- Anti-aircraft guns. Were very effective and shot down most of the U.S aircraft which crashed to the ground in North Vietnam.
- Surface-to-air missiles. Supplied by the Soviet Union, were new and high-tech but not as effective as the older anti-aircraft guns.
- Air-to-air missile. There were Soviet Mig-17’s and Mig-2 PF fighters. The Vietnamese pilots were highly skilled and held in high regard by their U.S counterparts.
When the U.S prevented the reunification of North and South Vietnam, The North Vietnamese communists restarted the guerrilla campaign. There were around 5,000 guerrillas in South Vietnam supported by around 100,000 communist sympathisers in the countryside. The Vietcong were guerrillas recruited from men and women who lived in, or had fled from South Vietnam. By 1961 there were around 20,000 Vietcong in the south; by 1964 there were around 100,000 Vietcong in South Vietnam. They operated in the jungle, swamps and forested hills in a guerrilla campaign; mostly at night. It was very hard to distinguish between VC (Vietcong) and South Vietnam peasants as the VC had no uniform; they both wore black pyjamas and straw hats. The U.S executed suspected VC’s but were condemned, as they did not know for sure whether or not they were part of the VC. So to combat this the U.S created strategic hamlets. Peasants were forced to move to the nearest strategic hamlet (which could have been miles away). This was very unpopular and only created more VC sympathisers. The surrounding areas of strategic hamlets were declared ‘free fire’ zones, where anyone found in them would be presumed VC and shot on site. The U.S soldiers feared the VC, mostly because of the booby traps that they set.
The VC were particularly proficient at planting booby traps. They were very effective and put the fear of God into U.S soldiers, making them watch their every step. Some were merely concealed holes in the ground that would break the ankle of anyone who stepped into it. Others, like the ‘Punji’ trap were more lethal. The ‘Punji’ trap was a deep hole with upturned bamboo or metal spikes tipped with poison or human excrement to cause blood poisoning. Other booby traps included the ‘Bouncing Betty’, a mine that was buried just under the surface of the path which would explode when someone walked over it; and the ‘Tin Can’ trap, a grenade with detonating mechanism attached to trip wire. One historian said, “Booby traps accounted for 11 per cent of American deaths in Vietnam and 17 per cent of wounds,”. America had to respond and find a way of avoiding booby traps.
The U.S army was trained in conventional methods of war, where they fought with a front line. The VC, however would not fight face to face as they knew they could not win. Instead they waged guerrilla war; ambushes, booby traps, night-time raids and most importantly, no front line. To overcome this problem the U.S hunted down the VC on search and destroy missions. On search and destroy missions American soldiers would search fields, jungle and villages for the Vietcong and kill as many as they could. Locating Vietcong proved difficult and it was hard to ascertain how successful search and destroy missions. The body count was introduced to do just that. This was the number of Vietcong killed. The more Vietcong killed, the more successful the mission was.
To get round the multitude of difficulties that America had to face in Vietnam, the U.S used helicopters. As I have already stated, the war in Vietnam was fought under tropical conditions that were completely different to what the Americans had been trained in. There were also booby traps everywhere on the ground. So as the war progressed U.S. forces increasingly used helicopters to overcome these problems. Helicopters played a dominant role in search and destroy missions; they would rapidly move soldiers into position then spray the ground with machine gun and rocket fire. The helicopters were equipped with machine guns and rocket launchers so they could be used as gunships. Helicopters were also used to carry supplies from the large coastal supply bases to the smaller inland fire bases from which search and destroy units went out on patrol.
The rain forests and jungle gave the Vietcong plenty of cover, making it hard for American pilots to target them from a helicopter or aeroplane. In response to this the U.S decided to take away the cover. The Americans used chemicals and giant mechanical ploughs to do this. One was called napalm. It was jellied petrol that set alight when it was dropped and burned everything that it landed on. It was intended to burn the leaves of trees, which it did, but it also caused horrific burns to anyone who was near a napalm attack. A chemical called Agent Orange, defoliant, was also used to strip away leaves and under growth. It contained a poisonous chemical called dioxin. It could cause birth deformities and cancer. Some American soldiers who worked at air bases contracted cancer, as did many Vietnamese civilians. American Pilots systematically eradicated the Vietnamese rain forest until 1970 after international condemnation. By the end of the war, 25,000 square kilometres of the rainforest in Vietnam had been destroyed.
As it turned out the mass destruction was almost unnecessary. The VC adapted to the lack of cover by increasing invisibility with better camouflage more suited to their new surroundings and by building more underground tunnels. There were huge complexes of tunnels, even extending to underneath the American camps. The tunnels were extremely useful when under attack or when retreating after having conducted an attack. This was in great contrast to the U.S bases which very conspicuous and open to attack like Plieku (an American firebase) was in 1965.
The North Vietnamese used the Ho Chi Minh trail to send guerrillas, weapons, equipment and food to the Vietcong in the south. The trail was 1000 kilometres long and 80 kilometres wide in places. It had dummy paths and depots to fool enemy aircraft. It was very well covered by three canopies in some places and a workforce of 40,000 to keep the traffic flowing. North Vietnam’s main supplier of aircraft, heavy guns and SAM missiles was the Soviet Union; most ammunition, food and handguns came from China. For the U.S however the easiest method of supplying their forces was by aeroplane. This was more difficult so disadvantaged the Americans again.
By January 1968, General Westmoreland of the U.S was convinced he was winning the war. America had one won every single set piece battle. Until now the NVA and VC had tried to avoid open confrontation and the NVA had lost 100,000 men in 1967. So it came as a major shock, when celebrating the Tet Festival of Lunar New Year, on 31st January 1968, communist rocket and mortar fire rained on over a hundred cities (including the capital Saigon) in South Vietnam. The Tet offensive was a great risk as it exposed the VC to enemy fire for the first time. The North Vietnamese plan was that the South Vietnamese people would grow sick of the conflict and rise against the South Vietnamese government to support the North, forcing the U.S out. This did not happen, however and the VC and NVA lost 30,000 men; they would never recover their full strength.
The U.S media were so shocked that the VC and NVA put up such fight (even though they actually lost) that they gave the impression, to the American public that the U.S had suffered a defeat. U.S congress refused to give Westmoreland anymore troops and L.B.J decided not to stand for re-election. In 1968 peace talks between North and South Vietnam began. The gradual withdrawal of U.S troops went on from 1968 to1973. Despite the fact that only 2 per cent of the people killed in the Tet offensive were American, compared with 71 per cent that were from the VC or NVA during its ‘victory’, the Tet offensive was the beginning of the American defeat in Vietnam.
Both sides ultimately had to use a combination of tactics between 1956 and 1968 to respond to the enemy.
By Nicholas Kawecki
