U.S. Aircraft Drop Bombs, Propaganda Leaflets on North Vietnam

Apr. 14, 1965 - United States aircraft dropped three million propaganda leaflets over four cities in North Vietnam today in an attempt to exploit centuries of Vietnamese distrust of the Chinese.

Thirty Air Force planes also poured 20 tons of bombs and rockets on Honmatt Island and near the Cualo River, hitting two radar installations that were struck yesterday. It was the third bombing of the radar sites in two weeks.

The U.S. Government had long restrained South Vietnamese officials from distributing propaganda in the North. The Americans felt that it was important to persuade the Communist leaders in Hanoi that the U.S. Government was not trying to overthrow them.

The three leaflets now approved for distribution, while harsh in their indictments of the Hanoi Government, focused on the role of Communist China in the Vietnamese war.

Propaganda leaflets, including copies of President Johnson’s April 7 policy speech on Vietnam, will not be regularly dropped over the North, an American spokesman declared.

The sites of the first leaflet drop were Donghoi, Hatinh, Vinh, and Thanhhoa, all in the central area of North Vietnam and more than 100 miles south of Hanoi.

“The air strikes are aimed at stopping the aggression of Red China,” one leaflet concluded in bold type, referring to the American and South Vietnamese attacks on the North that began last Feb. 7.

Another leaflet, prepared by an American and South Vietnamese psychological warfare committee, mentioned the North Vietnamese President in a reference to “the Ho Chi Minh clique lackeys of the Red Chinese.”

Asserting that the U.S. air strikes had been undertaken to stop “the cruel Communists from killing our innocent compatriots in South Vietnam,” one leaflet urged: “To protect yourselves, please keep away from the Communist military installations, offices, industrial plants, and important communications centers.”

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