The 'Napalm Girl' Photo Wasn't a US Attack

The most famous photo of the Vietnam War shows a horror that Americans are often blamed for, but didn't cause.

June 1972. A nine-year-old girl runs down a road, naked and screaming, her skin seared by napalm. The image stunned the world and became a symbol of American brutality in Vietnam.

But the plane that dropped that napalm wasn't American. It was a South Vietnamese Air Force pilot, striking what he thought were enemy positions near the village of Trang Bang. The bombs hit civilians and South Vietnamese soldiers by mistake.

An Associated Press photographer named Nick Ut took the picture, then drove the girl, Phan Thi Kim Phuc, to a hospital and helped save her life. His photo won the Pulitzer Prize and helped turn global opinion against the war.

One image changed history, even though the story behind it was not the one most people remember.

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