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Renewed Air Strikes Against North Vietnam

May 1, 1970

1970-05-01_NixononCambodia
1970-05-01_NixononCambodia
In his speech announcing the Cambodian incursion, President Nixon points out North Vietnamese Army sanctuaries along the Cambodian border, April 30, 1970. (National Archives)

The U.S. Air Force and Navy fly the first large-scale strikes against targets in North Vietnam since the bombing halt of 1968. President Nixon orders them as “protective reaction strikes” in retaliation for North Vietnamese antiaircraft and SAM attacks on U.S. reconnaissance aircraft. Almost 500 American aircraft strike missile sites and antiaircraft emplacements over the course of four days. Officials at the Pentagon publicly acknowledge these strikes on May 3.1

Wayne Thompson, To Hanoi and Back: The United States Air Force and North Vietnam, 1966–1973 (Washington, D.C.: Air Force History and Museums Program, 2000), 172–74 (for protective reaction strikes” see p. 174); Carl Berger, ed., The United States Air Force in Vietnam, 1961–1973 (Washington, D.C.: Office of Air Force History, 1977), 89 (see this page for “500”); Spencer C. Tucker, ed., The Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War: A Political, Social, and Military History (2nd edition; Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2011), 938–39.