The War: One-Way Traffic on a Two-Way Street

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Not Even a Whisper. With Hanoi obviously unwilling to talk—or even whisper—the U.S. significantly stepped up its bombing attacks last week in an effort to reduce the North's capacity to send troops and weapons into the South. Air Force pilots destroyed a 60-car freight train and repeatedly struck an army training center near Hanoi—on one occasion getting embroiled in dogfights with 17 MIGs that cost one U.S. plane and possibly five of the enemy's.

The Haiphong raids hit two thermal power plants—one barely a mile from the downtown business center, the other 2.1 miles away. Nearly 160 Navy jets took part, swooping off the decks of the attack carriers Kitty Hawk and Ticonderoga to strike at noon and again 4½ hours later. Dumping almost 150 tons of bombs on the plants, the strikes destroyed 80% of their generating capacity—and 12% of the North's total power supply—without losing a single plane. As one pilot said on his return to the Kitty Hawk: "There are no lights tonight in Haiphong."

The raids, said Rear Admiral David C. Richardson, whose Task Force 77 carriers launched the jets, "will show some people that their sanctuaries are not what they think they are." A few off-limits areas remain nonetheless—Haiphong's port facilities and its huge cement plant, Hanoi's industries, the MIG airfields and the dikes that channel water to the Red River rice bowl.

Whether they, too, are eventually bombed may well depend on what the three or four North Vietnamese divisions along the DMZ decide to do. If they come on down, the bombing is likely to intensify and U.S. officers in the South are likely to get all the reinforcements that they request. And in that event, Hanoi—for a change—will be clearly branded the escalator.