New Arms, More Bombs

As the third consecutive week passed without a major Communist onslaught, more and more U.S. and Vietnamese officials were venturing to speculate that the worst of the fighting on the ground might be over. Meanwhile, the war from the skies was deadlier than ever. The Nixon Administration last week ordered another increase in the bombing of North Viet Nam. One additional squadron of B-52s was ordered into action, and the range of targets was expanded to include factories, power plants and chemical works. With good weather over the North, the U.S. Air Force and Navy were counting on 20 bombing days per month in the weeks ahead.

U.S. intelligence sources claim that North Viet Nam's transportation system has now been virtually paralyzed by the bombing attacks, which have involved widespread use of a new generation of guided "smart" bombs (see box). Hanoi's railway system is out of service, its major bridges down, and its main harbors mined and closed to all shipping. The North Vietnamese have boasted that the mines are being cleared from Haiphong, but U.S. officials insist that this is impossible. The North Vietnamese lack the sophisticated locator and detonation equipment that is needed to sweep the mines. Even for the Russians, whose fleets include over 350 minesweepers, it would be an extremely hazardous operation.

The mines were sown in a random mix: some are acoustic (set to explode upon locking into the sound of a ship's engine), some are magnetic (reacting to steel hulls), while others are triggered by changing water pressure created by a ship's passage. Still other U.S. mines are "counters," which allow a number of ships to pass harmlessly overhead and then explode on, say, the tenth or 15th ship. Thus a Soviet trawler concentrating on clearing one type of mine would run the risk of being blown up by another variety.

Partly because of the attrition caused by the bombing raids, and partly because of the deliberate caution of North Viet Nam's General Vo Nguyen Giap. Communist main-force attacks have recently been replaced by a campaign of probes, sapper assaults and artillery barrages. The Communists' failure to follow up initial advantages suggested that they might indeed be running out of steam, but the situation in the three main trouble spots remained ambiguous.

> In the Highlands city of Kontum, Communist sapper forces attacked from the south and east, and for a time held part of the city. After several hours they were driven to the south but continued to fight tenaciously near the Kontum airstrip.

> In the Hue area, North Vietnamese units once again attacked South Vietnamese positions across the My Chanh River on both sides of Highway 1. One morning before dawn, their tanks quickly encircled the South Vietnamese Third Marine Battalion, running around their positions, as one U.S. adviser put it, "like Sitting Bull at Little Big Horn." The South Vietnamese cheered and yelled when U.S. Army

Sergeant Bill Tillman fired a brand-new wire-guided missile which corrected its direction in mid-air and blew the turret off an oncoming tank. As the sun rose, 22 North Vietnamese tanks were left burning on the plain. Although the marines had some bad moments and had to give a little ground, they did so in good order and finally held firm; the North Vietnamese tanks had not proved to be all that formidable.

> At An Loc, 60 miles north of Saigon, the Communists kept up a steady but diminishing mortar and artillery attack on the town's 6,000 defenders, while a South Vietnamese relief force remained stalled under enemy fire on Highway 13. An Loc has little strategic value, but it has become a symbol of victory or defeat to both the North and South. "As it slowly disappears under the combined weight of allied bombing and Communist bombardment," reported TIME Correspondent Rudolph Rauch, who visited the area last week, "its symbolic importance grows ever greater. Like Dien Bien Phu, which also had no particular importance until stubborn men made it a symbol, An Loc cannot be allowed to fall by either side. One U.S. adviser describes the effort to capture the town this way: 'While the North Vietnamese have to do it, they won't do it. While we have to do it, we haven't done it.' "

To help retake An Loc, the Saigon government has stripped the Mekong Delta of two-thirds of its ARVN defenders. As a result, there has been a sharp surge of small-scale fighting in the Delta, a region that the U.S. military once boasted had been virtually pacified; no fewer than 300 government outposts have been destroyed there since the offensive began. President Thieu is said to believe that if the Communists could overwhelm 50% of the Delta, as well as maintain their hold on ground they have gained elsewhere, they just might be willing to settle for President Nixon's cease-fire proposal.

What have the North Vietnamese accomplished in the current offensive? They have failed so far to capture Hue --although it is still not certain that seizing the city was one of Giap's basic strategic goals--but they have otherwise scored some substantial gains. They have badly hurt the South Vietnamese forces to the extent of 70,000 casualties. They have, moreover, re-established the presence of their own army inside South Viet Nam, thereby defeating ARVN'S two-year effort to keep the North Vietnamese regulars bottled up in Cambodia and Laos. Between April 1 and August 1, according to U.S. estimates, the North Vietnamese will have sent at least 37,000 replacements down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. That will not be enough to replenish their losses in the offensive, but it is clearly enough to let them strike again later this year.

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