Vietnam: The Big War and the Vietnam

Syndrome

Lsn 23

The Big War

• Bombing– Rolling

Thunder• Airmobility

– Ia Drang• Search and

destroy– Junction City

• Tet– Phase III

• Defeat– Domestic

issues– Vietnamization– Withdrawal

• Legacy– Vietnam

Syndrome

Bombing: Rolling Thunder

• Sustained bombing campaign designed to– Reduce North Vietnamese/Viet Cong activities by

affecting their will – Improve South Vietnamese morale – Provide US and South Vietnam with a bargaining tool – Reduce infiltration of men and material – Demonstrate US resolve to support allies

• Gradually expanded from 63,000 tons of bombs in 1965 to 226,000 in 1967– Bomb tonnage surpassed what had been dropped on

Germany, Italy, and Japan in World War II

Bombing: Rolling Thunder

• Heavy reliance on air power overestimated the capabilities of strategic bombing and underestimated North Vietnamese will

• North Vietnamese were able to rebuild damage, seemingly strengthen their will, and actually increase infiltration in spite of the bombing

F-4Cs on a mission over Vietnam

Bombing: Rolling Thunder

• Problems– Micromanaged targeting

and target restrictions frustrated military planners

– Difficulty in finding targets reduced effectiveness

– Gradual escalation and frequent interruptions allowed North Vietnamese to recover

Bombing: Rolling Thunder

• Restrictions– White House picked targets,

strike force size, weapons, and timing of attacks

– Most strategic targets were off limits:

• 30-mile radius around Hanoi • 10-mile radius around

Haiphong • Wide buffer zone along

Chinese border– North Vietnamese airfields

were off limits – Could not attack SAM sites

unless fired upon

Bombing Rolling Thunder

• Results– Ineffective– Showed a large

disconnect between political considerations and military objectives

– “Rolling Thunder had not been built to succeed, and it didn’t.”

• John Correll Johnson supposedly said, “I won’t let those Air Force generals bomb the smallest outhouse without checking with me.”

Airmobility: Ia Drang

• In 1962 Secretary McNamara tasks the “Howze Board” to study the emerging helicopter technology and develop “a plan for implementing fresh and perhaps unorthodox concepts which will give us a significant increase in mobility.”

• In Jan 1963 the Army begins forming and testing the 11th Air Assault Division which will ultimately result in the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) being activated in July 1965

• In Aug the division began arriving in Vietnam

Airmobility: Ia Drang

• The airmobility concept was tested in combat when the 1st Cav was ordered to the Ia Drang valley in Oct 1965

• On Nov 14 a US battalion (about 450 men) engaged some 2000 North Vietnamese regulars at LZ X-Ray

Lieutenant Colonel Hal Moore on LZ X-Ray

Airmobility: Ia Drang

• US relied heavily on airmobility and firepower– Helicopters

provided transportation, surprise, firepower, logistical support, evacuation

– Artillery, bombers, close air support

Airmobility: Ia Drang

• Numerically a huge US victory– 3,000 North Vietnamese

killed compared to 300 Americans

– Confirms Westmoreland’s “search and destroy” strategy

• North Vietnamese return to guerrilla warfare and make tactical adjustments to deal with US firepower

Search and Destroy

• North Vietnamese– Settled in for protracted

struggle– Retreated to sanctuaries– Fought only when it was to

their advantage to do so– Targeted US will and South

Vietnamese weakness

• US– Concentrated on large-scale

search and destroy missions against enemy base areas

– “To find and smash each [enemy base camp], one by one, is an essential task, a prime object in conclusively successful campaigning.” (DA Pam 4525-2, 1967)

– Often meant massive bombing followed by ground troops surrounding the area and helicopter-borne troops flying it to clear it

Search and Destroy

• Search and destroy operations were designed to “find, fix, flush, and finish” the enemy

• They came to represent the US trying to fight the “Big War” with large units stomping through the jungle trying to find illusive small guerrilla groups who would fight only on their own terms

Search and Destroy: Junction City

• Feb 22 to May 14, 1967• Largest operation in

Vietnam to date• Primary mission was to

search for and then destroy the Central Office of South Vietnam (COSVN) and Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army installations

Junction City: Phase 1

• Phase I begins on 22 February with five U.S. brigades forming a horseshoe shaped cordon in the western half of War Zone C. – 25th Division would block on

the west along the Cambodian border

– 1st Infantry Division (with the 173rd Brigade attached) would block along the border on the north and on the east along Provincial Route 4

Junction City: Phase 1

• One task force of the 173rd Bde conducts an airborne assault and two other battalions assault by helicopter to seal off the Cambodian border

Junction City: Phase 1

• On D plus 1 a brigade of the 25th Division and the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment (attached to the 25th), which had positioned themselves on the southern edge of the horseshoe the previous day, would attack north into the horseshoe.

