Fighting Strategies In The Vietnam War

The Vietnam War is known as one of the most brutal wars that the U.S. took part in. In Vietnam, the Vietnam war is known as the “American War” or the “Second Indochina War” (Rosen, 2). The war started as a conflict between the Republic of Vietnam, South Vietnam, and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, North Vietnam (Cosmas, 329). The war began in 1957 and ended in the spring of 1975, lasting a total of 18 years (Cosmas, 329). Although the North Vietnamese lost the most people in the Vietnam War, they still won. North Vietnam did have some advantages in weaponry, the M-30 and the RPG-7, but the real reason they won was because of their overpowering desire to win.

Each side in the Vietnam War had their own distinct advantages. The U.S. military advantages included modern weapons, a professional military force and superior firepower. The Viet Cong advantages were their lightly armed mobile fighters and their guerilla tactics such as ambushes and booby-traps that they used to surprise the enemy. The Viet Cong had a superior knowledge of the land and dressed like villagers which made it hard to tell them apart from the South Vietnamese

In 1961, during the early phases of the Vietnam War, United States and South Vietnamese soldier could not see how they were getting trapped and attacked by the enemy. The thick wilderness brush in Vietnam was the ideal environment for the North Vietnamese Army to cover themselves from U.S forces. The U.S reacted by making a new weapon called Agent Orange, an herbicide that Air Force planes planned to release above the treetops. This created fields of fire thus, leaving the enemies nowhere to hide. This bio-chemical was very powerful, and the United States utilized it for a long time.

In late 1961, America took physical force in the Vietnam War. War is a complex series of political events that leads to physical involvement in the form of armed combat. Technology is a major deciding factor in war, along with the battle tactics used, terrain, experience and professionalism of the opposing forces. By 1961 both the United States and Vietnam had developed a broad array of guns and weapons to fight off one another. Coupled with battle tactics this provides a deadly and extremely hostile environment.

There were many different combat strategies that were used in the Vietnam War between the North Vietnamese, the Vietcong, and the United States militaries. The North Vietnamese’s military strategy could be broken down into three different phases: Vietcong establishment, guerilla warfare, and conventional warfare. The Vietcong mostly used Chinese versions of the Russian AK-47 submachine gun. They used a number of machine guns ranging from light weight to heavy weight, using the heavy machine guns for defense against the United States helicopter. The Vietcong had an advantage to easily transport numerous amounts of mortars, but they also had effective rockets that propelled grenades and recoilless rifles. The Vietcong designed “Punji traps” to easily disable an enemy soldier, and some were even purposely contaminated to

Four decades after the Vietnam War was declared officially over, American involvement in that war continues to throw a shadow over American politics and society, not to mention the history of American presence in Southeast Asia. The reason for that longstanding legacy of the war is that the Vietnam War was a monumental political blunder and consisted of a series of strategic military errors. These errors made a profound impact on America as well as Southeast Asia and haunts American leaders to this day in the form of, as some argue, the "Vietnam Syndrome." Due to a mixture of misguided understanding of international affairs and arrogance, America was bogged down in a protracted war where Third World guerilla warriors taught the United States a lesson in humbleness.

The US initially viewed the Vietnam War simply as a testing ground for the new ‘flexible response’ policy of dealing with international aggression. However as the war progressed it quickly became evident that the war would become a serious problem for the existing and future US administration. The war was not, by any means, a victory for the United States and did not accomplish any of the goals set like deterring future aggressions, enhancing US credibility or ‘saving’ Vietnam.

The United States Military introduced chemical weaponry in their attempts to defeat communist forces in Vietnam. Because of the nature of the terrain, which consisted mostly of dense jungle, the US Armed Forces were unable to effectively target their enemy, the Vietcong.

America did have better technology which you would have expected them to use toothier advantage more than they did. Where the American’s had helicopters, the Vietcong had bikes. The American’s had bombs which they used in Operation Rolling Thunder. They had a large quantity of them too as they dropped more bombs than were dropped in the whole of World War II. They had chemicals such as Agent Orange and Napalm which was special.

