This day in history, February 7, 1965, 49 U.S. Navy jets from the 7th Fleet carriers “Coral Sea” and “Hancock” dropped bombs and rockets on the barracks and staging areas at Dong Hoi, a guerrilla training camp in North Vietnam, as a part of Operation Flaming Dart. A follow-up raid by South Vietnamese planes escorted by U.S. planes bombed a North Vietnamese military communications center.
These strikes were in retaliation for communist attacks on the U.S. installation at Camp Holloway and the adjacent Pleiku airfield in the Central Highlands, which killed eight U.S. servicemen, wounded 109, and destroyed or damaged 20 aircraft.
Prior to the attack, presidential advisors John T. McNaughton and McGeorge Bundy had favored bombing North Vietnam. After the attack in the Central Highlands, they urged President Johnson to order the retaliatory raids. Johnson agreed and gave the order to commence Operation Flaming Dart, hoping that a swift retaliation would persuade the North Vietnamese to cease their attacks in South Vietnam.
Bundy, who had just returned from Vietnam, defended the air raids as “right and necessary.” Senate Majority Leader Mansfield (D-Montana) and GOP leader Everett Dirksen (Illinois) supported the President’s decision, but Senators Wayne Morse (D-Oregon) and Ernest Gruening (D-Alaska) called the action a dangerous escalation of the war.
The retaliatory raids did not have the desired effect and on February 10, the Viet Cong struck again, this time at an American installation in Qui Nhon, killing 23 Americans. Johnson quickly ordered another retaliatory strike, Flaming Dart II.
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