The Harrowing War in the Air

IT was slightly before 2 a.m. of what was to be the first warm and sunny Sunday of the year in North Viet Nam. Suddenly, inside the big Soviet-built area surveillance radar stations near Haiphong and Hanoi, the radarscopes exploded into life with the blips of approaching aircraft--more than the technicians had seen at any one time in years. After a moment, the images smeared and the blips disappeared, as if overtaken by some evil magic. The radarscopes filled with impenetrable "snow"--or simply went dark.

As U.S. intelligence experts later reconstructed what had probably happened, the Communists worked furiously to switch their jammed equipment to alternate frequencies and different antenna systems, but with no success. Even so, they knew what the electronic symptoms meant: for the first time in the war, the U.S. was sending its eight-jet B-52s to bomb targets in North Viet Nam's Red River heartland.

The tip-off was the havoc created by the electronic "pilot fish" that, as the North Vietnamese know by now, often precede the B-52s: EB-66 Destroyers and EA-6B Intruders, whose bulges, pods and blisters house those gadgets designed to confuse ground radar, as well as needle-nosed F-105 "wild weasels," whose special radiation-seeking missiles lock onto and streak toward active enemy radar installations. Then, after the pilot fish, came the sharks: 17 B-52s. The B-52s dropped their 30-ton bomb loads into the darkness over Haiphong from 30,000 feet. The explosions destroyed a petroleum tank farm near the Haiphong harbor quay, provoking a fireball so large that it was seen from the bridge of the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk 110 miles out at sea in the Gulf of Tonkin.

Vapor Trails. In the North Vietnamese capital, 60 miles inland, loudspeakers urgently awakened the sleeping city: "Comrades, attention! The enemy is near Hanoi." At 9:30 a.m., the second wave of the U.S. air assault appeared. This time the raiders were 32 Air Force F-4 Phantoms, far nimbler than the high-and blind-flying B-52s; for nearly half an hour they bombed and strafed warehouses and petroleum storage areas on the outskirts.

By midmorning, panic was widespread. In Haiphong, all but soldiers and militia were ordered to evacuate; French Journalist Joel Henri saw "streams of children, old people and women walking along, carrying their belongings on bicycles." At 2:30 Sunday afternoon, the sirens wailed again in Haiphong. For more than an hour, 40 Navy jets from carriers wheeled around the city, pummeling warehouses, a huge truck park and nearby Kien An Airfield, where three MIG-17 fighters were destroyed on the ground. By the time the third attack had ended, the sky over Haiphong was streaked by the vapor trails of SAM missiles.

In all, the North Vietnamese gunners fired an astonishing 242 missiles at the American warplanes. Although the enemy claimed that 15 planes, including one B-52, had been shot down, the U.S. command said that, thanks largely to the new sophistication of U.S. electronic wizardry, the Communists had managed to score only two hits. One Navy flyer was rescued after he ditched his crippled A-7 Corsair II at sea; two crewmen of an Air Force F-105 "wild weasel" downed by a SAM were missing. Only four of the 88 MIG-21 s known to be based in the Hanoi-Haiphong area rose to meet the invading U.S. planes: three were shot down.

The planes and flyers that struck Haiphong and Hanoi early last week were merely a part--albeit an awesomely effective part--of the most powerful air force assembled in Indochina, not leastly because of its ingenious use of electronic and computer technology. The constant refinement and development of techniques is a military necessity for the U.S. if it intends to maintain its control of the skies over Viet Nam. For Nixon's air armada must deal with an opponent whose borders bristle with advanced Soviet missiles and antiaircraft artillery that have increased dramatically in quantity and sophistication. Still, the renewed air war promises to take a considerable toll. No B-52s have been lost since the Communist offensive began four weeks ago, but 16 smaller attack planes have been shot down, along with 21 helicopters. The human toll: 21 flyers killed, eight wounded, 35 missing.

Dramatic Step-up. The rapid air buildup continues. Within the past three weeks, more than 150 warplanes--F-4 Phantoms, all-weather F-105s, stubby EB-66s, B-52s--have been flown to the theater from Japan, the Philippines and even the U.S. The most dramatic step-up has been in the number of B-52s, increased from 83 to 139 airplanes, based in Thailand and on Guam. Within 13 1/2 hours after they received their orders at California's Beale AFB, two B-52 squadrons were settled in at Guam's Andersen, ready to operate over North Viet Nam (see box, page 15).

When the Midway and the Saratoga join the four aircraft carriers (Coral Sea, Hancock, Kitty Hawk, Constellation) currently on station in the Gulf of Tonkin, the number of U.S. combat planes in the Indochina area will climb past 850, up from only 400 last month. Counting the tough little South Vietnamese air force, with its A-l Skyraiders and A-37 and F-5 jets, Washington and Saigon have more than 1,000 combat aircraft available.

