The Biggest Boom

From the swamps of the Mekong Delta to the forests of the Demilitarized Zone, from the highlands abutting Cambodia to the sands of the South China Seacoast, all South Viet Nam thrums and bustles today with the American presence. It is not only the presence of 440,000 American fighting men but the astonishing buildup in a once-primitive land of all the means--and more--to fuel, feed and keep armed the fighting men. Dredging out ports and rivers, bulldozing roads and jet strips, the U.S. has created virtually from scratch a vast command, communications and supply network able to support and supply not only present U.S. needs but practically any that may arise in the future (see color pages).

Gone are the days of bomb shortages and logistical bottlenecks. In an endless stream that reaches back across the Pacific, the freighters daily steam by the dozens into such new Vietnamese ports as Cam Ranh Bay and Danang, each a modern $150 million harbor complex. By the hundreds, the air-cargo planes daily sweep in to disgorge their priority materiel, making Saigon's Tan Son Nhut one of the world's busiest airports. Depots larger than cities dot the Vietnamese landscape; base camps and artillery posts blossom in the midst of the raw bush; airstrips cleave the virgin jungle; forests of antennas in myriad shapes outsoar the jungle trees.

In his speech to Congress, Viet Nam Commander General William C. Westmoreland tellingly summed up what the U.S. has wrought in a mere two years' time in Viet Nam. "Then there were three jet-capable runways," he said. "Today there are 14. In April 1965, there were 15 airfields that could take C-130 transport aircraft. We now have 89. Then there was one deep-water port for seagoing ships; now there are seven. In 1965, ships had to wait weeks to unload; we now turn them around in as little as one week. A year ago, there was no long-haul highway transport. Last month alone, 160,000 tons were moved over the highways."

In his first report to President Johnson, new Ambassador to Viet Nam Ellsworth Bunker told of inspecting the port of Saigon and finding it "busy but orderly." A few months ago, before the U.S. built a second port upriver for Saigon, the city docks were so congested that goods were stored on barges, and as many as 35 ships waited in the harbor at a time. Today the improved flow has so increased the supply of goods coming into Saigon that it has driven down the black-market rate of the piastre from 173 to 145 to the dollar. The greater availability of things to buy, including rice, has eased inflation and lowered not only the price of rice but the country's cost of living.

Prefab Hootches. The largest U.S. base in Viet Nam is Cam Ranh Bay, once a sleepy village of fishermen. It is now well on its way to becoming one of the great ports of Asia, and plans are already in progress to make it a major commercial and industrial center once the war is over. Out of Danang flow supplies by ship LST, truck, Jeep and river barge for the needs of the 73,000 U.S. Marines in I Corps. Cargo and troop-carrying planes hop eastward to An Khe, home base of the far-ranging 1st Air Cavalry in the Central Highlands, and Pleiku, combat and supply center for the western highlands. Across Viet Nam the U.S. has built storage capacity for 1,666,000 barrels of fuel and some 80 acres of paved and revetted pads for 210,000 tons of ammunition. But not all the U.S. buildup has been for purely military needs. U.S. construction engineers have rehabilitated ten hospitals and built one from scratch in the Delta, all for the use of South Vietnamese civilians.

The basic buildup has progressed so far in Viet Nam that some amenities are now being added, such as semipermanent housing for U.S. troops, many of whom occupy tent cities when not out fighting in the field. A prefab factory at Saigon's Tan Son Nhut airport is turning out frames, roofs and sidings for "hootches," airy, dormitory-style barracks designed for the tropics (complete with prepackaged toilet units). A two-story sprawl of buildings now going up at Tan Son Nhut will become General Westmoreland's headquarters, which is now in a brace of overcrowded villas in downtown Saigon. A new $1,000,000 U.S. embassy is under way, and in the works are much-needed city-bypass roads for Saigon, Danang and Qui Nhon, plus an $11 million bridge from Cam Ranh Bay's military peninsula to the civilian mainland. To ease the housing pressure in Saigon, engineers are finishing up a 16,000-acre U.S. city for 50,000 servicemen and officers at Long Binh, 15 miles away.

Texas-Tower Technology. Much of the vast U.S. construction was the work of a combine of four U.S. companies that brought 4,000 civilian-job bosses and engineers from the U.S., hired 8,000 technicians and equipment operators in Korea and the Philippines, and employed 40,000 Vietnamese. Already they are beginning to phase out their part of the construction program, which will eventually total $1 billion--roughly 60% of the gross national product of South Viet Nam. On the enormous ex isting logistical platform that they helped build, the 40 military-engineering battalions now in Viet Nam can add anything required in the future, even for an increase in the number of fighting men to the 600,000 level.

Much of the U.S. buildup broke fresh technological ground. Utilizing a new type of aluminum matting, workers put down a jet strip at Cam Ranh Bay in a record 66 days. To break the shipping jam, preconstructed De Long piers were towed halfway around the world from South Carolina and sunk in place at Danang, Cam Ranh, Qui Nhon and Vung Tau ports. A new kind of prefab pier based on Texas-tower technology was designed in the Philippines and utilized at Danang and Saigon's New Port. To construct the latest U.S. base at Dong Tarn in the swampy Delta, some 600 acres of sand are being dredged out of the Mekong River.

Each of the four logistical islands at Saigon, Cam Ranh, Qui Nhon and Danang orders, schedules, receives, stores and disburses more than 100,000 different kinds of items, from ammunition, tanks and jet fuel to fresh vegetables, frozen meat, typewriters and air-conditioning units. Significantly, the number is four times what the U.S. Army rates as the minimum needs of its present field force. So well served is the U.S. fighting man in the Viet Nam war that helicopter-supplied units can bring him two hot meals a day out in the field. Many a soldier or Marine is able to sit down in the jungle minutes before going into combat and eat shrimp cocktail packed in ice.

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