how many bombs were dropped on vietnamstricklin-king obituaries

By "this area" MacArthur meant the entire area between "our present positions and the border". The Gulf War of 1990-1991 included air campaign, as the air forces of the coalition carried an extensive aerial bombing campaign from 17 January 1991 to 23 February 1991 against Iraq. This could distract enemy pilots, or even occasionally cause them to drop ordnance prematurely to lighten their aircraft enough to dodge the nonexistent missile. If China reacted to our slow escalation by threatening to retaliate, wed have plenty of time to ease off the bombing. An examination of records from the Vietnam war era, for example, revealed that, between October 1965 and May 1975, at least 456,365 cluster bombs were dropped on Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam. The database offers a blueprint for the governments of Southeast Asian countries, as well as NGOs from the U.S. and elsewhere, to work from as they try to locate as-yet-unexploded ordnance -- thus preventing further injuries and deaths. [48], During the war, the Soviet Union delivered 95 SA-2 systems and 7,658 missiles to the Vietnamese. facts. [67][s] With the assistance of the Soviet Union, the North Vietnamese had also quickly integrated an early warning radar system of more than 200 facilities which covered the entire country, tracking incoming U.S. raids, and then coordinating SAMs, anti-aircraft batteries, and MiGs to attack them. 922 aircraft lost[3][4], North Vietnam: 20,000 soldiers and 30,000182,000 civilians killed[5][6][7]120 aircraft destroyed[5] General Navarre Where were the French Defeated Dien Bien Phu How many French troops were killed at Dien Bien Phu? [22], These actions led to the plans for a sustained air campaign being reconsidered. Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War: A Political, Social, and Military History. More than 20,000 tons of ordnance was dropped on military and industrial areas in Hanoi and Haiphong and at least 1,624 civilians were killed. The most immediate use of the database, though, is the saving of lives rather than the recording of death. [128], It was not until Operation Linebacker in 1972 that the problem became acute enough for the Air Force to finally take note. There were a total a 269 American and enemy aircraft shot down in air-to-air combat over Vietnam during the entire war201 in fights between the U.S. Air Force and North Vietnamese air force and just 68 in the U.S. Navy's air battles with the North Vietnamese. Airborne early warning aircraft had difficulty detecting the fighters at low altitudes and the aircraft themselves were difficult to see visually. Get quick analyses with our professional research service. ", Rutgers University, Total tons of bombs dropped by the United States military during the Vietnam War from 1965 until 1970 Statista, https://www.statista.com/statistics/1334783/vietnam-war-us-military-bombs-dropped/ (last visited June 27, 2023), Total tons of bombs dropped by the United States military during the Vietnam War from 1965 until 1970 [Graph], Rutgers University, April 15, 1970. (U.S. Air Force photo) [49], Rolling Thunder exposed many problems within the American military services committed to it and tended to exacerbate others. Following the partitioning of Vietnam into the pro-independence Democratic Republic of Vietnam in the North, and the US puppet state the Republic of Vietnam in the South in 1954 (see our short history of Vietnam from 1945 to 1957) elections were due to be held on re-unification. During the campaign, conventional weapons such as explosives, incendiary bombs, and napalm destroyed nearly all of the country's cities and towns, including an estimated 85 percent of its buildings. Pound for pound, it remains the largest aerial bombardment in human history. By early 1968, there were more than 500,000 American troops there, and the US Air Force was dropping bombs at a rate unequalled in history. The airmen were already upset that Westmoreland was ordering "the greatest strategic bomber ever built" into a ground support role, but then to have a naval officer (CINCPAC) pick their targets was simply unbearable. Villages suspected of harbouring Viet Cong were subject to "search and destroy" missions - men of military age in the villages were killed, the homes were burned, the women, children, and old people were sent off to refugee camps. [82], The nature of the targets and the risks involved in striking (and re-striking) them began to take a toll. My unit commanders, however, chose to think that these bunkers are offensive. As you can see I have started putting in key events, but I still need help