The air war has not only been stepped up; it has been re-Americanized. During the long relative lull in the fighting, Saigon's own air force had taken over 90% of the combat flying within South Viet Nam, while U.S. airpower focused on massive bombing of the infiltration routes in Laos and Cambodia. The Communist offensive changed all that. Within South Viet Nam, U.S. pilots have been flying a punishing 500 sorties a day, up from only 20 a day before the offensive (a sortie is one flight by one aircraft). For the pilots, attacking North Vietnamese tanks or defending beleaguered South Vietnamese troops has been a welcome change. "We'd all rather bomb targets we can see," says Captain Rick Elder, 27, an A-37 pilot based at Bien Hoa, north of Saigon. "It's a little bit more rewarding when you know the ordnance isn't just burning down rubber trees."

There are several ironies in the war. One is that the skillful, reckless Canyonesque veterans of the South Vietnamese air force are probably closer to the conventional American image of what fighter pilots are like than their American counterparts. Many VNAF pilots have flown more than 3,000 combat missions. Currently, the Thieu regime is mounting a morale-stiffening campaign around Captain Tran The Vinh, a Vietnamese ace who was credited with knocking out 21 North Vietnamese tanks before he died two weeks ago, at the age of 25, in the crash of his shell-torn Skyraider. Posters of Vinh, making a jaunty thumbs-up sign, appeared all over Saigon last week.

Vinh's American counterparts are cool, detached professionals, by and large emotionally uninvolved with the war. Last week Major Douglas Stockton, an A-37 pilot from Arlington, Texas, explained to TIME Correspondent David DeVoss that he did not really have anything against the North Vietnamese. "I just like to fly in combat situations," he said. "Last week I had just completed a pass at An Loc when an NVA soldier comes on my radio as clear as could be. 'Go away from Viet Nam, American G.I.,' the voice said. The people do not want you.' I wish he would have talked a little bit longer so I could have got a fix on him. It would have given me a great deal of pleasure to drop a 500-pounder on his head."

Automated War. Three years ago General William C. Westmoreland, then commander of U.S. forces in Viet Nam, forecast a future of automated wars "featuring almost instantaneous application of lethal firepower." Much of the air war is now automated and instantaneous. B-52s move in an electronic "bubble" generated by Rivet Ace, a highly classified system designed to snarl the latest model enemy missile radars. Fighters flying as low as 200 feet can be programmed to jerk into a sudden, evasive barrel roll the moment they are picked up by SAM radar. Over enemy infiltration routes, AC-130 Spectre gunships lay down a barrage of fire when the presence of troops is revealed by tiny air-dropped sensors no larger than a twig, including magnetic metal detectors and "people sniffers" that respond electronically to the smell of ammonia in urine.

The new devices are not 100% foolproof. Enemy troops often foil the people sniffers by hanging buckets of urine in the trees. Even the "wild weasels," which were designed to counteract Soviet-built SAMs, occasionally run amuck. During the Haiphong raid, an anti-radar missile that was intended to strike a Communist antenna accidentally homed in on the guided missile frigate Warden. The ship was so heavily damaged that it had to be towed to the Philippines for repairs.

Can airpower save Saigon's army from disaster on the ground? U.S. military advisers in Saigon insist that it has already done so. Without lavish air support, they say, the embattled cities of An Loc and Quang Tri might have fallen to the Communists long ago. In fact, the Americans believe that the North Vietnamese blundered by underestimating the amount of airpower that the U.S. could and would bring to bear on the offensive.

On the other hand, it is conceivable that both the Americans and South Vietnamese are inclined to rely a bit too much on airpower. "This attitude prevails in every corner of the battlefield," reports TIME'S Stanley Cloud. " 'Don't worry,' commanders and G.I.s alike keep saying, 'if things get too bad, we'll just bomb the hell out of them.' " But over the years it has not always worked, and it still may not. The inability of the South Vietnamese army to make headway against the Communist invaders on the ground seems to illustrate another saying heard often in Saigon: "Airpower can keep you from losing ground, but it can't get any back for you."

Indefinite Presence. When can the South Vietnamese take over their own air war? After the training and equipping of the Vietnamese air force is complete late in 1974, Saigon will have the world's seventh largest air force, with 1,300 planes. But even then it will not be self-sufficient. Partly because Washington does not want Saigon to have an air force advanced enough to tempt it into unwise adventures, VNAF will not be given the long-range planes that would enable it to keep pressure up on the Ho Chi Minh Trail or hold Hanoi's supersonic MIGs at bay.

Unless a negotiated peace is arranged, the prospect is for an indefinite U.S. air presence in Indochina, involving as many as 30,000 men and costing up to $1 billion a year (current annual cost of the war: $6 billion). The irony is that the U.S., having extricated itself from a protracted ground war in Asia, may find itself committed to a less costly but no less enduring war in the air.

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