r/HistoryPorn • u/Pankon6829 • 1d ago
People leaving their shelters after an air raid. Hanoi, North Vietnam, 1967 (638x960)
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u/Bank_Gothic 15h ago
Was curious about these shelters - apparently they were called "manhole shelters" and are as small as they look. Described as "narrow, individual concrete pipe shelters and manhole covers flush with the pavement. These chest-deep individual silos were designed to prevent a single direct bomb hit from causing a massive civilian death toll, limiting casualties to whoever occupied that specific concrete cylinder."
I get that they're better than nothing, but that still seems terrible. I would hate to be trapped in one of these when a bunch of rubble from the nearby building falls on top. Will you be rescued in time? Or will you suffocate / slowly cook to death in your man-sized dutch oven?
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u/Viktor_Bout 14h ago
Given that they're organized along the sidewalk like this, it would make finding and clearing these bunkers fairly easy.
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u/Heavyweighsthecrown 15h ago edited 15h ago
And yet you'd still run to one given it's the only option you had, in a poorer place with so little resources available. When the bombs start falling people can't afford the luxury of asking "Will you be rescued in time? Or will you suffocate / slowly cook to death in your man-sized dutch oven?", they just run for their lives like there's no tomorrow because quite possibly there won't be.
That's an unforgettable experience the US has gifted many poorer countries and millions of people around the world, one which still hasn't been gifted back in similar magnitude.
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u/Live_Tie_5009 13h ago
We built millions of these and air-raid shelters throughout the American terrorist bombing campaign, and moved industry and refineries/oil storage underground. A far smaller country against the world's most barbaric military, enduring this day and night.
Air-raid shelters were also built extensively throughout South Vietnam by civilians, but the US, in proper terrorist fashion, called them tunnels and assumed anyone having this meant they were combatants.
American barbarism is now being revisited on Iran, and Americans will endlessly praise their dead terrorists as martyrs, as they did in this war and are now doing for the dead US service members in Iran.
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u/Q_QueefCompany 9h ago
We built millions of these and air-raid shelters throughout the American terrorist bombing campaign, and moved industry and refineries/oil storage underground. A far smaller country against the world's most barbaric military, enduring this day and night.
We call that FAFO, you invaded a country and in return got your little teeth kicked in by the other countries big brother.
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u/Willybrown93 8h ago edited 6h ago
You think generations of agent orange crippled children and one of the highest densities of landmines on earth are deserved because they tried liberate their own country from french colonial stooges? That america had the right to rape and slash and burn and butcher?
You think that's the just desserts, the 'finding out', you dog?
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u/Live_Tie_5009 3h ago
What a stupid comment, the US artificially divided Vietnam and setup a puppet government. And then proceeded to commit constant, endless war crimes against South Vietnamese civilians. You being too deluded, moronic to understand you were the villains in this war is telling.
Most people in "South" Vietnam despised US war criminals being on our land, and rightfully threw out the terrorists. Now we will never let the US touch our soil again.
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u/capri_stylee 9h ago
You do realise you lost this war, and in losing this war, started the decline of your hegemony. This isn't a win for you.
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u/h0v3rb1k3s 7h ago
Which decline? The time when America took over as lone global hegemon 15 years later? Or in the 35 years since then?
Communists are indeed prone to wish casting.
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u/raviolispoon 3h ago
We forced the commies into a peace treaty, left the country and had been gone for 2 years before they invaded again.
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u/Live_Tie_5009 3h ago
Not what happened you moron. The "treaty" ceded 25% of "South" Vietnam, left 200K of our troops in the South and traded in 1K captured American terrorist pilots for the total withdrawal of American war criminals within 60 days.
Americans of course decades later, concluded that they won the war just like how they will tell themselves they won in Iraq and Afghanistan.
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u/capri_stylee 10h ago
Facts.
Can't wait for the blockbuster about the emotional trauma inflicted on a poor US serviceman, after the IRGC forced him to blow up a girls school with a tomahawk missile.
The war crimes the US inflicted on Vietnam are not something they're really ready to face, preferring to blame bad policy or individual acts like Mai Lai. They've never been willing to accept that they were the aggressors, and that their conduct during that war rivals some of the worst crimes of the 20th century.
On the other hand, I've got insane respect for the Vietnamese resistance movement, to face such conditions and emerge victorious against 3 of the world's strongest armies is the stuff of fiction.
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u/h0v3rb1k3s 9h ago
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u/capri_stylee 9h ago
Can you link me a liberation struggle that didn't involve the use of terror?
Would you consider the USAF dropping 80 million litres of agent orange as the use of terror?
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u/h0v3rb1k3s 9h ago
Oh a liberation struggle that involved dynamiting a truck carrying 20 girls. Lmao. Just a normal Tuesday for the struggle!
I forgot this is Reddit where the only takeaway is America bad.
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u/capri_stylee 9h ago
You didn't answer me. Can you link a liberation struggle that didn't use terror?
Did the USA dropping more chemical agents on Vietnam than any other conflict in history, constitute the use of terror?
Pretty simple questions tbh.
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u/h0v3rb1k3s 9h ago
Yeah they were both terrible. So why is one side so deserving of your respect?
"Liberation struggle"... Definitely an optimistic branding.
I'm forced to agree that terrorism is historically common.
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u/capri_stylee 9h ago
Because one side was fighting the second of 3 imperialist aggressors that it would face in the span of 50 years, and the other was on one of its many regime change adventure of the decade. To put it bluntly - Yankee go home.
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u/h0v3rb1k3s 9h ago
Or they were a bunch of brainwashed commie dogs like the Khmer Rouge who you doubtlessly support.
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u/capri_stylee 9h ago
Is this the level of discourse you're hoping for?
Edit: also you do know that it was the Vietnamese that had to go in and stop the Khmer rouge after they defeated the Yanks.
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u/Live_Tie_5009 3h ago
"Look at this Wikipedia page that shows you did a bad thing, therefore all of our war crimes are justified".
Unfortunately many Americans are still brainwashed into thinking they were fighting a good war, or they were "defending" South Vietnamese people, when they were there to occupy naval and military bases to eventually confront China.
Americans still need a bedtime story that their soldiers died as heroes or something, when they died as terrorists invading another country.
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u/h0v3rb1k3s 1h ago
A bad thing? How about a sustained campaign of bad things?
Luckily the US were fighting terrorists, so it's almost a wash.
Many Americans did die as heroes, and many at the hands of their inhumane captors.
Not saying America is free of sin from this war. I'm an objective person. But, it was perfectly natural to fear a world movement based on mindless revenge and civilian execution. See: that wiki article. It's handily itemized by date.
It was also natural to plan against China, as it was a country who engineered the worst manmade period of human suffering since the Holocaust.
Of course the whole thing was a total loss for the US. They should've simply waited for their opponents to sink on their own.
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u/Live_Tie_5009 1h ago
>Campaign of terrorists
The US literally murdered women and children and called them terrorists, routinely, just as they do today. The US had free-fire zones which declared any civilians as valid combatants within Vietnam.
Americans did not die as heroes, the vast majority of South Vietnamese people did not see the US as there for anything other than controlling the territory for military bases. Heroes have to die for a worthy or noble cause, and no American died for anything good within Asia.
You really are this naive, its astounding.
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u/h0v3rb1k3s 51m ago
I don't understand. I acknowledge American war crimes and the overall failure of the campaign, but you handwave away a laundry list of deliberate murder. But I'm the naive one?
Totally fine to criticize the US conduct. But don't give me this good guy nonsense from the batshit communist era.
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u/MasterShredder 16h ago
i feel lucky to have never gone through this and sorry that anyone did