United States Navy planes from the Seventh Fleet are now participating in strikes against the Việt Cộng, a United States military spokesman said today. United States mission sources. said that, in case of a major Việt Cộng offensive, the Navy’s planes would be an important defense element. The use yesterday of Navy aircraft instead of the more centrally based United States Air Force planes was regarded as an attempt to give Navy pilots increased experience over South Vietnam.
In the strike yesterday, four propeller-driven A-1H Skyraider bombers and four small jet A-4 Skyhawks from the carrier USS Midway flew a total of 38 sorties seeking Việt Cộng targets in Tây Ninh and Chương Thiện Provinces, west and south of Saigon. In morning and afternoon raids, the eight planes dropped about 50 tons of bombs over a heavily forested area. Forward air controllers, the pilots flying light observation aircraft over the target zone, reported about 35 structures destroyed. In the wooded terrain, a structure can range from a tin-roofed barracks to a small thatched hut for the storage of rice. Navy aircraft also flew a minor mission today over North Vietnam after a one-day break in the recent series of bombings.
Two Skyhawks, escorted by two F-8 Crusader jet fighters from the carrier USS Hancock, bombed and strafed nine freight cars on a railroad siding 100 miles south of Hanoi. The pilots, who encountered limited ground fire, said they had left three boxcars heavily damaged and part of the siding damaged. Navy planes were also used last month in South Vietnam in a strike of a somewhat different nature — a 1,000-ton bombing raid in Tây Ninh Forest, a suspected Việt Cộng base.
In the South Vietnamese ground war, authoritative sources reported that four agricultural consultants from Japan were abducted last week by Việt Cộng insurgents near Buôn Ma Thuột in the Central Highlands. The consultants, accompanied by a guide and an interpreter, were seized on Route 14 Wednesday when they left their car to inspect an irrigation project. All were employees of the Nippon Koei Company, hired by the Japanese Government to study farming in the mountaineer area. Workers who witnessed the abduction said they overheard the guerrillas tell the captives their lives would be in no danger if they were not involved with the American military. Japanese correspondents in Saigon agreed not to file the story after a Japanese Government official said that publication would jeopardize the release of the men.
The first patrols by U.S. Marines in tanks are met only by scattered sniper fire. United States Marine medium tanks went on their first patrol today in a search operation. The 52-ton M48 tanks with Marines clinging to their sides, encountered only scattered Việt Cộng sniper fire. No one was hit. The tanks ranged out on the salt flats around Đà Nẵng Bay. Two infantry platoons from E Company of the Second Marine Battalion, Third Regiment, made fairly heavy contact three times in the same operational area west of the Đà Nẵng Air Base. One marine was wounded when he stepped on a sharpened bamboo stick. The Việt Cộng place these sticks for defense purposes. The tanks were from A Company, Third Tank Battalion. Eighteen tanks are in the Đà Nẵng area. In other action, three United States Army enlisted men were wounded in separate clashes with the Việt Cộng, a military spokesman said.
North Vietnam will claim (on 13 May) that during these days the Việt Cộng held their first “congress” in a “liberated area” of South Vietnam from May 2 to May 6; it was attended by the National Liberation Front’s president, Nguyễn Huu Tho, and 150 “outstanding cadres and fighters” from the Việt Cộng.
A Peking radio broadcast charges that the Soviet Union has joined the “U.S. aggressors” in a “peace negotiation swindle” — because the Soviets are reportedly backing some kind of peace conference before the total withdrawal of U.S. forces.
Cambodia asked to be removed from the protective umbrella of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) as pact member nations prepared to meet.
U.S. President Lyndon Johnson made a nationally televised speech to explain the invasion of the Dominican Republic by American troops, and said that “There are time in the affairs of nations when great principles are tested in an ordeal of conflict and danger. This is such a time for the American nations. At stake are the lives of thousands, the liberty of a nation, and the principles and the values of all the American Republics.” He added that the Dominican revolution had “taken a tragic turn” and that “what began as a popular democratic revolution” was “seized and placed into the hands of a band of Communist conspirators.” Johnson announced that he had ordered “2,000 extra men” to the Dominican Republic and for an additional 4,500 men to be deployed “at the earliest possible moment.” “The American nations cannot, must not, and will not permit the establishment of another Communist government in the Western Hemisphere…. This is what our beloved President John F. Kennedy meant when, less than a week before his death, he told us: ‘We in this hemisphere must also use every resource at our command to prevent the establishment of another Cuba in this hemisphere.’”
