Bombs Over Cambodia: New Light on US Air War

Taylor Owen; Ben Kiernan

doi:10.1017/S1557466007020967

Bombs Over Cambodia: New Light on US Air War

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2025

Taylor Owen and

Ben Kiernan

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On December 9, 1970, US President Richard Nixon telephoned his national-security adviser, Henry Kissinger, to discuss the ongoing bombing of Cambodia. This sideshow to the war in Vietnam, begun in 1965 under the Johnson administration, had already seen 475,515 tons of ordnance dropped on Cambodia, which had been a neutral kingdom until nine months before the phone call, when pro-US General Lon Nol seized power. The first intense series of bombings, the Menu campaign on Vietnamese targets in Cambodia's border areas — which American commanders labeled Breakfast, Lunch, Supper, Dinner, Dessert, and Snack — had concluded in May, 1970 shortly after the coup.

Type: Research Article
Information: Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 5 , Issue 5 , May 2007 , e7

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1557466007020967 [Opens in a new window]
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