The USA should have been successful in Vietnam because of its technological and military supremacy. However, the USA failed to use this supremacy effectively to defeat a smaller less advanced enemy Do you agree or disagree with this interpretation?

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The USA should have been successful in Vietnam because of its technological and military supremacy.

However, the USA failed to use this supremacy effectively to defeat a smaller less advanced enemy

Do you agree or disagree with this interpretation

I agree and disagree with this quote.  America was far advanced than the Vietminh and Vietcong. But the way that the communist recovered from there loses and that they had already drove France and Japan out. So there guerrilla tactics did work against stronger opponents. Even though the Americans out numbered and killed more the communist were willing to accept loses because they were fighting to free there country and make it one country, whereas the American public didn’t want more and more men to die for a useless cause. Maybe if the public had of stayed on there side America would of won the war.

 There were around 2.8 million Americans which served in Vietnam. Two million of these men were drafted. So only a small part of the army was professionals and the rest of soldiers were men which may have been against the war and have not experience. 48% of them died in the first 3 months. In total 58,000 American soldiers were killed thought out the war in Vietnam. A main part of the army were black because rich people could delay there draft to go to university. But just because the Americans had a lot of men doesn’t mean they were going to win because most of were poorly trained for jungle fighting, 11% of men were killed by booby traps. Soldiers on patrol didn’t just have enemy ambush to worry about there were booby traps as well. They were cheap, easy to make and very effective against clumsy inexperienced soldiers. Sharpened bamboo stakes hidden in shallow pits covered by leafs and sticks. But what the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong feared the most were bombing raid from the American planes.  The Americans had developed a variety of bombs the cluster bomb were called the ‘mother bomb’ by the Vietnamese they exploded in the air and released up to 600 smaller bombs. When one of those hit the ground, it exploded into thousands of metal pellet. Napalm was a bomb which exploded and showers the surrounding victims with burning petroleum jelly. Napalm sticks to the skin and burns at 800 degrees centigrade. This forced the communist to dig deep tunnels and use them for air-raid shelter. The tunnels around Saigon were up to 320km long. But the bombing raids weren’t always effective as it was hard to find Vietcong bases so they had to use new tactics like operation rolling thunder which continuously bombed north Vietnam was only supposed t only last 3 weeks as the Americans thought the Vietminh would surrender but they didn’t so it went on for a further 3 years.  But the bombing of cities by both sides didn’t have a deceive impact on the war. Another tactic was Search and Destroy. It was a basic idea the American troops would search out the communist and destroy the big enemy forces. But searching and destroying the enemy was one thing, but all to often the enemy couldn’t be founded and this got the American frustrated so they started to burn villages in sum cases the villages had no role in helping the Vietcong, these raids were known as the ‘Zippo’  raid after the lighter. If the VC couldn’t be founded or be forced into a battle the then the villages would suffer. Chemicals were used in the jungle and on crops to kill the vegetation, so that the VC couldn’t use the jungle as cover. The most used defoliant was Agent Orange it was later discovered that Agent Orange contained a dioxin which caused cancer among those who used it. The Australians also agreed to send troops to Vietnam. The Australians also had a reason to worry about the domino theory. They feared the spread of communism in South East Asia and by 1969 there were 7000 Australians troops in Vietnam. The Vietcong feared the Australian troops more because they were better jungle fighters than the Americans.

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Source A is chart to show how many American troops went to Vietnam from 1962 to 1972. The American government had to release all the information on Vietnam because of the ‘freedom of information act’ so we will be able to trust the information on this graph is correct. But it doesn’t say when it was made so we don’t know if its a primary or secondary source. However the graph has it its limits of usefulness as it doesn’t show how many of the men were drafted into the army and how many were professionals. This source backs up ...

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