The Vietnam War, This Week, The Daily Notes, Canonsburg PA

Vietnam War Weekly Front Pages

 13 March 1966 – 19 March 1966

The Daily Notes, Canonsburg PA 

“Such great sums.”

*****

The Joint Chiefs of Staff urged an expanded air war against Communist North Vietnam, with oil storage depots and refineries in the Hanoi/Haiphong area top priority targets. It was expected that President Johnson would, in time, approve the broader air campaign – heavier blows against an ever widening target list – if Hanoi made no moves toward the peace table. Part of the campaign had, in fact, been in progress since the United States resumed bombing 31 January after the 31-day Christmas pause. Raids over North Vietnam were running at three times the pre-pause level. But targets were still the same: supply lines feeding men and equipment into South Vietnam.

On Tuesday President Johnson signed into law an authorization for $4.8 billion [$9.3 billion in 2023] in supplemental military spending for the Vietnam War, asserting that it signified that Congress stood behind US troops fighting there. In a White House ceremony at which he signed the authorization bill, Johnson expressed sadness at having to spend “such great sums…for the bombs and planes and the gun power of war.” He said he wished that “these great resources could be put, instead, to the service of peace.”

A battalion of US paratroopers, part of the massive Allied ground force probing deep into the Communist stronghold known as War Zone D, northwest of Saigon, was surrounded and fired upon “from all directions.” Air and additional ground support repelled the Viet Cong attack. Later in the week a US military spokesman reported that the Communist death toll in battles with US and Australian troops sweeping War Zone D had reached 335. Twenty Viet Cong bodies were found by 173rd Airborne Brigade troops, part of the 10,000-man Allied task force pushing into the Zone D jungle behind heavy air and artillery support. The operation, called Silver City, began 8 March. With the paratroopers were the US First Infantry Division and the Royal Australian Regiment. Allied casualties were reported light.

Two unidentified jets, believed to be Communist MIG-21 fighters, shadowed American planes bombing targets in North Vietnam. It was the first time American spokesmen had announced the possible siting of the sophisticated Chinese-supplied MIGs over North Vietnam. Informed sources said that the swift jets had been seen before but not reported.

(Photo courtesy newspapers.com, Canonsburg Daily Notes)