The bomb does explode: WI the 1962 air strike on the South Vietnamese presidential palace had been successful?

[Hendryk]

On 27 February 1962, two disgruntled pilots from the Republic of Vietnam Air Force took off with their A-1 Skyraider ground attack planes, and instead of conducting a bombing raid on Viet Cong positions in the Mekong delta as ordered, they targeted Ngo Dinh Diem's presidential palace. It was a close call for Ngo and his family:

On their second run, they attacked with bombs and napalm before strafing the presidential compound with rocket and machine-gun fire. The duo continued their runs for 30 minutes before units loyal to the president arrived and fought back. Taking advantage of poor weather and low cloud cover, the two pilots circled the palace at altitudes of around 150 m (490 ft), periodically diving out of the clouds to re-attack before darting back into them. (...)

The first 500 lb (230 kg) bomb penetrated a room in the western wing where Diệm was reading a biography of George Washington. The bomb failed to detonate, which gave Diệm enough time to seek shelter in a cellar in the eastern wing. He was joined there by his elder brother Archbishop Pierre Martin Ngô Đình Thục, younger brother Ngô Đình Nhu, Madame Nhu—who sustained an arm fracture while running toward the cellar—and their children. Elsewhere within the palace, three servants and guards were killed, and about thirty more staff were injured.

In OTL, Ngo would only get to live another year and a half, long enough however to decredibilize his regime in the Buddhist Crisis and prompt his own military to assassinate him. So what if that bomb had gone off, and he and his relatives had died in the air strike? What would have been the consequences for South Vietnamese politics, for the escalating war, and for US involvement in the region?

 

[Alex Richards]

Hmm. Who would the likely successors have been at that time?

 

[Hendryk]

Hmm. Who would the likely successors have been at that time?

If Diem alone dies, his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu will probably make a bid for power. But if we're going with the hypothesis that the raid kills both Diem and his close relatives, I assume that a military junta will take over.