The Terror of War;Phan Thi Kim Phuc is the girl depicted running naked in the center of the image
The Terror of War, colloquially known asNapalm Girl,[1] is a photograph taken on 8 June 1972. It shows a naked 9-year-old girl,Phan Thi Kim Phuc, running toward the camera from a South Vietnamesenapalm strike that mistakenly hitTrảng Bàng village instead of nearby North Vietnamese troops. It is credited as one of the most famous images of theVietnam War and an indictment of the effects of war on innocent victims in general.[2]
Nick Ut sold the photo to theAssociated Press and was credited as the photographer, receiving several awards includingWorld Press Photo of the Year. After the documentaryThe Stringer (2025) explored the possibility thatstringer Nguyễn Thành Nghệ may have taken the photo, both the AP andWorld Press Photo conducted investigations, both of which were inconclusive as to whether the photo was taken by Ut,[3] Nghệ, or military photographer Huỳnh Công Phúc; though AP continues to credit Ut, while World Press Photo removed the attribution to Ut and considers the author unknown.
On 8 June 1972,South Vietnamese forces advanced onTrảng Bàng, which was held byNorth Vietnamese forces.[4] As a group of civilians and South Vietnamese soldiers fled from aCaodai temple to the safety of South Vietnamese–held positions, a pilot of theSouth Vietnamese Air Force, flying anA-1E Skyraider, mistook the group for enemy soldiers and diverted to dropnapalm.[5] According to a contemporaneous report byFox Butterfield, the bombing burned five civilians and six soldiers,[4] including nine-year-oldPhan Thi Kim Phuc, who tore off her burning clothes. A photographer, initially identified asNick Ut, captured an image of Phuc[6] and other villagers fleeing the attack.[7] Ut,ITN correspondent Christopher Wain, and South Vietnamese soldiers assisted Phuc, although descriptions vary as to the role of each. According toDenise Chong'sThe Girl in the Picture, Wain halted Phuc, Ut translated her request for water, and the soldiers doused her with their canteens.[8] Other accounts include Wain or Ut extinguishing her.[9]
By most accounts, Ut then took Phuc and at least one other victim to a hospital inCủ Chi orSaigon.[10] Several days later she was transported to a specialist facility, thanks to parallel efforts by Wain and her father.[11] Phuc sustainedthird-degree burns or worse over 30 to 35%of her body, including all of her left arm and almost all of her back.[12] Two civilians were killed in the bombing, both of them children of Phuc's aunt Anh, including Phuc's three-year-old "favorite cousin" Danh. Phuc's brother Tam wassuperficially burned and recovered after a month.[13]
The black-and-white photo depicts multiple children running toward the photographer. Closest to the photographer, on the extreme left of the image, is a boy, described byBarbie Zelizer as "crying in terror as his open mouth turned downward like a mask of human tragedy". Toward the center of the image, a bit behind him, Phuc runs with her arms stretched out to the side, fully naked, apparently screaming. Toward the right of the frame, slightly farther back, two children run holding each other's hands. Another child and several soldiers make up the middle background.[14]
According to Ut, he had four cameras—aLeica M2, aLeica M3, and twoNikon Fs[15]—and shot eight rolls of film in black-and-white.[16] The M2 was historically credited as the one with which he took the photo.[17] According to the AP's updated report(seebelow), the photo was likely taken with aPentax.[18] An analysis of photos and motion pictures of Ut and Nghe at the scene concluded that Ut was carrying two Nikon F SLRs and two Leica M2 rangefinders but no Pentax, and that Nghe was carrying only a Pentax.[19]
Ut and another photographer submitted eight photos at thebureau. One AP editor refused to use the photo of Phuc due to her nudity.Horst Faas, the head of the bureau's photo department, convinced the AP's New York office to make an exception from its normal rules on nudity, but agreed not to send out a close-up of Phuc.[20] The AP titled the photoAccidental Napalm Attack. At Faas's direction, a technician created anairbrushed print to avoid a shadow over Phuc's crotch being misinterpreted aspubic hair,[21] but most publications chose to use the unaltered photo.[22]
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Audiotapes of then-presidentRichard Nixon in conversation with his chief of staff,H. R. Haldeman, show that Nixon doubted the veracity of the photograph, musing whether it may have been "fixed".[23]
The photograph, attributed to Ut, won a number of major photographic awards.