The Vietnam war was the first war to be televised. Before the wide use of television to broadcast foreign campaigns, putting gore and death in the American public’s living room, the war efforts were broadcast via radio, as well as news reels that would show short clips of the war before movies. The fact that the American people had been sending the youth of their generation for almost a decade only served to turn the public against the war. This public hatred of a war that was being fought some 13,000 miles away, in a foreign land, where the best of the American youth was dying daily only grew as the war raged on. The war in Vietnam was not the same kind of traditional war the American military was use to fighting, such as World War II. The reason the Vietnam war was different, was because the North Vietnamese Army, alongside the VietCong fought with a new military style, guerilla warfare. Guerrilla warfare as defined by Mariam-Webster is “irregular military actions (such as harassment and sabotage) carried out by small usually independent forces”. The guerilla warfare style of the Vietcong was inflicted a great amount of damage by conducting small quick attacks on larger US military forces. This tactic led to the “victory” of the North Vietnamese

The Vietcong became experts in this type of warfare know as guerrilla warfare. Guerrilla warfare was termed coined during the Peninsular War by the Duke of Wellington but become popular with the rise of Communism and Marxism which called for the proletariat (lower class) to rise up against the bourgeoisie (upper class). Since lower class peasants could not stand a chance against conventional armies with tanks, helicopters, planes and artillery; they were forced to use cheap but effective tactics to kill the enemy. This type of irregular fighting is used against orthodox, conventional type opponents and the Vietnam war proved the effectiveness of guerrilla warfare. One guerrilla warfare tactic that proved to be highly effective for the Vietcong was using booby traps in order to kill or wound the enemy without being nearby for retaliation. The Vietcong would conceal hardened bamboo sticks smothered in poison known as Punji Sticks, underneath a weak platform covered in sticks and leaves, that would give out if stepped on. Once stepped on, the platform would give out and a US soldier would fall into the Punji sticks which would pierce his body. Other traps included land mines that would blow up once stepped on and tripwire grenades that would blow up once a soldier stepped on the wire. Overall these boobytraps accounted for 11% of US casualties in the Vietnam war. Beyond traps, the Vietcong would use other guerilla warfare tactics such as the hit and run strategy. During a hit and run the Vietcong would attack US forces by ambushing them then exiting before artillery or air support could be called in by predetermined routes. The Vietcong also used a strategy called the shoot and scoot strategy which involved the Vietcong attacking US military bases with artillery or mortars then moving the equipment to a new location before the US can

By 1965, North Vietnamese were fully supported by the Soviet Union and China making the American army to take out even more air support and ground forces into the South Vietnam. This cost American government tremendous amount of money and lives. North Vietnam, along with the help from Soviet Union and China, fully committed itself to defeating the United States and forces of South Vietnam. American people questioned how did their army even fought against North Vietnam when there was no realistic change for the Americans to trouble the North

During the Vietnam War, the U.S. was faced with an unfamiliar, grueling environment. The hot, humid forests and jungles combined with deadly animals like the infamous “Two-step snake” were radically different compared to the European city warfare experienced in World War II. Because of this, the country developed new strategies and tactics to accommodate this new environment. The Viet Cong, the main military force of North Vietnam, however, were in their element, and used several guerilla tactics to try to overpower the United States. Strategies ranging from spike pits to surprise attacks at night, were all commonly used. In the end, the U.S. withdrew from Vietnam in 1973 and in 1975, the capital of South Vietnam (The U.S.’s allies during the war) was captured by North Vietnam. Therefore, it is important to know if America’s

The Second Indo-China War, which is commonly referred to as the Vietnam War around the world and in the United States (US), pitted two very different nations against each other. This fight represents the modern day version of the biblical story of David versus Goliath. The United States at the time possessed the most technically advanced military in the world utilizing the latest high-tech equipment. The Democratic Republic of Vietnam or North Vietnam (DRV) was only a semi-industrialized nation struggling to feed its own population at the time. How did the DRV not get annihilated while fighting what was arguably the most powerful military state in the world at the time? How did they hold off the Americans long enough to earn a victory by not being defeated in the conflict? To answer these questions, first we must take a closer look at the background of Vietnam from the fall of Japan and the political maneuvering for control. Next, a strong understanding of the state of communist world relations is needed. Lastly, an exploration of the Vietnam War along varied avenues will shed some light on the before mentioned questions. There is more to the war in Vietnam than meets the eye. The DRV had a wide variety of assistance in varied quantities and quality over the span of nearly thirty years from the rest of the communist countries in the world in their effort to reunify Vietnam under one flag.

The American way of fighting was unique. No one was interested in building fortifications or digging in, it was all about firepower. The U.S. Air Force was largely involved and dropped a great amount of bombs on the North Vietnam soil. The weapon most common among the American ground troops was the