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The Prying Camera. Thanks to the Recce men, Viet Nam has become the most photographed war in history. Starting from scratch, the wing has made complete photo maps of all potential target areas and all possible enemy infiltration routes into South Viet Nam. Every month its 13th Reconnaissance Technical Squadron ("Recce Tech") processes and interprets an astounding 250,000 feet of film. Speed is the keynote. If pictures reveal a "hot" target, a strike can be ordered 20 minutes after the photo plane lands at Saigon's Tan Son Nhut airfield—and can be carried out almost instantaneously by U.S. bombers circling high over North Viet Nam awaiting assignment by radio.
More often, however, the targets are harder to find. The Viet Cong are masters of camouflage, and the canopy of the jungle that covers much of the land gives them excellent protection against prying cameras. To penetrate the cover, platoons of photo interpreters labor around the clock behind the electrically locked steel door of a special laboratory at Tan Son Nhut comparing pictures of the same minute areas, looking for the subtle changes that spell V.C. They are experts at their work. "I've seen them stretch film right across the room and then count the trees from a prominent river bend in order to pinpoint an area," says Major William L. Musladin, the Recce Tech's operations officer.
End of the Road. Trained for a year at a special Air Force school in Denver, the photo interpreters can tell whether a dark patch in the foliage is the cover for a V.C. truck—or the product of a jungle spring. A one-eighth-inch telephone wire strung across a jungle clearing can betray the location of an enemy field-communications system; a jungle trail that suddenly peters out can pinpoint the entrance to a labyrinth of V.C. tunnels; a road that goes nowhere can lead the photo interpreters to a hidden oil dump. It requires infinite patience. "A road ends at a river where the ferryboat has been sunk by bombing," says Captain John Irwin, a Recce Tech officer. "Where is the new ferryboat? We study the riverbank and find a bush that wasn't there a week ago. Bushes don't grow that fast."
Some enemy activity undoubtedly goes unseen, but the reconnaissance men doubt that the V.C. can get away with very much without being spotted. "If it's in the open," says Irwin, "we'll find it eventually." They're likely to find it even if it isn't in the open. Witness the greasy black smoke that rose last week over the deserted army camp at Badon.