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B-52’s Slam Cong

June 17, 1965 - A fleet of eight-engine B-52’s from the U.S. Strategic Air Command today raided a jungle hideout where the Viet Cong was reported massing for a sneak attack.

Scores of U.S. planes — including 27 B-52 heavy bombers making their debut in combat — rained tons of bombs, napalm, and rockets into three square miles of the Viet Cong jungle. Ground troops that searched the area later found few enemy casualties from the big air attack, military spokesmen said.

One American military spokesman said the raid apparently failed to kill a single Viet Cong. A search of the jungle area turned up only one body, and the spokesman said the man had been killed earlier in a ground engagement. It was not known whether the Viet Cong had removed bombing casualties from the area before the South Vietnamese arrived, but it was believed more likely that most of the enemy concentration had fled the area. 

Two of the giant eight-engine bombers were lost in a collision over the South China Sea. An amphibious rescue plane made a perilous landing in 12-foot seas to rescue four survivors and picked up the body of a fifth flier, an Air Force spokesman in Manila reported. Seven other airmen were missing, and the rescue plane was tossing on the stormy sea, unable to take off because of a damaged propeller. The survivors were transferred to a passing freighter, but the plane’s five crewmen stayed aboard to await a Navy ship.

The attack by the big, jet-powered bombers was the first mass bombing raid in Vietnam on World War II tactics. 

In the bombing raids in Vietnam up to now, the U.S. has used tactical fighter-bombers, which can carry only limited bomb loads and therefore have to resort to precision bombing of targets.

The B-52’s in the raid carried out a “pattern bombing” attack using high-explosive bombs. In pattern bombing, the bombs are dropped to blanket an area.

The B-52, America’s largest bomber, was first placed in service in 1952. It has a bomb capacity of more than 30,000 pounds and can carry 51 of the 750-pound bombs.



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