Friday, May 19, 1972
U.S. Jets Slam Haiphong; 'Cancel' Some Supply Orders
WASHINGTON (UPI) --The Pentagon made public Wednesday photographs showing U.S. bombs falling as close as 100 yards from freighters unloading at the Haiphong docks this past week. Pentagon officials said this was the closest American planes ever had bombed to the wharves.Pentagon spokesman Jerry W. Friedheim said the photos were taken with a hand--held camera by a navigator sitting in the back seat of an F4 Phantom fighter-bomber.The photographs clearly show nine ships lined up end to end along the docks. Most of the bomb clouds are around 300 to 500 yards from the docks and ships but at least one fell within 100 yards -less than the ship's length -from the bow of a freighter of unknown registry.The Pentagon said the targets of the raids were warehouses and transshipment areas of Haiphong Harbor. Numbers of long warehouses can clearly be seen in the photograph.The 27 ships trapped in Haiphong Harbor include 10 Soviet, 4 Chinese, 4 Somali, 3 Polish, 2 Cuban, 1 East German and 3 British ships out of Hong Kong that were believed chartered by Communist Chinese organizations."U.S. Jets Slam Haiphong; 'Cancel' Some Supply Orders", by (UPI), published in the Pacific Stars and Stripes Friday, May 19, 1972 and reprinted from European and Pacific Stars and Stripes, a Department of Defense publication copyright, 2002 European and Pacific Stars and Stripes.