In September 2016, a Norwegian newspaper published an open letter toMark Zuckerberg after censorship was imposed on this photograph placed on the newspaper's Facebook page.[28] Half of the ministers in the Norwegian government shared the photograph on their Facebook pages, among them prime ministerErna Solberg from the Conservative Party. Several of the Facebook posts, including the Prime Minister's post, were deleted by Facebook,[29] but later that day, Facebook reinstated the picture and said, "The value of permitting sharing outweighs the value of protecting the community by removal".[30] In 2022, Ut gave a copy of the photograph toPope Francis.[31]
According to Ut, he set his camera aside to rescue Phuc and later delivered his film to the AP.[32]
A 2025 documentary,The Stringer, investigates the authorship of the photo and states that it was not taken by Ut but by a Vietnamesestringer (freelancer) named Nguyễn Thành Nghệ. Ut and the AP both denied the claim,[33][34] although AP later backed away from a blanket denial. One review remarked, "Among the most compelling arguments put forth in the film is a visual timeline created using all available photographic and film evidence to place Ut out of position when the 'Terror of War' image would have been created, with Nghe in the correct spot."[35] World Press Photo also conducted an in-depth investigation which concluded based on an analysis of the location, distance and the camera used, that it was unlikely that Ut took the photo and that either Nghệ or Huỳnh Công Phúc (a military photographer and sometime freelancer for the AP) was more likely to have taken the photo.[36] The AP carried out its own investigation into the photographer and published its findings in an initial report based largely on witness statements and a second, larger report based on technical analysis.[37][38] They concluded that "itis possible Nick Ut took the photo."
Given the uncertainty and following their own investigation, World Press Photo announced that it would suspend the attribution of authorship to the photo going forwards.[39][40] The AP did not change the credit to Ut, citing the absence of conclusive evidence.[41]
^Nick Ut, born Huỳnh Công Út, uses his Vietnamese given name, Ut, as his English family name. In keeping with the Vietnamese custom of using given names on second reference and the anglophone custom of using surnames, this article refers to him by that name.
^Campbell 2022.Burge 2013: "On June 8, 1972, Kim Phuc, her family, other villagers and South Vietnamese soldiers had been hiding in a temple for three days. The day of the attack, they heard planes flying overhead. One of the soldiers told the civilians to run away, that the plane was going to bomb the temple."
^In theVietnamese namePhan Thi Kim Phuc,Phan is the family name,Thi is the middle name, andKim Phuc is thedouble given name. This article refers to Phan Thi Kim Phuc by her second given name,Phuc, and indexes sources by her full given name,Kim Phuc, in keeping with common Vietnamese practice.
^Collins 2010 andLumb 2010 describe Wain as pouring water on Phuc and do not mention Ut, whileHolland 2022 describes Ut as doing so and does not mention Wain. PerInaba 2025, Phuc's last recollection of the attack is a South Vietnamese soldier pouring water on her.
^Chong 2000, pp. 69–70,Lumb 2010,Campbell 2022,Holland 2022,Inaba 2025, andKim Phuc Foundation n.d. describe Ut as initially taking Phuc to the hospital. Chong describes Ut being convinced to take Phuc and one other victim to Bac Cha Hospital in Củ Chi on his drive back to Saigon. Per Chong, pp. 77–79, Phuc's family was told by staff there that she and the other victim had not been admitted, and later found her at Saigon First Children's Hospital (also mentioned by Lumb) in an outbuilding for "children who will die", alternately described by Inaba as amorgue. Per Holland, Ut transferred multiple injured children to a nearby hospital, and onward to Saigon when there was no space there. Exceptionally,Collins 2010 attributes Wain as the one who initially transported Phuc.
^PerChong 2000, pp. 79–80, Wain and theBBC's Michael Blakey found Phuc with help from theBritish Embassy and persuaded the American and Vietnamese governments to have her transferred to a private American-run unit atCho Ray Hospital. Per pp. 83–84, separately, Phuc's father Tung lobbied a doctor, who was coincidentally a former classmate of his, to take her out of the outbuilding.
^Chong 2000, pp. 89–90. Phuc also had severe burns on hernape and some on her scalp. Further, "lesser burns resulted from burning napalm that splashed from her clothes onto her right arm, buttocks, and stomach. The inside of her right hand was also burned from where it touched napalm on her other arm, and she hadsingeing to her left cheek and both ears."
^Chong 2000, p. 75. "Danh ... had died within an hour of the attack. Auntie Anh's baby ... would die of his injury six weeks later. No one else suffered burns except for Tam, and his were superficial. Napalm had stuck on his clothes and he was only indirectly burned. His wounds would heal within a month. The deaths of Auntie Anh's two children were the only known civilian deaths in the napalm attack. Years later, press reports would repeatedly make the mistake of stating that [Kim] Phuc had lost two brothers in that strike."Butterfield 1972's report of five civilian casualties, one more than Chong asserts, does not give the victims' names.
Chong, Denise (2000).The Girl in the Picture: The Story of Kim Phuc, the Photograph, and the Vietnam War (1st American ed.).Viking.ISBN9780670880409.
Gillespie, Tarleton (2018). "All Platforms Moderate".Custodians of the Internet: Platforms, Content Moderation, and the Hidden Decisions that Shape Social Media. Yale UP.ISBN9780300235029.
Butterfield, Fox (9 June 1972)."South Vietnamese Drop Napalm on Own Troops".The New York Times.ISSN0362-4331.Archived from the original on 22 February 2023. Retrieved22 February 2023.Standing in the company command post here today, Sgt. Nguyen Van Hai watched incredulously as a South Vietnamese plane mistakenly dropped flaming napalm right on his troops and a cluster of civilians.
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