The Terror of War


The Terror of War, colloquially known as Napalm Girl, 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 Vietnamese napalm strike that mistakenly hit Trảng Bàng village instead of nearby North Vietnamese troops. It is credited as one of the most famous images of the Vietnam War and an indictment of the effects of war on innocent victims in general.
Nick Ut sold the photo to the Associated Press and was credited as the photographer, receiving several awards including World Press Photo of the Year. After the documentary The Stringer explored the possibility that stringer Nguyễn Thành Nghệ may have taken the photo, both the AP and World Press Photo conducted investigations, both of which were inconclusive as to whether the photo was taken by Ut, 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.

Circumstances

On 8 June 1972, South Vietnamese forces advanced on Trảng Bàng, which was held by North Vietnamese forces. As a group of civilians and South Vietnamese soldiers fled from a Caodai temple to the safety of South Vietnamese–held positions, a pilot of the South Vietnamese Air Force, flying an A-1E Skyraider, mistook the group for enemy soldiers and diverted to drop napalm. According to a contemporaneous report by Fox Butterfield, the bombing burned five civilians and six soldiers, including nine-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phuc, who tore off her burning clothes. A photographer, initially identified as Nick Ut, captured an image of Phuc and other villagers fleeing the attack. Ut, ITN correspondent Christopher Wain, and South Vietnamese soldiers assisted Phuc, although descriptions vary as to the role of each. According to Denise Chong's The Girl in the Picture, Wain halted Phuc, Ut translated her request for water, and the soldiers doused her with their canteens. Other accounts include Wain or Ut extinguishing her.
By most accounts, Ut then took Phuc and at least one other victim to a hospital in Củ Chi or Saigon. Several days later she was transported to a specialist facility, thanks to parallel efforts by Wain and her father. Phuc sustained third-degree burns or worse over 30 to 35% of her body, including all of her left arm and almost all of her back. 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 was superficially burned and recovered after a month.

Composition and publication

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 by Barbie 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.
According to Ut, he had four cameras—a Leica M2, a Leica M3, and two Nikon Fs—and shot eight rolls of film in black-and-white. The M2 was historically credited as the one with which he took the photo. According to the AP's authorship investigation, the photo was more likely taken with a Pentax or Nikon.
Ut and another photographer submitted eight photos at the bureau. 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. The AP titled the photo Accidental Napalm Attack. At Faas's direction, a technician created an airbrushed print to avoid a shadow over Phuc's crotch being misinterpreted as pubic hair, but most publications chose to use the unaltered photo.

Response

then-president Richard 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".
The photograph, attributed to Ut, won a number of major photographic awards.
OrganizationsYearCategoryResult
George Polk Awards1972News PhotographyWon
Overseas Press Club1972Best Photographs, Daily Newspaper or Wire ServiceWon
Pulitzer Prize1973Spot News PhotographyWon
World Press Photo1973Photo of the YearWon

Legacy

In September 2016, a Norwegian newspaper published an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg after censorship was imposed on this photograph placed on the newspaper's Facebook page. Half of the ministers in the Norwegian government shared the photograph on their Facebook pages, among them prime minister Erna Solberg from the Conservative Party. Several of the Facebook posts, including the Prime Minister's post, were deleted by Facebook, but later that day, Facebook reinstated the picture and said, "The value of permitting sharing outweighs the value of protecting the community by removal". In 2022, Ut gave a copy of the photograph to Pope Francis.

Authorship dispute

According to Ut, he set his camera aside to rescue Phuc and later delivered his film to the AP.
A 2025 documentary, The Stringer, investigates the authorship of the photo and states that it was not taken by Ut but by a Vietnamese stringer named Nguyễn Thành Nghệ. Ut and the AP both denied the claim, although AP later backed away from a blanket denial. After a year-long investigation into the authorship of the "Napalm Girl" photo, the AP concluded there was no convincing evidence surrounding the identity of the photographer. The AP carried out its own investigation into the photographer and published its findings on May 6, 2025. They concluded based on an analysis of the location, distance and the camera used, that it was highly unlikely that Ut took the photo and that either Nghệ or Huỳnh Công Phúc was more likely to have taken the photo. 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."
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. The AP did not change the credit to Ut, citing the absence of conclusive evidence.

Scholarly and literary

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  • News media

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Category:1970s photographs
Category:1972 in art
Category:Black-and-white photographs
Category:Photographs of children in war
Category:Photojournalism controversies
Category:Pulitzer Prize–winning photographs
Category:Vietnam War photographs
Category:Works of uncertain authorship
Category:Nude photography showing children