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The situation is far starker in the countryside. Hanoi and the port of Haiphong are islands surrounded by a sea of discriminate destruction as the U.S. Air Force and Navy jets hammer in ever larger sorties at North Viet Nam's capacity to fuel the war in the South. From May to October of last year, the number of strikes increased 1000% , and after the bombing pause early this year, the number soared again, until Ho's land is now receiving 1,500 times the amount of bombing as was the case just a year ago. The Air Force has destroyed more than 300 bridges in North Viet Nam and damaged 800 more; Ho's highway system has been cut in more than 2,000 places; the two rail lines running northwest and northeast out of Hanoi have been splintered in more than 200 places.
That anything moves at all overland in the North is due to the continuous, primitive efforts of some 225,000 laborers conscripted into repair duty. But U.S. flyers have so interdicted and harassed the lines further to the South that lately, in desperation, the trucks are rolling again by day—and providing fat targets once again. Nearly 10% of Hanoi's truck fleet of 15,000 has been destroyed since the first of the year. The nation's major power plants are hit time and again, but only 20% of North Viet Nam's power supply has been knocked out at any one time. The reason: the vast majority of generators are built into flood-control dams in the Red River valley, and dams and levees are still proscribed targets.
The measured use of American airpower is aimed at making it simply too costly for Giap to keep supplying the war effort in South Viet Nam. The U.S. military would like to increase the pressure, mine the port of Haiphong where some supplies come in, and hit the "source targets" of gasoline that keep the trucks running. So far, Defense Secretary McNamara and the White House are holding back. Their argument: the present balance of terror in the air war is sufficient, and most supplies come in overland anyway from China. Mining Haiphong would risk Russian and British ships that call, also civilian life, as would bombing the source targets. The Air Force would also like to hit Giap's ammunition factories, but there are none, save for Haiphong, which is one big ammunition factory.
Propaganda Prisoner. For all the difficulties in his command and logistics, General Giap is still sending infiltrators down the trail, though the rate has dropped back to 3,500 a month from its peak of 7,000 last March. But what he will do with the force he has assembled in South Viet Nam remains the real question.
The best U.S. intelligence is that the Conqueror of Dienbienphu finds himself in a real dilemma. For one thing, he is the prisoner of his past tactics and a prisoner of the loneliness of the long distance away. Red-initiated battles are set-pieces, with every move plotted out in advance. Support areas are built up in advance with food, ammunition, medical supplies and, in some cases, even hospitals. Escape routes are hacked out, the terrain studied, the battle plan rehearsed in a sandbox. The Allies' ubiquitous harassment has made such set-pieces all but impossible; if one part of the plan goes awry, the whole action must be called off because enemy communications—and Giap dogma—do not permit enough flexibility to work around the flaw.