United States forces in the Dominican Republic nearly doubled in number from yesterday to today, while a peace mission of the Organization of American States began efforts to solve the crisis that has beset the country for more than a week. At the same time, John Bartlow Martin, President Johnson’s personal envoy to aid United States Ambassador W. Tapley Bennett’s peace efforts, said at a news conference that the rebel movement had become Communist-dominated. “This was originally a P.R.D. [Dominican Revolutionary par-1 ty] attempt to restore [former President Juan] Bosch’s constitutional government,” Mr. Martin said, “but I am now convinced after having talked to many people on the rebel side that this is Communist-dominated, and moderate elements of the P.R.D. are themselves aware of this fact. Bosch must feel as heartbroken as I do at what has happened to the movement in the last three or four days, and the loss of life.”
In the fighting, United States military spokesmen said sniper fire declined during the day. However, shooting did go on sporadically. Shooting picked up in Santo Domingo at dusk, The Associated Press reported. At the San Isidro air base, United States military planes landed and took off every two minutes. By this morning nearly 10,000 marines and paratroopers were in the Santo Domingo area. Five thousand troops were flown late yesterday and early today to the San Isidro air base, east of Santo Domingo, from bases in the United States. The O.A.S. committee said in a statement that it was charged with “doing everything possible to obtain re-establishment of peace and normality in Santo Domingo” and that it would “be guided strictly by the principles of nonintervention and the free determination of peoples.”
Santo Domingo is a city at war with itself. After a week of savage blood-letting, Santo Domingo is exhausted, mauled, thirsty, hungry and dirty and on the threshold of epidemics. But it is still a city in a rebellion, and the fighting is not over. Today, United States Marines and paratroopers are among the combatants. They are learning the meaning of that breathless surprise when the stillness is broken by machine-gun fire, from a roof or a sniper’s rifle shot from a tree. The residents of this normally attractive but almost mortally wounded capital — nearly 300,000 of them — have lived with the guerrilla war for eight days. Now it is the turn of the Americans.
You may be sitting on the stairs at the entrance to the United States Embassy, a low-slung, white villa-like building, enjoying the coolness of the sundown after a day’s siege. Then the sniper’s bullets whistle through the trees, hitting the building or losing themselves in the big garden. The marines guarding the embassy enter with their M-14 rifles and machine guns, and for a few minutes all is bedlam. The sniper may have been hit or may simply be lying low, but quiet comes back to the garden.
The Secretary General, U Thant, interrupted his European tour and returned here tonight to participate in tomorrow’s meeting of the Security Council on the Dominican crisis.
Former Vice President Richard M. Nixon said today he approved of President Johnson’s decision to send Marines into the Dominican Republic and urged that United States action “not stop with that.”
Former Dominican Republic President Juan D. Bosch said the revolution was won by forces supporting him until the U.S. intervened so it is now America’s responsibility to bring democracy to his country.
Pope Paul VI, referring to the outbreak of violence in the Dominican Republic, said today that “better news came from Santo Domingo last night, but the equilibrium is not yet secure.”
An angry wave of anti-American reaction is rolling over Latin America because U.S. military forces were sent to the Dominican Republic.
A violently anti-United States May Day speech by Premier Fidel Castro was rebroadcast all day today, indicating that Cuba is striving to exploit events in the nearby Dominican Republic in effort to attract Latin-American opinion.
Tunisian President Habib Bourguiba accused President Gamal Abdel Nasser of the United Arab Republic today of trying to become the dictator of the Arab world. The Tunisian President, whose call for negotiations with Israel has angered Mr. Nasser and other Arab leaders, also said that if the Arabs threatened war with Israel, “no one would take us seriously.” Mr. Bourguiba has suggested negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Arab refugees on the Palestine question. He has said these talks should be based on the 1948 United Nations resolution calling for Israel’s surrender of some of the territory she won from the Palestine Arabs during the 1947-48 fighting. The Israelis also have disagreed with the Bourguiba view.
