Two weeks ago, North Vietnamese antiaircraft fire shot down an unarmed U.S. RF4 Phantom reconnaissance plane, killing the crew of two. Since then other reconnaissance flights have been fired on but not hit. Late last week the U.S. retaliated with what Defense Secretary Melvin Laird elaborately called "limited-duration protective-reaction air strikes"a 24-hour series of raids involving nearly 150 U.S. fighter-bombers from airfields in South Viet Nam and Thailand and from carriers in the Tonkin Gulf. Radio Hanoi asserted that the U.S. had attacked the port of Haiphong and other targets in...
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