On the Battle Front - New U.S.-Viet Air Raid

Item

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363-04740.pdf
Digital Object Identifier
363-04740
Title
On the Battle Front - New U.S.-Viet Air Raid
Description
Article published in the New York Herald Tribune about a joint US-South Vietnamese air strike against North Vietnam, pages 1 and 4
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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
ON THE BATTLE FRONT By Beverly Deepe A Special Correspondent SAIGON. South Vietnamese fighter-bombers, supported by American jets, smashed at a North Vietnamese base yesterday in the second retaliatory raid in two days on the Communist north. Seventy per cent of the m111tary targets around Vinh Linh, five miles from the South Vietnamese border, were reported knocked out in the air strike, and columns of smoke and fire rose over the target area. One South Vietnamese plane was crippled by heavy Communist ground fire and crashed in South Viet Nam, but the pilot parachuted and was rescued. The U. S. Defense Department reported no American planes missing. The raid was a follow-up to Sunday's strike at the Dong Hoi area, 75 miles farther north, by 49 United States Navy planes. South Vietnamese and other American planes had also taken off Sunday to join at the aerial reprisal for a Communist attack at Pleiku, in which eight U. S. service men were killed and 108 wounded. But the land-based planes were prevented by bad weather from reaching their targets in the initial attack. U. S. Navy photo-reconnaissance planes returned to the Dong Hoi area yesterday to take pictures of the damage to Communist troop centers there, the Pentagon announced in Washington. n said jet fighters accompanied the reconnaissance planes and "expended some ordnance" against North Vietnamese anti-aircraft batteries which opened fire. None of the U. S. planes was damaged and p.11 returned safely to the carrier Hancock, the statement said. The Vinh Linh raid was announced at a Saigon press conference by Lt. Gen. Nguyen Khanh, South Vietnamese Armed Forces commander-in-chief, who said giving the retaliation order made Sunday "the happiest and most important day of my life." The attack was carried out by 24 South Vietnamese More on U. S. RAIDS-P 4 New York Herald Tribune Tuesday, January 9, 1965 NEW U. S.-VIET AIR RAID (Continued from page one) Air Force Skyraider fighter-bombers under Brig. Gen. Nguyen Cao Ky, the Air Force commander, Gen. Khanh said. U. S. jets accompanied the propeller-driven Skyraiders, apparently to deal with possible interception by North Vietnamese jets and to suppress ground fire. Gen. Ky, in a separate statement, said four American F-100 jets took part and dropped bombs on one target area with "excellent" results. He said he believed one F-100 was hit by anti-aircraft fire but there were no American casualties. One South Vietnamese pilot was wounded in the neck by shell fragments, and Gen. Ky himself was grazed by shrapnel which pierced his shirt. "We came in very low, just off the tree tops,"' Gen. Ky told newsmen. "Just before we reached the target, we pulled up to release our bombs. That's when the flak hit us. Almost all our planes were hit." He identified the targets as military installations at the villages of Liem Cong Tay, That Le and Song Song near Vinh Linh on a route leading to the nearby border. He declined to say whether more raids were planned. Gen. Khanh announced he was "very proud" of Gen. Ky, a power among the younger generals' group with whom Gen. Khanh maintains an uneasy political alliance. Brig. Gen. Nguyen Due Thang, head of the South Vietnamese Joint Operation Center, appeared at the press conference with Gen. Khanh and reported these results of the attack: "Seventy per cent of the military targets were estimated destroyed and a number of columns of smoke and fire were seen spiraling up by the pilots." The Vinh Linh raid, like the Dong Hoi strike, was in retaliation for the Communist guerrilla attacks at Pleiku and other points early Sunday that were regarded as directed by North Viet Nam, Gen. Khanh said. He also refused to disclose whether further air strikes were planned, saying only that "the Vietnamese Armed Forces will undertake activities that are both timely and to the point." Asked whether Communist aerial counterattacks were expected, he said: "In war there’s always a risk." But he expressed certainty that North Vietnamese planes, which include MIG jet fighters, could not get through his own and American air defenses in South Viet Nam. If Chinese Communist planes attacked, he said, "at most, 3 to 5 percent of their planes would get through." Meanwhile, an American military spokesman announced the arrival by air. If the first units of a Marine anti-aircraft battalion equipped with Hawk missiles deal with possible Red air attacks. The Hawks, whose movement to South Viet Nam was announced Sunday in Washington, will be housed at Da Nang, a major U. S. N. Force base 350 miles north of Saigon and 100 miles below the North Vietnamese border. The base is secured by more than 300 U. S. troops. The spokesman said the emplacement of the Hawks in South Viet Nam had long been part of U. S. contingency planning but the decision was made only on Sunday after the Pleiku attack. Unofficial Vietnamese sources, however, said the missiles had been en route to South Viet Nam before Sunday. The only immediate Communist comment on the latest retaliatory air strike came from the Peking radio, which quoted North Vietnamese officials as saying that six American planes were shut down yesterday in addition to four Sunday. The Soviet news agency Tass also reported new American air losses Lorn Hanoi. But U. S. authorities said only one U. S. plane was lost in the Sunday raid. The Pentagon yesterday identified another of the U. S. dead in the Pleiku attack as Capt. George Markos, of Melbourne, Fla. A sentry whose detection of Communist infiltrators probably kept the casualty toll from rising higher was identified as Sp. 5/c Jesse A. Pyle, of Marina, Calif., who was killed in the Red onslaught. Among those listed as seriously wounded was Pfc. Gordon V. Hansen, son of Mrs. Edna I. Hansen, of 131 Brixton Road, Weststead, N. Y.
Date
1965, Feb. 9
Subject
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Aerial operations; Vietnam War, 1961-1975--United States. Air Force; Vietnam War 1961-1975--Air Force of Vietnam (Republic); Bombing, aerial
Location
Saigon, South Vietnam
Coordinates
10.8231; 106.6311
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