North Vietnam is refusing to officially admitofficially any such
intrusions,
as . U. N. Secretary-General Un Thant recently mentioned.
American fighter-bombers have also been violating Laotian airspace for
maids since 1964--with the consent of the Laotian government--and clandestine
with American advisors and helicopters
South Vietnamese Special Forces teams,
have violated the border on the ground.
In South Vietnam, the Con Communist air incidents erased the
tops
17th panap parallel above-the-jungles as North Vietnamese ground troops
have been doing
below it since mid-1964.
==more reuter
--------------------
- Page 3
--------------------
zcze sag
Jy 1jp
weapons 3 (normass/deepe)
Whether the Communist air attacks over its neighbors
is related in any way to peace-talk probing is a matter of wide
conjecture here.
Militarily, however, anti-Communist sources here
are far more worried about two other factors associated with the
Piedingh The first is whether the air incidents are an
incidents.
"harbinger" of an escalation into across-the-boundary Communist
missile-power.
Officials here have long feared North Vietnamese-based
offensive sufrace-to-surface missiles descending on either American-
Vietnamese bases or cities in the South. The Communist capability of settin
up to ground-to-ground missiles in War Zone C with the range of
a
for
blasting Saigon is the topic not simply of insa
m wild imaginations
but official reports as well. And when a Soviet-made missile
sunk an Israeli ship in the Middle East last year,
the U. S. 7th
Fleet off North Vietnam shruder shuddered at the prospects of a
repeat performance in Asia.
==more reuter
--------------------
- Page 4
--------------------
zczc sag
ᎩᎩ ljp
weapons 4 (normass/deepe)
"The Communist option of weapons escalation thum
probably doesn't look very interesting to them," one reliable source
MISS.TES,
explained last week. "They can use surface-to-surface weapons, but
Handi
the Americans have lots of fancy new weapons too. The North must remember
that a little PT boat incident lead to the bombing of the North.
throw a few missiles at Danang, the U. S. will hit P Haiphong.
escalation might be a big mistake for the North."
If they
Weapons
more reuter
--------------------
- Page 5
--------------------
zczc sag
ᎩᎩ ljp
weapons 5 (normass/deepe)
The second factor even more worrisome to the fo officialdom
here is the day reality that the Communists are importing
into the South more and more of better and better infantry weapons and
infantry support weapons.
In the early 1960's, the wholly Southern
Viet Cong movement sustained their momentum by capturing Americs-
American-issued weapons from government defenders;
these captured weapons
were supplemental to their old cached stocks of antiquated, rusty
French weapons discarded after the anti-colonialist war.
American
surveys at the time estimated only two per cent of the Viet Cong
weaponry was supplied by other Communist nations, including the North.
==More Reuter
--------------------
- Page 6
--------------------
zozo sag
ᏭᎩ ljp
weapons 6 (normass/deepe)
In mid-1964, the patten pattern changed and weapons escalation
began to infiltrate
began. The North Vietnamese units infilite infiltrating into the South
as units, rather than individual cadre,
and brought with them the
from the
best infantry weapons system of the Communist bloc-the AK family of
weapons, including i assault rifles, submachineguns and machineguns,
which is now used to arm the frame borderline units of the Soviet army.
Through the years this flow of weapons has moved southwards,
northern provinces, to the pe provinces around Saigon--and now are found
in the set southern parts of the Mekong Delta. Also,
weapons moved organizationally downwards--from the North Vietnamese units,
then to the Viet Cong
then to the Southern-born Viet Cong main force units,
this flow of
regional units--and now even to their village militia guerrilla militia.
The Communist weapons supply is now so excellent that senior American officers
admit their enemy does not even attempt to capture the best
of American weapons
.
==more reuter
--------------------
- Page 7
--------------------
zczc sag
ᎩᎩ ljp
weapons 7 (normass/deepe)
By 1966, their arsenal in the South began including the lethal
fin-stabilized rocket launcher and then the
mmm 122 mm.
1140 mm.
rocket launcher,
all mobile and destructive enough to inflame
By 1967,
the America American-protected Danang airbase several times.
long-range .152 mm. howitzers were used across the Demilitarized Zone to
paste the American Marine positions at Con Thien, Gio Linh and Khe Sanh.
VEN
f
en in the Mekong Delta, the local guerrilla forces have virtually imposed
2
a weapons stalemate unt upon America's new "little boat" Navy
The American
patrolling the major rivers.
VESSELS
the mortar and rocketfire from the
heavily armed S. Navy is not lenal powerful enough to wipe out the
only
mud-baked Communist bunkers a direct hit by,.155 mm.
Con
howitzer shells
need to rout the Communist forces,
and the re frequently used airstrikes
*
But, the
are generally not close-in enough to hit the bunkerlines.
local guerrillas, armed with the new Soviet-made B-40 and B-41 bazooka-styled
rockets, can pierce the armor of the American Navy boats with "heat-rounds"
but still are unable to sink the boats-an.
Hence, the ballistics
war in the Delta is indecisively in-balance at this time.
More Reuter
--------------------
- Page 8
--------------------
zcze sag
Jy 1jp
weapons 8 (nromass/deepe)
the
the ed alleged MIG-17 air attack
H,
on the outpost-installation of Khe Sang, across the DMZ in South Vietnam,
remains "shrouded in mystery," as one official explained.
military command here suggests the plane was an Americzn
The American
American
F-4 Phantom which mistakenly rocketed the South Vietnamese Special Forces
camp. The Vietnamese Joint Operations Center,
side of the war on a minute-to-minute basis,
which runs the Vietnamese
at first called the plane a
to
Communist MIG and then shifted to the term "di "unidentified
aircraft," probably for "diplomatic reasons," one source surged.
suggested.
HOWEVER,
ese military sources referred to reman remenants
Other Vietnamesing,
of a Communist cannon cartrruge, which they said regu resulted from the
a strafing attack on the camp, and indicated a heavier calibre weapon
than American planes fire.
==more reuter
--------------------
- Page 9
--------------------
zczc sag
ᎩᎩ ljp
weapons 9 (normass/deepe)
The reported aerial incident across the DMZ is probably
because of the vagueness surrounding it, than the
less significant,
air attacks in Laos, which have been confirmed by the Laotian government
and by the military-o American military command here. Laos is often the
"trial balloon" battleground when either the East or the West wants
to escalate the war, while minimizing the risks attached to doing so
in the "short fuse" Vietnamese situation. For example, the American
bombing raids began in December, 1964, in the Laotian panhandle
served Laxaño first as a warning to--andthen a prelude to--
the bombing of North Vietnam
in February, 1965.
Sgram several months later
The American am combat escalation bet began
then began--first imbambam in the air--and then on the ground
in the South. The Communists escalation began on the ground
HPPEARS
maybe shifting to the air as well.
and now
Friday
(Hank:
this will end my filing until after returning from
Seventh Fleet. Regards Bev).
== End Reuter
Date
1968, Jan. 23
Subject
Vietnam War, 1961-1975; MiG (Fighter planes); Vietnam (Democratic Republic). Quân đội; Strategy; Air warfare; Escalation (Military science)
Location
Saigon, South Vietnam
Coordinates
10.8231; 106.6311
Size
20 x 26 cm
Container
B9, F4
Format
dispatches
Collection Number
MS 363
Collection Title
Beverly Deepe Keever, Journalism Papers
Creator
Keever, Beverly Deepe
Collector
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