Word: 52s
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Dated Nov. 20, 1969, some seven months after the clandestine bombing began, the memorandum came from General Earle G. Wheeler, then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and was initialed by Laird. It recommended that a 41-plane force of B-52s strike targets inside Cambodia while other B-52s bombed cover targets in South Viet Nam and Laos. The memorandum added: "Strikes on these latter targets will provide a resemblance to normal operations, thereby providing a credible story for replies to press inquiries." Despite the memorandum, Laird still insisted that he had not authorized any falsification-just...
...Prince Norodom Sihanouk. In fact, as a result of testimony by a former Air Force officer before the Senate Armed Services Committee last week, it was revealed that the President had for the previous 14 months personally authorized the secret bombing of Cambodia, a clandestine campaign by B-52s that poured over 100,000 tons of explosives in 3,630 missions onto suspected North Vietnamese sanctuaries just across the border. The U.S. command hoped that the heavy bombing would disrupt otherwise safe staging areas used by the Communists for damaging attacks on American outposts in South Viet Nam. A secret...
...said that bombing orders in sealed, unmarked envelopes were secretly flown from Saigon by propeller-driven courier aircraft each afternoon before a raid. They were kept under lock and key until dusk-the missions were flown at night to avoid detection-then transmitted by radio to the approaching B-52s...
CAMBODIAN BOMBING. William Beecher, a Washington correspondent for the New York Times (now an official at the Pentagon), reported on May 9, 1969 that U.S. B-52s were bombing Communist targets in Cambodia for the first time in the Indochina war-and with the tacit approval of Cambodia's then ruler Norodom Sihanouk. The report seems to have had little impact upon enemy action since the Communists knew perfectly well that they were being bombed. But the disclosure itself clouded the Administration's credibility (as well as that of Prince Sihanouk), since Nixon had been trying to convince...
...Cambodia in March and asked his people their opinion of America. "They said, 'Bombings, bombings, killing, killing. We cannot be friends with such an inhuman country.' My people cannot be aware of your good traditions or the background of your Revolution. They know you through the B-52s, the AC-130s, the Spookies [gun ships] and the F-111s and F-105s...