The US response to Vietcong tactics

The nature of the Second Indochina War

At the height of the conflict, one and a quarter million American and South Vietnamese troops, backed by the might of the US Air Force, were fighting in Vietnam. 

As the first US troops went into Vietnam in 1965, US Chief of Staff General Westmoreland explained that his aim was to wear down North Vietnam’s capacity to wage war whilst eliminating the guerrillas in South Vietnam.  Even allowing a 12-18 month period of ‘mopping up’ operations in remote areas, he predicted that victory would be completed by the end of 1967. 

Especially at the start of the war, the US had vastly superior technology; the problem was that the technology of the time was not good enough for the conditions in which the US army was fighting.  In the jungles and mountains:

 •  US bombers and helicopters, unable to see targets through the jungle, had to fly so low that they were vulnerable even to concentrated rifle fire. 

 •  Information technology could not determine the location of enemy units just yards away. 

 •  Soldiers what unable to tell the difference between a guerrilla and a civilian. 

Going Deeper

The following links will help you widen your knowledge:

Basic accounts from BBC Bitesize - US tactics and failures

YouTube

American tactics - I'm Stuck

Operation Rolling Thunder, Search and Destroy and Operation Ranch Hand - Mr Cloke

You may read in your textbooks that the US lost the war because they tried to fight a conventional war against a guerrilla enemy.  I question that; the problem for the US was that they did not get the chance to fight a conventional war. 

The result was that the US strategy flip-flopped from one expedient to another, and operations on the ground too easily descended into indiscriminate destruction and slaughter. 

1.   Hearts and Minds

President Johnson insisted that victory would only come if the Americans won the ‘hearts and minds’ of the Vietnamese people – he defined it as a policy of ‘hope and electricity’. 

 •  Between 1965 and 1972, the US provided $4bn economic assistance, including $800 million on food aid. 

 •  USAID:

      ◦ spent $550 in 1967 million on various projects, including rural development, education, public health, public works (such as schools, hospitals, highways and hydroelectric facilities) and housing refugees;

     ◦ sent thousands of agricultural experts, teachers, engineers and civilian advisers (more than 700 American physicians who served tours in USAID-built South Vietnamese hospitals). 

 •  the programme had some success in the towns (which stayed loyal during the Tet offensive), but not in the countryside. 

Source A

A leaflet distributed during the Vietnam War.  The text translates; "Then help the Army of the Republic of Vietnam protect you".

2.   Operation Rolling Thunder → bombing

On 7 February 1965 the VietCong attacked a US base at Pleiku; 8 US soldiers were killed, and 10 helicopters destroyed.  Johnson said: ‘We are swatting flies when we should be going after the manure pile’; on 13 February 1965 he ordered ‘Operation Rolling Thunder’ (bombing North Vietnam). 

 •  Operation Rolling Thunder did not attack towns, but strategic targets such as bridges roads railways and supply depots. 

 •  In addition to conventional bombs, US planes dropped cluster bombs (which burst in mid-air, spreading 600 ‘baby bombs’ which exploded into shrapnel pellets – later, cluster bombs used fibre-glass fragments, which could not be found by X-ray). 

 •  They also dropped napalm (388,000 tons during the course of the war), a sticky petrol-based jelly which created a huge fireball that burned jungle, buildings and humans. 

 •  Operation Rolling Thunder was planned to last eight weeks; in the end, it went on for three years and still failed.  Most of the bombs fell into fields and forests and had no effect at all.  It did not disrupt the production of arms because the north Vietnamese simply move their factories into secret locations and most of their weaponry came from China and the USSR anyway.  It did not stop the Ho Chi Minh trail.  In the meantime it killed thousands of civilians and turned them against the USA. 

 •  Although Rolling Thunder failed, the USA continued bombing; it was a way of attacking the enemy without endangering troops. 

      ◦ In 1969-70 the bombing was extended into Cambodia and Laos to attack VietCong bases there (‘Operation Menu’). 

      ◦ In December 1972, to force the North Vietnamese back to the peace negotiations, American planes bombed North Vietnam, dropping more bombs in 11 days than in the three years 1969–1971. 

 •  In the three years of Operation Rolling Thunder, the US made 153,784 raids, dropping 864,000 tons of bombs, causing $370 million of damage and 90,000 casualties, with the loss of 922 planes.  By 1970 the USA had dropped more bombs on Vietnam than had previously being dropped anywhere and everywhere in the whole of the 20th century. 

3.   Chemical warfare/ defoliation

Realising that they were unable to bomb accurately in forest areas, Agent Orange, a herbicide, was used from 1966 to destroy the leaves and undergrowth of the rainforest and expose VietCong operations (it was called 'Operation Ranch Hand').  The US mounted a propaganda to assure people that it was harmless to humans. 

 •  After a while, the Americans started using Agent Orange on the villagers’ crops in Vietcong-controlled areas. 

 •  Agent Orange caused huge problems after the war, but it failed militarily; US planes still got shot down, and the NVA and VietCong still moved around unseen. 

4.   ‘Air Mobility’ and Search and Destroy

General Westmoreland believed in Air Mobility tactics, dropping and extracting battalion-sized forces by helicopter for rapid surprise attacks on VietCong controlled villages. 

