“There is the guilt all soldiers feel for having broken the taboo against killing, a guilt as old as war itself. Add to this the soldier's sense of shame for having fought in actions that resulted, indirectly or directly, in the deaths of civilians. Then pile on top of that an attitude of social opprobrium, an attitude that made the fighting man feel personally morally responsible for the war, and you get your proverbial walking time bomb." Philip Caputo, 1982 (American author and journalist) The US National Security Council (NSC) recommended a three-stage escalation of the bombing of North Vietnam. On March 2, 1965, following an attack on a US Marine barracks at Pleiku, Operation Flaming Dart, Operation Rolling Thunder and Operation Arc Light commenced. The bombing campaign, which ultimately lasted three years, was intended to force North Vietnam to cease its support for the National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam (NLF) by threatening to destroy North Vietnam's air defences and industrial infrastructure. As well, it was aimed at bolstering the morale of the South Vietnamese. Between March 1965 and November 1968, Rolling Thunder deluged the North with a million tonnes of missiles, rockets and bombs. Bombing was not restricted to North Vietnam. Other aerial campaigns, such as Operation Commando Hunt, targeted different parts of the NLF and Vietnam People's Army (VPA) infrastructure. These included the Ho Chi Minh Trail, which ran through Laos and Cambodia. The objective of forcing North Vietnam to stop its support for the NLF, however, was never reached. As one officer noted "this is a political war and it calls for discriminate killing. The best weapon... would be a knife... The worst is an airplane." The Chief of Staff of the US Air Force, Curtis LeMay, however, had long advocated saturation bombing in Vietnam and wrote of the Communists that "we're going to bomb them back into the Stone Age". Escalation of the war officially started on the morning of January 31, 1965, when orders were cut and issued to mobilise the 18th Tactical Fighter Wing from Okinawa to Da Nang Air Force Base (AFB). A red alert alarm to scramble was sounded at Kadena AFB at 3:00am F-105s, pilots, and support were deployed from Okinawa and landed in Vietnam that afternoon to join up with other smaller units who had already arrived weeks earlier. Preparations were under way for the first step of Operation Flaming Dart, the mission of which was to cross the Seventeenth Parallel into North Vietnam, had already been planned and was in place before the NLF attack on Pleiku airbase on February 6. On February 7, 49 F-105 Thunderchiefs flew out of Danang AFB to targets located in North Vietnam. From this day forward the war was no longer confined to South Vietnam. It took almost an hour to get all of the F-105's in the air. On that morning, the continuous loud roar of the F-105 engines going down the runway, one following another, was described by the ground crew as a "rolling thunder". After several attacks upon them, it was decided that US Air Force bases needed more protection. The South Vietnamese military seemed incapable of providing security. On March 8, 1965, 3,500 United States Marines were dispatched to South Vietnam. This marked the beginning of the American ground war. US public opinion overwhelmingly supported the deployment. Public opinion, however, was based on the premise that Vietnam was part of a global struggle against communism. Dear Egyptian Mail readers, your contributions to and/or comments on articles published in this corner are welcome. We promise to publish whatever is deemed publishable at the end of this series. [email protected]
