This photograph shows bombs from an A-4C “Skyhawk” Bomber, of the U.S. Navy attack squadron VA-95, falling on the Truong Quang tin railroad bridge during an air strike over North Vietnam.
U.S. bombers dropped 643,000 tons of bombs between 1965 and 1968 during Operation Rolling Thunder, killing approximately 52,000 Vietnamese civilians. Rolling Thunder, a sustained bombing campaign against the North Vietnamese, was part of the expansion of America’s military presence in Vietnam in 1965. After southern Communist forces attacked a U.S. air base in January of that year, the Johnson administration had a pretext to launch Rolling Thunder.
