# Operation Rolling Thunder



## Zipper730 (May 12, 2019)

There was a pilot by the name of Bill Sparks, who in a documentary (it was about Linebacker II of all things) mentioned that he thought Rolling Thunder wasn't a totally bad idea, but it was not implemented rationally in that it was started and stopped, particularly after it appeared anything useful was being done (something that also allowed damage to be repaired), and that there was no continuity, in that they didn't take out all bridges, in one area, or all of any specific set of targets in one area, instead opting to jump over to hit one thing, then something else.

I'm curious why they had such a weird policy...


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## Dimlee (May 13, 2019)

From "Rolling Thunder" by Mark Berent.

_Partway through the target request list, the President straightened up and stretched his back. He looked over to Major General Albert G. "Whitey" Whisenand and asked him, with obvious pride but in a manner that would brook no abstaining, what he thought of his, the President's, ability to prosecute an airwar. Whitey looked at the surroundings for an instant, then back to the tall man from Texas. "Sir, respectfully, I must point out that as a target officer you are unschooled in basic Douhet principles; principles which clearly stipulate that piecemeal application of airpower is imprudent. Coupling that lack with the use of airpower which lacks mass, surprise, and consistency and you have a situation that wastes lives and money. This, in turn, fosters further contempt for this non-war in the opinion of the American people, and those of the rest of the world, while accomplishing exactly nothing." There was shocked silence in the room.
...
The President stared steadily at Whitey then finally threw back his head and gave a great yelp of laughter. SecDef, SecState, Advisor, and Press Secretary breathed a sigh of relief; so did the CSAF. He had decided that it would do no good to echo Whitey's quite correct statements because as the CSAF, he could be of more benefit in these bad days by maintaining his own position. He believed that one of his more important duties was to serve as a buffer between the troops in the field and that combination of an intransigent and abusive Secretary of Defense and an equally domineering and dictatorial President of the United States.
"Whitey, you old fart, you don't back down an inch, do you?" the President guffawed. Whitey, wisely, remained silent while the room sprang back to life. Conversation resumed sprightly about everything except the President's use of Navy and USAF aircraft to send “messages” to Hanoi.
After a moment, the President looked straight at Whisenand and said, "Whitey, I"m going to tell you an old Texas story." The room fell silent again. "Back in the days of the depression, back there by the Pedernales River," he pronounced it `Purden-alice', "a new young teacher applied to the school board for a job. His papers were in order; but to test him, a member asked whether the world was flat or round. The young man thought for a moment and replied `I can teach it either way.'" Whitey grinned at the humor of the story, but not the current situation. He thought he knew what was coming.
The President went up and put his arm across Whitey's shoulders. "I've got to teach it both ways," he said quietly and in a manner indicating he was taking Whitey into his innermost confidence. "You understand I have the duty to satisfy the American people at home yet protect their interests abroad. Do you know what that means? Do you know the heavy responsibility I carry?" Without waiting for an answer the President disengaged his arm, strode to the table and banged his fist on a photo of the Thanh Hoa Bridge, and said, "I've got to tell Ho Chi Minh that unless he stops his aggression in South Veet-nam, that I'm going to hammer hell out of him; and at the same time I've got to tell, to convince, the American people, that I am not going to escalate this Veet-nam war."_

Sorry for long quotation.
And even this long one tells probably just part of the story. I assume that the teaching was actually done "three ways" if not more. There were China and USSR whose intentions were not always clear and whose willingness to get involved directly was not tested yet.

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## Zipper730 (May 13, 2019)

Dimlee said:


> _Partway through the target request list, the President straightened up and stretched his back. He looked over to Major General Albert G. "Whitey" Whisenand and asked him, with obvious pride but in a manner that would brook no abstaining, what he thought of his, the President's, ability to prosecute an airwar. Whitey looked at the surroundings for an instant, then back to the tall man from Texas. "Sir, respectfully, I must point out that as a target officer you are unschooled in basic Douhet principles; principles which clearly stipulate that piecemeal application of airpower is imprudent. Coupling that lack with the use of airpower which lacks mass, surprise, and consistency and you have a situation that wastes lives and money. This, in turn, fosters further contempt for this non-war in the opinion of the American people, and those of the rest of the world, while accomplishing exactly nothing." There was shocked silence in the room._


I guess they didn't expect somebody to be honest...


> _The President stared steadily at Whitey then finally threw back his head and gave a great yelp of laughter. SecDef, SecState, Advisor, and Press Secretary breathed a sigh of relief; so did the CSAF. He had decided that it would do no good to echo Whitey's quite correct statements because as the CSAF, he could be of more benefit in these bad days by maintaining his own position. He believed that one of his more important duties was to serve as a buffer between the troops in the field and that combination of an intransigent and abusive Secretary of Defense and an equally domineering and dictatorial President of the United States._
> 
> _"Whitey, you old fart, you don't back down an inch, do you?" the President guffawed. Whitey, wisely, remained silent while the room sprang back to life. Conversation resumed sprightly about everything except the President's use of Navy and USAF aircraft to send “messages” to Hanoi._
> 
> ...


He basically wanted to stop Ho Chi Minh, and send them a message, without worrying the American public: Why not just give his men the marching orders, and give feedback as need be?

I'm curious if he had a great distrust for his own military...

BTW: What's CSAF? There was no Chief of Staff of the USAF that had the name Albert G. Whisenand...


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## fubar57 (May 13, 2019)

He didn't say Whisenand was CSAF; "...._ *so did the CSAF. He had decided that it would do no good to echo Whitey's* quite correct statements because as the CSAF_....." Probably General John Paul McConnell or this guy...Gen. John D. Ryan. Not up on American politics...or Canadian politics....or politics....


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## fubar57 (May 13, 2019)

https://www.jcs.mil/Portals/36/Documents/History/Policy/Policy_V010.pdf

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## Dimlee (May 14, 2019)

Just to note the obvious - that book by Mark Berent is great, but it is not documentary.
Makes sense to post a link:
https://amzn.to/2LEgL4L

This publication is also interesting.
https://media.defense.gov/2017/Mar/23/2001721069/-1/-1/0/LEMAY ON VIETNAM.PDF
Probably somewhat subjective and the personality of Le May should be taken into account and a lot of hindsight, as usual... Still worth to read.

_Gen. David A. Burchinal: Curt, was there ever a time during Vietnam when the recommendation was made that we go up and burn down North Vietnam?
LeMay: Yes, when we finally got that target list through the Joint Chiefs.
Burchinal: Because that would have ended the war real quick, just like it did in Japan.
LeMay: We could have ended it in any ten-day period you wanted to, but they never would bomb the target list we had. _

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## Zipper730 (May 14, 2019)

Would the incineration of Hanoi resulted in any of the following if it was implemented around 1965

Chinese hordes coming across the border
Other escalation of war
Outrage at home


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## tyrodtom (May 15, 2019)

Zipper730 said:


> Would the incineration of Hanoi resulted in any of the following if it was implemented around 1965
> 
> Chinese hordes coming across the border
> Other escalation of war
> Outrage at home


Incineration, as in a nuke ?? Surely you're joking.
Probably all three if that had been done in 1965, that would have been seen as a giant escalation on our part.

