Taylor testifies on Operation Rolling Thunder
In testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Gen.Maxwell Taylor states that a major U.S.objective in Vietnam is to demonstrate that wars of liberation are costly dangerous and doomed to failure.
Discussing the American air campaign against North Vietnam Taylor declared that its primary purpose was to change the will of the enemy leadership.The decision to launch a bombing campaign against North Vietnam was controversial.President Lyndon B.Johnson deliberated for a year before deciding to undertake the sustained bombing of North Vietnam.
Earlier in the month he had ordered Operation Flaming Dart in response to communist attacks on U.S.installations in South Vietnam.It was hoped that these retaliatory raids would cause the North Vietnamese to cease support of Viet Cong forces in South Vietnam but they did not have the desired effect.
Out of frustration Johnson initiated Operation Rolling Thunder.The new bombing campaign was designed to interdict North Vietnamese transportation routes in the southern part of North Vietnam and thereby slow infiltration of personnel and supplies into South Vietnam.The first Rolling Thunder mission took place on March 2 1965 when 100 U.S.Air Force and Republic of Vietnam Air Force (VNAF) planes struck the Xom Bang ammunition dump 100 miles southeast of Hanoi.
Rolling Thunder continued with occasional suspensions until President Johnson under intense domestic political pressure halted it on October 31 1968.Operation Rolling Thunder was closely controlled by the White House and at times targets were personally selected by President Johnson.From 1965 to 1968 an estimated 643000 tons of bombs were dropped on North Vietnam.A total of nearly 900 U.S.
aircraft would be lost during Operation Rolling Thunder.
