The Long Arm of SAM

U.S. strikes against North Viet Nam have been directed primarily against what air intelligence officers like to call the "ganglia" of Communist transportation and communications. Right from the start, the most dangling ganglion of the lot has been Vinh, the largest town in the panhandle of North Viet Nam, and the hub of road, rail and trail routes to the south. Last week U.S. Air Force and Navy planes once again pasted Vinh--this time with 77 tons of bombs. The prime targets now lie closer to Hanoi, and there last week the U.S. lost another fighter-bomber to North Vietnamese surface-to-air missiles. Cruising along some 50 miles southwest of Hanoi with three other jets on what pilots call an "armed wreck" (armed reconnaissance), a Navy A-4 Skyhawk felt the long arm of SAM--just as an Air Force Phantom had on July 24. The flight was out of range of any of the North Vietnamese missile sites so far identified by U.S. aerial intelligence, leading to the conclusion that Russia is supplying Ho Chi Minh with mobile surface-to-air missiles, much like the U.S.-built Hawk missile units that were installed in South Viet Nam last February. The sobering fact is that at present the U.S. military has no certain means of determining just where Ho's missiles are.

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