THE VALUE OF BOMBING THE NORTH

NO aspect of the war in Viet Nam has caused more controversy than the U.S. air raids on the North. Demands and petitions that they be stopped come from all quarters; last week, for example, both Pope Paul VI and the National Council of Churches pleaded for an extended pause. On the other hand, many politicians and military men feel that, to be really effective, the raids should be stepped up to include some of North Viet Nam's most vital targets.

Caught in the middle of the argument and disturbed by growing U.S. losses over the North -eight planes and 13 flyers in a single day early this month -the Administration last week made a riposte. The U.S., said Air Force Secretary Harold Brown, is neither "undercommitted" nor "overcommitted" in the air war against the North, but precisely on target. As for any prolonged bombing pause to alter that balance, Secretary of State Rusk firmly ruled it out without some sort of reciprocal gesture on Hanoi's part. "We have told them many times that if they will tell us what they will stop doing, we will consider stopping the bombing," he said. "We can't stop just half the war. They've got to stop their half of it."

Serious Degradation. Brown, 39, told aviation writers in Washington that the bombing of the North has two principal objectives: 1) "to make it as difficult and as costly as possible" for Hanoi to support troops in the South; and 2) to persuade Ho Chi Minh "that the peace table is preferable to continuation of a war he cannot win." Brown marshaled an impressive array of statistics to prove that the bombing has caused "serious manpower, supply and morale problems" for Hanoi. From March 1965 through last September, said Brown, U.S. bombers have caused a "serious degradation of the North Vietnamese logistic net" by destroying or damaging 7,000 trucks, 3,000 railway cars, 5,000 bridges and 5,000 barges and boats. Two-thirds of the North's oil storage capacity, most of its munitions-making facilities and nearly all its bridges outside Hanoi and Haiphong have been hit. Just to repair the damage, 200,000 to 300,000 North Vietnamese have been kept constantly at work.

The bombing has been so effective, Brown said, that the flow of supplies has been cut to 50% of what North Vietnamese fighting units in the South require. As a result, while the Viet Cong and their North Vietnamese allies were launching an average of seven battalion-sized attacks a month in 1965, this year the figure has dropped to 1.7 -though there are now more Communist battalions in the South. The Communists have failed to mount a single major offensive on their own all year, have instead been prodded by probing U.S. troops into a number of counterattacks.

Not Easy or Cheap. The array of statistics was admittedly an Administration brief for the bombings, though an impressive one. Even so, Brown conceded that the bombing strategy has its flaws. "I don't want to leave the impression that the air war has been easy or cheap," he said. "It has not." In the 22 months since the raids began, the U.S. has lost 437 planes over the North, 277 of them since the beginning of 1966. Part of the increasing rate is accounted for by the growing efficiency of North Viet Nam's antiaircraft gunners and the improvement of their defenses.

The nature of the bombing explains the rest. Under orders to keep civilian casualties to a minimum, U.S. bombers zoom in close to the deck for greater precision, thus become vulnerable not only to a dense cloud of flak but also to small-arms fire. Such ground fire takes an even heavier toll than do the surface-to-air missiles that bristle around major targets. "Every farmer over there, I bet, has a pistol or a rifle," says Air Force Major Edward E. Williams, a veteran of the bombing war against North Viet Nam. In dogfights with Red MIGS, though, the U.S. has a 26-to-6 edge.

One of the great disappointments of the bombing has been its failure to stop the flow of men from the North. "Infiltration continues," said Brown. In fact, it has risen from 4,500 men a month last year to 7,000 at present. Still, military men believe that the infiltration rate would probably be much higher without the bombings. Their value was dramatically illustrated two weeks ago when, according to U.S. officers in Saigon, American planes sighted a 600-man North Vietnamese battalion moving through Mu Gia Pass, one of the prime portals to the South. The planes swooped in and virtually wiped out the battalion.

Military men agree that the bombing has made it inestimably more difficult for Hanoi to supply troops in the South, but they argue that it makes no sense to risk heavy losses on such targets as trucks and supply shacks. An F-4 Phantom costs $2,500,000, they point out, while a Viet Cong hutch may be worth $20 and a pack animal $100. The brass want to hit Haiphong's port, big factories and the Red River Valley dams that supply most of the North's power.

Hostages to Power. To such arguments, the Administration replies that its object is not to bomb North Viet Nam back "to the Stone Age," as retired Air Force General Curtis Le-May once proposed. "There is no doubt that air power could destroy North Viet Nam if it were in our interests," said Brown. "Our Government does not believe that it would be." The U.S. has purposely avoided attacking certain targets because they are too close to urban residential areas, would cause suffering among the civilian population or would not significantly affect the enemy's short-term ability to continue fighting. Brown warned that "all of these targets are hostages to U.S. air power" and that the U.S. could easily increase that power to a much higher level. For now, though, the bombing is likely to go on reverberating over the North at just about the same level of intensity.

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