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Talk:Operation Freedom Deal

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Tonnage of Bombs in Cambodia

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I'm so way out of my depth here, but having read some of the reasonably RS that back up the article and the talk page and, without prejudice, I notice that while there is some dispute about the amount of ordinance, there's less dispute regarding the number of bombing missions: 43,415. From what I can understand, bombing was done with B52 aircraft, each one with a load capacity of up to 30 tons of bombs (24*750lb+84*500lb - from carpet bombing). If we were to take the 2.75 million tonnes of ordnance dropped quote, and divide that by full loads, it would suggest that an average bombing raid was equivalent to two fully loaded B52 bombers. Bearing in mind that a fully loaded B52 was capable of a 12 hour flight time, and that typical bombing formations included six B52 bombers, I find even the 5.7 million tonnes figure possible (if unlikely) given the upper limit to tonnage dropped (given the missions, formation, load, etc) is 7.8 million tons. On the same note, regardless of the excellent work done by rooting through the worst kept database in history, I find the notion of 0.5million tons unlikely, based on my simple, inexpert, and ill-informed calculations. (20040302 (talk) 08:44, 30 January 2018 (UTC))[reply]