where I can get it with original content and royalty free media to attach to event notes. One American pilot described the action which followed as "looking like the end of the world. Vietnam War: bomb tonnage dropped by the U.S. military from 1965 to 1970 Published by Statista Research Department , Apr 15, 1970 The bombing campaigns conducted by the U.S. military and its. The Most Bombed Place on Earth. Armstrong states that the bombing had a profound, long-lasting impact on North Korea's subsequent development and the attitudes of the North Korean people, which "cannot be overestimated": Russian accusations of indiscriminate attacks on civilian targets did not register with the Americans at all. This too failed. [48], To survive in this ever more lethal air defense zone, the U.S. had to adopt newer, more specialized tactics. During the U.S. involvement, more than two million tons of explosive were dropped on Laotian territory. Find your information in our database containing over 20,000 reports, fourth most deadly conflict in its history, support to any regime threatened by communist forces, Indochina (Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam) had been a colony of France, U.S. congress to give President Lyndon B. Johnson the power to employ conventional military force in Southeast Asia, more and more U.S. soldiers would be deployed to fight, Public opinion in the United States began to turn against involvement in the war, scaling down its bombing campaigns in Vietnam, the U.S. began withdrawing troops from Vietnam, lead to President Nixons resignation in 1974, capital of Saigon being taken by communist forces on April 30, one of the world's fastest growing economies, use of chemical agents such as Agent Orange. [99] He bluntly admitted that there was "no basis to believe that any bombing campaignwould by itself force Ho Chi Minh's regime into submission, short, that is, of the virtual annihilation of North Vietnam and its people. The chant "LBJ, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?" But the U.S. accounting of SE Asia losses shows no Crusaders lost that date. The Vietnam War was a civil war that North Vietnam launched against South Vietnam in 1959. "[23][e] Rolling Thunder called for an eight-week air campaign consistent with the restrictions imposed by that Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara. Having soon established air supremacy by the destruction of the Korean People's Army Air and Anti-Air Force in the air and on the ground, FEAF bombers encountered no resistance and "the sky over North Korea was their safe front yard. My unit burned and plundered their meagre possessions. A movement of resistance to the war had also started to develop amongst American GIs that would bring the US war machine almost to a halt. [50] The U.S. Seventh/Thirteenth Air Force, based in Thailand (which carried out the majority of the Air Force's strikes in North Vietnam), had a dual command structure. Profit from the additional features of your individual account. These bunkers are to protect the families. [45], On 29 June 1965, airstrikes against the North's petroleum, oil, and lubricants (POL) storage areas were authorized by Johnson. Pound for pound, it remains the largest aerial bombardment in human history. Howard Zinn's short history of the war in Vietnam from the beginning of the Communist insurgency in 1957 until the defeat of US and South Vietnamese forces in 1975. The attack did not work. [91], Despite the best interdiction efforts of Rolling Thunder, however, the VC and PAVN launched their largest offensive thus far in the war on 30 January 1968, striking throughout South Vietnam during the lunar new year holiday. May 20, 2016. He has scoured more than a million records from Vietnam. General John W. Vogt Jr., commander of the Seventh Air Force, reported to the USAF Chief of Staff that they were losing the air war. [42] Until the third week of April, Rolling Thunder had enjoyed at least equal status with air missions conducted in the south. After input from the State Department and the CIA, the requests then proceeded to the White House, where the president and his "Tuesday Cabinet" made decisions on the strike requests on a weekly basis. But for the North Koreans, living in fear of B-29 attacks for nearly three years, including the possibility of atomic bombs, the American air war left a deep and lasting impression. There were no more targets in Korea. To use individual functions (e.g., mark statistics as favourites, set They paid a high price, but B-52 aircrews dropped over 15,000 tons of bombs on important military targets during Linebacker II and helped force the North Vietnamese back