Tactics in the Vietnam War (1965-68)
US tactics
- A ‘Hearts and Minds’ campaign tried to win the Vietnamese peasants over by attempting to persuade them that the peasants were on their side – the policy failed.
- In 1962, Kennedy approved ‘Operation Ranch Hand’. This involved spraying Agent Orange which destroyed thousands of trees but it was later found to have caused birth deformities in children and cancers in soldiers fighting the war.
- Bombing was also directed against territory controlled by the NLF in South Vietnam. The plan was for Operation Rolling Thunder to last for six weeks but it lasted for the next three years. In that time, the US dropped 1 million tons of bombs on Vietnam.
- B-52 bombers, flying at heights that prevented them from being seen or heard, dropped 8 million tons of bombs on Vietnam between 1965 and 1973.
- As well as explosive devices, the US air force dropped a considerable number of incendiary devices. The most infamous of these was napalm.
- In 1962, President Kennedy had approved Operation Ranch Hand. This involved the spraying of chemicals from the air in an attempt to destroy NLF hiding places.
- Chemicals were also sprayed on crops. Between 1962 and 1969, 688,000 agricultural acres were sprayed with a chemical called ‘Agent Blue’.
Vietnamese tactics
- For arms, ammunition and special equipment, the Vietcong depended on the Ho Chi Minh trail. Other needs were met inside South Vietnam.
- By the mid-1960s, most main force Vietcong troops were armed with Chinese versions of the Russian AK-47 submachine gun. They also used a range of effective Soviet and Chinese light and medium machine guns.
- For destroying armoured vehicles or bunkers, the Vietcong had highly effective rocket-propelled grenades and recoilless rifles. Mortars were also available in large numbers and had the advantage of being very easy to transport.
- Many weapons, including booby traps and mines, were homemade in villages.
- Local forces also designed primitive weapons, some designed to frighten intruders but others were extremely dangerous ‘Punji traps’.
Guerrilla tactics
- Mao Tse Tung had used guerrilla tactics when leading the Communist revolution in China, which ended in victory in 1949. Ho Chi Minh and the NLF greatly admired Mao and decided to use the same tactics against the Americans and South Vietnamese army in South Vietnam.
- They organised the guerrilla army into small groups of between three and ten soldiers, called cells.
- The Vietcong, following the example of Chinese guerrillas, always gave the highest priority to creating safe base areas
- Ho’s NLF guerrillas had to follow a strict code of conduct.
- The NLF won the support of the peasants because they promised to take land from large landowners and give it to the peasants.
- In some cases, they actually became guerrillas and joined the war. The vast majority of peasants backed the guerrillas but those who refused, despite the code of conduct, were often threatened and beaten.
- Using the peasant villages as their base, the guerrillas went out into the jungle. They attacked units of the South Vietnamese army, the ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam), and ambushed patrols of American soldiers.
- Out in the jungle, the guerrillas never chose to fight unless they were certain of winning.
- The biggest tunnel systems were in the Iron Triangle and the Cu Chi District, only 20 miles from Saigon.