• The horseshoe forces would conduct search and destroy operations in their areas.

Junction City: Phase 1

• Simultaneous with the search, a Special Forces and Civilian Irregular Defense Group camp near Prek Klok would be established for future interdiction of enemy supply and infiltration routes in War Zone C.

An airstrip capable of handling C-130's would be constructed at the camp and a second similar airfield would be constructed in the vicinity of Katum. These facilities would facilitate future operations in the area.

Junction City: Phase 1

• During the operation, particular attention was to be devoted to searching suspected locations of the political and military elements of the Central Office of South Vietnam.

• A thorough interrogation of all persons apprehended was to be conducted.

Stars and Stripes photograph of a 1st Infantry Div soldier in the entrance of a tunnel leading to a VC headquarters during Operation Junction City.

Junction City: Phase 2

• During Phase 2, II Field Force elements would focus their attention on the eastern portion of War Zone C, conducting search and destroy operations against COSVN, Viet Cong, and North Vietnamese forces and installations.

– The Saigon River was to be bridged at its intersection with Route 246 west of An Loc.

– At that site the Special Forces and Civilian Irregular Defense Group camp with an airstrip for C-130’s was to be built.

Junction City: Phase 3

• In Phase 3, Junction City would be reduced to a brigade-size operation in the vicinity of Tay Ninh city in the southern portion of War Zone C

• The operational control for this phase would be passed from II Field Force to the 25th Infantry Division

CPT George Joulwan shows LTC Alexander Haig radios and other material found during Operation Junction City

Junction City: Results

• North Vietnamese– 2,728 enemy killed and 34 prisoners taken. – 139 Chieu Hoi ralliers and 65 detainees– 100 crew-served weapons, 491 individual weapons,

and thousands of rounds of ammunition, grenades, and mines captured

– More than 5,000 bunkers and military structures were destroyed

– Over 810 tons of rice and nearly 40 tons of other food-stuffs such as salt and dried fish were uncovered

– Nearly one-half million pages of assorted documents were taken

Junction City: Results

• US– 282 killed and 1,576

wounded– 3 tanks, 21 armored

personnel carriers, 12 trucks, 4 helicopters, 5 howitzers, and 2 quad-.50 machine guns and carriers destroyed

• But the objective of destroying the COSVN forces was not met

Reasons for COSVN Escape

• The proximity of a privileged sanctuary to the reported locations of COSVN and Headquarters, 9th VC Division.

• The extreme difficulty of establishing a seal with sufficient troop density to deny infiltration routes to VC units thoroughly familiar with the dense jungle terrain.

• The difficulty of gaining complete surprise, as a result of extensive repositioning of troops and logistical support prior to D-Day, in spite of the efforts devoted to deception measures.– Major General John Hay, CG 1st Infantry Division

Junction City

• The official Army history concludes “JUNCTION CITY convinced the enemy command that continuing to base main force units in close proximity to the key population areas would be increasingly foolhardy. From that time on the enemy made increasing use of Cambodian sanctuaries for his bases, hospitals, training centers, and supply depots….A turning point in the war had been reached.”– Vietnam Studies: Cedar Falls-

Junction City: A Turning Point, Rogers, 1989.

President Nixon during a press conference on operations in Cambodia in 1970.