to the peace table. F-4 Phantoms, using the same radio call signs, direction of approach, altitude, and speed as a typical flight of bomb-laden F-105s, lured a group of MiG-21s toward what the MiG pilots thought would be easy prey. Westmoreland referred to "an almost paranoid fear of nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union" and a "phobia" that the Chinese would invade. The women wail and moan. The following year, without American troops, the United States supported a South Vietnamese invasion of Laos. Requests for airstrikes originated with the 2nd Air Division and Task Force 77 in Vietnam and then proceeded to CINCPAC, who in turn reported to his superiors, the Joint Chiefs, at the Pentagon. Language links are at the top of the page across from the title. [12] As late as 8 February, however, in a cable to US Ambassador to South Vietnam Maxwell Taylor, Johnson stressed that the paramount goal of a bombing campaign would be to boost Saigon's morale, not to influence Hanoi, expressing hope "that the building of a minimum government will benefit by assurances from us to the highest levels [of the South Vietnamese government] that we intend to take continuing action. The logistical effort was supported by citizens on sampans, driving carts, pushing wheelbarrows, or man-portering supplies on their backs to keep the war effort going. And yet not all of those bombs actually detonated. Here are some statistics of the U.S. bombing of North Vietnam during the 10 years of the Vietnam War (from 1965 to 1975). has been compiling a database of the bombs the U.S. military has dropped since World War I. In 1968 the Navy introduced the TOPGUN program, a move that was welcomed by the F-8 pilots who had been campaigning for this all along. [2] Armstrong did not separately determine how many of these deaths were among civilians or caused by U.S. bombing. North Vietnamese MiGs entered the battle en masse, as their capital was threatened and kill ratios fell to one U.S. aircraft lost for every two MiGs. [118], Due to combat and operational circumstances, 506 USAF, 397 Navy and 19 Marine Corps aircraft were lost over or near North Vietnam. April 15, 1970. Schlight, The meetings were usually attended by the president, McNamara, Secretary of State. Vietnam War: bomb tonnage dropped by the U.S. military from 1965 to 1970 Total tons of bombs dropped by the United States military during the Vietnam War from 1965 until 1970 The project -- which began as a hobby and has since become Robertson's full-time job -- finds Robertson searching through papers and other documents, combing them for records of deployed ordnance. But the Vietnamese knew that U.S. aircraft were coming and set up many 23mm and 37mm anti-aircraft guns at the site. These two boys were playing in Xuan Vien village . [48][j] Air Force aircrews had flown 25,971 sorties and dropped 32,063 tons of bombs. For the Secretary of Defense's thoughts on the planning and implementation of the air campaign see McNamara, pp. "[45] Six of the strike craft were destroyed (two of the pilots were killed, one missing, two captured, and one rescued) during the ambush. The Americans were shocked when six of their aircraft were shot down during the mission. [51], The Navy's Task Force 77 took its orders via 7th Fleet from CINCPAC, a Navy admiral based in Honolulu, through his subordinate, the Air Force commander of Pacific Air Forces (PACAF). [74] When the nation's lines of communication came under attack, railroad supply trains and truck convoys were split into smaller elements which traveled only at night. Vietnamese mothers reported birth defects in their children. It should be studied. As he had done previously in July and October, MacArthur again denied the request, explaining that he planned to use the town's facilities after seizing it. Overview The designation "BLU" stands for Bomb Live Unit, as opposed to "BDU" (Bomb Dummy Units) used for practice. Public views on U.S. favorability, by country 2014, Facebook: quarterly number of MAU (monthly active users) worldwide 2008-2023, Quarterly smartphone market share worldwide by vendor 2009-2023, Number of apps available in leading app stores Q3 2022, As tensions rose between the North and South in the late 1950s, the U.S. increased its financial and material support for South Vietnam, before entering the conflict in a full military capacity in 1964. In the spring of 1968 Johnson announced he would not run again for President, and that negotiations for peace would begin with the Vietnamese in Paris. [2][29][36] Historian Bruce Cumings has likened the American bombing to genocide.