1CL Libosada, JLE

Sec C ‘D’ Co

Operation Rolling Thunder

Operation Rolling Thunder was the code name for an American bombing
campaign during the Vietnam War. Between March 1965 and October 1968, US military
planes attacked sites in North Vietnam. This massive bombardment was intended to
exert military pressure on North Vietnam's communist leaders and prevent them from
waging war against the South Vietnamese government, which the United States
supports. Operation Rolling Thunder was the first sustained US strike on North
Vietnamese territory and marked a substantial rise in US involvement in the Vietnam
War.

Beginning in the 1950s, the US helped the South Vietnamese government resist
a communist takeover by North Vietnam and its Viet Cong guerilla fighter allies
stationed there. The US military began limited aviation operations within South Vietnam
in 1962 to aid South Vietnamese army troops, bomb suspected Viet Cong locations,
and spray herbicides like Agent Orange to clear jungle cover. President Lyndon B.
Johnson intensified US air operations in August 1964 by sanctioning retaliatory air
assaults on North Vietnam in reaction to a reported attack on US warships in the Gulf of
Tonkin.

During that year, Johnson authorized limited bombing attacks on the Ho Chi Minh
Route. Via the adjacent countries of Laos and Cambodia, the Ho Chi Minh Trail
connected North and South Vietnam. The flow of labor and materials from North
Vietnam to the Viet Cong and its allies was something the president sought to halt.

Operation Rolling Thunder, a bombing operation, began on March 2, 1965, in

part due to a Viet Cong attack on a U.S. air base at Pleiku. By modifying American
strategy to include frequent aircraft assaults on North Vietnam, the Johnson
administration offered a number of arguments. Administration officials, for instance,
believed that severe and continuous bombing may convince North Vietnamese
authorities to back the non-Communist government in South Vietnam. The government
also wanted to make it difficult for North Vietnam to produce and transfer supplies for
the Viet Cong insurgency. Not to mention, Johnson and his advisers wanted to boost
South Vietnamese morale while weakening the Communists' commitment to the
struggle.

The Operation Rolling Thunder campaign quickly grew in size and ferocity. At
first, just the southern portion of North Vietnam was the focus of the raids, but
subsequently, American commanders steadily expanded the attack area northward to
increase pressure on the Communist government. By the middle of 1966, American
planes had started attacking military and civilian targets all across North Vietnam. The
only locations that were believed to be off-limits for the bombing raids were the cities of
Hanoi and Haiphong as well as a 10-mile buffer zone along the Chinese border.

Soon after the Vietnam War began in 1965, Johnson sent the first US foot
soldiers to the conflict. The soldiers' initial responsibility was to safeguard South
Vietnamese air bases being used in the bombing campaign, but this soon changed to
include actively battling the Viet Cong. Johnson increased American troop levels in
Vietnam over time as the North Vietnamese army become more directly involved in the
conflict. The government of North Vietnam was able to successfully construct a defense
against the bombing strikes despite having a small air force. China and the Soviet Union
helped the North Vietnamese construct a potent air defense system.

The North Vietnamese used radar-controlled anti-aircraft artillery and surface-to-

air missiles to bring down hundreds of American aircraft during the bombing campaign.
The majority of US POWs captured and held by North Vietnam as a result were
therefore pilots and operators of aircraft weapon systems. Officials in North Vietnam
also took other measures to limit the impact of American air operations. They
constructed networks of bombproof tunnels and shelters, sent crews out at night, and
rebuilt the roads, bridges, telephone lines, and other bomb-damaged facilities.

Furthermore, the communists propagandized using the horrific airstrikes to incite

nationalism and anti-American sentiment among the North Vietnamese population.
North Vietnam was regularly attacked for more than three years, with periodic short
pauses. Johnson made the decision to halt the campaign on October 31, 1968, in favor
of pursuing a diplomatic settlement with the Communists.

Different historians have placed varying values on Operation Rolling Thunder's

strategic significance. Others claim that the bombing campaign nearly rendered North
Vietnam incapable of winning the war. Yet, the campaign's efficacy was deemed to be
insufficient. They claim that limits on US bombings stopped them from attacking a
number of important targets, including oil storage sites, shipyards, power plants, and
airports. These limitations were imposed in order to protect Hanoi and Haiphong from
harm and to avoid offending communist China. Furthermore, they assert that American
leaders did not coordinate the bombing campaign in North Vietnam with the military
actions in South Vietnam.

Johnson's successor, President Richard M. Nixon, soon began bombing North

Vietnam after taking office in 1969, despite the difficulties the Johnson administration
had during Operation Rolling Thunder. In 1972, Nixon began a large new bombing
campaign against North Vietnam called Operation Linebacker. The U.S. military had
dropped nearly 4.6 million tons of bombs on Vietnam by the time the final combat troops
left the country in 1973, obliterating a substantial chunk of its cities and villages and
killing an estimated 2 million Vietnamese people.