Authors: Nigel Cawthorne
During World War II, a six per-cent mixture was used in flame-throwers and a twelve to fifteen per-cent mixture in the firebombs dropped on German and Japanese cities. During the Korean War, napalm was used against enemy troops. The napalm of that era was difficult and dangerous to handle and a safer version was developed. This was known as NP2, super-napalm or napalm B. In fact, it did not use any of the original naphthenate and palmitate mixture. Instead the gasoline was turned into a gel by the additions of benzene and polystyrene – Styrofoam. This produced a more controllable incendiary that could be handled quite safely. You could even stub a cigarette out in it, but it could be deployed against an enemy to devastating effect.
In the bombs used in Vietnam, a canister of 110 gallons of napalm was ignited by Thermite, which itself was used in World War II incendiary bombs and burns at around 4,400 degrees F°. The new napalm B had the added advantages that it was stickier and adhered to the target – the victim – and it burnt longer. Not only was it a very effective weapon against an enemy hidden below the jungle canopy, it also had a terrible psychological effect on all who faced it.
As early as 1962, there were press reports that napalm was being used in Vietnam. Then on 29 March 1964, after a photograph of a badly burnt small child appeared in the press, the Department of Defense admitted that napalm bombs had been supplied to South Vietnam and had been dropped from aeroplanes with US instructors on board. From then on napalm was used widely in Vietnam and the angry red clouds of flame produced by pods of napalm exploding over the jungle were seen on TV screens and in newspapers and magazines around the world. It has been estimated that some 400,000 tons of napalm bombs were dropped on Vietnam – two or three times the amount of incendiaries used by US forces in World War II. It is hard to get an accurate figure as some bombs were filled during production; others were shipped empty and filled with gasoline and thickening agent in the Far East. Military procurement from 1964 to 1973 shows that US forces had the necessary ingredients to make 1.5 million napalm bombs in all.
Napalm was used in South Vietnam for the destruction of both food supplies and forest cover, as well as close air support during search-and-destroy operations. Napalm was used in preference to fragmentation or high explosive bombs in close combat as it could be dropped more accurately from a lower level and had a more clearly prescribed area of devastation. This was useful as the Communists had learnt that their best tactic was to stay as close as possible to the American troops who were engaging them, so, if the Americans called in an air strike, they risked having their own positions hit too.
It was also used in areas where it was difficult to deploy ground troops and against readily flammable targets such as bamboo huts. Napalm was also dropped in North Vietnam, largely on troop and matériel marshalling areas near the 17th parallel. It was also used widely in Laos and Cambodia, quite illegally.
As the war progressed, the use of napalm became more indiscriminate. It regularly hit civilians, and images of women and children with their skin blackened and peeling from napalm were flashed around the world by television. Its use was condemned by the Soviet Union, though they used it later in Afghanistan. However, Britain and other sympathetic nations also condemned its use, turning world opinion against the war. Senator Morse claimed the use of napalm was a violation of international law, and although few backed his position, the use of napalm also helped turn opinion at home against the war.
By 1971, the United Nations was becoming concerned about the use of napalm and commissioned a special report. On 14 November 1972, the UN condemned the use of napalm by the Portuguese in their colonies in Africa, and on 29 November it condemned its use in other conflicts. But napalm was not banned by an international convention until 1980. The United States backed this move, recognising that images of badly burnt women and children are counterproductive. A programme was instituted to decommission the weapon by burning the remaining stocks of napalm, but this brought complaints from environmentalists.
The most famous victim of napalm was Phan Thi Kim Phuc. AP photographer Nguyen Kong 'Nick' Ut photographed the nine-year-old fleeing naked down a road. She had been hiding in a pagoda when her village was hit by napalm. Her clothes and much of her skin were burnt off. The photograph was printed in newspapers and magazines around the world and won Ut a Pulitzer Prize. Nine-year-old Phuc became a potent symbol of the civilian suffering in the war and the horrors of napalm. It helped turn the American people against the war.
Phuc ran down the road for about half a mile before being taken to hospital. She lay in a coma for six months, her back, neck and left arm badly burnt. After eight months she was discharged from hospital. Some years later, she went to Germany where her treatment was completed by a plastic surgeon. She went on to become a pharmacist in Ho Chi Minh City, as Saigon was renamed. She later visited the US and is now a Canadian citizen living in Ajax, Ontario.
