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The bombing campaigns of the Vietnam War were the longest and heaviest aerial bombardment in history. The United States Air Force, the U. S. Navy, and U. S. Marine Corps aviation dropped 7,662,000 tons of explosives. By comparison, U. S. forces dropped a total of 2,150,000 tons of bombs in all theaters of World War II.
The objective of forcing North Vietnam to stop its support for the insurgency in South Vietnam, however, was never reached. By the time the United States ended its Southeast Asian bombing campaigns, the total tonnage of ordnance dropped approximately tripled the totals for World War II.
B-52s dropped 15,237 tons of ordnance on 18 industrial and 14 military targets (including eight SAM sites) while fighter-bombers added another 5,000 tons of bombs to the tally. [96] Another 212 B-52 missions were flown within South Vietnam in support of ground operations during the campaign. [97]
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.
The BLU-82B/C-130 weapon system, known under program "Commando Vault" and nicknamed "Daisy Cutter" in Vietnam for its ability to flatten a section of forest into a helicopter landing zone, was an American 15,000-pound (6,800 kg) conventional bomb, delivered from either a C-130 or MC-130 transport aircraft or a CH-54 Tarhe heavy-lift helicopter from the 1st Air Cavalry.
During the operation, U.S. Air Force 2nd Air Division and U.S. Navy Task Force 77 dropped 260 million bombs on Laos. [1] The operation was launched to persuade the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) to stop supporting the insurgency in the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam).
Between March and May, B-52 sortie rates had climbed from 700 to 2,200 per month and they had dropped 57,000 tons of bombs in Quảng Trị Province alone. [69] During Freedom Train and Linebacker proper, B-52s had dropped 150,237 tons of bombs on the North while Air Force and Navy tactical aircraft had flown 1,216 sorties and dropped another ...
[18]: 107 [63] [64] In addition, over 100,000 tons of bombs were dropped until mid-April by aircraft of the USAF, US Navy and Marines onto the area surrounding Khe Sanh. [65] This equates to roughly 1,300 tons of bombs dropped daily – 5 tons for every one of the 20,000 PAVN soldiers initially estimated to have been committed to the fighting ...