[37]. Additionally, "nearly all radio communications of the U.S. air operations used unencrypted tactical voice. Eight RVNAF aircraft had also been lost. But this controlso essential for preventing World War IIIwould be lost the moment we unleashed a total assault on the Northfor that would be rape rather than seductionand then there would be no turning back. [1], A total of 635,000 tons of bombs, including 32,557 tons of napalm, were dropped on Korea. [25] The military was still not satisfied, since, for the time being, the bombing campaign was to be limited to targets below the 19th parallel, each of which would have to be cleared individually by the President and McNamara. American aircraft dropped over 5 million tons of bombs on Vietnam- the largest bombardment of any country in history- and more than twice as much tonnage as the U.S. Air Force dropped in all of World War II.Over 4 million tons fell on the mostly rural areas of the former South Vietnam, plus 400,000 tons of napalm and 19 million gallons of herbicides. How many pounds of bombs dropped in Vietnam? The same evening, MacArthur's chief of staff told Stratemeyer that the firebombing of Sinuiju had also been approved. In response to President Ngo Dinh Diem's abrogation of the 1956 reunification election and suppression of communists during the late 1950s, Hanoi had begun sending arms and materiel to the Vietcong (VC), who were fighting an insurgency to topple the American-supported Saigon government. Calculating U.S. [111] On 31 December 1967, the Department of Defense announced that 864,000 tons of American bombs had been dropped on North Vietnam during Rolling Thunder, compared with 653,000 tons dropped during the entire Korean War and 503,000 tons in the Pacific theater during the Second World War. Tiny glimmerings of the massive human suffering under this bombardment came to the outside world. According to VanDeMark, Rolling Thunder failed to achieve any such objective. This was the first time that U.S aircraft had been attacked by SAMs. These consisted of F-105 Wild Weasel hunter/killer teams configured with sophisticated electronic equipment to detect and locate the emissions associated with SAM guidance and control radars. Single. Under these conditions, measures to observe the regime of camouflage and radio silence became especially important. McNamara, pp. Due to altered tactics and the increased use of electronic radar jamming, the record of SAM kills decreased over time. [27], In May 1951, an international fact finding team from East Germany, West Germany, China, and the Netherlands stated, "The members, in the whole course of their journey, did not see one town that had not been destroyed, and there were very few undamaged villages. [4], Between June and October 1950, USAF Far East Air Force (FEAF) B-29 bombers carried out massive aerial attacks on transport centers and industrial hubs in North Korea. This article was taken from Howard Zinns excellent A People's History of the United States. [2] By comparison, the U.S. dropped 1.6 million tons in the European theater and 500,000 tons in the Pacific theater during all of World War II (including 160,000 on Japan). Lyndon Johnson had escalated a brutal war and failed to win it. sapper raid against an American enlisted men's billet at Qui Nhon, "China's Involvement in the Vietnam War, 196469", "LBJ approves 'Operation Rolling Thunder,' Feb. 13, 1965". [29] The generating facilities of hydroelectric dams had been targeted previously in a series of mass air attacks starting in June 1952. Assistant Secretary of Defence John McNaughton in early 1966, seeing that large-scale bombing of North Vietnam villages was not producing the desired result, suggested a different strategy. During the 44-month time frame, 454 naval aviators were killed, captured, or missing during combined operations over North Vietnam and Laos. [10], On 3 November 1950, General Stratemeyer forwarded to MacArthur the request of Fifth Air Force commander General Earle E. Partridge for clearance to "burn Sinuiju". . "[8], In October 1950, FEAF commander General Stratemeyer requested permission to attack the city of Sinuiju, a provincial capital with an estimated population of 60,000, "over the widest area of the city, without warning, by burning and high explosive". The war against the United States, more than any other single factor, gave North Koreans a collective sense of anxiety and fear of outside threats that would continue long after the war's end. was heard in demonstrations throughout the country. Vietnam, watch as a U.S. Air Force F-4 makes close air support strike over the area. This page includes content from the SourceWatch page Bombing of North Korea 1950-1953 under the terms of