Diminishing Heartland

Ho Chi Minh and the men who rule North Viet Nam with him are getting less sleep these nights. U.S. planes have not only bombed Hanoi and vicinity several times recently by day and night, but regularly streak overhead on the way to other targets, forcing the Communist leaders to take shelter like the rest of the citizenry. Just as sleep-killing as the dramatic raids over and around Hanoi and the port of Haiphong, however, is the steady stream of information that flows into Hanoi about the more routine daily destruction wreaked by U.S. planes on practically anything that moves or looks important in North Viet Nam. Last week U.S. Air Force fighter-bombers from Thailand and carrier-based Navy planes flew some 600 missions over the North.

They hit railroad yards and army barracks, motor pools and POL (petroleum, oil and lubricant) depots, coastal artillery batteries and SAM sites. Hanoi's transformer station was struck.

Bombs rained down on the MIG bases of Kep and Hoa Lac and on two rail bridges north of Hanoi. Much of the bombing was what the pilots call "nuts and bolts": such small but vital bits of North Viet Nam's war machine as bridges, barges, trucks and trains.

Four Possibles. The stress on the nuts and bolts is neither by chance nor, of late, altogether by choice. So regularly and effectively have U.S. pilots pounded Ho's fledgling industries in the nation's heartland (see map) that very few major targets remain intact. U.S. policy has so far strictly proscribed the bombing of Haiphong harbor, the Red River dikes, and the government's civilian and military headquarters in Hanoi. Of the permissible targets, only four major ones are still untouched: the three airfields of Phuc Yen, Gia Lam and Cat Bi, and the large Red River Bridge feeding into downtown Hanoi.

Ho's diminishing heartland along the Red River once housed 60% of North Viet Nam's economic base. Eleven of the nation's power plants, which produce 80% of the country's electricity, have been struck--some many times. The only large power plant left is Lao Cai, which is off limits because it stands on the border with Red China. U.S. jets recently destroyed the Haiphong plant that poured 95% of the country's cement. The showpiece Thai Nguyen steel plant has been bombed 13 times. To defend the heartland as best he can, Ho has emplaced in it some 5,000 of his total 7,000 antiaircraft guns and about 20 of his 25 SAM battalions, each of which operates six missile launchers. The result is layered flak and missiles from the deck all the way to the stratosphere that have brought down 541 U.S. planes.

Continuous Replacement. Russian-built MIGs have accounted for another 20 planes, a poor showing against the 72 MIGs that U.S. pilots have downed in dogfights and another dozen or so destroyed on the ground. In the last month alone, the U.S. has destroyed an estimated 25% of the North Vietnam ese air force, bringing its total number of planes down to some 85 or 100. Since Hanoi never had more than 125 planes to begin with, and well over half that number have been lost in the war, Russia obviously is providing new planes to make up for at least part of the losses. U.S. intelligence is divided on the means used to get them to Hanoi. Most likely: either by train through Red China or by sea through the port of Haiphong. However they come, though, their life expectancy, once in the air, is very short.

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