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## XBe02Drvr (May 16, 2019)

Zipper730 said:


> I'm curious if he had a great distrust for his own military...


He had an image of the military as harboring a distressing number of fire breathing warmongers (a la Curtis LeMay) who would get us in over our heads if not kept in check. He was not unaware of how Japan's Kwantung Army had, on its own initiative, gotten Japan embroiled in the invasion of Manchuria in 1931 and China proper in 1937. He thought that was not a good example to emulate, and he had been a front row observer when MacArthur was sacked for advocating the nuking of North Korea.
So if not outright distrust, at least a healthy skepticism.
Cheers,
Wes

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## swampyankee (May 16, 2019)

tyrodtom said:


> Incineration, as in a nuke ?? Surely you're joking.
> Probably all three if that had been done in 1965, that would have been seen as a giant escalation on our part.


With LeMay involved, nukes are very likely always an option.

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## michaelmaltby (May 16, 2019)

The most defining dialogue. Real insight.
_Gen. David A. Burchinal: Curt, was there ever a time during Vietnam when the recommendation was made that we go up and burn down North Vietnam?
LeMay: Yes, when we finally got that target list through the Joint Chiefs.
Burchinal: Because that would have ended the war real quick, just like it did in Japan.
LeMay: We could have ended it in any ten-day period you wanted to, but they never would bomb the target list we had. _




Last edited: Tuesday at 6:19 PM


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## FLYBOYJ (May 16, 2019)

Zipper730 said:


> I'm curious why they had such a weird policy...



Because uneducated and unqualified politicians were running the war.

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## XBe02Drvr (May 16, 2019)

FLYBOYJ said:


> Because uneducated and unqualified politicians were running the war.


That's the hallmark of the American system, and western democracies in general: civilian control of the military. It takes the existential threat of total war to put the military in charge, and then only temporarily. Even in the darkest days of WWII, the Army and Navy answered to the civilians at the top, and FDR wasn't a veteran, though his political career had given him a lot of exposure to military (especially naval) affairs. Certainly way more qualified to lead a war than LBJ/RJM.
Cheers,
Wes

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## XBe02Drvr (May 16, 2019)

The number of our politicians (and of our voting population) who have any military experience dwindles with each passing year. Painful as it sounds, I think our future requires that we return to a system of mandatory universal national service. And national service needs to be defined as more than just military. Peace Corps, VISTA, CCC, Medical Service Corps, forest fire service; the options are endless. What people today lack is a sense of participation and investment in something larger than themselves. Just look at the voter turnout records, and the number of people who don't show up for city council, school board, county legislature, and a whole host of other meetings that govern their lives, then complain about and feel persecuted by the results. Food for thought.
Cheers,
Wes

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## FLYBOYJ (May 16, 2019)

XBe02Drvr said:


> That's the hallmark of the American system, and western democracies in general: civilian control of the military. It takes the existential threat of total war to put the military in charge, and then only temporarily. Even in the darkest days of WWII, the Army and Navy answered to the civilians at the top, and FDR wasn't a veteran, though his political career had given him a lot of exposure to military (especially naval) affairs. Certainly way more qualified to lead a war than LBJ/RJM.
> Cheers,
> Wes


But I think we could agree Wes, this situation in Vietnam was over the top.

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## Zipper730 (May 16, 2019)

FLYBOYJ said:


> Because uneducated and unqualified politicians were running the war.


Why didn't they trust the brass?


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## Zipper730 (May 16, 2019)

tyrodtom said:


> Incineration, as in a nuke??


No, I meant incendiary raids: Basically to destroy something by burning.


> Surely you're joking.


Don't call me Shirley 
(I know that's old, and kind of lame)



XBe02Drvr said:


> He had an image of the military as harboring a distressing number of fire breathing warmongers (a la Curtis LeMay) who would get us in over our heads if not kept in check. He was not unaware of how Japan's Kwantung Army had, on its own initiative, gotten Japan embroiled in the invasion of Manchuria in 1931 and China proper in 1937. He thought that was not a good example to emulate, and he had been a front row observer when MacArthur was sacked for advocating the nuking of North Korea.
> 
> So if not outright distrust, at least a healthy skepticism.


So, this is why he wanted to have total control? Or was that just part of it?



swampyankee said:


> With LeMay involved, nukes are very likely always an option.


Yeah, or he'd try and set in motion circumstances that would justify it.


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## FLYBOYJ (May 16, 2019)

Zipper730 said:


> Why didn't they trust the brass?



Putting it bluntly, they were VERY dumb.


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## tyrodtom (May 16, 2019)

I don't think we had enough airborne assets in the area to do it in 1965,, or enough munitions.

When I got to Asia in late 66 we were scrambling to locate old munitions left over from WW2 and the Korean war.
It was stored all around the Pacific rim, japan, Korea, Okinawa, Philippines , etc,.
Some of it was in pretty sorry shape. We had to grade it, recondition it, repackage it, and ship it off to Nam.

When I got to Thailand and Vietnam we were still experiencing a shortage, sometimes forced to use questionable munitions.
All this time American industry was gearing up to produce new munitions, but I don't think they ever caught up .
No matter how much they made, we could always use it up faster.

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## Barrett (May 16, 2019)

A complex and immensely frustrating subject. THE best book on the period probably is H.R. McMaster's _Dereliction of Duty_, which excoriates the JCS during the Johnson regime. When I met HR in 04 he was preparing to take his armored cav regiment to Iraq though he said he wanted to complete the story with a companion volume covering the JCS through the end of the war. Obviously his later commitments prevented that.

Meanwhile, speaking of bombing bridges, at risk of committing Shameless Hype, this book was just released this week. Steve Coonts of course was a naval aviator in That Crazy Asian War, and his perspective is um forceful. We spent 5 years tracking down USAF, USN, USMC, Vietnamese, and other sources, some of which were unavailable in govt archives. The book debuted on Amazon in No. 1, 2, and 5 under aviation history. Amazon product

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## tyrodtom (May 16, 2019)

Rolling Thunder was conducted by the USAF and the Navy. The USAF dropped the most of the tonnage.
Most of the USAF aircraft conducting the Rolling Thunder raid were flying out of bases in Thailand, Ubon ' Takli, NKP, etc.
All these bases were located in the interior of Thailand, and mostly supplied by truck convoys over very primitive roads.

