The Vietnam War, What Took Place, The Centre Daily Times, State College PA
Vietnam War Weekly Front Pages
7 February 1965 – 13 February 1965
The Centre Daily Times, State College PA
Massive air strikes in the North.
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South Vietnamese fighter-bombers, with US Air Force jets flying support, blasted military camps across the border in Communist North Vietnam on Monday in a follow-on action to retaliatory raids by US Navy jets Sunday. In Saigon, the school for American children closed and dependents of US government personnel prepared to leave South Vietnam under orders of President Johnson.
In the wake of the American first strike on North Vietnam, President Johnson met with top advisers to review the southeast Asia campaign and hear from special emissary McGeorge Bundy. Bundy was expected to report at a National Security Council session. The presidential aide hurriedly returned Sunday from a South Vietnam fact-finding trip and went directly to the White House late Sunday night. High ranking officials declined to predict what turn events would take next. They looked for diplomatic and military clues from the Communists, but reported nothing so far giving a firm reading on the Reds’ future course. Vietnamese defenses against possible Communist retaliatory attacks bristled on Tuesday. A battery of Hawk antiaircraft missiles were set up at Da Nang airbase and Vietnamese armed forces tightened the alert along the North Vietnam border. Qualified sources at Da Nang, 80 miles south of the border, said that Air Force F-105 fighter bombers, among the best in the US Air Force arsenal, carried out heavy raids in Laos Monday shortly after Vietnamese and American aircraft struck at North Vietnam. Raids against North Vietnam had halted, at least temporarily. The raids against Communist supply lines in Laos were expected to continue as they had for more than a month. There were no immediate reports on results of the raids into Laos. Heavy fighting continued in South Vietnam and a US helicopter crew member was killed in action Tuesday in Phuoc Tuy province, not far from Binh Gia. Eight other helicopter crewmen were wounded.
On Wednesday the Viet Cong went on the offensive throughout South Vietnam amid reports that Red guerillas had wiped out about 600 government troops in a mountain battle. The Red attacks were capped Wednesday night by the bombing of the US enlisted men’s barracks at Qui Nhon, in which 22 Americans were believed to have been killed. The mountain battle was fought Monday but reports of the disaster, possibly the worst battle of the war so far, did not reach Saigon until the next day. Elsewhere, heavy fighting raged near the key Da Nang base east of Saigon. On Thursday, about 150 US and South Vietnamese war planes raked targets in North Vietnam with bombs and rockets in reprisal for the latest in a series of Viet Cong attacks. More than 100 carrier-based planes in the US Seventh Fleet attacked from the South China Sea in this third and heaviest reprisal strike since Sunday. They hit at Chang Hoa and Chap Le.
The United States charged on Friday that continuing “aggressions and outrages” by Communist forces in South Vietnam compelled the US and South Vietnamese governments to strike anew at Red infiltration bases in North Vietnam. The statement by the White House asserted “our desire to avoid spreading the conflict” in Vietnam but added that because of “provocations” by North Vietnam, the United States and South Vietnam felt compelled to strike back by air for the third time this week.
A British cabinet minister would meet with Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko in Moscow Monday and diplomats speculated he may act as a go-between for UN secretary general U Thant’s call for peace talks on Vietnam. The Johnson Administration was officially silent about proposals for a negotiated settlement of the Vietnam war. The climate appeared chilly.
An editorial observed that gradually and with evident reluctance, President Johnson appeared to be hardening US military policy in Vietnam. Unless the situation took some sudden and presently unforeseen turn toward a peaceful settlement, any challenging new thrusts by the Communists were likely to draw quick American retaliation. This had not been true until the present in the long, grinding Southeast Asian conflict. Johnson and his chief advisers now believed North Vietnam and Red China, and probably also the Soviet Union, had come to doubt this country’s will to continue the struggle.
(Photo courtesy newspapers.com, State College Centre Daily Times)