Thursday, May 4, 1972
N. Viet Advance Menacing Hue
SAIGON --North Vietnamese troops with "many, many tanks" following behind them Tuesday night drove into Artillery Base Nancy, which anchors the government's new defense line on 15 miles northwest of Hue, Allied officers said.By nightfall, control of the base on the Thua Thien-Quang Tri Province border was in doubt. Field officers said South Vietnamese Marines held part of the base and the north Vietnamese the other."There are many, many tanks at My Chanh heading for Nancy," one officer said. "My Chanh is within small arms firing distance of Nancy, 12 miles south of the fallen province capital of Quang Tri city.Allied warplanes Tuesday bombed and strafed at least 30 government tanks left behind in the Quang Tri sector, abandoned Monday. The U.S. command reported 462 air strikes, including B52 heavy bomber raids, in Quang Tri Province in the 24 hours ending at noon -the heaviest concentration of air raids in four years.Meanwhile, the U.S. command announced the loss of four warplanes and three helicopters with a total of four crewmen killed, three missing, one wounded and two rescued. This raised to 59 the number of planes and helicopters reported lost by the U.S. command since the start of the North Vietnamese offensive March 30. A total of 32 crewmen have been killed, 18 wounded and 47 are missing."I believe Hue is the major objective," Brig. Gen. Thomas W. Bowen, deputy senior U.S. adviser in the northern front, told reporters at the old imperial capital Tuesday night.But Bowen, who earlier in the day personally rescued five U.S. advisers on the ground in his command helicopter, said he thought the North Vietnamese might regroup and resupply for another week before making a major attempt to seize Hue.Hue, 400 miles north of Saigon, is swollen and more than 100,000 refugees from the Quang Tri defeat and now has a population of about 315,000.U.S. pilots flying observation planes along Highway 1 Tuesday said they saw "hundreds and hundreds of dead soldiers" along a 20-mile stretch of the highway from Quang Tri south to the government"s small garrison at Camp Evans.Government commanders Tuesday night moved a 100-truck convoy of ammunition and other supplies up Highway 1 from Da Nang to Hue, field reports said. There were hundreds of South Vietnamese soldiers in the city who had no weapons.President Nguyen Van Thieu Tuesday summoned Lt. Gen. Hoang Xuan Lam to Saigon for urgent conferences on the situation. Lam is the government commander in the five northernmost provinces known as Military Region I."There is no doubt that the South Vietnamese Army suffered a major defeat yesterday," a senior U.S. officer said Tuesday. "This is not something that can be papered over."The 2,000 American troops at Phu Bai Air Base, 10 miles south of Hue, were ordered on "yellow alert" status, which in military terminology means an enemy attack could be imminent. Most of the GIs are communications specialists with about 400 "line" infantrymen at Phu Bai to guard the base.Senior U.S. officers said the government had suffered "major losses in personnel and equipment" in losing Quang Tri Province to the Communists. They said the major problem would be to put government units back into effective condition and the South Vietnamese "are certainly going to get the full support of the United States" in carrying out the mission.Five Americans were killed Tuesday about five miles southeast of Quang Tri city when their UH1 helicopter was shot down after picking up a U.S. adviser on the ground. Bowen told newsmen the chopper was hit by a hand-held heat-seeking missile which to his knowledge was used for the first time in the war.Along the central coast, heavy fighting was reported at the South Vietnamese Combat Base English in Binh Dinh Province, 35 miles north of the major port of Qui Nhon. The Communists have seized three district capitals in northern Binh Dinh and English is the last government base left in the area.Six civilians were killed and at least 19 wounded Tuesday when Communist gunners fired four rockets into Qui Nhon itself. The country's fourth largest city also was shelled Tuesday night but there were no immediate reports of casualties.To the west, government Rangers Monday evacuated Fire Base Lima, nine miles northwest of the province capital of Kontum, 260 miles north of Saigon in the central highlands. Only one combat base, about two miles north of Kontum, remained in government hands Tuesday.The U.S. command reported 10 more B52 missions over Kontum late Monday and early Tuesday."N. Viet Advance Menacing Hue", by (AP and UPI) published in the Pacific Stars and Stripes on Thursday, May 4, 1972 and reprinted from European and Pacific Stars and Stripes, a Department of Defense publication copyright, 2002 European and Pacific Stars and Stripes.