Abstract
This chapter explores the known facts regarding the United States (US) air war in Vietnam and all of Indochina. Although US ground forces in South Vietnam played a large role in the battle, the use of air power came to define US strategy. In the early 1960s, when US advisers first went to Vietnam to help build local armed forces, the US leadership had high hopes that the communist insurgency in the south could be defeated with “police actions” and better weapons. The accepted view was that the area below the 17th parallel was being invaded by communist guerillas trained in North Vietnam. The regular bombing of both North and South Vietnam would continue intermittently from 1965 until 1973, when the Paris Peace Agreement ended the direct US role in the war. In November 1968, as the peace talks in Paris were beginning, President Johnson announced that all bombing above the 17th parallel would cease.
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