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It was siesta time in Viet Nam's clammy cities as the droop-nosed F-4 Phantom jets snapped off the U.S.S. Ranger's dipping flight deck. Next into the crystalline sky burst four flights of A-4 Skyhawks. Then the mission, 45 planes strong, streaked low across the Gulf of Tonkin toward the craggy, familiar coastline of North Viet Nam—and a target never before attacked by American pilots.
The strike area was two miles northwest of Haiphong (pop. 375,000), North Viet Nam's biggest port and second largest city. First, the leading Phantoms bombed and rocketed the formidable concentration of radar-directed antiaircraft batteries ringing the port's walled oil-storage facilities. While other F-4s prowled overhead and to the north to ward off any attacking MIGs, the Skyhawk attack bombers swooped on their targets. Within eight minutes, they had dropped 19 tons of bombs and 5-in. Zuni rockets on the nation's principal oil-storage complex (capacity 476,000 barrels), its only pipeline for offloading tankers, and three piers through which North Viet Nam funneled 95% of its fuel supplies.
A wall of red flame leaped 3,000 ft., followed by a coiling pillar of oily black smoke that rose five miles and was visible 150 miles offshore. Exclaimed Commander Charles R. Smith, 39, of Dalhart, Texas, who wrestled his Vigilante reconnaissance plane through the heat and flames to photograph the holocaust: "It looked as if we had wiped out the entire world's supply of oil."
Fifty-five miles to the west, as the Navy craft headed back to the carrier, 70 U.S. Air Force jets from bases at Korat and Ta Khlj in Thailand crisscrossed Hanoi, raining 72 tons of 750-lb. bombs in 25 minutes on North Viet Nam's second biggest petroleum depot (202,000 barrels), 3½ miles northeast of the capital city's center. At about the same time, A-4s from the U.S.S. Constellation blasted a smaller, 48,000-barrel fuel-tank area at Do Son, twelve miles southeast of Haiphong.
Tactical Triumph. Thus, more than a year after U.S. commanders in the field first urged bombing raids on the North's vital industrial targets, the U.S. last week finally attacked the hitherto-sacrosanct Hanoi-Haiphong complex. The operation was a triumph of tactical planning and destructive efficiency. Said an Air Force colonel who took part in the Hanoi raid: "We did the kind of surgical job that hasn't been done in this war."
U.S. planes previously had knocked out 15 lesser fuel dumps elsewhere in the North. Now, inside the "Red envelope," they had gone after the biggest, most lucrative targets yet. The Haiphong installation included 35 storage tanks on the surface and three underground, 16 warehouses, rows of oil barrels in an open storage area. The Hanoi storage farm, across the Red River from the city, contained 32 revetment-protected tanks, 13 supporting buildings, and railroad spurs that comprised the country's main oil-transshipment center.