General Westmoreland was the commander of the American forces in Vietnam, he had a basic tactic, this was called search and destroy. The Americans sent out “search and destroy” platoons. Search and destroy was known as Zippo raids by the American troops. These were searching out villages and then destroying them. They were called Zippo raids after the name of the lighters they used to light/destroy the villages. The us often brought in gun ships, helicopters, aircraft strikes or artillery to back up their platoons, when the platoons were not killing as much Vietnamese as they should have done. However during all this a lot of the American troops were getting killed. But general Westmoreland did not mind this as he thought that the American public would not mind the losses needed to beat the communists in Vietnam. But all of the American losses soon caused the…to grow in America. But although the NFL and the Vietnamese suffered much more higher casualties, they did not mind this as they seemed willing to pit their, lives on the line for defending their country.
But because operation rolling thunder and search and destroy turned out to more of a failures than successes. They wanted to kill as many as they could but they hadn’t killed a lot, so the US often exadurated on the number of gooks or charlies that had been killed.
One of the biggest problems the US faced was the dense jungle. This was because it was raining most of the time and also because the Vietcong used the jungle to hide, to set booby traps and to build tunnel. They built tunnels so that the Vietcong snipers could shoot the US easily. However to try and prevent failing due to the jungles the US used agent orange and agent blue to destroy the vegetation and make the Vietcong sick and weak. The US used b-52 bomber planes, these planes would drop cluster bombs on Charlie positions, and then the bombs would burst into about a dozen of small bombs. The UIS also used a chemical called napalm. This chemical was later e-enforced with prosperous, and this would stick to the victim’s body and then burn them alive.
But whilst all this was going on the NVA and the Vietcong had got help and supplies from communist china. All of the supplies etc were sent down the Ho Chi Minh trail, this trail was a series of about 10 trails through the jungle, and despite what the
Americans did they could not stop it. This was because every time the US bombed one of the trails they simply made another one. And also if the Vietcong saw a bomber planes in the sky then they had SAM missiles to shoot them down, so then the US had to drop the bombs from a much higher altitude so their aim would not be 100% accurate.
The Vietcong had some quite successful and unsuccessful tactics also. Their tactics all together were called guerrilla warfare. They had a mine named the bouncing Betty. This mine was a stepped on by a US soldier, then it would be flung up about 1 meter into the air then it exploded in front of the soldier. It was designed to explode at the same height as a males genitals which it did, the Vietcong thought that if the US want their soldiers to survive they might as well have half of them surviving.
One other Vietcong tactic was bobby trap these were designed for the careless soldiers. The Vietcong would put stakes made from bamboo into the ground and then a careless US soldier would walk along the ground and fall into one cutting them or their legs into pieces.
In 1968 the Vietcong began the Tet offensive. The Tet offensive was the Vietcong’s surprise attack on the US. It began in January 1968, and lasted many months. This had marked a major change of tactics by North Vietnam, the Vietcong had swapped guerrilla warfare for an all out assault on the soldier, and also the Tet offensive was an urban war and not a jungle war.
