Feb. 25, 1965 - A Vietnamese commander said today that the first announced attack by American-piloted jet planes against Communist Viet Cong guerrillas in South Vietnam was highly successful.
Brig. Gen. Nguyen Huu Co, commander of the South Vietnam 2nd Army Corps, said the attack yesterday by eight B-57 light bombers and eight F-100 Supersabre fighter-bombers killed more than 100 Viet Cong.
The U.S. planes saturated a Viet Cong troop concentration area with a hitherto-secret new type of fragmentation bombs which burst at low level over the jungle hideouts.
Another development has been a bomb casing which opens after being dropped and lays down a line of small antipersonnel bombs more than 100 feet long.
U.S. Air Force pilots in Vietnam feel the effects of their bombing and strafing of the Viet Cong will be more psychological — inside and outside Vietnam — than tactical.
Radio Hanoi labeled the U.S. jet strafing as “an extension of America’s dirty war tactics.”
The first results of the American attack coincided with the departure of the nation’s former strongman, Lieut. Gen. Nguyen Khanh, and reports of a Communist massacre of 90 South Vietnamese civilians in reprisal for the U.S. retaliatory bombings in North Vietnam.
Co told newsmen that guerrillas halted two buses on Highway 19 in Binh Dinh province Tuesday and machine-gunned about 90 men and women passengers. The sole survivor was a 4-year-old girl, who told rescuers that the Communists yelled that because “Vietnamese have died in North Vietnam, now you must die.”
In Washington today, Secretary of State Dean Rusk said North Vietnam must indicate a willingness to end its aggression against South Vietnam before the U.S. will agree to negotiate the end of the war there.
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