To keep the American public in the dark about the sustained bombing over North Vietnam, Operation Rolling Thunder secretly began on March 2, 1965 and would continue for the next three years. Shortly after the bombing commenced, ground forces were sent to protect the American airbases from possible attack. This decision would prove to be monumental, and despite Johnson’s pledge to ‘’never send American boys over to Vietnam to do the job that Asian boys should do”, it opened the door for the eventual presence of 500,000 U.S. troops in Vietnam.

From 1965-1968, 864,000 tons of bombs were dropped on North Vietnam, compared with 653,000 tons dropped during the entire Korean Conflict and 503,000 tons in the Pacific theater during the Second World War. Years later Robert McNamara recalled that at the time, “data and analysis showed that air attacks would not work, but there was such determination to do something, anything, to stop the communists that discouraging reports were often ignored, and it was that ‘desperate energy’ which drove “much of the Vietnam policy in the years ahead.”