The Vietnam War, This Week, The Public Opinion, Chambersburg PA
Vietnam War Weekly Front Pages
22 August 1965 – 28 August 1965
The Public Opinion, Chambersburg PA
Death never rests.
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On Monday, 24 US war planes pounded a hydroelectric plant and dam site in North Vietnam for the third successive day. Striking the Ban Thatch plant twice, pilots said they damaged a multi-storage generator building and a dam 80 miles south-southwest of Hanoi. Eight Air Force F-4s, eight F-104 Starfighters and four support aircraft bombed the plant after four Phantom jets hit it earlier in the day. Heavy damage was reported to have been inflicted on the same target in two raids over the weekend. The next day B-52 bombers of the US Strategic Air Command made another raid on South Vietnam, attacking a Viet Cong installation 55 miles south of the big Da Nang air base. A brief announcement said “a number” of B-52s made the early morning strike in Quang Tin province. Thirty planes made up the attack force. The assumption was that they flew from Guam.
The Viet Cong shelled and mortared the Bien Hoa air base near Saigon on Tuesday, damaging 45 US and Vietnamese Air Force planes and four US Army helicopters. None of the aircraft were seriously damaged and all would be repaired within three days. A spokesman said the guerrillas fired ten mortar rounds at the base and 22 other shells of 75 mm caliber, possibly from a howitzer or recoilless rifle. US and Vietnamese casualties were described as light and no deaths were reported. The base’s artillery batteries did not return the fire because the enemy apparently were located in a populated area.
A US Navy Phantom had been shot down by what appeared to be a surface-to-air missile about 90 miles south of Hanoi. The supersonic plane, from the Seventh Fleet aircraft carrier Midway, was hit Tuesday near the city of Thanh Hoa. The downing was the first indication that Communist anti-aircraft missiles had been moved that far south. It seemed likely that the missiles were fired from a mobile launcher. One parachute was seen after the Phantom was hit, but search and rescue operations failed to locate the American airman. The other crewman was presumed dead.
On Friday Communist guerrillas attacked three government positions a few miles south of Saigon within an hour. Vietnamese losses were reported heavy in the assault on the Tan Nhut outpost, which was reported overrun. An Army Ranger unit was dispatched to the scene. The Communists also showered the district town of Bien Chan with 12 rounds of mortar fire. Light Vietnamese casualties were reported. In other action a Marine patrol launched a surprise attack Thursday night four miles west of the Hue-Phu Bai area, killing three Viet Cong. No Marine casualties were reported.
58 US servicemen, most of them Marines flying back to Vietnam after leave, were feared dead after their transport plane crashed into Hong Kong harbor just after taking off. “Except for 13 known survivors it now appears all of those aboard the flight are dead,” said an American official on the scene. An operations officer at Hong Kong’s Kaitak airport said there were 71 persons aboard when the C-130 Hercules took off for Da Nang and Saigon. He said the manifest indicated two were Navy men and the rest Marines. Sabotage was not felt to be a factor.
(Photo courtesy newspapers.com, Chambersburg Public Opinion)