<text id=00he1810><title>The First Bombing Halt</title>
<history>US Air Force: Events History</history>
<article><hdr>The First Bombing Halt</hdr><body>
<p>The year ended with one of the many 'signals' sent to Ho's government by the Johnson administration. Johnson ordered a bombing halt from the evening of 24 December 1965, to the end of January 1966, since that time period included both Christmas and Tet, the Buddhist festival. There was no discernible response from the North, and bombing began again in February.
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<p>The JCS had been urging the bombing of NVN petroleum supplies since November 1965. McNamara recommended it in a memorandum in March 1966, and Johnson decided that it was a feasible idea. Under orders to take great care with their strikes, US tactical air forces went North on 29 June to bomb the oil storage facilities at Hanoi and Haiphong. The capital's tank farm was completely destroyed, and the Haiphong dock installations were listed as 80 per cent destroyed. The Seventh Air Force headquarters issued a statement calling the raid the most significant and most important strike of the war. It was, unfortunately, a hollow boast. Even though almost three-quarters of NVN petroleum products storage capacity lay in ruins by the end of July, it did not slow the pace of the war. The North Vietnamese continued to import oil and gasoline, but in barrels instead of in bulk. They established a myriad of small storage dumps that could be easily concealed and easily moved.
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<p>The tactical success and strategic failure of the strikes against the oil system started some rethinking of the role of air power and its employment in the war. One specific assignment was given to the Jason Division of the Institute of Defense Analysis; in September the group reported its consensus: "As of July 1966, the US bombing of North Vietnam had had no measurable direct effect on Hanoi's ability to mount and support military operations in the South at the current level ...
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<p>Since the initiation of the Rolling Thunder program the damage to facilities and equipment in North Vietnam has been more than offset by the increased flow of military and economic aid ... The indirect effects of the bombing on the will of the North Vietnamese to continue fighting and on their leaders' appraisal of the prospective gains and costs of maintaining the present policy have not shown themselves in any tangible way. Furthermore, we have not discovered any basis for concluding that the indirect punitive effects of bombing will prove decisive in these respects."
