The assumption in the 1960s was that the use of herbicides in Vietnam did not pose a significant danger.
The
UC-123K tactical transport known as “Patches” got its name the hard
way. The aircraft was held together nose to tail with repairs to the
battle damage inflicted by almost 600 hits from enemy ground gunners in
Vietnam.
When
its flying days were over, Patches was retired to the US Air Force
Museum in Dayton, Ohio, as a memorial to the airmen who flew the
dangerous “Ranch Hand” missions from 1962 to 1970.
Ranch
Hand used herbicides to defoliate the vegetation in Vietnam, where the
jungle provided concealment and cover for Viet Cong insurgents. It began
as a peripheral notion in 1961 on a White House list of “techniques and
gadgets” that might be tried in lieu of all-out combat and expanded
from there.
At
its peak in 1969, Ranch Hand employed only 25 spray planes, but the
results and consequences went far beyond anything the White House ever
imagined. Local commanders and ground forces swore by Ranch Hand, which
stripped bare the enemy ambushes and hiding places. It was part of a
broader operation named “Trail Dust,” which included spraying from
backpacks, trucks, and riverboats, but the main operation was Ranch
Hand.
The
propeller-driven C-123 had long since been declared obsolescent but it
found new purpose in Vietnam. In 1968, auxiliary jet engines were
mounted under the wings, making takeoffs less hazardous for the heavily
loaded Ranch Hand aircraft. The enhanced model was designated UC-123K.
The
spraying was done from treetop level and was especially risky with the
original equipment, which dispensed no more than one-and-a-half gallons
of herbicide per acre, half the amount necessary for defoliation. Before
the Ranch Hand crews got better sprayers that pumped three gallons an
acre, they had to fly a second mission against each target. The ground
gunners knew this and were waiting for them. With the improved system it
took four minutes to empty the 1,000-gallon tank and cover an area 16
kilometers (10 miles) long and 80 meters (260 feet) wide.
About
10 percent of the Ranch Hand sorties destroyed crops supporting the
Viet Cong—a priority for the South Vietnamese government—but the vast
majority of them were flown to expose the enemy’s strongholds and travel
routes. Even critics of the program concede that this saved many
thousands of American and allied lives.
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