Until they opened up the Port at Sattahip, and built the B-52 base nearby, any heavy bombers had to fly from Okinawa.

We may have had the aircraft to perform the mission, but not where we needed them. 

But one thing we did not have, IMO, was the ability to supply those aircraft with the munitions to perform that mission, and then it seemed we didn't know where to drop them ..

I can remember working many 12 hour, and longer days, seven days a week. Just unloading and storing bombs, then then trailering them out to the flightline.

About 3 times the tonnage dropped in WW2, dropped on a country about the size of California.
Somebody did something wrong, but you can't blame it all on LBJ.

It's just impossible to explain to someone who wasn't there.

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## swampyankee (May 16, 2019)

FLYBOYJ said:


> Putting it bluntly, they were VERY dumb.



There was more than enough dumb to go around. If you’re going to blame the civilian leaders, you also have to include a few in uniform, or recently out, like Maxwell Taylor. 

A question everyone should have been asking, but weren’t, is “what is the root cause for this war that’s been fought for decades?” Communism wasn’t all of it.

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## tyrodtom (May 16, 2019)

I wonder what your thought process is on incinerating Hanoi ?

Do you think it's going to kill Ho Chi Minh , or any of the leadership ?
They're very likely going to be in deep bunkers, shelters, or elsewhere.
No doubt it would kill a lot of civilians, is that your take on a sound tactic.

Vietnam wasn't Japan, or Germany, they had very little production capacity.
They used a lot of trucks and bicycles to transport supplies south.
They made no trucks, they didn't even make the bicycles. 
They got the trucks from China, and Russia, the bicycles were made in China and modified in Vietnam for their unique use.

They made almost none of the own munitions, as far as I know they didn't refine their own oil.
They had a electric grid around most of their major cities, but if you knock it out, you're going to just inconvenience them.

Incinerating Haiphong might have been effective,a lot of supplies were entering N. Vietnam through that port.
 But that would mean killing a lot of Russians, Chinese, plus other foreign nationals still trading with Vietnam.

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## swampyankee (May 16, 2019)

A question that's not being asked is was the cost in treasure, life, and national reputation worth incinerating Hanoi. France, even with US aid, didn't think Vietnam worth keeping. 

Was Vietnam worth America fighting for?

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## FLYBOYJ (May 16, 2019)

swampyankee said:


> There was more than enough dumb to go around. If you’re going to blame the civilian leaders, you also have to include a few in uniform, or recently out, like Maxwell Taylor.
> 
> A question everyone should have been asking, but weren’t, is “what is the root cause for this war that’s been fought for decades?” Communism wasn’t all of it.


Absolutely. But folks like him were far removed from those who had to do "the dirty work," and there were many left overs from WW2 (both civilian and military) who were clueless.

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## XBe02Drvr (May 17, 2019)

swampyankee said:


> Was Vietnam worth America fighting for?


The question that split America right down the middle (a condition that still exists today) largely along generational and political lines. The question that started the decay of civil discourse resulting in the hostile armed camps that define our social and political landscape today.

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## XBe02Drvr (May 17, 2019)

swampyankee said:


> A question that's not being asked is was the cost in treasure, life, and national reputation worth incinerating Hanoi. France, even with US aid, didn't think Vietnam worth keeping.


If the final bill as of 1975 had been presented to Mr John ("Quemoy, Matsu, and the Pescadores Islands are not worth the bones of one American soldier!") F Kennedy as a choice in 1962 when the first steps down the slippery slope were taken, do you think we'd be asking these questions today? If JFK hadn't stepped on a land mine called Bay of Pigs, and if Oswald's Carcano had been a little less accurate, we'd have had a president who came of age in combat and understood the conduct and cost of war, instead of a back room wheeler dealer political animal with delusions of grandeur.
The idealism and dedication of the Viet Minh outlasted the attachment of the French ("Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite!") people to the prestige and economic benefits of hanging on to their colonial empire. This set the pace for liberation movements throughout the empire. If they could outlast their former colonial masters, with all the investment they had made in Indochina, the Vietnamese could certainly outlast the US, who didn't even have a horse in the race. And as we all know, they did. Shades of Yorktown and "The World Turned Upside Down".
Cheers,
Wes


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## mikewint (May 17, 2019)

Rolling Thunder was simply put a microcosm of all the problems the US faced in Vietnam. There are SO many factors at work that it is difficult to cover all of them. IMHO -
1. In the simplest terms I can think of the dichotomy of Vietnam was that the US was attempting to wage a conventional war against an unconventional enemy and trying to wage a limited war against an enemy waging an essentially unlimited war. 
2. The specter of another Korea haunted both political and military leaders. The possibility of the military going too far and a million Chinese boiling over the border in support of Hanoi haunted every decision that was made. Westmoreland himself referred to an "almost paranoid fear of a nuclear confrontation with the Soviet Union"
3. American Air power doctrine was based on a WWII concept of strategic bombardment - Destroy the enemies ability to wage MODERN warfare and that the enemy bombed would be an industrialized one. Vietnam was none of these and the US goal became one of trying to persuade the North to stop supporting the war in the south.
4. Rolling Thunder was a very small part of a war that had an almost unimaginable scope. The Air war ranged over S Vietnam, N Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. The political part of the war involved Hanoi, Saigon, Washington, Peking, and Moscow. The political wrangling literally defies description. Then there was the war in the field which ranged from large unit conventional mechanized actions to small unit guerrilla battles all over which were overlaid by efforts to pacify and control a suspicious and reluctant peasantry who had little in common with US troops or the Saigon elites. 
5. Washington considered Vietnam to be a Communist plot to alter the balance of power in the world. Vietnam was a Communist plot to seize the South rather than a North Vietnamese one. So in short Vietnam was not a civil war fueled by nationalism for control of a country that the major powers had summarily divided into two parts but just a part of a battle for world power.
6. Politically we were pretty clear. LBJ stated in 1965 "Our objective is the independence of South Viet-Nam and its freedom from attack" On the other hand the militarizes role in in obtaining that goal was very unclear. Existing document state clearly that the military goal was NOT to win (in the WWII sense) the war but to convince the enemy that he could not win.
9. By 1964 the war and deteriorated drastically. There was no effective government in Saigon as various generals struggled to seize power and coup followed coup. Intelligence estimated that 40% of the South was under the control of the North. ARVN forces were failing in the field and desertions topped 5,000 a month. The North was equipping the VC with standard infantry weapons and artillery and the first regular NVA troops were appearing in the South
10. The American response to the crisis was 1965s Rolling Thunder air campaign. Commanders on the scene in Vietnam submitted their targeting recommendations to Admiral Grant Sharp, the commander in chief, Pacific, at Honolulu. Admiral Sharp’s staff evaluated the recommendations and assembled them into a coordinated program, and then forwarded the program to the Pentagon. In the Pentagon, the strategic significance of each target was evaluated by military experts, and the State Department was asked to assess the international political implications of striking each target. After this process was completed, what remained of the target recommendations were forwarded to the White House where LBJ and his staff made the final decisions. The White House dictated the size of the striking force, its weapons, and the precise time of the attack. 
11. North Vietnam had almost nothing in the way of industry. What few strategic targets that did exist were usually "off-limits" to bombing. American bombing missions were not allowed within a 30-nautical mile radius of Hanoi, within a 10-nautical mile radius of Haiphong, or within a wide buffer zone along the Chinese border.
12. American flight crew training had focused on the delivery of nuclear weapons not of precision bombing of small targets. Flaming Dart I and II were directed against 491 structures. BDA showed 47 destroyed and 22 damaged. The average circular error probable was 750 feet. Such a large error made hitting small buildings and bridges with conventional explosives almost impossible

