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Most Communist governments seemingly dusted off the rote anticapitalist, anti-imperialist tirade from the agitprop manual. Indeed, their response was probably the most realistic of all, for they had plainly long accepted the inevitability of U.S. raids on such inviting targets. One Moscow commentator noted that Soviet policymakers had regarded them as "imminent for some time." Peking, preoccupied with its internal "purification" purge, unstoppered the prescription brimstone but pointedly refrained from any specific threat to enter the war or increase its assistance to Hanoi. As for Hanoi, its reaction had a certain surrealistic quality, with broadcasts about "a big victory" and "a glorious feat of arms" in which, it claimed, seven U.S. planes were downed. Actual details of Hanoi's reaction were reported in a down-East country-weekly vein: "Misses Phuc and Due," said one broadcast, "were very busy today going back and forth to support troops with cartridges and water."
At home, congressional and press critics raised the cry that the President had abrogated a longstanding pledge to spare Hanoi and Haiphong. Beyond the assurance that "population centers" would be avoided, the Administration had never in fact made any such promise. New York Times Columnist James Reston went so far as to fault Johnson for his offer to negotiate with Hanoi after "he said he would not."
Sheets of Shrapnel. The North Vietnamese had a more pragmatic view of U.S. policy. Having repeatedly and unequivocally rejected all logical conditions for a settlement, they took the precaution of assembling around Haiphong and Hanoi one of the world's most lethal concentrations of antiaircraft guns and missiles. Haiphong's precious complex was guarded by 56 multicaliber antiaircraft guns and seven SAM sites. Hanoi's installation bristled with more than 90 ack-ack guns, countless massed machine guns and nearly a score of missile sites. How heavily defended the targets were—thanks to the help of Moscow and Peking—the pilots well know.
Lieut. Colonel James R. Hopkins, 42, of Norman. Okla., a veteran of 47 World War 11 missions, 100 Korean War missions and 60 raids over North Viet Nam, led the Air Force pack into Hanoi and admitted that he was as nervous as "a football player going out to play."
Weaving in from different headings and altitudes to outfox the ground gunners, the attacking jets approached at medium height, climbed abruptly, then dive-bombed their targets, plunging through sheets of bullets and shrapnel. "As we approached, I knew we had a go," said Hopkins. "The weather was beautiful, but the sky was filled with automatic-weapons fire and flak. I laid my bombs down the center of the area occupying the storage buildings and pump houses." Hopkins' co-leader, Major James H. Kasler, 40, of Indianapolis, recalls: "The whole place was going up. Every bomb that went in set off a secondary explosion. As we pulled out, the flak was real heavy. It was as thick as I've ever seen up there."