Operation Rolling Thunder: US atrocities in the Vietnam War
If we talk about the bloodiest war organized after the Second World War, we will talk about the Vietnam War first. The long 20-year war from 1955 to 1975 killed about 3.7 million people, most of them Vietnamese civilians.
We may have seen very little literature or movies about the Vietnam War. One of the reasons for this is the direct participation and defeat of the US forces, one of the world's superpowers in this war.
Without discussing the background to this highly controversial war, today we will discuss a special US Air Force bombing campaign, Operation Rolling Thunder, organized during the war, which is one of the main causes of civilian casualties in this war.
When the war between Communist North Vietnam and South Vietnam broke out in 1955, the United States began to support South Vietnam for its anti-communist attitude. Communist North Vietnam also formed their guerrilla forces in the south, the National Liberation Front (NLF), and continued to provide them with direct economic and military support.Although there was a U.S. military presence in South Vietnam, they participated in the war in 1964.
They blamed North Vietnam's patrol-boat attack on the American warship USS Maddox in the Gulf of Tankin. Although many experts have described the incident as a staged drama, the then US President Lyndon B. Johnson called the attack an aggression and decided to take a direct part in the Vietnam War.
On February 24, 1975, when he and his security minister, Robert S. When McNamara decided to conduct Operation Rolling Thunder, its motives were largely political. President Johnson sought to force the North Vietnamese leadership to halt the war by demonstrating a model of U.S. military capability.Not only that, but their purpose was to prove that the communist leaders of North Vietnam were completely helpless and incapable of running the country against the US aerial bombing campaign.
U.S. Air Force Commander Curtis Limeoy confidently promised the president that the world's most powerful air force would take the Communists back to the Stone Age in just a few weeks. The reality was different though.The people of Vietnam still bear the brunt of the crimes they committed against the Vietnamese people in pursuit of this goal.
Despite approval on February 24, 1975, the United States launched its first attack on its ally South Vietnam on March 2. About 100 aircraft from both forces attacked an arsenal in Ion Bang.Initially, Operation Rolling Thunder was supposed to last only a few weeks, but the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Marines (Pacific Command) continued the airstrikes for almost three years.