THE TENSE TIGER

The real deterrent to the Reds' threatened attack on the offshore islands was out of sight of the beaches and almost out of the news. More than 200 miles from Quemoy, Rear Admiral Ralph S perry Clarke's Task Force 77 surged along at better than 25 knots, its awesome power untapped but tautly alert if word should come to unleash it. From Clarke's flagship, TIME Correspondent James Bell cabled:

LKE a tiger on the scent, Task Force 77 stalked around the island of Formosa. Spread out across the glittering sea were 17 ships deployed around the strike carriers Midway and Lexington. Ahead and on the flank prowled four destroyers, listening for sonar pings. Off to port, screened by six more destroyers, was the carrier Princeton, an antisubmarine hunter-killer. Far to the west, 1,000-m.p.h. F8Us swept along the China coast, their sidewinder missiles inscribed with obscene messages to the Communists. "We make lots of big radar blips," said one of Midway's pilots.

Aboard Midway there was a tenseness I didn't feel when

I last visited Task Force 77 a year ago. Not only were her pilots flying within jet-age spitting distance of Red Chinese airfields, but Midway was having a run of hard luck. One F3H squadron had lost two pilots and three planes in accidents within the week. The day I joined Force 77 the squadron's skipper, Commander Walter Heider of Coronado, Calif., died when his throttle apparently stuck after landing and his plane plunged overboard out of control.

So far 77's planes are flying armed only with conventional weapons. "We are not flying loaded for bear, but for rabbit," said one pilot wryly. But on the deck of each of her carriers, right over the "special weapons" bay, stands a single A3D bomber. An armed marine guard stands by to keep inquisitive seamen at a distance. Should the signal come from Washington, the deck beneath the A3D would open, and up would come an elevator to tuck into the plane's belly a nuclear bomb capable of reducing all Peking and its masters to radioactive dust.

With a grin, Lieut. Don Fraasa of Cincinnati extracted a small Stars and Stripes from the sleeve pocket of his flight suit. "We show the flag," he said. "Hope it scares them."

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