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Unique Tactical Bombing Raid Successful(EDITOR’S NOTE: Charles Black, Enquirer military writer, has returned home after four months in Viet Nam. He was with men of the 1st Cavalry Division during many of their recent engagements with Communist guerrillas, and his articles on the war as he saw it will continue in The Enquirer daily.)
By CHARLES BLACK Enquirer Military Write |
During the evening of Nov.
16 at Pleiku, at the compound where the press corps covering the 1st
Cavalry
Division’s Plei Me campaign was staying between trips to the field,
Capt. J. D.
Coleman of the public information office passed out word which
explained why
Brig. Gen. Richard Knowles had pulled 3rd Brigade troops back from Chu
Pong
Mountains.
Col. Thomas Brown’s brigade
was poised for yet another smash at the North Vietnamese army units in
the Ia
Drang valley - and a massive B-52 bomber raid would strike the slopes
of Chu
Pong Mountain the next morning.
Robin Mannick of Associated
Press and myself got a helicopter arrangement made with Capt. Coleman
and went
out from Camp Holloway to get a sky-view seat for the bombing attack.
The attack was unique in
B-52 tactical bombing history. Missions
for this big bomber require 72 hours advance notice, and the
coordination with
Vietnamese officials is complex. Most
of the bombs seem to finally land in areas deserted by the Communists.
The raid on Chu Pong
Mountain was already planned for another target in the area and the 1st
Cavalry
Division’s assistant commander had prevailed in having the bombs
carried on
down to the Chu Pong battle.
Brig. Gen. Knowles had
pulled the Sky Troopers back to trap the Communist units into filling a
kill
zone for what amounted to an ambush utilizing B-52 strategic bombers
and
750-pound bombs.
On these raids, a 1,500
meter “zero line” is observed. No
friendly troops or aircraft are allowed closer to the bomb targets than
that
distance. Our helicopter flew a monotonous
pattern along the line at about 1,500 feet altitude.
Chu Pong still was smoking from the battle just finished there
and the scars of artillery and bombs were visible on its lower slopes.
Mannick and I were coping
with seat belts which didn’t work by using a buddy system.
He had a camera and I held him while he
leaned out and took pictures. He had a
telescopic lens arrangement which looked very impressive and I borrowed
it to
look at the mountain through. He took
it back hurriedly when the helicopter lurched and I almost dropped it
grabbing
for a handhold.
“You hold me and I will hold
the camera. I didn’t intend to
establish any priority in grabbing the camera instead of you, then, of
course. It was just a matter of putting
first things first,” he informed me in his best Oxford manner.
I saw an orange blossom on the
military crest of Chu Pong, then a long line of them grew, stretching
in a
continuous flash. As the orange flames
disappeared a boil of black smoke went up and then the crash of the
first
explosions came to us.
I attempted to spot the
B-52s which had dropped this fury and couldn’t see them at all. More bombs were bursting in lines which
traced out an almost geometrical pattern of violence on the mountain
and in the
brush around Landing Zone X-Ray where the battle had been fought.
“That is fantastic,” I told
Mannick.
He was shooting pictures and
I was holding his belt to anchor him.
“Here, look at them through
the lens,” he shouted, he held to me and let me handle the camera but
he kept
the cord to it securely around his neck.
Through the telescopic lens,
I could see the initial burst of the bombs flattening trees and sending
huge
gusts of dirt and dust into the air.
The boiling black smoke and dust would obscure one burst just as
the next
bomb exploded. I looked at the first
string of bombs and saw a staggering line of craters stitched through
the green
canopy on the mountain.
Mannick went back to his
photography and I kept shouting nonsensical directionsat the pilots of
the
still invisible B-52s. There is a
valley behind Chu Pong Mountain which seemed to be an especially
desirable
target to me, and there was a finger from the main ridge which shielded
a
defile from the battlefield below which had sheltered reserves and
possibly a
regimental headquarters, I had been told.
While I was pounding poor
Mannick on the back instead of holding him, causing him considerable
problems
in properly focusing his camera, and acting like a football fan helping
the
quarterback of the home team, the B-52s kept up the inexorable pounding.
The flash and smoke of bombs
blotted out the finger of ground and its reverse slope and there was a
sudden
cloud of smoke and dust from behind the mountain in the valley I had
been
shouting about.
Mannick suddenly pointed to
the sky. I saw tiny silver specks
shining.
“Look at that! They
must have dropped those bombs 20 or 30
miles from here! They are at 35,000 and hitting exactly where they
should,”
Mannick said.
The silver flashes kept
coming. I had no detailed information
on the number of planes or the number of bombs they had dropped, but
the
explosions were still flaring, this time in the timber around Landing
Zone X-Ray.
The bombing was a display of
brutal firepower and the lack of warning of any plane’s approach must
have made
them a horrible surprise to the PAVN battalions there.
The B-52s completed the
display of U.S. firepower at Landing Zone X-Ray. The
shattered, bloody woods had been the scene of the death of
the 66th Regiment, 325th Division of the People’s Army of Viet Nam. A prisoner, his morale shattered, later
deserted when “. . . less than 100 soldiers finally came to our
rendezvous
point. Regimental headquarters was also
destroyed.”
The raid was an example of how the big planes could be used to full effect in a tactical blow.
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