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

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ON THE BATTLE FRONT
By BeveHy Oeepe

New York

A Special ~Correspondent .

SAIGON.
South Vietnamese fighter-bombers, supported by American jets, smashed at a North Vietnamese base yesterday
1n 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 Plelku, 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 phcto-reconnalssance 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 a:\,lti-alrcraft batteries which opened fire.
None of the U. S. planes was damaged and p.11 returneq
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 cemmander-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

l{eraltJ m'rfbunt

Tuesday, Ei'etn•ua,•y 9,

1965 --------~□

NEW U. S.-VIET AIR RAID
(Continued from page one)

Air F'orce 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 ~ay whether more raids were planned.
Gen. Khanh announced he wa.s "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 rthe 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 estiated 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. Kbanh said.
.
He also refused to disclose whether further air striKes
. ,vere planned, saying only ·that "the Vietnamese Armed
.;F'l;>rrcs will undertake activities that are both itmely and
i,t6 the point."
Asked whether Communist aerial counterattacks were

expected, he said: "In war thete's always a risk." But he
expressed certainty that North Vietnamese planes, which
include MlG .iet fighte:·s, could not get thJ"ough his own and
American air defenses in South Viet Nam. If Chi:iese
Communist planes attacked, he said, "at most, 3 to 5 per
cent of their planes would get through."
Meanwhile, an Ar.1er:can 111 · ·ita y spokesm'.\n a
unced
the arrival by air ,)f th2 first units of a Marine anti- ircraft
battalion equipped ,,-ith H-:::wk m'ssiles b deal with possible
Red air attacks. The Hawks, wh0se movement to South Vir,t
Nam was announced Sunday in Washington. will be oa§ect
at Da Nang, a ma_ior U. S. Nr Force base 350 mlles north
of Saigon and 100 miles below thr. North Vietnemese border.
The base is secured by more than 300 U. S. troops.
The spokesmaa said the emplacement of the Hawks
In South Viet Nam had long been part of U. S. contingency
planning but the dccis'on was made only on Sunday after
the Pleiku attack. Unofficial Vietnamese sour;;es, however,
said the missiles had been en route to South Viet Nam
before Sunday.
The only immec;_,2.t~ Communist comment on the latest
retaliatory air strik2 came frcm the Peking rac<io, which
quoted North Vietname~e officials as saying that six American planes were sh::it cl,wn yesterday in addition to four
Sunday. The Soviet news agency Tass also !"e!)orted new
American air losses Lorn Hanoi. But U. S. authorities said
only one U. S. plane was lost in the Sunday raid.
The Pent?.gon yeste:·day identified another of the U. S.
dead in the Pleiku att2,ck 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 kil!ed in the Red onslaught.
Among those I' ted as seriously wounded was Pfc.
Gordon V. Hansen , son of Mrs. Edna I. Hansen, of 131
Brixton Road, West
pstead, N. Y.

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