Word: torpedo-boats
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...MIGs were out in force last week not only around Phuc Yen but above Hanoi and Haiphong, which took some of the heaviest bombing of the war. For five straight days, the whine of jets over Hanoi was almost monotonous. U.S. planes struck at a torpedo-boat base, an army barracks, storage depots, power plants, and two bridges over which supply trains from China funnel into Hanoi. Foreign seamen aboard ships anchored off Haiphong sat on the bridges with their feet on the railing watching duels between planes and ack-ack batteries...
Planes & Ships. The U.S. first bombed the north in August 1964 in tit-for-tat retaliation for a torpedo-boat attack on two Seventh Fleet destroyers in the Tonkin Gulf. Regular bombings began last February; since then U.S. and South Vietnamese planes have flown more than 50,000 sorties against the enemy. The 800 planes in use range from the old prop-driven Skyraider, whose fond jockeys insist that it can fly home with nearly as much enemy lead in it as the four tons of bombs it can carry out, to the droop-nosed, brutal-looking...
...Viet Nam the weather and the political climate are both uncertain, and coups or clouds kept getting in the way. Finally 19 propeller-driven South Vietnamese Skyraiders and 20 U.S. Air Force Super Sabres took off from Danang and headed for the North Vietnamese torpedo-boat base at Quangkhe, 65 miles north of the 17th parallel. There they relentlessly clobbered berths, repair shops, ammo dumps and supply warehouses with 70 tons of bombs, destroying an estimated 70% of the targets and sinking three to five PT boats in the bargain...
...August 5, the day after American jets bombed North Vietnam's torpedo-boat bases, both China and the Soviet Union announced that they would not "sit idly by" in the face of any U.S. "aggression" against North Vietnam. It is clear that were South Vietnam to attack North Vietnam, American would risk another Korea and probably worse...
...were no "doves" or "hawks" at this meeting. The possibility of shelling the northern seaport of Haiphong was discussed briefly, but it was discarded since it would involve civilian casualties and would require moving warships into territorial waters. McNamara suggested instead an air strike against five specific targets-four torpedo-boat bases and an oil storage facility. Rusk thought it might be wiser to hit two of the southernmost bases first and save the others for a possible second-stage attack. McCone argued for clobbering all five places, in view of the gravity of the North Vietnamese...