Hey, I'm Shannon Rice, the podcast producer here at C-SPAN, and this week lectures in history

shares a class on Operation Rolling Thunder from the Vietnam War. Douglas Kennedy of the U.S.

Air Force Academy teaches the goals of the air campaign, which took place from 1965 to 1968.

He also describes the campaign's limitations to avoid antagonizing

other communist powers, such as the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China.

The Johnson administration saw those countries as defenders of communism, who might intervene

if the North Vietnamese faced defeat. Consequently, the administration tried to punish the

North without provoking the two nations

believed to be its protectors. More on Operation Rolling Thunder with Professor Kennedy right

after this.

Sir, passports ready for instruction.

Thanks, awesome. Take seats. Good to see you guys all here today. Appreciate you coming.

Today, as you know, we did the reading out of the Thompson book, two big chapters discussing Rolling Thunder.

Obviously, I had to limit how much you could read, those two chapters focusing on the latter part of Rolling Thunder.

So we'll establish some good context and then discuss air power in this operation.

Again, last time we talked about Vietnam, this is our second

of four lessons talking about air power in Vietnam, last time reading out of Schleitz

text, we discussed air power in the South. Primarily, his chapter is discussing the advisory role.

So we're kind of doing a chronological approach and we've

reached, we've looked at that period of time from insurgency growing, North Vietnamese

support of that insurgency in 59 and that advisory role from 61 to 64. So now we're

focusing on air power against North Vietnam.

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