The Vietnam War was a protracted armed struggle between North Vietnam and the combined forces of South Vietnam and the United States of America. It took place in Southeast Asia from 1954 to 1975, during the Cold War. It came to an end when Saigon, the capital South Vietnam, fell in the hands of the North Vietnamese Army. It was not just another guerrilla war, because the United States used the full power of his non-nuclear arsenal, which included napalm, cluster bombs, agent orange, as well as all types of helicopters, fighter aircraft and B-52 bombers; however, the American government lost it to the Vietcong insurgent forces and the highly-trained North Vietnamese Army.
The Vietnam War was the continuation of the French Indochina War, which had just ended in May 1954, with the French defeat at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu. In that year, the French government’s representative and Pham Van Dong, who acted in the name of Ho Chi Minh, leader of the Vietminh forces, signed the Geneva Accords, which divided the territory of Vietnam into North and South Vietnam, using the 17th Parallel line as the border between the two countries. With the full support of China and the Soviet Union, the Vietminh would become the North Vietnamese Army as Hanoi became the capital of North Vietnam, and Saigon the capital of the South. Laos and Cambodia became independent countries, too.
As a new independent country, South Vietnam, which was ruled by Ngo Dinh Diem, began receiving American military support from 1959. Fearing a domino effect in Southeast Asia, the Dwight Eisenhower Administration sent weapons and military advisers to counteract the guerrilla attacks. In 1960, the communist insurgents in South Vietnam got formally organized into an effective guerrilla force, which was known as the Vietcong. The American military presence in Southeast Asia increased under the John F. Kennedy Administration, who sent the Green Berets to provide military training and advice to the South Vietnamese Army.
Below, Map of Vietnam after the 1954 Geneva Conference agreements, which divided the country into two politically different nations.
As violence and guerrilla attacks increased in South Vietnam, the Lyndon B. Johnson Administration decided to no longer support Ngo Dinh Diem. As a result, he was overthrown and assassinated in 1963. He was replaced by Duong Van Minh. The United States of America wanted to intervene directly in the conflict and to send US Army troops and Marines into Vietnam. But to do that, they needed an excuse. Thus, the Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara secretly orchestrated what is known in history as the ‘Gulf of Tonkin Incident’, in which the destroyer USS Maddox (DD-731) was purportedly followed and attacked by North Vietnamese torpedo boats when she was cruising in the Gulf of Tonkin doing intelligence close to the North Vietnam coasts in August 1964. As a result, the US Congress approved the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which authorized President Lyndon B. Johnson to send combat troops to Vietnam and to carry out air raids against North Vietnamese targets.
In contrast to WW2, the US ground forces did not conduct massive military campaigns that comprised large tracts of territory in a total-war fashion in Southeast Asia. From 1965, American General William C. Westmoreland implemented the main US strategy to fight against the Vietcong guerrillas and their North Vietnamese cadres; it was called Search and Destroy, which involved isolated military ground operations, usually with air insertions with helicopters (Air Cavalry), to seek, find and destroy the enemy. Each one of these operation was based on intelligence information. Meanwhile, the Vietcong insurgents were trained by North Vietnamese Army officers and they were supplied by North Vietnam through the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The communist guerrillas also used a complex network of tunnels to either escape from a bombing raid or to get close to their military targets. The most famous of these tunnel systems was the Iron Triangle, which was located about 50 km north of Saigon.
Below, an H1 Huey helicopter inserting troops during a search and destroy operation.
The Battle of Ia Drang was the first intense battle in the American war in Vietnam, which was the result of a search and destroy mission, taking place in November 1965. From 1966 to 1967, important ground operations were carried out by the American forces, such as Attleboro, Masher, Junction City, Daggerthrust, and Cedar Falls. Some of these operations were conducted together with the South Vietnamese Army and the Australian Army, which was the only country that effectively fought alongside the US Army. At the beginning of 1968, when mass media and the American public still supported the war in Southeast Asia, the North Vietnamese Army and the Vietcong launched a massive counteroffensive against several targets in South Vietnam, which included the city of Hue, the American Embassy in Saigon, and the US Base of Khe Sanh; it was called the Tet Offensive, which was launched on January 31, 1968.
The Battle of Hue and the Battle of Khe Sanh were the most viciously fought military engagements of the Tet Offensive. Although the American and South Vietnamese forces were able to repel the attacks and to recover their lost grounds, with the city of Hue being retaken, the perception of the American mass media was a negative one, as the TV journalists on the field portrayed it as a North Vietnamese victory. However, it was a costly communist counteroffensive for North Vietnam, in terms of men and military resources, as it would take more than a year for the Vietcong to fully recover. Thus, although it failed militarily, Tet was a political victory for the North, because it made the war unpopular, forcing Lyndon B. Johnson not to run for a second term as the US Senate cut back the military budget allocated for Vietnam.
The newly-elected American President, Richard M. Nixon, began a de-escalation of the war, which was called ‘vietnamization’ of the conflict. It boiled down to replacing the American troops with South Vietnamese soldiers after these have been trained and equipped. It would be done in different phases, starting in 1970. As the North Vietnamese Army and the Vietcong increased their attacks in the South, the Nixon Administration sought to put an end to the war through negotiations, which was conducted by his National Security Advisor and Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger; ‘peace with honor’ it was called. In order to put pressure on the government of North Vietnam, Richard Nixon ordered several bombing operations against targets in North Vietnam, like Operation Linebacker.
The US military presence in South Vietnam ended with the Paris Peace Accords, which was signed on January 27, 1973. Thus, by April 1973, all US Army combat soldiers and US Marines had been withdrawn from Southeast Asia, remaining behind logistic and medical personnel. Despite the peace agreements, the North Vietnamese Army and the Vietcong resumed their military offensives against South Vietnam by mid 1973. In 1974, the communist offensives continued unrelentingly until the Fall of Saigon in April 1975. This city, the former capital of South Vietnam, was renamed ‘Ho Chi Minh City’.
Vietnam War combat action footage. 1968-Battle-Of-Khe Sanh. Public Domain Historical Video.
Below, Boeing B-52 bombers during Operation Linebacker
