The Vietnam War, This Week, The Standard-Speaker, Hazelton PA
Vietnam War Weekly Front Pages
4 July 1965 – 10 July 1965
The Standard-Speaker, Hazelton PA
Darker days were yet to come.
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More than 1,000 American troops joined Vietnamese and Australian forces for their second combined operation against the Viet Cong. Like the first such operation, there was no significant contact with the enemy. The operation was preceded by artillery and air bombardment of a stretch of jungle about 30 miles northeast of Saigon. Then about 100 helicopters began shuttling the troops in. B-52 bombers of the Strategic Air Command dropped 500 tons of bombs on the Viet Cong-controlled “D-Zone.” The planes flew from Guam, 2,200 miles away. Fighting was bloodier elsewhere. A US Spokesman said two Americans and 26 Vietnamese mountain troops were missing and four Vietnamese were killed in mountainous Pleiku Province, 215 miles north of Saigon.
Some 3,400 US Marines landed at two points in central Vietnam on Wednesday, and a US spokesman announced that 4,600 more would come ashore during the next week to boost American strength to nearly 60,000 men. About midway between the two landing points the district capital of Dak, in the central highlands 280 miles northeast of Saigon, was reported overrun by the Viet Cong. Other Marines made an amphibious landing on an island off their Chu Lai beachhead and cut off a Viet Cong force that had overrun a Vietnamese naval headquarters. A US destroyer rushed to An Hoa island 345 miles northeast of Saigon to cut off the Reds if they tried to escape by sea.
US paratroopers had scored heavily in a series of clashes with the Viet Cong near Saigon. 25 guerillas were known dead and it was estimated that casualties totaled more than 100. On the other side, the Viet Cong ambushed a Vietnamese government battalion northwest of Saigon and was mostly wiped out. The battalion was under strength and probably numbered about 300 men. Four US advisors were with the group; their fate was not known.
US Phantom jets bagged two Communist MIGs while other American planes flew their deepest bombing mission of the war. The Phantoms downed the MIGs 40 miles south of Hanoi while US Air Force planes destroyed two bridges and five buildings at an ammunition depot 85 miles northwest of Hanoi. Four other US Air Force F105 jets dropped 750,000 leaflets over Nam Dinh, 40 miles southwest of Hanoi. Government naval junk forces were active off the coast of South Vietnam. A junk unit had captured a Viet Cong junk loaded with 3-1/2 tons of rice and Communist documents about 290 miles northeast of Saigon.
President Johnson named Republican Henry Cabot Lodge, an outspoken supporter of Johnson’s Vietnam War polices, for a second tour as ambassador to South Vietnam. Administration officials insisted that the switch from the former ambassador, who was resigning, to Lodge would mean no change in US policies or major war strategy. Lodge and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara were to fly to Saigon next Wednesday for a week-long series of conferences with American and Vietnamese officials.
President Johnson predicted darker days to come in Vietnam. He signaled a new surge in the US military buildup which could reach 100,000 men by late summer. “We expect it will get worse before it gets better,” Johnson told a news conference in assessing the course of the war which had involved the US ever more deeply. He spoke against the background of a Communist offensive which had brought more South Vietnamese people under Red guerrilla control in the past six months, Isolated parts of the country, and slashed roads and rail lines. “Our manpower needs there are increasing and will continue to do so,” the president said.
(Photo courtesy newspapers.com, Hazelton Standard-Speaker)