Eyes in the Sky

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.

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.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.