During the first six months of 1967, while McCain was part of an attack squadron of A-4 Skyhawks on the carrier Oriskany in the South China Sea, North Vietnamese officials said some 167 schools were bombed, along with 230 churches, three seminaries, and 23 pagodas. In late September—just a month before McCain’s crash on his 23rd bombing run—U.S. planes managed to drop four massive container bombs (2,400 pellet bombs apiece) on a grade school in Thanh Hoa province, south of Hanoi. The school had just reopened after the summer recess and, according to Vietnamese reports, the attack killed 33 pupils, ages 8 to 12. Thirty more were wounded, including two teachers. That was a single incident. The American estimate is that the 1965-68 bombing campaign killed between 52,000 and 182,000 civilians; the Vietnamese claim the figure was several times higher.