Bombsight & Hindsight At the O.K. Corral

In Viet Nam's vicious war, the U.S.

has employed just about every weapon in the book, from bowie knives to bombs that hurl darts, in an attempt to wipe out the Viet Cong guerrillas. But few expected to see the weapon that was called in last week. It was the B-52 Stratofortress, that eight-jet colossus of the Strategic Air Command whose normal function is toting H-bombs round the world in constant cold war vigilance against attack on the U.S. On this mission, the Stratoforts--30 of them--carried conventional bombs and the seeds of a quite unconventional controversy. For their target was one against which most airmen would never think of employing strategic bombers.

Lyndon Said Go. The big bombers' target was "the O.K. Corral,"* a desolate 1-by-2-mi. patch of wilderness just 33 miles north of Saigon. There, according to intelligence reports, as many as four Viet Cong battalions were massing in the dense thicket near Bencat for another devastating attack on government positions along Route 14, a mere 30 miles north of Saigon. In the hope of avoiding a disaster like the one fortnight ago at nearby Dongxoai (rhymes with wrong's why), U.S. planners in Saigon searched for a means to trap the concealed Communist troops by surprise in their jungle hideout. SAC had long been restless to get into the war, and General William C. Westmoreland, commander of U.S. forces in South Viet Nam, gave SAC its wish. The big bombers would unroll a carpet of destruction, carefully tacked down by radar-controlled bombsights guaranteed to produce pinpoint accuracy. The plan was approved by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, by the Pentagon, and then forwarded to the White House. Lyndon Johnson said go.

The Stratoforts swept in at 15,000 ft. from their base on Guam, 2,600 miles away. En route, two of the $8,000,000 planes collided while refueling off the Philippines, and over the target area another plane was unable to release its bombload because of a mechanical failure. The remaining bombers unloaded a torrent of high explosives--270 tons in all--on the tangled forest floor. Then they wheeled for home, confident that they had dispersed the Viet Cong and killed many. But had they?

Buffalo & Teakettles. Not according to the three teams of U.S. and South Vietnamese Special Forces who helicoptered into the area to evaluate damage. The searchers found that many bombs had fallen as much as 250 yards apart, and much of the force of the explosions had been absorbed by the dense forest growth. Water buffalo grazed peacefully in fields where the 750-lb. and 1,000-lb. blockbusters had hit. Not a single Viet Cong body was found, although the searchers drew steady sniper fire, showing that Communists were still in the area. In an abandoned cave, the searchers found Viet Cong communications equipment and teakettles still warm to the touch. This led Washington officials to claim that the mission had been a success: the bombers had forced the Viet Cong to break and run. More skeptical officers looked at it another way: the bombing raid had been so ineffective that it had not even tipped over the teapots.

In hindsight, use of the B-52s had been an expensive means of hunting guerrillas, and the scheme's only real merit may well have been psychological. Hanoi could hardly fail to notice how quickly and easily SAC's huge squadrons had been brought into the Viet Nam battle. The B-52s would, of course, be enormously effective if turned onto the cities or factories of the north. But the jungle strike also served to prove once again that the war in South Viet Nam can be won only by foot soldiers, closely supported by tactical air strikes.

Also, the cost of ground war is high. Last week Saigon revised its casualty totals for the bloody battle of Dongxoai. The toll: more than 700 government troops and 150 civilians dead v. an estimated 700 Viet Cong. But Saigon's new military leaders seemed ready and willing to keep up the grim ground battle. To buttress their fighting force, 600 U.S. paratroopers of the 173rd Airborne Brigade were now holding a vital flank of Route 14, at the same time guarding the airstrip at Phuocvinh, a few miles from Bencat and Dongxoai.

Among the riflemen were lots of would-be Wyatt Earps, backed up by 300 impatient gunners of a U.S. artillery battalion. But so far, there was not a sign that the Viet Cong would test their perimeter, and through the long, hot days the troops were getting bored. As a precaution they were digging their foxholes a little bit deeper. As one paratrooper put it: "The longer we stay here, the more of a target we become."

* Named by U.S. officers for the scene of the Old West's most famous gunfight, the livery stable in Tombstone, Ariz., where Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday gunned down three bad-men in 1881.

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