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## XBe02Drvr (May 18, 2019)

mikewint said:


> the military goal was NOT to win (in the WWII sense) the war but to convince the enemy that he could not win.


A goal that could only (maybe) be achieved with a unified, honest, dedicated, patriotic RVN, with at least as much determination to remain independent as the northerners had to reunify, and the unfailing logistical support of the "free" world. Now given the actual South Vietnam that existed, how likely does that seem? The view from Khe Sanh and from Washington were from different galaxies.


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## Dimlee (May 18, 2019)

XBe02Drvr said:


> A goal that could only (maybe) be achieved with a unified, honest, dedicated, patriotic RVN, with at least as much determination to remain independent as the northerners had to reunify, and the unfailing logistical support of the "free" world. Now given the actual South Vietnam that existed, how likely does that seem? The view from Khe Sanh and from Washington were from different galaxies.



Probably it was likely but long term and only subject some critical factors, for example:
1. Success of the "Vietnamizatioin".
2. No Case-Church Amendment or any similar restriction.
3. Significant reduction of corruption in all spheres of power of Republic of Vietnam, military and civilian.
But ##1 and 3 required much longer time than was given by real history.

*

 mikewint
-*
thanks for excellent overview.

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## mikewint (May 18, 2019)

XBe02Drvr said:


> A goal that could only (maybe) be achieved with a unified, honest, dedicated, patriotic RVN



In 1965, Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara defined the American military objective by asking Westmoreland “how many additional American and Allied troops would be required *to convince the enemy he would be unable to win*. 
Westmoreland, _A Soldier Reports_, 183.


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## XBe02Drvr (May 19, 2019)

Dimlee said:


> But ##1 and 3 required much longer time than was given by real history.


Actually, much longer time than was given by the attention span of American support.


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## tyrodtom (May 19, 2019)

I saw Rolling Thunder from the unromantic side.
The part that if it even gets mentioned in a book will say there were supply problems, or supply shortages, usually they never get into it deeper than that.

In Thailand, at NKP when Sattahip got improved and the B-52 airbase nearby got really going they caused a shortage for every other airbase in the area.

Strangely it wasn't 750 lbs bombs we ran out of but the fins for them that held us back.
The fins were made by different contractors than the bomb bodies, shipped separately.
The 750 lbs bomb had a rebated rim at it's base, the fins were secured to this rim with allen bolts.

If the fin was bent, or too many allen bolt hole threads were stripped the fin was grade 3 and not used.
Bent fins or loose fins degraded bomb accuracy.

About everywhere you'd go in the USAF, you'd see orange 750 bomb fins outside the entrance to every chow hall, squadron HQ. orderly room, etc., full of sand, big butt cans.

It was a big sin in the USAF or Army to throw your cigarette butts on the ground, you threw them in the butts cans, or else.
In 1967 at NKP, and probably worldwide, we were reexamining all these orange butt cans and seeing if the fins might be straightened or the allen treads rethreaded so the fins could be used. We painted them OD, and used them.
Probably a lot of not so accurate bomb drops because of that episode.

I can remember a almost 40 hour period of work while we were supporting the Khe Sanh seige.
Unloading constant 50 and 100 truck convoys of munitions to be used in the Khe Sanh area.

From my perspective as a low ranking USAF enlisted man, IMO, Rolling Thunder probably could not have continued full force, it needed the on and off effort to allow the munition makers and the supply system the chance to catch up

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## swampyankee (May 19, 2019)

XBe02Drvr said:


> Actually, much longer time than was given by the attention span of American support.



Given the lack of ability for the politicians to try to convince the US populace that it was worthwhile, and the military to convince the populace that it was winnable without behaving at least as badly as nazi Germany or the USSR, it wasn't so much "attention span" as antipathy. The US had done similar wars in the past, especially in Central America and Haiti, but they tended to be fought by small numbers of volunteers, not large numbers of conscripts. The perceived and real unfairnesses of the Selective Service System and its local boards certainly didn't help.

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## mikewint (May 19, 2019)

swampyankee said:


> real unfairnesses of the Selective Service System and its local boards certainly didn't help.


Local boards were autonomous and essentially accountable to no one. Appeals went before the same men who made the initial decision to begin with so an appeal was for all intents and purposes no appeal.
The University of Illinois is/was a Land Grant University and as such, at the time, required all Freshmen and Sophomore students to enroll in ROTC. Those who had had ROTC in High School became Corporals & Sargents over the rest of us clowns. Resistance was futile since you had to pass ROTC to graduate. A resistance group formed, naturally, the SPU or Student Peace Union. They'd come out and picket while we Hup-two-threed up and down the Quad. It was all pretty peaceful and most of us agreed with them in any case. I went to a number of their meetings and met one of the most charismatic people I've ever known, Tom Hayden. He was visiting campuses across the country trying to organize the various SPUs into what became SDS, Student for a Democratic Society. I soon became a member and joined the picketers. After a time names were taken and the University reported our subversive picketing to local Draft Boards. In my Sophomore year my 2-S deferral was revoked despite scoring in the 99th percentile on Student Deferral exam. I appealed twice, got no where, and by the next June was on my merry way to beautiful downtown Vietnam to fight and die for liberty


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## tyrodtom (May 19, 2019)

I went completely of my own free will.
Earlier generations of my family had fought in every war back through the Civil War. 
I didn't question it, I enlisted, twice.

But while in the USAF, I met several guys who had enlisted in the air force, to escape the draft.
Even though in that era, enlisting in the USAF was a minimum 4 years, verses the draft for 2 years.
But many considered the draft as a almost automatic term in the infantry, and some thought of that as a semi death sentence.

