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U.S. troops were soon besting the Viet Cong in fire fights from Chu Lai to An Khe. The 34,000 marines in Viet Nam boast a 5-1 kill ratio over the enemy, have spread their original beachhead until now they control 400 sq. mi. of territory. When a bad bit of intelligence unloaded the 101st Screaming Eagles from their helicopters right into a battalion of Viet Cong near An Khe, the Eagles fought hand-to-mortar until the field was theirs. Soon the increasing aggressiveness of American ground troops everywhere was adding yet another dimension of fear and uncertainty for the V.C., already long harassed by U.S. air and sea power.
Planes & Ships. The U.S. first bombed the north in August 1964 in tit-for-tat retaliation for a torpedo-boat attack on two Seventh Fleet destroyers in the Tonkin Gulf. Regular bombings began last February; since then U.S. and South Vietnamese planes have flown more than 50,000 sorties against the enemy. The 800 planes in use range from the old prop-driven Skyraider, whose fond jockeys insist that it can fly home with nearly as much enemy lead in it as the four tons of bombs it can carry out, to the droop-nosed, brutal-looking ("It's so damn ugly it's beautiful") F-4B Navy Phantom, at 1,700 m.p.h. the fastest machine in the Vietnamese skies. Then there is the Navy's Intruder, a computer-fed, electronics-crammed attack ship that virtually flies itself once aloft.
Along with the fighter-bombers goes a covey of other craft: jammers to knock out the enemy's radar, flying command and communications posts, planes whose radar sweeps the sky for signs of attacking Communist aircraft. RF-101 photo-reconnaissance planes dive into the smoke to film the raid's damage for analysis back home, using strobelike parachute flares at night. Backing the raids also are the planes and helicopters of the Air Rescue Service, ready to pluck a downed airman out of the enemy heartland.
Some 400 of the daily strike planes are based aboard the carriers of Task Force 77 of the U.S. Navy's Seventh Fleet. The two flattops on "Yankee Station" shoot their planes off over North Viet Nam, while the "Dixie Station" carrier normally hits only V.C. in the south. The 30 ships, 400 warplanes and 27,000 men of "77" are not included in the 145,000-man total of forces now in Viet Nam. But they are very much a part of the war, and not merely of the air war. When U.S. Marines systematically took apart a V.C. regiment on the Van Thuong peninsula south of Chu Lai last August, two destroyers and a cruiser of Task Force 77 bombarded V.C. bunkers, blasted to pieces a Red company that tried to escape over the beach. Fact is, Seventh Fleet Commander Admiral Paul P. Blackburn's floating artillery can make life miserable—and hazardous—for the V.C. up to fifteen miles from the coast, and his screen of smaller craft on patrol duty in "Operation Market Time" has sharply limited V.C. gunrunning by boat along the shore.