The defoliant is an equal mix of two herbicides, 2,4-diclorophenoxyacetic acide (2,4-D) and 2,4,5-trichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4,5-T). When sprayed on foliage during the war, it quickly stripped off the leaves, revealing anyone and anything below the canopy, destroying crops, and clearing vegetation near U.S. bases. By the end of the campaign, U.S. military forces had sprayed millions of gallons of Agent Orange on over 5 million acres of upland and mangrove forests and about 500,000 acres of crops—an area the size of Massachusetts, and about 24 percent of South Vietnam. Some areas of Laos and Cambodia along the Vietnam border were also sprayed. This massive effort, known as Operation Ranch Hand, lasted from 1962 to 1971.

user-inactivated:

Most planes in the Air Force are older than the pilots who fly them. I've flown on planes as old as '63 in some RC-135s, but most C-130s are within a few years of that. Because they were used so extensively in Vietnam almost all of the planes were used in Ranch Hand at some point.

This brings me to my point, which is that the VA still will credit an Agent Orange claim in cases where the veteran was only exposed to it by the plane proxy because it was proven to stick around so long and yet still have negative effects. That shit is nasty.

posted 3192 days ago