Agent Orange was a chemical used to strip the trees of all their leaves and green so that the Americans could see where the Vietcong or any persons using the ho chi minh trail. This was extremely useful for finding the Vietcong alone their way to coming into the south or Vietnam but the only problem was that when they found the route they were using the North Vietnam Vietcong would just move the trail which was very easy considering they were all on bikes.
Search and destroy was a tactic used by the US it was were the US pick certain villages which may have or may have not been a threat to them and travelled to that particular village and set the village a light and burnt it down. This was useful for the US to get rid of any threats to them.
Another typical tactic of the US was bombing this was a obvious tactic of bombing all towns and villages that they wanted and that they saw as a threat this was useful because it killed most people in the destination which they bombed along with any soldiers or threats.
Operation rolling thunder was the name given to Americas bombing campaign against the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam War. Operation rolling thunder officially started on February 24th 1995 though the first attack did not actually happen until the 2nd of March when 100 US and VNAF planes attacked an ammunition base. Rolling thunder was the code for a nonstop but interrupted bombing raids in the north of Vietnam its purpose was to destroy all will of the north Vietcong to fight and also to destroy all of their air and ammunition bases.
All of these tactics were useful to the US in many different ways the styles of Tactics of the US are all very militarily weapon like.
Vietcong Tactics
The VC had 3 main Tactics which consisted of Guerrilla warfare, the ho chi minh and the vietnamisation
Guerrilla warfare was a tactic used by the Vietcong it’s based on booby-trap and small tunnels going through the ground which has many levels guerrilla warfare soldiers were normal people normally dressed in black pjs and robes the pipes and tunnels the guerrilla warfare soldiers were getting around in were very narrow but also they went on for miles and on some sucumstancies there were even class rooms for children in some of the travel lines if an US found one of these pipes and tunnels and threw grenades down there it wouldn’t do much damage and also all the Vietcong could go out another entrance to that tunnel and go behind the Americans and kill them from behind the Vietcong did have some weaponry supplied by Russia but they were mainly all guerrilla warfare fighters. This Tactic was very good and killed many Americans it also put the Vietcong out of danger by them not being in range of gunfire while the booby traps go of so the Americans cannot react.
Ho chi minh trail was a trail used by the Viet Cong to get from the north of Vietnam into the south the ho chi minh went through Cambodia a Laos this was very useful as if the South Vietnamese found the ho chi minh trail it could be moved very easily and quickly and the south vitnamses would have to find it again and if they found it again, again it would be moved.
Stephen Rodwell.