 •  This secured a significant victory in November 1965, when the Americans trapped the NVA in the Ia Drang Valley, killing 1,800 men dead, compared to only 240 Americans. 

 •  Ia Drang was a disaster, not a victory; for the next three years the North Vietnamese fought a guerrilla war, avoiding direct confrontation … but at the same time it convinced Westmoreland that the tactic was winning; for the rest of the war the main US strategy on the ground was ‘search and destroy’, where:

      ◦ patrols were helicoptered in rural areas to search a villages for VietCong fighters and sympathisers, and interrogate/torture people for information;

      ◦ since the villagers had been ordered to leave, it was assumed that anyone left (men, women or children) where VietCong;

      ◦ wounded prisoners were usually shot by both sides, healthy prisoners were taken back for questioning – and torture. 

      ◦ they were nicknamed ‘Zippo raids’ because the soldiers often used their ‘Zippo’ cigarette lighters to set fire to the houses. 

 •  To an extent, the patrols were bait – they would wander about until attacked, whereupon they would call in the airforce to napalm the enemy. 

 •  The measure of success was the ‘kill ratio’ of VietCong to US soldiers … but this was unreliable, since the North Vietnamese took their dead away with them, so the patrols often just made up the numbers of enemy dead.  An alternative measure of effectiveness was that six Vietnamese were killed for every VietCong weapon captured. 

 •  The impact of this on the US soldiers was catastrophic, and was one of the key reasons the US lost the War. 

5.   McNamara Line

Aware that the VietCong were being supplied from North Vietnam, US Defence Secretary Robert McNamara ordered the building, along the 17th parallel, an ‘interdiction line’. 

 •  It comprised three military bases, minefields, barbed wire and ditches, along with an 11km bulldozed strip called ‘The Trace’ (at a cost of $1½ billion and $¾ bn a year after that). 

 •  Since the line had to stop at the Laos border, a sub-project, named Igloo White, dropped thousands of naval ‘acoubuoy’ listening devices by parachute into the treetops, and rocket-shaped ‘Air-Delivered Seismic Intrusion Detectors’ (ADSIDs) which buried themselves into the ground, to listen for enemy movements.  In case the enemy moved quietly, thousands of 'button bomblets' (noisemakers that popped loudly when disturbed) were also dropped. 

 •  In January 1968, before the line was finished, and as part of the Tet Offensive, the NVA laid siege to the north-western base at Khe Sanh.  US forces broke through to relieve the fort in March, and declared the engagement a victory.  But the McNamara Line had clearly failed (and McNamara had resigned), and Khe Sanh was abandoned, and work on the physical line ended. 

 •  Project Igloo White continued, and the US Army believed that it allowed them to destroy 80% of supply along the Ho Chi Minh trail.  The NVA Easter Offensive of 1972 proved that this, too, was nonsense (the real figure was 15%) and Igloo White, also, was discontinued. 

6.   Phoenix Program

Aware that, far from winning hearts and minds, US military operations were actually turning many South Vietnamese against the US, Johnson appointed Robert Komer to set up the Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support organization (CORDS) as a joint civilian-military ‘pacification initiative’. 

 •  This did not just involve good works among the people.  A key element was the ‘protection’ of the South Vietnamese in their strategic hamlets, and chief among the initiatives to do this was the Phoenix Program (1968-72), in which Provincial Reconnaissance Units (PRUs) marauded door-to-door through villages, captured VietCong and/or ‘enemy’ civilians, interrogated and tortured them, and ‘neutralised’ (ie imprisoned, ‘turned’ or murdered) them. 

 •  Coming immediately after the Tet Offensive, which had caused the deaths of many VietCong guerrillas from the South, the Phoenix Programme appeared successful, and there was a significant decrease of terrorist activity in the South … but at the cost of wholly alienating the population (a strange achievement for a ‘hearts and minds’ initiative). 

7.   The effects of the war on civilians in Vietnam

it is estimated that:

 •  4 million Vietnamese died on both sides of the conflict

 •  More than a million South Vietnamese civilians were killed. 

 •  More than half a million Vietnamese children since the war have been born with birth defects that can be directly linked to chemical poisoning. 

 •  The country was impoverished/ agricultural production, particularly in the North, was purposely decimated:

      ◦ one seventh of South Vietnam’s land area, including its most fertile cropland and forest – had been sprayed with Agent Orange, poisoning soil, rivers, and the food chain, disrupting ecosystems;

      ◦ 1,200 square miles had been bulldozed & stripped;

      ◦ deforestation led to flooding and soil erosion, compounding agricultural difficulties

 •  There were 21 million bomb craters in South Vietnam.  Unexploded bombs and landmines have continued to kill or injure thousands, especially children and farmers. 

 •  4 million of the people in South Vietnam were refugees; 800,000 orphans, 500,000 prostitutes. 

 •  Hundreds of thousands of physically and/or mentally maimed casualties reduced to begging.

 •  In the North, 70% of industry damaged/ all the roads damaged and almost impassable. 

 •  Vietnam remained internationally isolated, and a US trade embargo (lifted only in 1994) created economic problems. 

 •  Perhaps 1.5 million Vietnamese fled the country after 1975 (the ‘boat people’); tens of thousands died at sea due to storms, overcrowding or pirates. 

Source G

A cartoon by the American cartoonist Herblock, February 1968: "I don't know if either side is winning, but I know who's losing".

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