Cover Photo

Page 3. Blood, Tears And Confusion: American Invasion Of Tonkin

Page 12. The Arms Markets of Kunming

Page 16. Where In The World Is Nguyen Tuong?

Page 18. Viet Quoc Land Reform, Summarized

Page 19. A Visit To Saigon

Page 25. Vietnam's Nascent Air Force

Page 30. The Future Of Vietnam

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The American invasion of North Vietnam, apparently, was never supposed to happen. If the Viet Quoc had accepted the "cease-fire" deal, we are told, they would have been left alone. Their president, we are told, "defected" of his own free will to the United States, and the Viet Quoc are now "rogue". These statements are, at best, half-truths. In reality, they are more likely lies. Lies hiding the brutal reality of American support for a group of "nationalist" guerillas whom are strangely infatuated with Lenin, of Vietnamese villages destroyed for supporting the Viet Quoc, of a baffling and wasteful diversion at a time when global communism is on the advance everywhere from Greece to Korea.

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Visiting Tonkin, we can see the brutality of this war in full picture. Villages that have been leveled, people left homeless and hungry from the total war that the United States is waging. The cover photo of this issue is of a young girl, screaming as she runs away from her village--leveled with napalm because the Americans suspected it of holding VNRA soldiers, and while we see a few, there aren't many and they're decidedly a sorry looking lot, clutching worn-out Arisakas and a few grenades and bullets--even by the standards of the VNRA, which aren't especially high, these are uninspiring. Certainly not a target worth destroying a whole village for, and yet the Americans callously do so anyway. One wonders what the American pilots think about their targets, though we must imagine they're much more concerned about the aerial threats that have recently begun to emerge in the theatre.

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The Vietnamese people seem largely confused at why these Americans, with whom they were often on largely friendly terms up until the dramatic change in events last year, are so violent towards them--or indeed, why they are invading at all. Many fondly remember the brief period where the Americans brought trucks full of food and medicine to Hanoi, in their hour of need, and don't understand why they first left, then sought to launch a full-scale invasion of Viet-nam. Nobody really knows what the American objectives in Vietnam are, other than what seems to them blatant imperialism of the worst sort--and perhaps supporting the Viet Minh, the feared jungle communists whom are at best thought of warily by most of the public.

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Americans, too, seem equally confused about why they're in Vietnam. In fact, the response of most Americans our reporters talked to was "we're in Vietnam? Where's that?", but upon further elaboration, most either were in a state of disbelief or anger, with a few recalling recent articles in the American press fingering Secretary of State Acheson for the strange flirtation with communism the United States seems to be making its new policy....

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Pictured above is a Nakajima Ki-84, still in Japanese markings. We were informed that it was probably being sold to the Viet Quoc.

The Chinese Civil War--and indeed, civil conflict for something like a century at this point, in China--has left the country overflowing with weaponry. While most of it is in the hands of the National Revolutionary Army or the People's Liberation Army, a large portion of it is not--especially with the chaos of the multifacted, multifactional conflict. On the streets of Kunming, we found a wide variety of weapons for sale--to purchasing agents of various parties in the Indochina conflict, from Tai opium smugglers to the Viet Quoc to indeed even Viet Minh, or simple Chinese bandits. A Hanyang 88 fetches $20, while a vz 26 light machine gun costs $200, though given the quality of the Guangxi-made weapons this is most likely a ripoff. Former Japanese weapons from Type 100 submachine guns to Type 99 grenades are prolific here and highly popular in Indochina, stretching to mortars and artillery if you can pay a sufficient price. We even saw aircraft for sale, former Japanese Ki-43s, Ki-44s, Ki-61s and Ki-84s were all apparently available for the right price, to whom and for how much was not a question we dared ask. Foreigners, too, of European extraction, were seen in Kunming...

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Per the official American account, Nguyen Tuong defected of his own volition, fearing reprisal from his own government, but hardly anyone believes this to be the case. Not only is this staggeringly bad form, but it has ruined whatever trust the Vietnamese had in the United States to be a neutral arbiter. It has significantly elevated Truong's status, if anything, as a nationalist martyr, and led to widespread questions as to the fate of Tuong, whom has not been seen nor heard of since being forcibly disappeared from the Manila peace conference...

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Where, precisely, the Vietnamese have gotten their aircraft is unknown. Per their own accounts, they have salvaged them from Japanese aircraft left behind during the occupation, but it seems unlikely this accounts for all the airframes, which may have been acquired from China, Korea, Indonesia, or the Philippines, among others whom have received Japanese aircraft. But what they have done with it has proven an inspiration to the Vietnamese nation, while proving a constant thorn in the side of otherwise dominant American airpower, with the nation losing thirty aircraft to the Vietnamese--a surprisingly large number given the circumstances, and, perhaps more importantly, it has left the United States in a position where it cannot operate freely in the skies over Vietnam...