GUNLINE Vietnam 1972 - Page 3 
GUNLINE Vietnam 1972 - Page 3 
  | Lincoln Journal StarNo. Viets Run Truck Shuttle To China BorderJuly 19, 1972 |
| Washington (AP) – The North Vietnamese apparently have cut a small path through the U.S. air and naval barrier by running a truck shuttle to the Chinese border.
Pentagon sources estimate the North Vietnamese receive between 10 and 20% of the 220,000 tons of supplies they formerly received from the outside. The main routes of the truck shuttle run roughly parallel to the often-severed main trail lines connecting Hanoi with southeast China. Freight trains from China reportedly unload at Dong Dang, a North Vietnamese town so close to the border that U.S. war planes avoid bombing it. At Dong Dang, North Vietnamese trucks pick up the war supplies and drive back along roads leading to the battlefield in the South. An Air Force general, trying to convey the difficulties in shutting off this kind of traffic entirely, described the road network as “like the veins on the back of your hands.” Despite a heavy concentration of surface to air missiles in this region, Pentagon officials claim more than 30 important bridges have been disabled there. This has paralyzed train movements inside North Vietnam, but the North Vietnamese have managed to keep some trucks rolling by improvising pontoon bridges and ferries. Most of the trucks drive at night. The ingenious North Vietnamese are said to be putting flanged wheels on some of their trucks so these vehicles can ride train rails and transport cargo between breaks blasted by U.S. bombs. One source estimated the North Vietnamese are using between 100 and 1,000 trucks in the shuttle to and from the Chinese border. U.S. officials forecast, as they have for some time, that North Vietnam’s motor fuel supply will get tighter and tighter because of U.S. raids against fuel depots and storage dumps. The North Vietnamese have been building a fuel pipeline toward the Chinese border, but military sources said this line has of yet been completed. Intelligence analysts were unable to say specifically what kind of supplies are coming into North Vietnam from Chinas but there have been recent reports of hew types of Chinese weapons appearing on the battlefields in South Vietnam. These weapons include an 82 millimeter recoilless rife which experts said has been in production in China for only about a year. Despite persistent reports that China has sent engineer troops or laborers into North Vietnam to repair shattered railroads and shattered bridges, military authorities deny there is any hard evidence of this. |
