<text id=00he1804><title>Background to Rolling Thunder</title>
<history>US Air Force: Events History</history>
<article><hdr>Background to Rolling Thunder</hdr><body>
<p>The Viet Cong attacked a US military compound at Pleiku in February 1965, and drew down the first reprisal air strike. About 50 USAF and Navy planes hit Donghoi, a major NVN base about 50 miles (80 km) north of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) on the coast. The Viet Cong then hit a US barracks, and the second reprisal strike went out. These Flaming Dart attacks were just a prelude; that same month, Johnson ordered the beginning of Rolling Thunder, a sustained air campaign against the North. It began in March.
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<p>Its objective was to break the will of the North Vietnamese, a tactic that had been tried before in Korea and in World War II, and that had failed then. It was to start on a small scale and expand slowly and deliberately, first hitting targets in the South that were associated with the infiltration of men and supplies to the guerrilla forces. It would creep northward, hitting a wider variety of targets and striking harder. As a plan, it was an excellent one. As a concept, it has been called 'a colossal misjudgement'.
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<p>The theories of bombing assume that the country to be attacked is an industrial power, producing at home most of the materiel required by its armed forces. Further, they also assume that those armed forces are to be engaged in large and intensive battles, requiring the movement of large numbers of men and mountains of supplies, and featuring concentrations of troops, armor and munitions.
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<p>None of this was true for North Vietnam. It was a agricultural country, with inadequate roads, a minor railroad network and very little industry. The gross national product of the entire North in 1965 was estimated at $1.6 billion, and of that, about $192 million was attributed to industrial output. It had few major industrial complexes, and only eight were deemed worth including on the first target list. They made very little in military materiel. Instead, North Vietnam's military machine was supplied by China and Russia. Practically every single weapon, every round of ammunition, every airplane, tank and truck came from the two major Communist powers. True, it had to be moved from outside to key distribution points within North Vietnam, and at first glance their transportation system looked like a prime target whose destruction would be worthwhile. But even if the rails were knocked out, the roads would remain, and the trails could be used by porters carrying loads on their backs or trundling them along on bicycles.
