Word: petroleum
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...nearly a year, while Lyndon Johnson, Dean Rusk and Robert McNamara agonized over whether to step up the U.S. air raids on North Viet Nam, one presidential adviser consistently argued that the bombing of the petroleum depots around Hanoi and Haiphong was vital to the U.S. war effort. Now that the President has accepted that approach-also urged on him by the Joint Chiefs of Staff-the insistent adviser's influence in the Ad ministration's inner circle has increased considerably. The man: Walt Whitman Rostow, 49, the garrulous, determined special assistant who three months ago inherited part...
Fifty-five miles to the west, as the Navy craft headed back to the carrier, 70 U.S. Air Force jets from bases at Korat and Ta Khlj in Thailand crisscrossed Hanoi, raining 72 tons of 750-lb. bombs in 25 minutes on North Viet Nam's second biggest petroleum depot (202,000 barrels), 3½ miles northeast of the capital city's center. At about the same time, A-4s from the U.S.S. Constellation blasted a smaller, 48,000-barrel fuel-tank area at Do Son, twelve miles southeast of Haiphong...
...raids destroyed an estimated 75% to 80% of the two complexes. At least 50% of North Viet Nam's remaining POL (for petroleum, oil, lubricants) supplies went up in smoke, leaving the country with reserves adequate for only eight weeks-if they are not bombed again. The loss will make incalculably more difficult the flow of troops and materiel for the Communists' ever-more-desperate war in South Viet Nam. Though U.S. planners had feared that a dozen or more aircraft might be shot down, only one-an F-105 fighter-bomber hit over Hanoi-was lost...
High Price. The attacks, said McNamara, were "aimed at the heart of the petroleum system-major storage facilities and the distribution apparatus," and should in time impose "a lower ceiling on the number of men that can be supported in the South." The North Vietnamese will not find it easy to replace the wrecked facilities, McNamara pointed out, since "they have only a limited rebuilding capability"; the repairs call for "stocks and materials-large steel plates, for example-which are in very, very short supply in North Viet...
...fuel-storage areas outside Hanoi and Haiphong. U.S. commanders have long wanted to hit the vital "source" targets that enable North Viet Nam's trucks to feed supplies southward into the Ho Chi Minh trail. Until now, in Washington's judicious application of pressure on Hanoi, the petroleum dumps have been off limits to U.S. pilots...