The War: Into Exile

Though the anti-aircraft fire thrown up by the North Vietnamese is the thickest in the history of aerial warfare—it accounted for the loss of 14 U.S. planes last week—U.S. pilots for most of the war were little bothered by the North’s MIG air force. The MIGs frequently did not come off the ground to meet U.S. pilots or, when they did, tried merely to force U.S. planes to jettison their bombs and defend themselves. Last August, the U.S. air commander in Viet Nam, Lieut. General William (“Spike”) Momyer, told a Senate subcommittee: “We have driven the MIGs out of the sky for all practical purposes.” Then the situation changed dramatically. The MIGs began coming up in greater numbers and harassing U.S. planes with unaccustomed aggressiveness and a wider range of maneuvers. After challenging U.S. pilots only 17 times in August, they attacked a total of 78 times in September and the first half of October.

Last week, in retaliation, the U.S. mounted the biggest air strike of the war against the most important of the two MIG bases that had not yet been bombed. Navy and Air Force jets rolled in five times to smash the base at Phuc Yen, northwest of Hanoi, turning the sky into a tapestry of fireballs. Later, Marine planes from Danang ventured farther north than they normally do to make an unusual night raid on Phuc Yen. The Communists filled in many of the bomb craters overnight, but U.S. planes were back the next day to chew out more. In two days, the attackers hit twelve of the until now untouchable MIGs, and wrecked the control tower, hangar and runway. By taking the wraps off Phuc Yen, the U.S. also virtually assured the exile of the North Vietnamese air force to China.

Blind Spot. Opinions vary on the reasons for the MIGs’ recent tenacity, but most U.S. pilots agree with Air Force Colonel Robin Olds, who recently returned from Viet Nam: “I don’t know what has happened to them, but there has been a change up there.” Some believe that the MIGs are more active because North Koreans or Chinese are flying them. More likely, however, North Vietnamese pilots who have been trained in China or Russia are coming back with new tricks and honing their skills through experience.

The North has also been using ground radar in a more sophisticated fashion to track incoming bombers and has enabled its pilots to exploit an American blind spot. Knowing that U.S. pilots have to locate their targets—and must take pains to avoid restricted areas—the MIGs have been climbing above the clouds and out of sight to await the attackers. Then they swoop down like hawks, rip through a U.S. squadron with guns ablaze and vanish into the blue. With such tactics, the MIGs have lately shot down almost as many planes as they have lost—though the U.S. still is way ahead in overall dogfight kills, 95 to 25.

The 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.*

Altogether, the U.S. put 16 MIGs out of action last week, bringing Hanoi’s total losses on the ground and in the air to at least 120 aircraft. This might be expected to sap the resistance of the North’s air force, which normally has no more than 110 planes at once, but for the fact that the Russians regularly provide replacements. Packed in crates, MIGs from the Soviet Union roll by railroad across China. The North’s biggest problem is thus not getting new planes to replace losses but training enough pilots to fly them.

No Fuel. Of the six MIG bases in the North, only the one at Gia Lam, which is also Hanoi’s commercial airport, has not been bombed—but no more than ten MIGs can operate from Gia Lam. As a result, while 90% of the North Vietnamese force was once kept in the North, about 80% of it is now based across the border in China. The Peitun-Yunnani base in Southwest China harbors not only about 50 MIGs but eight Russian Ilyushin medium bombers not yet used in the war. None of the MIGs have yet flown out of China against U.S. planes. One reason is that they would not have enough fuel to maneuver long over Hanoi and Haiphong, which are over 300 miles from China. Another is that the Chinese are not eager to provoke the U.S. into attacking China as a sanctuary for fleeing North Vietnamese planes.

*Among those shot down: Navy Lieut. Commander John McCain Ill, 30, son of the admiral who is commander in chief of U.S. naval forces in Europe. His plane was hit by a missile over Hanoi, and he was captured by the North Vietnamese.