The Vietnam War, This Week, The Evening Gazette, Indiana PA
Vietnam War Weekly Front Pages
20 March 1966 – 26 March 1966
The Evening Gazette, Indiana PA
“We thank our American friends for helping us fight the Viet Cong.”
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The United States lost six more planes in widening American air operations over North and South Vietnam. On Sunday two flyers were killed, two captured, and two others were missing. Near Saigon, the US Strategic Air Command marked its 20th anniversary by sending Guam-based B-52 bombers over the Communist D Zone stronghold 35 miles north of the capital to pound escape routes leading through the jungle to Cambodia. The next day US jet pilots reported they struck heavy blows on trucking and shipping in North Vietnam, blasting more than half of a 50-vehicle convoy in a mountain pass and sinking or damaging five gunboats.
In the ground war, about 3,000 US Marines launched two separate operations – Oregon and Texas – against Communist units near Hue and Quang Ngai city on the north coast. Attacking under Marine jet strikes and artillery fire, the Leathernecks reported killing 46 Viet Cong in ground attacks and possibly many more in the air and artillery strikes in operation Texas at An Hoa near Quang Ngai City. Marines in Operation Oregon, 15 miles northwest of Hue, reported killing 34 enemy troops amid heavy fighting. Marine casualties in both cases – about 120 miles apart – were described as light. The next day it was reported that the Leathernecks killed at least 205 communists in expanding ground operations in South Vietnam provinces. But ten Leathernecks were killed in the crash of a Marine helicopter, and an A4 Skyhawk crashed in a bombing run in support of the Marines. The pilot was rescued.
By Thursday, an unrelenting display of firepower from ships, planes, and artillery cost the Viet Cong 501 killed in the preceding 24 hours. On Saigon’s outskirts, South Vietnamese troops and planes mauled and scattered a 700-man Communist force after a daring attack on a government armored regiment headquarters at Go Dau within gunshot of a large American troop concentration. The five day battle was over on Friday. Five thousand US Marines and South Vietnamese troops had brought the fighting to a close. The Allies claimed that 1,236 Communists had been killed or wounded in the central coastal plains with overall light casualties for the Allies.
At the end of the week, US forces in Vietnam demonstrated new mobility with a thrust designed to protect the capital of Saigon itself. US Marines, normally based far to the north, leapt onto the coast 30 miles southeast of Saigon in an area normally left to South Vietnamese government troops. They came ashore assigned to preserve shipping lanes into Saigon which had been attacked by the Viet Cong, and had a double-barreled task of clearing out marshland long in the hands of the insurgents. The assault by more than 1,200 Marines with cover by naval fire encountered no resistance.
Buddhist students in Da Nang and Hue demonstrated peacefully against the government of Premier Nguyen Kai Ky. In Saigon, Thich Tam Chau, leader of the Buddhist political movement, personally halted a student demonstration, although the National Buddhist Institute he headed had issued a communique making it clear it was unhappy with Ky. The next day new anti-government demonstrations erupted in those cities, intensifying the political dispute between the military regime and the Buddhist leadership. For the first time there were anti-American overtones. Several thousand persons milled about the City Hall in Hue, the old imperial capital. Some carried banners attacking the United States for supporting Ky’s military rule. However, a small knot of demonstrators carried a banner saying, “We thank our American friends for helping us fight the Viet Cong.” American and Vietnamese employees at the nearby US Information Agency building locked doors and hid equipment as rumors flew that the demonstrators might sack the center. But by evening the threat abated as the crowd dispersed.
(Photo courtesy newspapers.com, Indiana Evening Gazette)