U.S. Planes Strike North Vietnam

Apr. 16, 1965 - United States Navy and Air Force planes knocked out six bridges today in a series of air strikes at North Vietnam.

Military spokesmen described the raids as successes in a continuing effort to sever communications links that may be used to supply and reinforce Communist guerrilla units in South Vietnam.

The Navy fighter-bombers, operating from the carriers Coral Sea and Midway, returned for a second strike at their targets after they failed to destroy two bridges assigned to them. 

A Navy spokesman afterward remarked with a smile: “We tied the Air Force.”Early in the morning, elements of the South Vietnamese Army’s Fifth Division and an airborne brigade were lifted by helicopter into a forest area 70 miles northwest of Saigon, a day after the area suffered saturation bombing.

Aircraft of all four U.S. armed services and of the South Vietnamese Air Force, totaling 230 planes, had dropped 1,000 tons of bombs on what was described as a major stronghold of the Viet Cong.

The airdropped troops, pushing through heavy jungle toward the target area, made no contact with the guerrillas as of the afternoon. Helicopter and fighter planes, supporting the airborne assault, reported no ground fire in the landing zones.

North Vietnam asserted today that seven U.S. planes had been shot down and many others damaged on the bridge raids. A Hanoi announcement, broadcast by the Peking radio, said the people and the army had “scored brilliant victories.”

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