Word: lon
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...backed Khmer insurgents make their big move? Despite several weeks of concentrated assaults by American B-52s, the rebel forces had been able to move to within ten miles of the capital of Phnom-Penh prior to the deadline. Those sweeping advances suggested that the troops of Cambodian President Lon Nol, once they were denied the support of U.S. warplanes, would be hard-pressed to stave off a major enemy attack...
Last week more than 5,000 insurgents laid siege to a comparable force of government soldiers defending Kompong Cham, Cambodia's third largest city (peacetime pop. 125,000, now about 65,000), approximately 50 miles northeast of Phnom-Penh. Lon Nol vowed that he would not let Kompong Cham fall and dispatched Major General Sar Hor, the highly regarded Minister of Veteran Affairs, to take charge of its defenses. Nonetheless, the insurgents steadily advanced. Using American 105-mm. howitzers captured last month from fleeing government troops, they massively shelled the city, rendering Kompong Cham's airport useless. Government...
...Though Lon Nol threw several thousand fresh reserves into the battle, the rebels continued to move toward the city's limits. One government soldier, evacuated to a hospital in Phnom-Penh, moaned: "They just keep coming and coming." At a large textile factory just outside the town-which had been built for Cambodia by China-Lon Nol's troops fled under fire while the workers and managers remained behind, trying unsuccessfully to hold back the insurgent attacks. Inside the city itself, house-to-house fighting erupted around the central marketplace when rebel infiltrators suddenly surfaced. Using armored scout...
...final moment, U.S. warplanes pummeled the area around Phnom-Penh, the Cambodian capital. It was the last day of more than six months of frantic U.S. air support of the Lon Nol regime, during which the U.S. flew 32,000 sorties (including 8,000 by B-52s) and dumped more than 245,000 tons of bombs on Cambodia. This deluge totaled 50% more than all the conventional bombs the U.S. rained upon Japan in World War II. Most of it, of course, was aimed at guerrillas hiding in heavy jungle. As a result, the bombing obviously did not inflict...
Without U.S. air support, President Lon Nol is vulnerable. His army of 180,000 is undertrained and undermotivated. Lon Nol's fledgling air force of 30 World War Il-vintage, T-28 propeller-driven fighters will hardly be a substitute for U.S. airpower. Some of the regime's top generals have already established secret contacts with insurgent officers. With the exception of a few Americans, diplomats in the capital are betting that the Lon Nol regime cannot survive until the end of the year. When the insurgents get ready to attack, Phnom-Penh will fall, they predict...