Christmas brings to mind many wonderful memories for most of us. But history has bequeathed to some a most awful little twoword phrase blackening those memories like a stain. That phrase is “Christmas bombing.”

From Dec. 18 until Dec. 30 in 1972, the United States conducted a campaign of intensive aerial bombing, using massive B-52s, over North Vietnam. In the approximately 4,000 sorties flown in what was termed Operation Linebacker II, American pilots concentrated on the major cities of Hanoi and Haiphong. The missions executed so-called area bombing, never precise or pinpoint. Their goal: To kill as many civilians as possible.