As it lifted off the runway at Pleiku in South Viet Nam's Central Highlands last week, the Air Force C-130 Hercules transport acted almost like a frisky jet fighter. With Air Force Major General Burl McLaughlin pushing it along at full power, the craft climbed rapidly to 12,500 ft. before leveling off for the hour-long return flight to Saigon. McLaughlin's desire to gain altitude quickly, a routine precaution among pilots in Viet Nam, was heightened in this case both by the Viet Cong's post-Tef offensive and by the unusual payload that he was carrying. Back in his plane's cargo compartment, attired in green Army fatigues, 45 Americans--businessmen and journalists--slumped wearily in bucket seats after a fact-finding trip into Viet Nam's war-riddled countryside. For all hands, the visit to Viet Nam was the focal point of TIME'S current News Tour of Asia.

The tour is a unique project designed to provide a group of top U.S. businessmen with an opportunity to gather information and insights into some of the principal countries of the Far East. The fourth such undertaking arranged by TIME since 1963 (the others went to Western Europe and Russia, Asia and Eastern Europe), this year's trip will have carried its participants on a 23,000-mile journey to ten cities in eight Asian countries before ending in the U.S. next week with a White House debriefing by President Nixon.

Claims and Control. Most of the tour members, traveling as concerned citizens at their own expense, are principal officers of major business organizations. Together they employ 2,400,000 people and had combined sales in 1968 of more than $55 billion. They went to the Far East as observers eager to sound out Asia's leaders. Led by the publisher, TIME'S delegation included Board Chairman Andrew Heiskell, President James A. Linen, Editor in Chief Hedley Donovan and Managing Editor Henry Grunwald. The tour program was organized by the Time-Life News Service, with Chief of Correspondents Richard Clurman and TIME correspondents in cities along the way acting as guides. The businessmen:

William Blackie, Chairman, Caterpillar Tractor Co.

Gene C. Brewer, President, U.S. Plywood-Champion Papers, Inc.

Edgar M. Bronfman, President, Joseph E. Seagram & Sons, Inc.

Donald C. Burnham, Chairman, Westinghouse Electric Corp.

Hugh Cullman, Executive Vice President, Philip Morris, Inc.

Russell DeYoung, Chairman, Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.

John B. Gates, Vice President, Pan American World Airways

Gordon Grand Jr., President, Olin Mathieson Chemical Corp.

Theodore Greeff, President, Greeff Fabrics, Inc.

Michael L. Haider, Chairman, Standard Oil Co. (New Jersey)

John D. Harper, President, Aluminum Co. of America

Harry B. Henshel, President, Bulova Watch Co., Inc.

Arthur E. Larkin Jr., President, General Foods Corp.

Andrew McNally III, President, Rand McNally & Co.

George A. Murphy, Chairman, Irving Trust Co.

Frank Pace Jr., President, International Executive Service Corps

Henry G. Parks Jr., Chairman, H. G.

Parks Co., Inc. Robert H. Platt, President, The Magnavox Co.

Henry R. Roberts, President, Connecticut General Life Insurance Co. E.

Claiborne Robins, President, A. H. Robins Co.

H. I. Romnes, Chairman, American Telephone & Telegraph Co.

George Russell, Vice Chairman, General Motors Corp.

Forrest N. Shumway, President, The Signal Cos.

Thomas R. Wilcox, Vice Chairman, First National City Bank

Kendrick R. Wilson Jr., Chairman, Avco Corp.

As they kept pace with press briefings, government receptions and panel discussions, the tour members--some of them veterans of previous TIME trips --proved willing and capable newsmen. They took notes along the way, shot rolls of black and white and color film and, above all, asked questions.

More often than not, their queries were answered fully. In Saigon, the businessmen conferred with U.S. Ambassador Ellsworth Bunker and General Creighton ("Abe") Abrams, commander of American forces in Viet Nam. As one businessman summed it up afterwards, Abrams "made no claims and promised no quick victories. He merely demonstrated that we were in control of the situation." South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu spoke with confidence about the war effort. Asked by one guest whether South Vietnamese troops would soon bear enough of the burden of fighting to allow American troops to go home, Thieu answered with emphatic brevity: "Yes." Later, when the group presented him with a cutglass head of an American eagle, Thieu quipped: "You come here while we are talking of peace and give me a hawk."

The visitors often found the sights and sounds of Viet Nam more moving than words. On their field trip, they clambered into cockpits of Air Force Phantom fighter-bombers at Cam Ranh Bay, 200 miles northeast of Saigon, and drank rice wine through bamboo reeds with Montagnard tribesmen in the Central Highlands. In Pleiku, they visited a hospital filled with Vietnamese civilians who had been injured by Viet Cong rockets. Circling in helicopters, they watched an allied air strike against the enemy.

Continued Role. From Saigon the travelers went to Bangkok, where they were greeted by Thailand's Prime Minister Thanom Kittikachorn in a gilded, red-curtained hall of Government House. Later in their stay they had an audience with King Bhumibol Adulyadej in his lavishly landscaped palace. The Thais discussed recent strains in their country's relations with the U.S. and said that efforts to combat Communist insurgency in northeast Thailand were, in Thanom's words, having "rather satisfactory" results.

When TIME President Linen told King Bhumibol that the group planned to donate a schoolhouse to Thailand, the King asked pointedly: "What size school-house?" Following a lively discussion of school costs, American Banker George Murphy finally broke the impasse by suggesting, to Bhumibol's apparent satisfaction, that the group's gift be 500,000 baht ($25,000), which the Thais could apply toward school construction of any sort they wished.

Everywhere the group went, the main questions on the agenda were the Viet Nam war and what is to follow when it ends. As they charted their continent's future course, Asia's leaders argued with out exception that the U.S. must continue to play a prominent role. Talking with tour members in Bangkok, Thailand's Foreign Minister Thanat Khoman urged the U.S. to abandon its tendency to talk about "so-called priorities" between trouble spots in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and elsewhere. Thanat's explanation was straightforward: "The people who live in lesser-priority areas will feel degraded."

Another War. A rare opportunity for relaxation came in Manila, when the Communist offensive in Viet Nam forced the travelers to delay their departure for Saigon. Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, who had already played host to them at the presidential palace, invited the Americans, along with a number of Filipinos, for a cruise across Manila Bay aboard his yacht, The President. At Corregidor, the visitors went ashore to inspect the bombed-out fortress that U.S. and Filipino defenders surrendered to the Japanese in another war 27 years before.

Afterwards, as the grey, 280-ft. yacht knifed back across the inky waters toward Manila, Marcos' comely wife Imelda, a former Miss Manila, led the guests in a conga line. At length, Mrs. Marcos approached the TIME group and announced, "Now, the entertainment." Once they realized what she had in mind, the American guests rose and serenaded their Filipino hosts with a spirited, if slightly off-key Auld Lang Syne.

At Singapore's famed Raffles Hotel, tour members lunched with Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, who warned against a precipitate withdrawal of U.S. troops from Viet Nam. At week's end the travelers jetted off to Indonesia for conferences with President Suharto and Foreign Minister Adam Malik. Visits to South Korea and Japan lay ahead before they crossed the international dateline on the trip home.

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