Word: airlifts
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...addition to juggling the economy and foreign crises, President Kennedy last week ordered a step-up in U.S. deterrent and airlift capability, and asked Defense Secretary Robert McNamara to produce by month's end a full reappraisal of the U.S. defense setup. Along the way, Kennedy registered a solid boost in G.I. morale by rescinding Dwight Eisenhower's order calling for a cut-down in the number of military dependents abroad to slow the drain on gold...
...increase the airlift capability. Defense will add 53 troop-transport planes to its purchasing program. Thirty of these planes will be Boeing C-135 jets (military version of the 707). Deliveries at the rate of two per month will begin in June. The remaining 23 planes will be Lockheed null turboprops, which will be turned out at a fast eight per month, beginning in July. In all, the aim is to outfit the military with long-range (4,000 miles plus) craft with a 25-ton payload that can operate on relatively short, 6,000-ft. runways...
...asked. Last week President Kennedy announced that the U.S. was rushing rice, corn, dried milk and other foodstuffs from U.S. surplus stocks to help feed 300,000 homeless Baluba tribesmen starving in remote Kasai province. Orders crackled from U.S. Air Force European headquarters in Wiesbaden, and an urgent airlift headed south. U.S. planes stopped at Nairobi, Salisbury and the Cameroun city of Garoua, picked up food pledged by other governments. On the way back, the planes would help haul out the Moroccan, U.A.R. and Guinean troops that the dissident politicians of Africa had ordered home...
...inventive Information Minister claimed the capture of thousands of chopsticks, adding darkly that "Laotians don't use chopsticks." On their own, the Laotians were getting little fighting done. Rebel Captain Kong Le still sat astride the central Plaine des Jarres, on the receiving end of a steady Soviet airlift of supplies from North Viet Nam. He concentrated on training his five-battalion force, made up of paratroops, villagers and recruits from the army posts he has captured. He claimed to be only a "neutralist" himself-though he coordinates his attacks with Communist Pathet Lao guerrillas...
...east the army fared much worse. There, Rebel Captain Kong Le shot down one of the government's AT6 trainers (whereupon the U.S. sent in two more, raising the royal air force to a total of five planes). Kong Le also had artillery, supplied him by Russian airlift. He advanced on the village of Ta Vieng on the Nam Nhiep River. The government troops prudently retreated, carrying out what the officer in charge called his "coiled-spring tactic." Kong Le took the village and moved on south toward Pak-sane, slowly bulldozing a road ahead...