Help for the Junkmen

The grim war pounded on. U.S. and South Vietnamese planes last week continued their daily raids to the North, striking at roads and munitions dumps, trucks and bridges. In Washington, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara revealed that air strikes in North Viet Nam had already shattered 24 vital bridges (see following pages) and that more would fall in the immediate future. On the ground, South Vietnamese troops continued their steady pressure on the Communist Viet Cong, and in swampy Kien Hoa province, 50 miles south of Saigon, government Rangers, supported by U.S. jets and helicopters, killed at least 150 Viet Cong in a running battle. The powerful U.S. presence was being felt even at sea.

Sat Cong. Since 1962, the coastal waters of South Viet Nam have been patrolled by "the Black Pajama Navy" --a force of 500 junks and 4,000 conscripts who resemble freebooters more than freedom fighters. Clad in black cotton bellbottoms, draped with carbines and bandoleers, each of them wearing a tattoo that reads Sat Cong ("Kill Communists") on their chests, the "junkmen" look like tough customers. They have girls in every port, they dine on grilled octopus stewed in rotten fish sauce, they swipe fish from passing customers, and they claim to have searched 200,000 boats last year. But of the 830,000 persons aboard, only 1,850 were arrested, a mere 21 confirmed as Viet Cong infiltrators.

Such statistics have long led U.S. authorities in Saigon to pooh-pooh the idea of offshore routes as a major supply source for the Viet Cong. But when a 300-ton, steel-hulled freighter out of North Viet Nam's port of Haiphong was sunk by air bombardment last February in Vungro Bay (TIME, March 5), U.S. Navy advisers began reassessing things. The Vungro ship carried 100 tons of Viet Cong cargo, ranging from medical supplies to heavy artillery, and nobody knew how many other ships had made it in to the coast. With continued air interdiction of North Viet Nam's overland supply routes to the south, the Communists just might be shifting a considerable portion to sea --where there is vast opportunity for concealment.

Bamboo Bottoms. More than 50,000 fishing junks ply South Viet Nam's bulging, 1,000-mile coastline. The ragged reach from the southern coast to the 17th parallel is a navigator's nightmare of coves and sandbars, ready to crack the keel of any U.S. destroyer that ventures within the ten-fathom curve.

On the radarscope of a U.S. warship, the coastline and the fishing fleet blend into a single, miasmic blur, and no technique other than close search has yet been devised to distinguish Communist from honest fisherman.

Of obvious advantage is the design of the Vietnamese fishing boats that carry most of the murderous contraband. Over the centuries, Viet fishermen have learned to bottom their boats in bamboo. The intricately woven basket hulls of their fishing junks--some of them more than 100 feet long--keep out the water and yet can slide over the craggiest reef without rupturing; on sandbars, the bamboo weave spreads and flattens to prevent broaching.

Hard to Sink. The U.S. Seventh Fleet does what it can to cope. Its Task Force 71, with more than 20 destroyers and minesweepers plus the cruiser Canberra, scours the offshore sea lanes. Each day, its five P2V Privateer patrol planes swoop low over the coastline day and night. Using radar, the planes finger suspicious boats and notify surface craft to investigate. But the fishing armada clogs the radar screens, making detection well-nigh impossible. Trying another tack, the U.S. last week ordered 17 Coast Guard patrol boats and 200 men into the area. The Coast Guardsmen have fairly high speed (18 knots) and deep experience in catching small boats. At the same time, the Black Pajama Navy of South Viet Nam will be integrated with the lackluster South Vietnamese navy (in which no doubt they will be forced to wear khaki). The "defensive sea area"--in which all boats can be hailed--has been extended to the three-mile limit, while patrol craft will be allowed to intercept any suspicious boat as far out as twelve miles.

Will the new measures be enough? Men who go to sea in baskets, as the Viet Cong "fishermen" do, are hard to find, harder to sink. It may well take more than 17 new patrol boats to do the job.

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