The Vietnam War, This Week, 4 December 1966 – 10 December 1966The Morning Call, Allentown, PA

Vietnam War Weekly Front Pages

 4 December 1966 – 10 December 1966

The Morning Call, Allentown, PA

No one is safe anywhere at any time.

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On Sunday the Viet Cong unleashed a mortar attack on the Tan Son Nhut Air Base, followed swiftly by a bombing at a US billet in downtown Saigon. Nine US Army soldiers were wounded in the downtown blast, none seriously. Casualties and damage to aircraft and other equipment in the airport attack were light. The Viet Cong started its attack by dropping more than 40 mortar rounds into the air base at 0128, then attacking with small arms fire. US and South Vietnamese forces returned fire and sent up armed helicopters and other aircraft to hit suspected enemy positions. Flares illuminated the battle scene. The fighting ended nearly five hours after the mortar attack began. A US spokesman said that 17 Viet Cong were killed at the base and one captured. A German Shepherd dog named Rebel, hurling his 100 pounds of bone and muscle at the shadowy figures moving in the grass, was the first line of defense. Rebel’s strong jaws snapped across the throat of one of the infiltrators, stifling a scream. His hind legs kicked at the midriff of another. But Rebel, a sentry dog, was soon dead. Two other sentry dogs were also killed, shot down as the infiltrators began a headlong rush to cross the main airport runway, maneuver past the line of sandbagged bunkers that made up the main line of defense, and penetrate the flight line where scores of jet fighters and transport aircraft were located. Only one Viet Cong got through, testimony to the bold defense by the dogs and 50 air policemen who fought the determined guerrillas to a standstill, killing 18 of them and capturing four. Three Americans were killed and five wounded. About three hours after the fight broke out at the air base, a blast ripped apart the Kinh Do theater, a four-story building downtown used a transient billet. Ambulances and firefighting equipment rushed to the scene. The fire was under control about an hour later and the 11 wounded evacuated. The top floor had caved in with the explosion.

On Tuesday a terrorist bomb blasted the quarters of six American civilians in the Mekong Delta, south of Saigon, wounding one person. A terrorist also threw a fragmentation grenade on the porch of a Saigon residence leased by the US Air Force. Three US airmen and a Vietnamese man were wounded and the building lightly damaged. More of the same at the end of the week, when guards at an Army ammunition dump 13 miles northeast of Saigon reported coming under small arms fire, followed by two explosions, twenty minutes apart. The incident appeared to part of a Viet Cong plan increasing guerrilla and terror attacks to hamper US troops carrying out a major campaign to clear the enemy from areas surrounding Saigon.

American jets tangled with Communist MIG interceptors Monday for the fourth straight day during bombing runs over North Vietnam. Dogfights occurred with both MIG-17s and MIG-21s as US fighter-bombers hit at key rail yards and other targets north and northwest of Hanoi. Hanoi reported that four US planes had been downed, but this had not been corroborated. On Monday’s raids, American pilots reported heavy damage to the vital Yen Bay Railroad yards and heavy damage to a surface-to-air missile site.

President Johnson announced that “a reasonably accurate estimate” indicated that Vietnam costs through 30 June would top earlier projections by $9 billion. He said he would ask Congress for the extra money next month. He declined to say whether the new projection would make a tax increase less likely, since it was somewhat less than many had expected. Meanwhile the preliminary report of a US Senate investigation team that had just returned from Vietnam indicated that the US was not “significantly closer to bringing the war to a conclusion” than it was a year ago. The investigators reported that in one recent month more than 13,000 North Vietnamese had infiltrated into South Vietnam, some three times the estimated rate a year previously. The report stated that the “enemy force [had] increased rather than decreased,” and that the Viet Cong “[had] grown despite the heavy toll of casualties.”

US troop strength in Vietnam swelled to 363,700 as a contingent of 1,700 GIs arrived at the port city of Vung Tau, 40 miles southwest of Saigon. They were the leading elements of the newly formed 199th Light Infantry Brigade.

(Photo courtesy newspapers.com, Allentown Morning Call)