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Viet Cong Bombing and Operation FLAMING DART II

February 10, 1965 - February 11, 1965

1965-02-10_Qui-Nhon-bombing_2-12-65_NARA
1965-02-10_Qui-Nhon-bombing_2-12-65_NARA
General Westmoreland and Ambassador Maxwell D. Taylor speak with Bronze Star recipient Specialist Fifth Class Robert Marshall after the Qui Nhon attack, February 1965. (National Archives)

Viet Cong guerrillas detonate a bomb at a U.S. Army barracks facility in the South Vietnamese coastal city of Qui Nhon. The blast kills 23 Americans and 7 South Vietnamese. In response, President Johnson orders additional air attacks in North Vietnam on February 11, known as FLAMING DART II. U.S. Navy and Air Force and South Vietnamese aircraft hit barracks and other facilities at Chanh Hoa and Vu Con with rockets and bombs.1

1Graham A. Cosmas, MACV: The Joint Command in the Years of Escalation, 1962–1967, United States Army in Vietnam (Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, 2006), 172–173; Spencer C. Tucker, ed. The Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War: A Political, Social, and Military History (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2011), 215; Edward J. Marolda, The Approaching Storm: Conflict in Asia, 1945–1965, The U.S. Navy and the Vietnam War (Washington, D.C.: Naval History & Heritage Command, Department of the Navy, 2009), 81. “23 Americans” killed is from Robert F. Futrell, The Advisory Years to 1965, The United States Air Force in Southeast Asia (Washington, D.C.: Office of Air Force History, 1981), 266.