Foreign Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto of Pakistan today denied Indian allegations that Pakistan was using American military aid in the battle for the desolate Rann of Cutch. “Indian allegations are not correct,” Mr. Bhutto said as he arrived by air from Paris to attend the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization conference. He also denied Indian contentions that collusion with Communist China had set off the border dispute.
South Korea President Park Chung Hee gave a speech chastising student protesters. “Dear students!” he said, “Whenever the politicians wrangle over a big issue in the National Assembly, you, without knowing the real point of the issue, take to the streets or hold discussion meetings on the campus with placards saying “Down with the Government’… But I say this to you frankly, that you are the future masters of the nation, but you must train yourself for the job 10 or 20 more years. Then comes the time for your generation, not now…”
Opposition to the government’s plan to nationalize the British steel industry began hardening in preparation for the most crucial political battle since Labour came to power six months ago.
Hand grenades were tossed into three bars in two of Leopoldville’s townships last night, killing four persons and injuring at least 36. The attacks represented the first outbreak of terrorism in the Congolese capital in 10 months. High police officials said they had no evidence yet as to who threw the grenades, or what their purpose might have been. Bombings last year were traced to the National Liberation Committee, a rebel group based across the Congo River in Brazzaville, capital of the former French Congo.
Chairul Saleh, Third Deputy Premier and a leading opponent of the Indonesian Communist party, has come out openly in favor of Communist demands that “capitalist bureaucrats” be purged from state enterprises.
United States Supreme Court Justice Arthur J. Goldberg proposed last night the creation of a neutral, fact-finding United Nations commission to investigate religious discrimination throughout the world.
Senate liberals are expected to decide early this week whether to give up their fight for inclusion of a ban on poll taxes in the voting rights bill. A substitute bill seeking to attract their support was unveiled last week by Mike Mansfield of Montana, the Democratic leader, and Everett McKinley Dirksen of Illinois, the Republican leader. If the liberals agree to support the substitute, Senate leaders believe, final Senate action on the voting rights measure could come within two weeks.
Until now, the Senate has been split into three factions: Southerners who want no bill at all; liberals who want to ban the poll tax in state and local elections, and Administration supporters who fear the poll tax ban would be unconstitutional. Support of the liberals for the substitute bill over the one containing the poll tax ban is not crucial to Senate passage of a voting rights measure. It would, however, make it quicker by avoiding much debate on the constitutional issue. The liberal bloc has tentatively set a meeting for tomorrow to begin discussing the substitute.
The government announced it has adopted new rules for determining which U.S. families are poor as a tool to use in the war on poverty. Sargent Shriver, director of the Office of Economic Opportunity, disclosed the change while the United States Chamber of Commerce was challenging the Government’s present standard, which says that any family earning less than $3,000 a year is poverty-stricken. A family of four with an annual income under $3,130 and an individual with income under $1,540 would now be classed as poor, Previously, the figures were $3,000 and $1,500. For families of two the poverty level would be $1,990, and for families of three it would be $2,440.
The State of Alabama, in a murder trial scheduled to begin today in Hayneville, will attempt to prove that a young Ku Klux Klansman killed Mrs. Viola Liuzzo.
Civil rights leaders have begun to express concern about President Johnson’s delay in appointing a commission to administer the fair employment practices section of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
For the first time outside Congressional chambers, Representative William E. Dickinson has repeated his charges of immorality during the civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery.
Mrs. Lyndon B. Johnson flew from the Capital for a nostalgic visit to the east Texas land of her birth.
The Mississippi River began rising in the Hannibal (Missouri)-Quincy (IIIinois) area after a respite during which the flooding river hurtled through a crushed dike and dropped nearly a foot.
The Intelsat I communications satellite (nicknamed “Early Bird”), launched on April 6, was moved to a stationary geosynchronous orbit, 22,300 miles above the Atlantic Ocean and began regular operations. Live television programs from the Western and Eastern hemispheres were broadcast via the communications satellite Early Bird for the first time publicly.