Then in both services I met several troops who had committed some minor crime in civilian life and was given a choice by the judge, jail time or FTA. ( that's Fun, Travel, Adventure, what the Army recruitment posters guaranteed )
Of course the troops had another version of what FTA stood for.


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## swampyankee (May 19, 2019)

The accepted wisdom I had heard at the time was that if you enlisted in the Army, you would _not_ go to Vietnam unless you volunteered. If you drafted, you would go.

The other accepted wisdom was that you couldn't get into the National Guard without a lot of pull.


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## tyrodtom (May 19, 2019)

swampyankee said:


> The accepted wisdom I had heard at the time was that if you enlisted in the Army, you would _not_ go to Vietnam unless you volunteered. If you drafted, you would go.
> 
> The other accepted wisdom was that you couldn't get into the National Guard without a lot of pull.



The minimum enlistment period in the Army was 3 years.
That means the Army had more time to train you, so chances are you get some kind of technical training.
But pretty much all Army technical training is related to their combat mission in some way.
They needed truck drivers, mechanics, heavy equipment operators, etc. worldwide. But they were needed the most in Vietnam, or nearby.
I'm not sure they were all volunteers.

The Army in the USA, or Europe was noted for CS, a lot of attention to hair cut's, shiny boots, super clean barracks, a lot of GI parties
They put more emphasis on the appearance of a high morale "Espirit de Corps" than on what the morale actually was.
I know some guys that volunteered for Vietnam just to leave the chicken shit behind.


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## Zipper730 (May 19, 2019)

tyrodtom said:


> I saw Rolling Thunder from the unromantic side.
> The part that if it even gets mentioned in a book will say there were supply problems, or supply shortages, usually they never get into it deeper than that.


I remember hearing about that, it affected F-105 operations, and also resulted in shortages that affected the USN as well (this actually lead to the USS Forrestal disaster).


> In Thailand, at NKP when Sattahip got improved and the B-52 airbase nearby got really going they caused a shortage for every other airbase in the area.
> 
> Strangely it wasn't 750 lbs bombs we ran out of but the fins for them that held us back. . . . From my perspective as a low ranking USAF enlisted man, IMO, Rolling Thunder probably could not have continued full force, it needed the on and off effort to allow the munition makers and the supply system the chance to catch up


Because they figured they'd never fight a large scale conventional war ever again, they never produced enough bombs for such an event.

The B-52's running everything out makes a great deal of sense. Particularly after the Big-Belly mods came online.


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## tyrodtom (May 19, 2019)

I don't think the B-52s suffered from much of a supply shortage, U Tapao was at the head of the supply train in Thailand right at the port of Sattahip. They seemed to have a higher priority too.
Everybody else , further away from the ports of entry , experienced shortages.

In 65 they were depending on what they had stored worldwide.
By the time the big belly program was going full swing and U Tapao was opened for B-52 in mid 67, they'd had time to ramp production of new munitions up, but it still wasn't enough.


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## XBe02Drvr (May 19, 2019)

swampyankee said:


> The other accepted wisdom was that you couldn't get into the National Guard without a lot of pull.


When the Dec 1 1969 first draft lottery came out, my number guaranteed I would be going, one way or another. I checked all the options and discovered, as swampyankee suggests, that all the guards, Army, Air, and Coast, had two and three year waiting lists, and even the USAF had a lengthy baglog in my recruiting district. After my mandatory, atypical, experience with Army ROTC, the Army option was a non-starter, even as an officer.
Shortly thereafter, my boss at GE Aircraft Armament Div came and offered me instant enlistment in the Army Guard company he commanded, bypassing the "official" recruiting process. He said his was one of two companies made up almost entirely of employees of GE and of Simmons, another defense contractor down the road. Apparently the enlisted personnel were hourly workers at the two companies, and the officers were their civilian supervisors and managers. He said even if the Guard were called up to active duty, their battalion would be held stateside.
After thinking a bit, I decided the Navy was a better option than becoming a lifer in the class conscious stratified society of GE/Army Guard. And glad I did!


tyrodtom said:


> I met several troops who had committed some minor crime in civilian life and was given a choice by the judge, jail time or FTA. ( that's Fun, Travel, Adventure, what the Army recruitment posters guaranteed )


My boot camp company had quite a few of those JTN&STW (Join the Navy and see the world) court ordered enlistments from the street gangs of Philadelphia. Almost equal numbers from two deathly rival gangs. Despite some early fisticuffs, and a knife fight, with one exception they eventually all turned into alright dudes and reliable shipmates. GMGC Narvesen supplied the father figure they needed. You didn't BS Chief Narvesen, but he would go the extra mile for you if he thought you needed it. Most of the "dudes" left boot camp with their GEDs in hand.
Cheers,
Wes

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## XBe02Drvr (May 21, 2019)

swampyankee said:


> it wasn't so much "attention span" as antipathy.


For the first three or four years of the "large scale" war the majority of Americans supported the war, actively or passively. After the Tet offensive of 1968, the opposition became more visible, vocal, and persuasive, and more and more of the people began to suspect they'd been sold a bill of goods.
The cost in materiel, personnel, and social stress of a drawn out war of attrition without geographic evidence of progress just doesn't set well with a culture enamored of the quick decisive conflict resolution of the wild west gunfight. I say again, except for a Civil War/WWII style existential crisis, Americans just aren't in it for the long haul. That's what I meant by attention span.
Cheers,
Wes

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## Barrett (May 24, 2019)

Shameless Hype Dept: just learned that Dragon's Jaw is being reprinted in its 2nd week; no info on ebook or audio book sales yet.

Anyway: one of the things we learned is that Big AF was essentially clueless about how to destroy an over-engineered, over-built bridge in 1965. Part of the problem was that star wearers required the troops (read: F-105 pilots) to use up the instantaneous fuses in stock before using more useful delay fuses. So ineffective dumb bombs combined with inadequate Bullpups (250-lb warhead) essentially scratched Thanh Hoa Bridge's paint while cratering the approaches. Which were easily repaired. I quote Robbie Risner, who led the first two strikes against the bridge. Got to know him somewhat in the aces assn. When shot down he said "Those AAA gunners had a better target in their sights than I did."


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## Zipper730 (May 24, 2019)

Barrett said:


> Part of the problem was that star wearers required the troops (read: F-105 pilots) to use up the instantaneous fuses in stock before using more useful delay fuses.


Why would they make such a stupid decision? You'd figure you'd use the correct weapon for the correct purpose...


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## XBe02Drvr (May 25, 2019)

Zipper730 said:


> Why would they make such a stupid decision? You'd figure you'd use the correct weapon for the correct purpose...


