Word: torpedo
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...radarscope. Last week a bad odor lingered over four such radar contacts. They were the blips that appeared in the Tonkin Gulf a fortnight ago and drew the fire of two patrolling U.S. destroyers-and, since then, the fire of innumerable Republican sharpshooters. Were the skunks really North Vietnamese torpedo boats or gunboats, as the destroyer captains believed? If so, were they really indulging in "hostile" behavior-preparing to attack U.S. vessels as they had on two earlier occasions? What damage was really done? The Pentagon has offered no answers, but a few facts about the mysterious engagement...
...because of the ships' sensitive, U-2-like role, the Pentagon was unwilling to release their names. Early in the evening of Sept. 18, the destroyers picked up the four skunks, found them to be moving at speeds of around 40 knots-too fast to be anything but torpedo boats. The destroyers increased their own speed to 30 knots, began running a zigzag course, and kept their narrow sterns to the approaching blips...
...that the pursuers were "hostile," opened fire with their radar-controlled 5-in. guns, although they still could not see their targets by eye. Why did they begin shooting at such a great distance? After the first Tonkin incident, when the U.S.S. Maddox sank one of three at tacking torpedo boats, President Johnson had been scornful of the lone destroyer's marksmanship, so this time the skippers wanted to get in as many ranging rounds as possible to improve their score...
...blew up a sugar mill on Cuba's southern coast last May and shot up a Russian radar station in the same area two weeks ago. Artime, a leader in the abortive Bay of Pigs invasion, now operates out of Central America, is believed to have some dozen torpedo boats armed with 57-mm. recoilless rifles and other weapons. Two other exile possibilities: the smaller November 30 Organization, which says it shelled a Cuban freighter homeward-bound from Canada two weeks ago; and the Comandos Mambises, which claims to have attacked a Russian vessel in the Cuban port...
...told by Artime in Panama afterwards, the men landed at night from two heavily armed torpedo boats. At a signal, one group attacked the militia garrison assisted by machine gun and recoilless rifle fire from the boats, thus pinning down most of the troops. An other group then fought its way to the radar station and destroyed most of the equipment with antitank weapons. The action lasted 55 minutes be fore the commandos escaped safely out to sea and back to "a secret base somewhere in the Caribbean." His own group suffered no losses, Artime claimed; but he could...