Ho Chi Minh's air defenders struck back last week. Eleven U.S. warplanes were shot down over North Viet Nam by antiaircraft batteries, MIG-17 jets, and a record barrage of 74 SAM missiles. A sleek new MIG-21 also showed up in North Vietnamese skies with air-to-air missiles that barely missed three American raiders. It was the heaviest week's action of an expanding air war, and it brought to 303 the total number of U.S. airplanes that have now been lost over Viet Nam.
The losses did not deter American bombers. Swooping in low, they blasted eight oil dumps and an assortment of bridges, trucks, trains and barges in 702 separate missions over North Viet Nam. Most spectacular strikes were against the cratered ruins of a bombed-out North Vietnamese army camp at Badon, 75 miles north of the 17th parallel. For six successive days Air Force F-4C Phantoms dumped new bombs into the craters—which exploded into towering columns of greasy black smoke. Looking for hiding places for his remaining petroleum supplies, Uncle Ho had turned the camp into an oil dump.
The New Shadows. The strikes had been called when an American photo interpreter in Saigon spotted tiny new shadows in the latest air photographs of the camp. The pictures were the product of the 460th Tactical Reconnaissance Wing, whose relentless, tedious, and often dangerous activities provide 90% of the intelligence information on which American bomb strikes are based.
Day and night, the 200-odd planes of the 460th—the largest wing in the Air Force—criss-cross the skies of Viet Nam, snaking up infiltration trails, dodging mountains, flying through thunderstorms and flak, alone, unarmed, and always looking for Charlie. It is the toughest flying in the world, as its pilots—all veterans of proven skill—know all too well. In the past two years the "Recce" wing has lost 27 crews, including the six men aboard an RB-66 that was shot down last week northeast of Hanoi. But, says Captain Gale Hearn, 34, a onetime flying instructor who specializes in night runs, "we're more scared of those mountains than we are of the Viet Cong. You learn to trust your radar out here. When the moon goes down, it's like flying through an ink bottle."
To search out targets for the bombers to hit, the Recce planes are crammed with cameras, infra-red detectors, special radar, and secret electronic devices that can jam enemy radar. With special heat-sensor equipment, they can pinpoint tiny cooking fires that betray the presence of the Viet Cong. "We can't kill them all, but we can make sure Charlie has to eat cold rice," says an Air Force targeting officer. With powerful 4,500,000-candle-power flash cartridges, Recce planes can turn night into day to photograph enemy convoys sneaking down the Ho Chi Minh trail. "The object is to make Charlie walk," says another targeter. "I'd like to see him start walking at Hanoi. The farther he has to walk, the longer his supply line becomes, and the less there is that reaches the South." Their cameras are set to fire automatically when the flash cartridges go off, but Communist tracers can come so close that one pilot last week came home with an extra picture triggered by a bullet's glare.