Tet Offensive

• On January 30, 1968, the North Vietnamese escalate to Phase III, the War of Movement

• Attack gains surprise by coinciding with the Vietnamese lunar new year holiday

• Designed to foster antigovernment uprisings against the South Vietnamese

Tet Offensive

• 84,000 Viet Cong and North Vietnamese attack 36 of 43 provincial capitals, 5 of 6 autonomous cities, 34 of 242 district capitals, and at least 50 hamlets

Reasons for North Vietnam’s Lack of

Tactical Success in Tet • By attacking everywhere, the North Vietnamese had superior strength nowhere (violation of mass)

• Inflexible Viet Cong command and control system could not respond to late announcements of timings and objectives from the North Vietnamese Army (unity of command)

• North Vietnamese wrongly assumed South Vietnamese were on the verge of a general uprising (objective)

Pulitzer Prize winning photograph of the director of the South

Vietnamese national police executing a VC prisoner in Saigon

during Tet

Reasons for the U.S. Tactical

Success in Tet • Technology gave the US a strategic mobility that allowed it to respond to multiple threats (maneuver)

• When the North Vietnamese came out and fought en masse in a traditional war of movement, the US could bring to bear its overwhelming firepower in a strategy of annihilation (mass)

Helicopters gave the US the ability to cover all types of terrain,

maneuver over large areas, react quickly to enemy attacks, reinforce embattled units, and conduct raids

into enemy territory

Back to Insurgency Phase II • Previously complacent South Vietnamese population was for the first time made to feel involved in the war effort

• Local insurgency movement suffered a devastating loss when it surfaced to assume leadership of a general uprising that never materialized

• Clandestine shadow government, years in the building, was largely destroyed

• Tactical military defeat for North Vietnam

• By coming into the open, the enemy had exposed itself to massive American firepower and lost 137,000 killed in the first nine months of 1968

• Allows US to practice “the American way of war”

Overall Results of Tet • Tactical defeat for North Vietnam

• North Vietnamese 32,000 killed and 6,000 captured

• US and South Vietnamese 4,000 killed

• But a strategic victory

• “I thought we were winning this war!” (Walter Cronkite)

• Dramatic shift in public opinion in US

Returning from Vietnam after Tet, Walter Cronkite reported, “It seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is a

stalemate” and then urged the government to open negotiations with

the North Vietnamese.

Domestic Issues

Societal Changes

Country Joe McDonald at

Woodstock, 1969

Martin Luther King delivers his “I have a

dream” speech in 1963Gloria Steinem

helped found Ms magazine in 1971

War Protests

President Johnson

President Lyndon B. Johnson listens to tape sent by Captain Charles Robb from Vietnam,

July 31, 1968.

Democratic delegates protest the Johnson administration's policies

in Vietnam at the 1968 Democratic National Convention

in Chicago.

President Nixon• Richard Nixon was elected

president in 1968 campaigning for “peace with honor”

• Under Nixon the process of “Vietnamization”– the gradual transfer of primary responsibility of the war to the South Vietnamese that Johnson had begun on a small scale after Tet– was accelerated

• Nixon’s involvement in Watergate, his impeachment, and resignation hamstring his ability to influence peace negotiations through sustained offensive operations

Nixon was succeeded by Gerald Ford. By this point the US was traumatized by

war-weariness and economic recession. Ford had almost no maneuver room to help the South

Vietnamese.

My Lai• On March 16, 1968, an

infantry company entered the village of My Lai

• They found no insurgents but, being psychologically prepared for battle and poorly disciplined, they proceeded to kill between 347 and 504 mostly old men, women, and children

• Word of the massacre did not reach the American public until November 1969 when it then fueled national outrage and further undermined support for the war

Kent State and Jackson State

Four students were killed and nine wounded at Kent State and two students were killed at Jackson State during

protests against a number of issues to include US operations in Cambodia

Defeat• The US concluded a

peace agreement with the North Vietnamese in 1973, but the South Vietnamese continued fighting until April 30, 1975 when the North Vietnamese captured Saigon

• Throughout the 1970s and 1980s “boat people” flee Vietnam– Some 823,000 find

refuge in the US

Americans and South Vietnamese who had worked for the US are

evacuated from Saigon

Legacy and Lessons

Legacy and Lessons

• Sophisticated weaponry and conventional forces have limits in “low intensity conflict”

• The restrictive rules of engagement (ROEs) and political considerations of limited war hamper military operations

• Domestic support is critical• You can win the battles and lose the war• “Vietnam syndrome” effects military and diplomatic

operations until finally exorcised by Desert Storm. – We’ll take about that in the Lesson 25.

Vietnam Today

• Vietnam remains communist• However, since 2001, it has committed to

economic liberalization and is trying to modernize the economy and to produce more competitive, export-driven industries

• An April 28, 2005 article in the Economist was aptly titled “America Lost, Capitalism Won”

• If you’re interested, USM has a nationally-acclaimed Vietnam Study Abroad Program

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