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Part of Viet Bombers Sow Bitter Seeds

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Viet Bombers Sow Bitter Seeds
By Beverly Deepe
A Special Correspondent

SAIGON.
While air power is vital to
the U. S. war effort in Viet
Nam, there is a feeling in some
quarters here that indiscriminate use of this power could
jeopardize the political war.
, Air raids have been stepped
' up perceptibly in recent weeks,
with frequent missions by
B-52 tactical bombers and
often a couple of hundred
sorties a day by fighterbombers carrying high explosives and napalm.
At the same time, U.S. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge
seeks to win the minds of the
people with the help of
counter - insurgency expert
Gen. Edward Lansdale-a difficult task made harder by the
fact that some of these people
may be the innocent victims
of the bombing raids.
Gen. Lansdale wrote in
Foreign Affairs magazine recently that the Communists
had set loose an idea in Viet
Nam that would not be destroyed by bombs and bullets;
and, while a military source
in Saigon says there is no
conflict between the Lansdale
viewpoint and the orthodox
military viewpoint at the moment, •the political strategists
niay attempt to force an easing-up of the bombing raids.
"You can carry a military
program so far that it will
create political hatreds," the
source said. "We could win the
war, then hold a referendum
and lose that."
.The use of air power in
South Viet Nam falls into
three categories. The first is
the saturation bombing of
known Viet Cong strongholds
by B-52 bombers-giant, highaltitude jets based on Guam
that can carry a payload of
at least fifty 750-pound bombs.
The second category is
called close tactical air support, which means air power
used to support troop action
or to defend Vietnamese or
American units encircled by

the Viet Cong. Such action
has turned the tide in some
battles and has pirevented
the annihilation of some government units-the besieged
defenders during the battle
at Due Co., for exampleuntil the arrival of ground
combat relief forces.
It is the third category
that some quarters feel could
hurt Mr . Lodge's plans for
social revolution in . the
countryside. This is the program of "combat · sorties"
by U. S. and Vletnamese
fighter-bombers which hit
suspected· Viet Cong structures and troop concentraions .
Unlike the B-52 raids,
these air strikes are not solely
in Viet Cong s·t ronghold
areas.
And not always do ground

troops follow up the combat
sorties to determine exactly
wlhat structures have been
hit and who has been killed
or wounded. The results are
,o ften adjudgecJi on reports
by the pilots or, at best, surveys by spotter aircraft.
While the B-52 raids are
made in areas that contain
the sparsest civilian populations, this is not so with the
combat sorties. These are
often launched against guerrilla bands, which are able to
merge quickly and easily with
the civilian population.
A further problem is that
the B-52 raids are driving the
Communists out of their
strongholds, to infiltrate their
headquarters elements into
the areas nominally controlled
by the government.
The Vietnamese government

controls only a small fringe of
villages surrounding each of
the major population centers.
The remaining villages in the
countryside are considered by
counter-insurgency experts to
be partially or totally dominated by the Viet Cong-not
only by guerrillas but by political cadres as well.
Here is a problem that air
power cannot solve . While air
strikes can prevent large Viet
Cong troop concentrations
from forming , they cannot
discriminate good from bad ·
and hit the guerrillas in the l
villages where they do most
harm,
"The basic problem on our
side is that we have not yet
found the answer for guerrillas in small groups," the
U.S. military source-in Saigon
said.

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