Just a Mistake

It sounded almost as if Milo Minderbinder, the entrepreneurial mess officer who honored all contracts American and German, had stepped incarnate from the pages of Catch-22. On an overcast day last week, five U.S. fighter-bombers, using "precision" electronic bombing gear, went astray and swept over the U.S. airbase at Danang, South Viet Nam. They promptly deposited 34 500-lb. bombs on the sprawling installation. Only a "few" of the bombs landed on a fuel supply area, the military said; the rest fell harmlessly in open country. Those few, however, were enough to injure ten Americans and one Vietnamese. The bombs also ignited three fuel tanks, burning up 720,000 gal. of aviation gas.

The incident cast a further shadow over claims of precision bombing, most recently heard regarding the raids on Hanoi, where American planes have hit the French consulate and the Bach Mai Hospital. Still, apparently nothing will deter the US. bombardiers from their appointed rounds. Said one military spokesman: "There will be mistakes from time to time, just like the mistake of the L-1011 going down in the Everglades. People still fly commercial airplanes; we will continue to bomb."

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