The other enduring image of the war is the B-52 Stratofortresses with their bomb bay doors open, dropping 84 five-hundred-pound bombs. Flying from Guam, Okinawa, and, later, Thailand, the huge bomber, 48 metres long and with a wing-span of 56.4 metres, flew in a cell of three planes which were guided by ground-based radar stations. They would drop their bombs simultaneously, completely obliterating everything in a 'box' measuring one kilometre by three. Throughout the war, B-52s dropped a staggering 250,000 tons of bombs.
B-52s were used for ground support in the South as well as the strategic bombing of the North. This was criticised as 'swatting flies with sledgehammers'. Indeed, one mission during Operation Arc Light, designed to destroy the VC bases to the north of Saigon, cost $20 million when two B-52s collided. In all B-52s flew 126,000 sorties in support of ground troops.
To begin with Operation Rolling Thunder, the bombing of the North, had limited objectives. Then on 14 March 1965, military and naval targets on the North Vietnamese island of Conco were attacked. Between 3 to 5 April Rolling Thunder was extended to non-military targets. The operation was supposed to last for just eight weeks. It ran for three years, dropping on average one 500-pound bomb every thirty seconds. As well as B-52s, F-4 Phantoms and F-105D Thunderchiefs, or Thuds, flew from bases in South Vietnam or aircraft carriers in the South China Sea. In all more than 300,000 sorties were flown, and some 860,000 tons of bombs were dropped, on North Vietnam, three times the tonnage dropped on Europe, Asia, and Africa in World War II. Some 52,000 civilians were killed at a loss of 922 planes.
On 24 April, Johnson stepped up the bombing again, defending the decision on the 26th by saying: 'Our restraint was viewed as weakness. We could no longer stand by as the attacks mounted'.
But the restraint continued throughout the war. The USAF never used the 'carpet bombing' that obliterated Dresden and Tokyo during World War II. Nor did it target the dykes along the Red River which, had they been breached, would have flooded the valley and killed hundreds of thousands of people. And for two years, the US did not even bomb the air bases, leaving the North Vietnamese Soviet-built MiG jet fighters free to attack incoming American aircraft, forcing bombers to jettison their bombs prematurely and return to base. While air strikes were authorised in South Vietnam, killing seventy Vietcong on 29 April, Johnson made the first of many bombing halts on 13 May 1965 to see if the Hanoi government was ready to parley. The Communist response was a daylight attack on a textile mill just five miles north of Saigon by the Vietcong. The bombing was renewed on the 19th. By 22 June American planes were dropping bombs within 80 miles of the Chinese border, prompting the Chinese government to warn that it might send troops to aid its Communist ally to the south. And on 11 July the US announced its intention to bomb all parts of North Vietnam. Later in the month US planes launched major strikes against Vietcong positions in South Vietnam as well and on 5 September US and ARVN planes flew a record 532 missions in one day. Another record was set on the 20th, when seven US planes were lost. Two more USAF jets were downed on the 30th while bombing the Minh Binh bridge near Hanoi.
In October, the massive B-52s were deployed against targets inside South Vietnam – a friendly country – when the USAF began bombing Vietcong bases near the Cambodian border. The Vietcong responded by attacking American airbases and destroying US planes. But this did not discourage American fliers who, soon after, bombed a friendly Vietnamese village, killing 48 civilians and injuring 55 others.
Although protests against the war had already started in America, Johnson also faced pressure from those who wanted to escalate the war. On 22 November 1965, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, L. Mendel Rivers, called for bombing raids against Hanoi and North Vietnam's principal port Haiphong, saying it was, 'folly to let the port of Haiphong and military targets of Hanoi remain untouched while war supplies being used against our troops are pouring into port'.
Upping the stakes yet again, the 7th Fleet sent two nuclear-powered ships – a guided-missile frigate and an aircraft carrier – to take up positions off Saigon. US A-1 Skyraiders, A-7 Corsairs, and F-4 Phantoms were then sent to bomb, strafe and fire rockets at the Ho Chi Minh trail in an attempt to cut down on the amount of supplies getting through. But they did not go unopposed, the NVA responding with withering fire from anti-aircraft batteries.
On 9 December 1965, an article in
The New York Times
reported that the bombing had not succeeded in slowing the infiltration of NVA troops and supplies into South Vietnam. The USAF responded by turning their attention to industrial targets in the North, destroying a power plant in Uongbi.