First, they'd have to understand what the correct weapon for the job is. After almost two full decades of doctrine dedicated to "big bang" nuclear warthink and regulated by bean counter logic, USAF could be expected to have a shortage of "star wearers" steeped in the minutae of tactical air warfare. Not stupid, just inadequately informed. And too proud to listen to those truly in the know.
Cheers,
Wes

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## tyrodtom (May 25, 2019)

Maybe not so much stupidity as a difference of opinion as how was the best way to drop a truss type bridge.
Take out the overhead truss with bombs with instantaneous fuses, or take out the bottom roadway portion with delay fuses.

Or maybe the bean counters knew what was in the munition storage areas, and used what they had.

Since the munitions storage areas were commonly called bomb dumps, it sort of gives the impression they were just big super markets loaded with explosives.
The weren't. You had store explosive in widely separated , revetted , storage areas. Separated with enough distance between so that if one storage point experienced a explosive event it wasn't passed to the next, and so on until you lost the whole storage area, along with maybe the whole base.

The temptation was always there to just store extra munitions in each area, or create new storage areas in the places between, but that can come back and bite you if the right combination of mishaps occur.

There were several small scale explosive events in the Vietnam era in USAF munitions areas, but none expanded to taking out the entire depot.

One in particular I remember happen at Takli, Thailand, in 1967.
A night crew possibly ( nobody knows for sure what happened because all 10 or 12 people in the immediate area died ) dropped a 750 lb bomb from a fork lift. It was unfused, but it was found out later the lot of bombs there at that time was a defective batch with a thin plastic liner that didn't completely cover the inside of the bomb. Which allowed the explosive filling to get into the fissures in the cast iron bomb case.
Though the entire batch ( about 100 ) of 750 lbs bombs in that one revetment went up. The explosion didn't pass to the other munition storage revetments. Even though parts of forklifts, trucks and trailers went about a mile.

You couldn't allow munitions to just accummilate, it had to be first in, first out, for the overall safety of the whole base.

And everything there had a long, torturous, journey just to get there.

If you had a mission that needed special bombs with special fuses, you had to plan it weeks in advance, Captain PeCard didn't just stick his hand in the air and say " make it so "

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## Zipper730 (May 25, 2019)

XBe02Drvr said:


> First, they'd have to understand what the correct weapon for the job is. After almost two full decades of doctrine dedicated to "big bang" nuclear warthink and regulated by bean counter logic, USAF could be expected to have a shortage of "star wearers" steeped in the minutae of tactical air warfare.


Ironic as many of those guys would have served in WWII and knew people who served in Korea.

Didn't time delay fuses exist in WWII times?



tyrodtom said:


> Maybe not so much stupidity as a difference of opinion as how was the best way to drop a truss type bridge.
> Take out the overhead truss with bombs with instantaneous fuses, or take out the bottom roadway portion with delay fuses.


But wouldn't just blowing out the roadway portion be the most important thing?


> Or maybe the bean counters knew what was in the munition storage areas, and used what they had.





> There were several small scale explosive events in the Vietnam era in USAF munitions areas, but none expanded to taking out the entire depot.
> 
> One in particular I remember happen at Takli, Thailand, in 1967.
> A night crew possibly (nobody knows for sure what happened because all 10 or 12 people in the immediate area died) dropped a 750 lb bomb from a fork lift. It was unfused, but it was found out later the lot of bombs there at that time was a defective batch with a thin plastic liner that didn't completely cover the inside of the bomb. Which allowed the explosive filling to get into the fissures in the cast iron bomb case.


And around 100 x 750's went up -- I'm amazed only 10-12 guys died. I would have expected much more, I guess those revetments were designed very well.


> You couldn't allow munitions to just accummilate, it had to be first in, first out, for the overall safety of the whole base.
> 
> And everything there had a long, torturous, journey just to get there.
> 
> If you had a mission that needed special bombs with special fuses, you had to plan it weeks in advance


How long did the planning take in WWII times?


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## tyrodtom (May 25, 2019)

What do you think the function is of the truss structure in a bridge? Looks ???
Cut the truss, the bridge falls. 
Look at a picture of a truss type bridge, it's unlikely you could get a bomb thru all that structure without hitting it.
It you were using a delay bomb, the structure would only suffer collision damage, if it had a instant fuse, the structure would be cut.
Just a matter of opinion, which is most likely to bring it down.

They probably had several types of fuse availiable, Where ever I was based we did. 
In my experience the account doesn't ring quite true, or doesn't give all the information.

As for the bomb dump explosion in Thailand going up only killing as many as it did, was more due to the fact that good munition storage areas are mostly open areas with lot's of room between working and storage areas. The revetments are just walls of dirt surrounding each site, they direct to force of the blast upward.
Plus the accident happened at night, when only a fraction of the personnel who worked there was present.
The Takli bomb dump probably had 50 or 60 storage sites, only one went up.

It's easy to criticize events of long ago when you have no real working knowledge of what went on.
Everything looks simple from a computer monitor.


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## XBe02Drvr (May 25, 2019)

Zipper730 said:


> I guess those revetments were designed very well.


Outside the fence at our base and across the main highway, there was an "old abandoned" WWII munitions storage compound with a rusty tumbledown chainlink fence and the bunkers obscured with foliage. We used to walk and drive past and sometimes through it to the old WWII sub pens to go skin diving.
Years later, after the cold war was over, I ran into one of the "ordies", an old drinking buddy, from EOD back in the day and learned that under all the apparent disuse and neglect, nuclear warheads for torpedoes and ASROCS had been stored there all those years. Who'd of thunk it? He said they went out to do status checks and maintenance in the wee hours of moonless nights, dressed in civvies and carrying fishing poles. He said fishing in the sub pens was particularly good at night, and you weren't likely to be interrupted by the Florida Marine Patrol. Can you imagine the zoomies doing anything that casual?
Cheers,
Wes

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## Zipper730 (May 27, 2019)

tyrodtom said:


> What do you think the function is of the truss structure in a bridge?


For some reason I was thinking of a suspension bridge, of which some have a lot of structural members below the bridge too.


> Look at a picture of a truss type bridge, it's unlikely you could get a bomb thru all that structure without hitting it.


So what was the objection?


> As for the bomb dump explosion in Thailand going up only killing as many as it did, was more due to the fact that good munition storage areas are mostly open areas with lot's of room between working and storage areas. The revetments are just walls of dirt surrounding each site, they direct to force of the blast upward.


Understood


> Plus the accident happened at night, when only a fraction of the personnel who worked there was present.


That is a big plus -- less people present means less can die.


