It's raining poison

Hi, this is Our Bloody History, where we spend hours combing through Wikipedia and Academic Journals so you don’t have to.

Here’s today's nugget:

The first aerial spraying of herbicides in Vietnam by the US Military this week, 61 years ago, on 10 August 1961, which led to the massively destructive Operation Ranch Hand.

Let's go.

Watch any movie about the Vietnam War and you'll probably see some napalm.

It was manufactured by Dow Chemical Company, the dudes that first created Saran wrap – you know, that plastic your mum wrapped your soggy sandwiches in for school. But as bad as napalm is, sadly it's not the only arrow in the US Military's quiver. Another hellish chemical is actually first on the scene.

Meet Agent Orange.

Not a person.

But a herbicide.

Classified as a defoliant–a chemical sprayed or dusted on plants to cause their leaves to fall off–Agent Orange is used heavily by the US Military to destroy the forest cover and food resources that sustain the North Vietnamese style of guerilla warfare.

On 10 August 1961, our day in history this week, the first aerial test of spraying herbicides is conducted in a village north of Đắk Tô against the foliage. Testing continues over the next year, and despite doubts about its efficacy, Operation Ranch Hand officially kicks off in early 1962.

Over the next ten years, nearly 20,000 sorties are flown, spraying an estimated 19 million U.S. gallons (72,000 m3) of defoliants and herbicides across South Vietnam. More than 5 million acres (20,000 km2) of forest and 500,000 acres (2,000 km2) of crops are heavily damaged or destroyed. Around 20% of South Vietnamese forests are sprayed at least once.

It's literally raining herbicide.

And that's bad.

Not just for the forests, but for the people in those areas.

According to the Vietnamese government and other sources, Operation Ranch Hand exposed approximately 4.8 million Vietnamese people to Agent Orange. This resulted in more than 3 million health problems including at least 1 million people disabled, 400,000 deaths due to cancers and other ailments and 150,000 children born with severe birth defects.

Terrifying numbers.

But current studies estimate that the dioxin release could even be double what everyone has previously predicted. Yikes.

So it aint all about guns and bombs people. One of the most destructive strategies to create lasting harm to your enemy is to poison their environment.

Fortunately, Herbicidal warfare has been forbidden since 1978 by the Environmental Modification Convention. It bans "any technique for changing the composition or structure of the Earth's biota." In other words, don't spay poison fools.

That's it for this week. Just a short one for ya.

3 quick facts:

• The current scientific consensus on the effects of Agent Orange concludes that scientists at the time made erroneous judgements on how devastating the chemical would actually be, as most of their studies were based on limited access to classified files.

• Agent Orange was first used by the British Armed Forces in Malaya during the Malayan Emergency (1948–1960). It was also used by the US Military in Laos and Cambodia during the Vietnam War because forests near the border with Vietnam were used by the Viet Cong.

• According to the Department of Veteran Affairs, 2.6 million US Military personnel were exposed to Agent Orange and hundreds of thousands of veterans are eligible for treatment for Agent Orange-related illnesses.

Other conflicts that happened this week:

• 8 August 1220: Sweden is defeated by Estonian tribes in the Battle of Lihula.

• 9 August 378: A large Roman army led by Emperor Valens is defeated by the Visigoths in the Battle of Adrianople during the Gothic War.

• 10 August 955: Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor defeats the Magyars in the Battle of Lechfeld, ending more than 50 years of Magyar invasion of the West.

• 11 August 923: The Qarmatians of Bahrayn capture and pillage the city of Basra (Iraq) in the Sack of Basra.

• 12 August 1950: 75 American POWs are massacred by the North Korean Army in the Bloody Gulch massacre during the Korean War. 

• 13 August 1937: The Battle of Shanghai begins, the first of the twenty-two major engagements fought between Japan and China during the Second Sino-Japanese War.

• 14 August 1598: Irish forces defeat an English expeditionary force in the Battle of the Yellow Ford during the Nine Years' War.

A historical quote about historical things:

DisclaimerYou are reading my abstractions based on the abstractions of others. History is not always an accurate map of what really happened. The map is not the territory. Reality can be very different. We are like blind people groping an elephant, describing what we feel. It always pays to do your own research and ask questions.