The Vietnam War, This Week, The Inquirer, Philadelphia PA

Vietnam War Weekly Front Pages

 10 July 1966 – 16 July 1966

The Inquirer, Philadelphia PA

Sweating and fearful.

*****

On Sunday American forces, pursuing an estimated 2,000 Vietcong toward the Cambodian border after tricking the enemy into a reverse ambush, reported they had killed 160 Communist guerrillas. The fighting, which continued late Sunday night, broke a ten-day lull in the ground war. The battle erupted near An Loc, about 40 miles north of Saigon, when an ambush-minded enemy regiment fell for the bait and snapped at a cruising US armored column. The waiting Americans raked the enemy with pre-planned fire, then a heavy air assault. Overall American losses were described as light, though the first American unit hit – an armored outfit of the 1st Infantry Division – was roughly handled when the Vietcong sprang an ambush on a narrow road. In later stages of the heavy fighting, one Vietcong bunker complex was overrun. Over three thousand men of the 1st Infantry then pursued the Communists as they broke up into small groups in hope of escaping through the jungle and bamboo thickets.

In the air war the US command announced strikes at four more of North Vietnam’s oil installations in the drive to wipe out enemy fuel reserves. A fuel-tank factory 31 miles north of Hanoi was among other targets in the 75 missions flown over the Communist north by US jets. The Cambodian prince Norodom Sihanouk sent a message to North Vietnam’s president Ho Chi Minh on the US bombings of oil depots near Hanoi and Haiphong. The prince expressed “profound indignation” for the raids and pledged “total support” to the north. In another reaction to the continued fuel-related bombings, the North Vietnamese were said to be dispersing their oil stocks into the middle of villages to use them as shields. The Soviet Union charged that US air attacks on oil depots near Haiphong “created a direct threat to Soviet merchant ships and the lives of Soviet seamen.” A Soviet note handed to the American Embassy in Moscow warned the US must bear the responsibility for “possible consequences.”

Defense Secretary Robert McNamara said that US bombing of oil dumps at Hanoi had so far had no perceptible difference on the movement of troops and supplies to South Vietnam. It was too early, he said, for the raids to be “translated” into a slowdown of military traffic from north to south. Nor have they had any perceptible effect on the morale of the North Vietnamese. As a result, McNamara held out the possibility of a greater US troop commitment to South Vietnam, a further escalation of the air war in the north, and rising costs for the US treasury. He declined to comment on a published report that the US troop commitment would rise from 280,000 to 350,000 ground troops by the end of the year except to say that he “would anticipate” a manpower buildup. As for escalation of the bombing, McNamara said this would occur if the infiltration of troops from the north was increased. The war was currently costing $12 billion a year [$31 billion in 2023 dollars], he said, and "no doubt this will continue to increase.” Nevertheless, the secretary reaffirmed the “cautious optimism” which had become the administration’s official view of the situation. The United States, he said, was “gaining militarily” against the Vietcong. The former US air commander in Vietnam predicted on Wednesday that Hanoi “pretty soon” would seek some way to “disengage” from the Vietnamese war. Because of bombing in North Vietnam and ground attacks in South Vietnam, Air Force Lieutenant General Joseph Moore said the communists were finding the war too costly. Moore, Director of Air Operations for 2½ years, gave his appraisals at a Pentagon news conference.

Fresh signs indicated that North Vietnam was planning a show trial of captured American airmen as “war criminals.” A communist Yugoslav news agency said flatly they would be tried. A mounting “popular” outcry for the blood of the captives in Hanoi was fanned by the alleged “confession” of an American pilot captured on 8 May. In Washington, State Department officials said any attempt by North Vietnam to try American prisoners of war as “war criminals” would violate the 1949 Geneva convention on treatment of prisoners, to which Hanoi had adhered in 1957. Last week, Hanoi radio broadcast details of the parade of handcuffed captives, “sweating and fearful” through crowds in the North Vietnamese capital who screamed for their blood.

(Photo courtesy newspapers.com, Philadelphia Inquirer)