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## XBe02Drvr (May 27, 2019)

Zipper730 said:


> For some reason I was thinking of a suspension bridge








This is some of the structure of the Paul Doumer (or Long Bien) bridge in Vietnam, known to American aviators as "the dragon's jaw". Does it look like a suspension bridge to you? Can you imagine dropping a bomb through that maze without setting it off?
OTOH, it is a cantilever bridge, not a Warren type linear truss, so I can easily see the aviators believing that a bomb that didn't explode until it reached or penetrated the roadway would have a greater chance of taking down the whole structure. As it was, they did succeed in dropping the center span but the two cantilever sections were untouched, so erecting a new center span was feasible, and did happen.
Cheers,
Wes

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## michael rauls (May 27, 2019)

tyrodtom said:


> Incineration, as in a nuke ?? Surely you're joking.
> Probably all three if that had been done in 1965, that would have been seen as a giant escalation on our part.


Im guessing both he and LeMay meant leveling Hanoi and any other concentrated targets in a more conventional manner, ala Tokyo or Dresden.

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## michael rauls (May 27, 2019)

FLYBOYJ said:


> Putting it bluntly, they were VERY dumb.


Certainly this is true in the context of military afairs. However it occurs to me that it was hubris on the part of political descision makers more than intelligence or lack thereof that made things unnescesarily dificult for our military.
There is nothing more dangerous than a person generally intelligent or not, convinced of there own acumen but ignorant in the task at hand and either un aware of or unwilling to admit to themselves there need for counsel from those more knowledgeable than themselves in said task at hand.

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## tyrodtom (May 27, 2019)

XBe02Drvr said:


> View attachment 539605
> 
> This is some of the structure of the Paul Doumer (or Long Bien) bridge in Vietnam, known to American aviators as "the dragon's jaw". Does it look like a suspension bridge to you? Can you imagine dropping a bomb through that maze without setting it off?
> OTOH, it is a cantilever bridge, not a Warren type linear truss, so I can easily see the aviators believing that a bomb that didn't explode until it reached or penetrated the roadway would have a greater chance of taking down the whole structure. As it was, they did succeed in dropping the center span but the two cantilever sections were untouched, so erecting a new center span was feasible, and did happen.
> ...


The Thanh Hoa bridge was know as the Dragons Jaw, not the Paul Doumer bridge.

The Thanh Hoa bridge was a warren truss bridge , wasn't finally dropped until 1972. 
On the first attack of the Thanh Hoa bridge 1200 bombs and 32 Bullpup missiles were expended, but apparently only scorched the paint on the structure.
They even tried to bring it down by dropping mines upstream from C-130s, and blowing them up as they floated under it. 
With only more scorched paint as the result.
It earned it's name as the Dragon's Jaw the hard way.

The Paul Doumer Bridge had a span dropped in it's first attack in 1967. 
Repaired soon of course.

We didn't know it at the time but some of the conventional bridges were replaced by underwater bridges a few miles away, with camouflaged approaches, and only used at night. 
But the conventional bridges still repaired and defended just to keep our attention on them, and cause us to lose aircraft trying to destroy them.

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## tyrodtom (May 27, 2019)

I notice the roll eyes emoji was used when I said maybe the bean counters knew what the storage areas had.

If you want to believe it or not, it's true.

While in the Army in Wildflecken, Germany, in 72, at first I was on limited duty because of injuries. 
My duty was in the computer room. We were updating stock records daily on a IBM computer, and it's verifyer. The cards were sent to HQ in Frankfort daily by courier.

In Nkp Thailand the same task was performed daily by telex to HQ, I'm just not sure if that was in Asia or the US
They had pretty solid information on what and how much of everything we had.


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## Zipper730 (May 27, 2019)

XBe02Drvr said:


> View attachment 539605
> 
> ... Does it look like a suspension bridge to you? Can you imagine dropping a bomb through that maze without setting it off?


It'd require amazing luck...


> OTOH, it is a cantilever bridge, not a Warren type linear truss, so I can easily see the aviators believing that a bomb that didn't explode until it reached or penetrated the roadway would have a greater chance of taking down the whole structure.


And they knew this back in 1965-1967? Also, were they sending fighter-bombers to hit the bridge up-stream (rather than down the span)?


> As it was, they did succeed in dropping the center span but the two cantilever sections were untouched, so erecting a new center span was feasible, and did happen.


Why not just 'sic a B-52 cell on it?



michael rauls said:


> Im guessing both he and LeMay meant leveling Hanoi and any other concentrated targets in a more conventional manner, ala Tokyo or Dresden.


Yeah, basically: Also we flattened a whole bunch of cities in Korea (supposedly both North and South).


> However it occurs to me that it was hubris on the part of political descision makers more than intelligence or lack thereof that made things unnescesarily dificult for our military.


I think it was a combination of paranoia against some of the military establishment (and trying to keep them in line, and remind them who was boss), as well as hubris.


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## tyrodtom (May 27, 2019)

I think one thing that finally got engraved on their brains was if you want to take a modern steel bridge down, you need to hit it with a BIG bomb. 
Like 2000 lbs, and you need to hit it with a slight delay. It needs to penetrate the roadway, then explode just slightly beneath the roadway surface.

I think it was big bombs, early generation guided munitions that finally dropped the Thanh Hoa ( Dragons Jaw) in 72.

A B-52 cell might sound good, but the Big belly B-52s usual configuration was 500 lbs bombs in the bomb bay, and 750 lbs bombs on the wing racks. 
A lot of bombs, but meant for tearing up jungle and light structures.

I'm sure the B-52 could be configured for 2000 lbs bombs too, but dropping them from their preferred altitude with the precision required is questionable.


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## XBe02Drvr (May 27, 2019)

tyrodtom said:


> The Thanh Hoa bridge was know as the Dragons Jaw, not the Paul Doumer bridge.


I stand corrected. Thanks TT.


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## XBe02Drvr (May 27, 2019)

Zipper730 said:


> Why not just 'sic a B-52 cell on it?


Up until the final push in 1972, B52s only flew over the south as the north's defenses were viewed as too formidable. This view was vindicated by the losses suffered in the Christmas raids on Hanoi and Haiphong in 1972.
Cheers,
Wes


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## Zipper730 (May 27, 2019)

tyrodtom said:


> I think one thing that finally got engraved on their brains was if you want to take a modern steel bridge down, you need to hit it with a BIG bomb.
> 
> Like 2000 lbs, and you need to hit it with a slight delay. It needs to penetrate the roadway, then explode just slightly beneath the roadway surface.


So the time delay was something learned with experience? The Grandslam and Tallboy didn't seem to employ any time delay and brought down the Bialefeld duct...


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## tyrodtom (May 28, 2019)

Zipper730 said:


> So the time delay was something learned with experience? The Grandslam and Tallboy didn't seem to employ any time delay and brought down the Bialefeld duct...



Didn't seem to employ a time delay ? In other words you don't know .

What delay you'd use with a 10,000 lbs bomb, or thereabouts, compared to a 2000 lbs bomb or less, is apples to oranges.


