The morale of the soldiers who were in the North was growing because they felt the need to win the war and regain the control o their country. They could see what America was doing in destroying Vietnam and they wanted to do something o stop this from happening.
The US were fed up with the criticism that they were receiving so they decided that something needed to be done that would win them the war built still avoid criticism. This led to the introduction of Smart Bombs. These were specially designed to hit specific targets, which meant that the US now had the ability to destroy anything that was associated with the Vietcong. This tactic would have worked extremely well except for the Vietcong introduction of anti-aircraft missiles. These missiles shot down any US plane or the bombs that the pilots were dropping. Although this stopped some planes from attacking some of the planes were still managing to get through. The Vietcong managed to make a large advantage out of this by using it as propaganda. The way that they did this was to display, to the people of Vietnam, the number of planes that had been shot down. This was a sign of the communist victory. It showed that they were winning the war and made the people who lived in the North of Vietnam to have faith in them and what they were doing for them.
The US knew that with continuing to use the tactics that they were using they would not get anywhere so they decided to start trying other methods of warfare. The US then introduced Search and Destroy Mission’s. This was where, if the US believes that there was a large number of Vietcong in a village, they would invade. The invasion involved the people in the village being interrogated and anyone who was thought to be a member of the VC would have been hunted down and killed. If there were any weapons found, they would have been destroyed. Violence and torture became a common occurrence during the missions and it was often that the innocent civilians became the victims of the hunts. The US used this in response to the Vietcong’s use of Guerrilla Warfare. If the VC were in their own clothes the only way that they were able to kill then would be to kill a large number of people. One of the main Search and Destroy missions was My Lai, which later became infamous and received massive criticism from the US media. The US army believed that the village of My Lai was filled with VC and so they invaded. The whole of the village was destroyed with the population being massacred. The US soldiers got the criticism although it was the generals who ordered the soldiers to do what they did. The soldiers were ordered to kill every person who was in the village, man woman or child whether they believed that they belonged to the VC or not. It was assumed that many f the villagers were communist. There were other factors that led to this massacre including the US soldiers wanting revenge for the death of friends in previous battles. Because the soldiers did what they did we are shown how much of an impact the generals had on what the soldiers did. This was very unsuccessful because most of the VC managed to escape before the village was destroyed. This meant that almost all of the people who were killed were innocent civilians. This did not have a good response when it was reported 18 months later in America. There were photos of dead bodies shown and there were also a number of interviews with the soldiers who took place in My Lai and felt guilty. The response that the soldiers reports got when they were shown were not very good. The US people could no understand how the soldiers were saying that such an awful event could be seen as a success. This event led to a large scale anti-war movement. The army knew that they had to do something to make it up to the Vietnam people to prove that they were fighting against the army and not the civilians. The US decided that Pacification would be he only way to make this happen. The US tried to win over the hearts and minds of the South Vietnamese people. The aim of this was to keep the support of the people in South Vietnam to stop them joining the VC to make them harder to defeat. This tactic was unsuccessful because the Americans were always going to be unpopular in the South of Vietnam and nothing that they could attempt would wok in their favour.
The Americans realised that many of the VC were taking shelter in the dense jungle. This made it hard for the Americans to search the VC in ode to attack them. The US realised that the only thing that they could do is to use chemical that would clear the jungle. The US began to use Agent Orange and Agent Blue which worked as a pesticide to clear the jungle so that they could see he enemy on the ground. This tactic was successful in doing what the Americans hoped it would do because it cleared the jungle. Unfortunately there were some very bad consequences that affected the health of the people of Vietnam. Some of these things included the amount of people who contracted cancer being increased and also the number of children who were being born deformed. As America was becoming more and more desperate to win the war they began to use more chemicals. One of these chemicals was called Napalm which caused horrific injuries. It would stick to its victims causing burns and deformities. This tactic was not a failure. It had devastating effects of the civilians who continued to turn against the US. This gave the media horrendous pictures to show to the people in America. This encouraged more anti-war supporters acting on what they believed in.
Towards the end of the war there was a change of tactics for the VC. On the day of the Tet Festival in Vietnam the VC started to use conventional warfare against the Americans. As they were so close to winning the war, and it was a traditional Vietnamese festival, the Americans believed that the VC soldiers would stop fighting to take part in the celebrations that were being held. As the American soldiers got involved with the celebrations the Vietcong continued to fight and attacked the US bases. The VC were trying to show that they would never give up fighting until the war was won. This was a big attempt to try to get America to take their soldiers out of Vietnam. Though the Americans saw this as a success for them the VC also saw it as being successful in their favour. America saw this as an advantage for them because 47% of the people that were killed were VC soldiers but also a disadvantage for them because of the devastation that was caused in the south of Vietnam. The people in the North o Vietnam saw it as a defeat because of the number of people that were killed and the act that it would take them a long time to recover from what had happened. The Vietcong saw this event as a good thing even though 47% of the people that hey had killed were their own men. They thought of it as being good because of the fact that they managed to get into Saigon. They thought that this symbolised that the US army was weakening, which would men that they are close to winning the war. The people in the US began to question the army’s ability to fight and win the war. The reason for this was that the army was saying that they were closer to winning the war but the only thing that was being reported was that they were causing devastation in Vietnam and if this was the case they were not winning the war in the correct way. This was the major event that led to Vietnamization, the withdrawal of the USA from the war. America said that the South Vietnamese army could continue with the war with the aid of weapons from the US but there would be no US soldiers partaking in the war. The Vietnamization was the choice of President Nixon. He made his decision because of 2 reasons. He knew that the US was not going to win the war after the reaction of the Vietcong in the Tet Offensive. There was a large anti-war movement and he didn’t want to lose the support of the people in the US. Vietnamization had an affect on the way that the soldiers fought. None of them wanted to be the last left in Vietnam as they wee being removed. Many of the soldiers gave up fighting because they didn’t see why they should have to die for a lost cause and if it had no effect on their country.
