Word: bases
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...nighttime hit-and-run mortar barrage against crowded Tan Son Nhut airbase three miles north of Saigon, which serves both commercial and military traffic and is the world's busiest airport (1,512 landings and takeoffs a day). Firing with deadly accuracy, they lobbed 200 shells into the base in 20 minutes, ignited a 420,000-gallon fuel tank, smashed the enlisted men's transient billets, and destroyed four parked aircraft and damaged 29. The Viet Cong escaped without a scratch, leaving seven Americans and a Vietnamese dead, 182 wounded...
...Viet Nam's confused political situation become last week that at one point it nearly produced civil war. Flown from Saigon by Premier Ky to "liberate" the northern town of Danang, three battalions of Vietnamese marines at Danang Air Force Base showed every sign of marching into the city. When he heard of this, Colonel Dam Quang Yeu, commander of Vietnamese army troops at Hoi An, 15 miles to the south, decided to march on Danang to block the paratroopers. With several hundred men, 13 armored carriers, four 155-mm. howitzers and enough ammunition to blow up a city...
Inside the base, where TIME Correspondent Don Neff walked in on the crisis, the U.S. Marines had to make some quick decisions. If Yeu shelled the base, he would not only precipitate civil war between Vietnamese units but would almost surely kill or injure some of the 30,000 Americans stationed there. Since there were no ranking Vietnamese officers around, Lieut. General Lewis Walt, commander of the 3rd Marine Amphibious Force at the base, decided to move fast. He ordered a detail of 60 marines to cut Yeu's still advancing column in half by stalling a big truck...
...finally persuaded Yeu to meet with Danang's new commander, General Ton That Dinh, who had arrived from Saigon. The two officers talked, slapped each other's back, seemed to reach an agreement for the removal of the howitzers. But Yeu kept them trained on the Danang base, demanding the removal of the Vietnamese marines. For three days, the marines and Yeu remained eyeball-to-eyeball, gun-to-gun. Finally, last week, the central government ordered the Vietnamese marines to leave the base, and Yeu abandoned his position...
...Catchup. Most of the new breed had old family fortunes to build on, and they used that base imaginatively. Indian companies were formerly privately owned hodgepodges put together, without economic rhyme or reason, over the years. The new boys have turned their enterprises into stock companies to gain additional capital and are carefully tailoring operations so that they complement one another...