The Soviet Union lost all contact with Zond 2, the interplanetary probe that it had launched toward Mars on November 30, 1964.
The 60-year-old St. Regis Hotel in New York has been sold to new owners who plan to continue it as a pillar of elegant living on Fifth Avenue.
“New Faces of 1965” opens at Booth Theater NYC for 52 performances
“Wagon Train,” the popular television Western drama ended after eight seasons with the broadcast of its 272nd and final original episode. The series closer was also a television pilot with Frank McGrath’s character (Charlie Wooster) telling Terry Wilson’s Bill Hawks about Charlie’s days working at a trading post. The pilot, “Bend of the River,” would not be picked up by any of the networks.
Major League Baseball:
The Baltimore Orioles swept a doubleheader from the reeling New York Yankees. Young Dave McNally beats Mel Stottlemeyer in the opener, 4–2. 38-year-old Robin Roberts shuts out the Yankees in the nitecap, 5–0.
The Kansas City Athletics broke a seven-game losing streak today by defeating the Los Angeles Angels, 9–5, in the second game of a double-header. The Angels slammed their way to a 10–8 victory in the opener with a 15-hit attack.
Dalton Jones and Mike Ryan, a rookie, combined to drive in seven runs in Boston’s 10–3 second-game victory over the Detroit Tigers today, completing a sweep of a double-header. The Red Sox won the opener, 2–1.
Jim King’s pop foul in the first game and his tie-breaking single in the second game carried the Washington Senators to 3–2 and 4–2 victories over the Cleveland Indians today.
Harmon Killebrew hit a two-run homer and drove in the winning run with a double in the 10th inning for Minnesota’s 3–2 opening-game victory over Chicago today before the White Sox took the second game, 5–4, on homers by Floyd Robinson and Don Buford.
Larry Jackson started a four-run, third-inning burst with a triple and, with help from Ted Abernathy, pitched the Chicago Cubs to a 6–3 victory today over the Houston Astros, snapping the Astros’ winning streak at 10 games.
McCovey hit Bob Miller’s first pitch in the 10th inning for his second homer of the game today and gave the San Francisco Giants a 4–2 victory over the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Jack Fisher of the New York Mets pitched the Cincinnati Reds into first place in the National League today. He started and lost the first game, 9–4, then relieved and lost the second, 10–8, before 17,242 spectators at Crosley Field.
Bill White hit a home run in the ninth inning of the second game today to give the St. Louis Cardinals a 5–4 victory and a sweep of their double-header with the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Cardinals won the opener, 9–5, behind Tim McCarver’s clutch hitting.
The Philadelphia Phillies ended a slump today by sweeping a double-header from the Milwaukee Braves, 6–0 and 10–7. Chris Short won a seven-hitter in the opener and Jack Baldschun contributed a brilliant relief job in the second game.
Minnesota Twins 3, Chicago White Sox 2
Minnesota Twins 4, Chicago White Sox 5
New York Mets 4, Cincinnati Reds 9
New York Mets 8, Cincinnati Reds 10
Washington Senators 3, Cleveland Indians 2
Washington Senators 4, Cleveland Indians 2
Boston Red Sox 2, Detroit Tigers 1
Boston Red Sox 10, Detroit Tigers 3
Chicago Cubs 6, Houston Astros 3
California Angels 10, Kansas City Athletics 8
California Angels 5, Kansas City Athletics 9
San Francisco Giants 4, Los Angeles Dodgers 2
Philadelphia Phillies 6, Milwaukee Braves 0
Philadelphia Phillies 10, Milwaukee Braves 7
Baltimore Orioles 4, New York Yankees 2
Baltimore Orioles 5, New York Yankees 0
Pittsburgh Pirates 5, St. Louis Cardinals 9
Pittsburgh Pirates 4, St. Louis Cardinals 5
Born:
Félix José, Dominican MLB outfielder (All-Star, 1991; Oakland A’s, St. Louis Cardinals, Kansas City Royals, New York Yankees, Arizona Diamondbacks), in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic.
Matthew Barley, British classical, contemporary, and jazz cellist (“The Peasant Girl”), in London, England, United Kingdom.
History Diaries 