the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license. If the aircraft fired one, the Shrike could be neutralized with the side-pointing technique without sacrificing any SA-2s. The American contention is that they were Vietcong soldiers. By the beginning of 1965, the policy was reversed in the belief that without further American action the Saigon government could not survive. Contrary to opinion, the U.S. public still supported the American effort in South Vietnam. North Korea: 14 pilots killed[8]. His popularity was at an all-time low; he could not appear publicly without a demonstration against him and the war. Chief of Naval Operations David McDonald reported to his co-chiefs after a trip to South Vietnam in September 1966, that Rolling Thunder aircrews were angered with the targeting process and that they faulted the campaign due to "guidelines requiring repetitive air programs that seemed more than anything else to benefit enemy gunners. A Communist insurgency erupted in 1957, which was largely kept under control until 1963 when the pro-independence Viet Cong inflicted a large defeat on South Vietnamese forces at the Battle of Ap Bac and full-scale war began to break out. [31] One of the primary objectives of the operation, at least to the military, should have been the closure of Haiphong and other ports by aerial mining, thereby slowing or halting the flow of seaborne supplies entering the north. The bombing campaigns of the Vietnam War were the longest and heaviest aerial bombardment in history. Almost all of the targets on the Joint Chiefs' list had been authorized for attack, including airfields that had been previously off limits. On September 6, another press dispatch from Saigon: "In Bien Hoa province south of Saigon on August 15 United States aircraft accidentally bombed a Buddhist pagoda and a Catholic church it was the third time their pagoda had been bombed in 1965. The answer seemed to lie in the application of air power. [107] The North Vietnamese responded by doubling the number of anti-aircraft batteries in the panhandle, but most of their SAM batteries remained deployed around Hanoi and Haiphong. [85], VPAF flew their interceptors with superb guidance from ground controllers, who positioned the MiGs in perfect ambush battle stations. 90,000 At what point was North Vietnam and South Vietnam split? "[13][c], Questions then arose among the U.S. administration and military leadership as to the best method by which Hanoi (the perceived locus of the insurgency) could be dissuaded from its course of action. The civilian administration, however, never considered utilizing the big bombers (whose operations remained under the control of the Strategic Air Command) very far north of the DMZ, believing that it was too overt an escalation. On 8 April, responding to requests for peace negotiations, North Vietnamese premier, Pham Van Dong, stated that they could only begin when: the bombing was halted; the U.S. had removed all of its troops from the south; the Saigon government recognized the demands of the VC, and it was agreed that the reunification of Vietnam would be settled by the Vietnamese themselves. Audio recordings and transcripts with comments of actual Wild Weasel combat missions over Vietnam. [d] This did not, however, satisfy the military chiefs, who demanded a wider and more aggressive campaign.[18]. "[2], According to a Chosun Ilbo report in 2001, a report by Soviet ambassador and chief military adviser to North Korea, Lt Gen V. N. Razuvaev, estimated 282,000 North Korean deaths in bombing raids during the war.[33]. On 13 February a new plan was approved and given the name Rolling Thunder, merging targets and priorities from the lists produced by the Bundys and the JCS. MacArthur's order preceded the receipt of an order of President Harry Truman to expand air operations into North Korean areas, also issued on 29 June but not received in Tokyo until 30 June. [a], U.S. policy was for a time dictated by its perception of improvement in the Saigon government. Many of those bombs landed without exploding. [70][r] In 1966, the MiG-17 were joined by more modern Soviet-built Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21s, which could fight on a more equal footing with the American aircraft. Morocco, p. 142. SAM crews could briefly illuminate a hostile aircraft to see if the target was equipped with a Shrike. The best of the best: the portal for top lists & rankings: Strategy and business building for the data-driven economy: Show sources information [33], Navy strikes were launched from the aircraft carriers of Task Force 77, cruising off the North Vietnamese coast at Yankee Station. In 2022, MAG destroyed 