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High over the Red River delta, U.S. jets raced toward their targets: bridges and ammunition dumps, barracks and railroad lines. Below, the country spread like oozing clay, its paddies framed by the dark brown lines of dikes. Ahead loomed the forested mountain peaks crowned with billowing thunderheads. Then there was Hanoi: a net of tiny roads leading in, the rail line gleaming north toward China, the factories on the river's edge belching smoke, the concrete revetments of Phuc Yen airfield, behind which lurked North Viet Nam's MIGs. As the American jets flew high overhead, bypassing the capital for other targets, the enemy below was waiting.
Upstream from Hanoi's abattoirs, sentries manned the guns atop the Pont Doumer, a spidery span built by the same engineers who erected the Eiffel Tower. From their perch, they could see other batteries: 37-mm. cannon, machine guns, hand-held automatic rifles—all poking skyward from the taller buildings of the capital. In the streets below, grim-faced boys snapped through the manual of arms with wooden rifles while pretty girls in pantaloons hurled mock grenades through automobile tires, many of them scoring two hits out of three over 25 yds. Beyond the city, crews of workers put the last touches on more sophisticated armaments: the launch pads of Soviet-supplied SAM II antiaircraft missile sites.
The Men from Uncle. Hanoi last week was ready for total war. So was Ho Chi Minh, the goat-bearded god of Vietnamese Communism and, at 75, Asia's oldest, canniest Red leader. North Viet Nam's Ho was making his last and most steely stand, and his young country seemed ready to win or die with him. Since February, U.S. air strikes into North Viet Nam have pounded Ho steadily: in more than 4,050 sorties, jets and prop bombers have razed at least 30 military bases, knocked out 127 antiaircraft batteries, shattered 34 bridges. In their wake the planes left ablaze 17 destroyed truck convoys and an equal number of weapons-carrying trains, along with 20 radar stations, 33 naval craft and the entire Dong Hoi airbase. Yet even as the bomb line crumped closer to crowded Hanoi, there was no sign of Ho's flinching.
"We've asked the other side on more than one occasion what else would stop if we stopped bombing," said U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk last week. "Are you going to stop attacking these villages and killing off thousands of innocent civilians? What else will stop? And we've never had any reply." Even the intentional five-day lull in U.S. bombing last May failed to draw a response from intransigent North Viet Nam. Britain's Commonwealth peace mission has not got very far either. Last week, after pondering Hanoi's rebuff of the mission, Harold Wilson gamely sent a low-level British official off to Hanoi on a "private" visit, apparently hoping to get Ho to change his mind. Few held out hope that Ho would do so.