The Vietnam War Was Fought Betweennorth Vietnam (Supported by the Soviet Union, China And

Introduction

The Vietnam War was fought betweenNorth Vietnam (supported by the Soviet Union, China and othercommunistallies) and the government ofSouth Vietnam (supported by the United States and otheranti-communistallies).

TheViet Cong(also known as the National Liberation Front, or NLF), a lightly armed South Vietnamese communistfrontdirected by the North, fought aguerrilla waragainst anti-communist forces in the region.

ThePeople's Army of Vietnam(a.k.a. the North Vietnamese Army) engaged in a moreconventional war, at times committing large units into battle. As the war wore on, the part of the Viet Cong in the fighting decreased as the role of the NVA grew.

U.S. and South Vietnamese forces relied onair superiorityand overwhelming firepower to conductsearch and destroy operations, involvingground forces,artillery, andairstrikes. In the course of the war, the U.S. conducted a large-scalestrategic bombingcampaign against North Vietnam, and over time the North Vietnamese airspace became the most heavily defended airspace of any in the world.

The U.S. government viewed American involvement in the war as a way to prevent a Communist takeover of South Vietnam. This was part of a widercontainmentstrategy, with the stated aim of stopping the spread of communism.

According to the U.S.domino theory, if one state went Communist, other states in the region would follow and U.S. policy thus held that accepting the spread of Communist rule across all of Vietnam was unacceptable. The North Vietnamese government and the Viet Cong were fighting to reunify Vietnam under communist rule. They viewed the conflict as acolonial war, fought initially against forces from France and then America, as France was backed by the U.S., and later against South Vietnam, which it regarded as a U.S.puppet state.

Gulf of Tonkin Incident

TheGulf of Tonkin Incidentis the name given to two separate confrontations involvingNorth Vietnamand theUnited Statesin the waters of theGulf of Tonkin. On August 2, 1964, the destroyerUSSMaddox engaged three North Vietnamese Navy torpedo boats.Asea battleresulted. One US aircraft was damaged, threeNorth Vietnamese torpedo boatswere damaged, and four North Vietnamese sailors were killed and six were wounded; there were no U.S. casualties.

It was originally claimed by theNational Security Agencythat the second Tonkin Gulf incident occurred on August 4, 1964, as another sea battle, but instead may have involved "Tonkin Ghosts" (false radar images) and not actual NVN torpedo boat attacks.

The outcome of these two incidents was the passage byCongressof theGulf of Tonkin Resolution, which granted PresidentLyndon B. Johnsonthe authority to assist anySoutheast Asiancountry whose government was considered to be jeopardized by "communistaggression." The resolution served as Johnson's legal justification for deploying U.S. conventional forces and the commencement of open warfare against North Vietnam.

Escalation in Vietnam

Operation Rolling Thunder

The United States conducted these bombing raids on North Vietnam. They happened on a near continuous basis for three years. In 1965 there were 25,000 bombing raids, escalating to 108,000 bombing raids in 1967. By 1967 the United States had dropped more bombs on Vietnam than the Allies had dropped during all of WWII.

War in the Jungle

The United States used the Search and Destroy method to find opposition forces. The Vietcong (VC) used hit-and-run and ambush style tactics which utilized their knowledge of the jungle terrain. The VC were also able to blend into the general population and attack in cities and the countryside. In addition, the VC used booby traps and landmines.

Vietcong Tunnels

The Vietcong had created an elaborate system of tunnels that allowed them to launch surprise attacks on American soldiers and then disappear quickly. They began building these tunnels during French occupation and increased their tunnel systems once the US began Operation Rolling Thunder. There were more than 30,000 miles of tunnels throughout Vietnam and they were often connected to villages which became home to guerilla fighters. Inside the tunnels they would sleep, store weapons, build landmines and tend to their wounded.

Tactics

In an attempt to find VC tunnels and uncover the Ho Chi Minh trail, the US dropped napalm to set fire to the jungle. In addition, napalm was used in flamethrowers for US and South Vietnamese ground forces. It was quickly learned that using these flamethrowers could consume all of the oxygen in a bunker which resulted in the death of those hiding in the bunker.

Agent Orange was a powerful herbicide and defoliant that was sprayed in the jungles of Vietnam. The purpose of Agent Orange was to kills the leaves and foliage, allowing the US to better identify where the tunnels and bunkers were located. Nearly 13 million gallons of Agent Orange was used during the war and it lefts many villages in ruins. (The top photo shows the Mangrove forest before 1965, the bottom photo shows the same forest after the spraying of Agent Orange.) In addition to napalm and Agent Orange, the US military conducted Search and Destroy missions that rooted out suspected VC soldiers, in the process many villagers were uprooted and villages were burned and livestock was killed.

Ho Chi Minh Trail

TheHo Chi MinhTrail was not just one trail but a series of trails, named after North Vietnamese leader, Ho Chi Minh. The Trail was used by the North Vietnamese as a route for its troops to get into the South. They also used the trail as a supply route – for weapons, food and equipment. The Ho Chi Minh Trail ran along the Laos/Cambodia and Vietnam borders and was dominated by jungles. In total the ‘trail’ was about 600 miles in length and consisted of many parts.

The ‘trail’ consisted of dummy routes that served the only purpose of confusing theAmericansbut was, in places, 50 miles wide. It is thought that up to 40,000 people were used to keep the route open. The natural environment gave the trail excellent cover as the jungle could provide as much as three canopies of tree cover, which disguised what was going on at ground level. The American response to this was to use defoliants – the most famous beingAgent Orange– to kill off the greenery that gave cover to those using the trail. However, while large areas of jungle were effectively killed off, the task was too great and the Ho Chi Minh Trail was used for the duration of the war against the Americans in South Vietnam.

One way for the Americans to counter the Ho Chi Minh Trail was to build large bases near to it –Khe Sanhwas one of these. From these large bases patrols were sent out in an effort to intercept anyone using the route. Regardless of this, it does seem that the task was simply too great for the Americans. Whereas the trail was based on deception and fluidity, the military bases built by the US were static. Therefore, once patrols left these bases they were by themselves. While they could be supported by air, there would always be a time delay between combat on the ground and the arrival of air support. By the very nature of guerrilla warfare, this gave the North Vietnamese the advantage as they had the ability to disappear into the jungle.