Attempts To Destroy The Thanh Hoa Bridge

April 3, 1965

Overview

As part of Operation ROLLING THUNDER, the U.S. Air Force launches a strike against the Thanh Hoa Bridge, which spans the Song Ma River in North Vietnam, approximately 70 miles south of Hanoi. The bridge represents a choke point on a crucial North Vietnamese supply route. A total of 79 U.S. aircraft attack the bridge with a variety of munitions but fail to destroy it.

Before a bombing halt in 1968, the U.S. Air Force and Navy launch numerous strikes on the Thanh Hoa Bridge. None manage to take the bridge permanently out of service. Not until 1972, with the help of new precision electro-optical and laser-guided bombs, does U.S. air power succeed in destroying it.1

¹A.J.C. Lavalle, ed., The Tale of Two Bridges and The Battle for the Skies over North Vietnam (Washington D.C.: Office of Air Force History, 1985), 3, 6, 9, 31, 36–38, 78–79, 85–86; Jacob Van Staavern, Gradual Failure: The Air War Over North Vietnam 1965–1966 (Washington, D.C.: Air Force History and Museums Program, United States Air Force, 2002), 105–107; Ronald Bruce Frankum, Like Rolling Thunder: The Air War in Vietnam, 1964–1975 (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2005), 22, 32, 157–158.