May 16th 1965, at AB Bien Hoa. Ordnance being loaded onto a B-57 Canberra spontaneously detonated, creating a chain reaction that resulted in the destruction of 10 B-57s, 27 A-1 Skyraiders, and an F-8 Crusader, 34 deaths, and over 100 wounded.
34-year-old USAF Major Robert G. Bell --- who had been one of the 32 finalists for NASA Astronaut Group 1 in 1959 --- was among the dead.
The USAF, in their official history of the Vietnam War, stated that it was one of the "worst disasters in Air Force history".
"A South Vietnamese soldier uses the end of a dagger to beat a farmer for allegedly supplying government troops with inaccurate information about the movement of Viet Cong guerrillas in a village west of Saigon, Vietnam." January 9, 1964
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