19721776 Club
A napalm strike hits fleeing civilians near Trảng Bàng; a nine-year-old girl runs burning down the road
An RVNAF pilot mistakes the group near the Caodai Temple for enemy troops; a photographer is there as Kim Phúc runs screaming from the smoke.
By the summer of 1972, the Vietnam War had run for nearly two decades, and American public support had been bleeding away since the Tet Offensive four years earlier. On June 8, a Republic of Vietnam Air Force pilot flying an A-1E Skyraider mistook a group of fleeing civilians and soldiers near the Caodai Temple in Trảng Bàng for enemy troops and diverted to attack, dropping napalm on them. Nine-year-old Phan Thị Kim Phúc ran down the road with her clothing burned away, screaming "So hot, so hot" — and a photographer captured it. The image, titled "The Terror of War," won the 1973 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography and became one of the most reproduced photographs of the twentieth century…