A 37-day bombing halt over Christmas failed to bring Hanoi to the negotiating table and Rolling Thunder was resumed at the end of January. Its purpose, said Maxwell Taylor, the retiring ambassador to South Vietnam, was to, 'change the will of the enemy leadership' and show others that 'wars of liberation' were 'costly, dangerous, and doomed to failure'. Rolling Thunder was stepped up again in March with USAF and USN flying two hundred sorties over North Vietnam in a single day. In April, F-4 Phantoms took out the road and rail bridges connecting North Vietnam to the city of Nanning in China. But these sorties took their toll on the fliers and the USAF imposed a limit of a hundred missions on flight crew. Nevertheless, in a concerted campaign against the Ho Chi Minh trail, B-52s dropped a million tons of bombs on the Mugia Pass, where the trail passes from North Vietnam into Laos. On 17 April the bombing campaign was escalated once again with USAF and USN planes began to close in on Hanoi and Haiphong. The North Vietnamese responded by sending up their MiGs, flown by Soviet-trained pilots, in their first concerted effort to engage American planes in air combat. But in a raid on 29 June US bombers managed to destroy 50 per cent of North Vietnam's stock of fuel. This was the beginning of a campaign to knock out all the fuel installations in the Hanoi-Haiphong area, forcing the North Vietnamese to evacuate all but essential workers from the area. China denounced the bombing as 'barbarous and wanton acts that have further freed us from any bounds of restriction in helping North Vietnam'. They also claimed that US planes had hit Chinese fishing boats in international waters, killing three sailors.
Downed American pilots were paraded in front of angry crowds, while Britain, France and other friendly countries, condemned the air raids. But a Pentagon report claimed that some 80 to 90 per cent of North Vietnam's fuel supplies had come under attack and intensified the raids. The raids on the Ho Chi Minh trail were also intensified with over a hundred raids a day being flown over neutral Laos. And at the end of July, US planes also began bombing the DMZ. But more mistakes were made. USAF jets hit two villages eighty miles south of Saigon, killing 63 civilians and wounding over a hundred, and Prince Sihanouk, the leader of neutral Cambodia, complained about the US bombing of the village of Thlock Track, near the South Vietnamese border. China complained that US planes had hit more of its shipping and attacked Chinese territory in its campaign against North Vietnamese coastal installations.
At the same time, Operation Ranch Hand was reaching its height. This was America's attempt to deny the Vietcong and NVA the protection of the forests. Several methods of jungle clearance had been used, including dropping napalm in an attempt to set the forest on fire. But in dense jungle, the canisters got caught in the canopy and burnt down just one tree, rather than beginning a self-sustaining fire. Roman Plows, huge Caterpillar tractors fitted with a 2.5-ton plough blade and fourteen tons of armour plating, bulldozed 750,000 acres of forest. But this method could not be used on hilly terrain. Besides, it fertilised the ground very effectively and in the monsoon conditions of Vietnam dense undergrowth soon grew back. The US forces began using chemical herbicides, Agent White and Agent Purple, named for the colour of the can they came in. But none was as effective as Agent Orange.
Agent Orange was a growth hormone that made the trees shed their leaves prematurely. Converted C-123 transports sprayed a thousand cans at 280 gallons a minute from two hundred feet over the jungle and in three-and-a-half minutes another 350 acres of jungle had been destroyed. The programme began in 1961, when American airmen dressed as civilians began spraying VC strongholds at the request of President Diem. The Ranch Hand fliers adopted the motto, 'Only you can prevent forest'. In the nine years of Operation Ranch Hand, over eighteen million gallons of herbicide were used, laying waste 5.5 million acres: the area of Wales or Vermont. That was one-seventh of the area of the country, including 36 per cent of the coastal mangrove swamp, wiping out shellfish, cutting the production of the local fisheries, and driving several species into extinction.
In areas where it was sprayed, leaflets were dropped, warning local people. This gave the VC a chance to organise a hot reception committee and F-4 Phantoms had to rocket and strafe target areas before the spray planes went in. The VC distributed their own leaflets, telling local people to bury their food six feet below ground. To counter VC propaganda, South Vietnamese psychological warfare teams would eat bread soaked in Agent Orange and wash their faces in it. This failed to convince. Rumours that the Americans were trying to poison them spread among the peasants, who could not get used to evil-smelling fluid falling on them. Agent Blue was also used to destroy crops grown by the VC and crops that would be taken as 'taxes' by the Communists. This technique had been used effectively by the British against Communist insurgents in Malaya. But peasants hated seeing the crops that they had planted and trees they had tended for years killed overnight by a spray plane.