14,615 bombs, clearing just more than 10 square kilometres (3.86 sq miles) of land. Johnson refused to take such a provocative action, however, and such an operation was not implemented until 1972. FILMS TALKS CHILDREN'S BOOKS History of The American Secret War in Laos From 1964 to 1973, the U.S. dropped more than 2.5M tons of ordnance on Laos during 580,000 bombing sortiesequal to a planeload of bombs every eight minutes, 24 hours a day, for nine years - making Laos the most heavily bombed country per capita in history. and over 1Mio. So every hut we find that has a bunker we are ordered to burn to the ground. Bridges, rail yards, docks, barracks and supply dumps were all targeted, and selected based on a criterion system considering: (a) reducing North Vietnamese support of communist operations in Laos and South Vietnam, (b) limiting North Vietnamese capabilities to take direct action against Laos and South Vietnam, and finally (c) impairing North Vietnams capacity to continue as an industrially viable state.[19]. "[53][k] To complicate matters, the U.S. ambassadors to Thailand (Graham Martin) and Laos (William H. Sullivan) exerted undue influence over operational and command arrangements. They also introduced a passive guidance mode, whereby the tracking radar could lock on the jamming signal itself and guide missiles directly towards the jamming source. The chief purpose of the American air effort in the higher Route Packages of North Vietnam was slowly transformed into that of interdicting the flow of supplies and materiel and the destruction of those segments of the north's infrastructure that supported its military effort. The Americans had a multiple numerical advantage. "[14], In June 1952, as part of a strategy to maintain "air pressure" during armistice negotiations, FEAF's Fifth Air Force selected seventy-eight villages for destruction by B-26 light bombers. Armstrong estimated that 1215 percent of the North Korean population (c. 10 million) was killed in the war, or approximately 1.2 million to 1.5 million people. [95][v] The limited goals entailed in American foreign policy and the military's goal of total victory were simply not reconcilable. [87], The U.S. Air Force and the US Navy continued to have expectations of the F-4 Phantom, assuming that the massive arms, the perfect on-board radar, the highest speed and acceleration properties, coupled with the new tactics would provide "Phantoms" an advantage over the MiGs. By comparison, air-defense guns brought down 60% and 9% were shot down by MiG fighters. The Air Force was also embarrassed by the fact that the Navy was better prepared. After shooting down a few American planes and forcing some of the F-105s to drop their bombs prematurely, the MiGs did not wait for retaliation, but disengaged rapidly. . He added, "My impression was that I am traveling on the moon because there was only devastationevery city was a collection of chimneys. In 2019, the last year for which we have fairly complete . In 1971, 800,000 tons of bombs were dropped by the United States on Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam. Nearly 7 million tons of bombs were dropped in Vietnam, and the B-52 carried roughly a third of these. By 1964 most of the civilians surrounding President Lyndon B. Johnson shared the Joint Chiefs of Staff's collective faith in the efficacy of strategic bombing to one degree or another. When it is time for her to sleep her family puts a blanket over her head. "[24], It was believed that selective pressure, controlled by Washington, combined with diplomatic overtures, would prevail and compel Hanoi to end its aggression. Its aircraft had been designed and its pilots trained for strategic operations against the Soviet Unionfor nuclear, not conventional war. There is nothing standing worthy of the name Just before the Chinese came in we were grounded. It was a small rural network of villages and the people were incredibly poor. The reason I say this is due to my genealogy research into my fathe. 171177. Such destruction doesn't kill or drown people. Directly accessible data for 170 industries from 150+ countries "Monitoring Trends in Global Combat: A New Dataset of Battle Deaths". [119], Rolling Thunder had begun as a campaign of psychological and strategic persuasion, but it changed very quickly to interdiction, a tactical mission.

Pleading Guilty With Explanation To Speeding Ticket, Can Raccoons Damage Your Roof, Hair Products That Cause Cancer, Peg Perego Polaris Rzr Ranger, Advocate Good Shepherd Health And Fitness Center, Ivermectin Cream On Eyelids, Labor Unrest In The 1920s, Stevens Men's Volleyball Schedule 2023, Vscode Find And Replace Shortcut Mac,