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## The Basket (May 29, 2019)

I am sure the best way to deny a bridge to the enemy is by occupying said bridge with soldiers.

I am not expert on these things.


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## Zipper730 (Jun 13, 2019)

I have one question about policy in general during the Vietnam War, and the other on General Westmoreland in specific.

Vietnam Policy: The US Army had pretty good latitude to decide how to persecute the war: Did the USN have similar latitude in regards to surface warfare, submarine warfare?

General Westmoreland: I got some questions...

Why did he focus so much on massive search and destroy tactics over efforts aimed at pacification?
Why didn't he bother to train and arm the ARVN forces? Why didn't anybody above him seem to ensure he did?
Did any General/Admiral in that period of time (1945-1968) realize that if you have a war where one side is in a fight for survival (North Vietnam) and the other can disengage at will (United States) without being destroyed, that the former will do everything they can to survive?
Did any Generals in this time period realize that it was important to keep wars from dragging out too long, as it will undermine morale at home?


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## tyrodtom (Jun 14, 2019)

I'm surprised you would even ask that question.
It was hardly a secret that almost every weapon the ARVN had, from tanks , helicopters, aircraft, guns, munitions, right down to the helmets on their heads, came from us.
We had advisers in Vietnam from the late 50's.
And Yes, advisers trained ARVN.
My older brother's first 2 tours in Vietnam was as a adviser to the ARVN.
In the 50's they had MAAG, military assistance and advisory group, which was integrated into MACV Military assistance command Vietnam, in the early 60's.
Westmoreland was commander of MACV from 64-68.
There's plenty of books out there about Westmoreland, what his reasons and thoughts were. Read one.
It can't be summed up in just some simple sentences like you seem to want.
Though I'm sure someone else will try.

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## XBe02Drvr (Jun 14, 2019)

tyrodtom said:


> It can't be summed up in just some simple sentences like you seem to want.


It can't really be understood by anybody who wasn't there. I grew up in that generation, had a lot of the same training, and have read and read, and listened and listened for fifty years, but still can't really get my head around it. I've amassed a wealth of information, but without the context of being there, it doesn't qualify as knowledge. We are so fortunate to have have the likes of MikeW, Shortround, Tyrod, and Biff (I know, post VN, but valuable nonetheless) with us to provide the context that gives information the ring of truth.
Cheers,
Wes

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## Zipper730 (Jun 16, 2019)

tyrodtom said:


> I'm surprised you would even ask that question.


Questions...


> It was hardly a secret that almost every weapon the ARVN had, from tanks , helicopters, aircraft, guns, munitions, right down to the helmets on their heads, came from us.


There was a video about the various things Westmoreland did wrong, and they mentioned that he didn't seem to really do all that good a job about training the ARVN so they could eventually take over our job. Supposedly he said he didn't really give a damn about them.

While it seems that we provided them with equipment and trained them, I'm just not sure as to how well we did the job. Admittedly the F-5's were a pretty good jet to supply them with, if one were to choose.


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## Dimlee (Jun 16, 2019)

Zipper730 said:


> Did any General/Admiral in that period of time (1945-1968) realize that if you have a war where one side is in a fight for survival (North Vietnam) and the other can disengage at will (United States) without being destroyed, that the former will do everything they can to survive?



Sorry, but can not agree with this "survival" statement.
The only side in a fight for survival was the Republic of Vietnam (RV). 
The Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV, North Vietnam) always had a choice: to negotiate and to co-exist peacefully or to continue its aggression. And that aggression was as much "a fight for survival" for Hanoi as it was for Berlin (or for Moscow) in 1939.

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## Zipper730 (Jun 16, 2019)

Dimlee said:


> Sorry, but can not agree with this "survival" statement.
> The only side in a fight for survival was the Republic of Vietnam (RV).


That's a good point, however, we were in a position where we could disengage at will.

Once we started attacking NVN, they would pull out all the stops to protect themselves from us: We had greatly more firepower, and technically, could have turned them into an irradiated wasteland.


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## tyrodtom (Jun 16, 2019)

Zipper730 said:


> That's a good point, however, we were in a position where we could disengage at will.
> 
> Once we started attacking NVN, they would pull out all the stops to protect themselves from us: We had greatly more firepower, and technically, could have turned them into an irradiated wasteland.


NVN knew we wasn't going to nuke them, we had too many allied countries, and some not at all allies, in the immediate area.
How do you think Thailand, for instance, would have reacted? Japan ? SEATO ? The UN ? China ?
If we had nuked NVN, have any idea how many other countries in the world would wanted our help from that point on ?
Knowing that help from the USA would mean they'd risk having atomic weapons used nearby.


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## Shortround6 (Jun 16, 2019)

Zipper730 said:


> So the time delay was something learned with experience? The Grandslam and Tallboy didn't seem to employ any time delay and brought down the Bialefeld duct...


They certainly did employ a time delay, otherwise they would have exploded on impact which was not the way they were designed to work. They were not blast bombs depending on a pressure wave through the air to take out objectives. They were deep penetration bombs that were supposed to penetrate 60-100ft into the ground before going off and causing a small, local earth quake to shake the target structures down. 






note the numerous bomb craters from previous attacks.

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## Zipper730 (Jun 17, 2019)

tyrodtom said:


> NVN knew we wasn't going to nuke them, we had too many allied countries, and some not at all allies, in the immediate area.


I'm just saying we had the ability to do so.

Regardless, the facts (as I grasp it) are

We had greatly more firepower: Even if nuclear weapons were not employed, we could wiped out most major population centers, much as we had done in Korea, and in the latter half of WWII (1944-1945 in particular), in some ways, it would have likely been easier
Experience: We've carried out these raids in WWII and Korea, so we knew what to do, and what didn't work.
Bigger bombers:
The B-52F could carry 25000 pounds prior to the 'big belly' mods, which brought up the internal load to 42000, and the pylons used for the AGM-28 could be modified to carry up to 9000 pounds of bombs a piece; even 25000 would eclipse the Avro Lancaster (they were hauling loads ranging from 6000-14000 pounds) and the B-29 (which carried around 16000 when stripped down for incendiary raids).
Some fighters and attack aircraft had maximum loads that were substantial: The F-105 & A-6 had loads comparable to WWII heavies; the A-4 had loads that were comparable to medium-bombers.

In Flight Refueling: You could fly farther by refueling in mid-air, and since you are starting at 25000 feet after refueling, it's like you just appeared up at altitude.
Other: RB-66's can allow precise bombing by computing impact point, and then signaling F-105's to release ordinance; the A-6's could guide A-4's to their targets.

We could disengage at will: While it would have been bad for South Vietnam, the United States would not have come under attack; in comparison: If the UK were to attempt to disengage from war with Germany in WWII -- they would have been wiped out.

BTW: I'm not sure if I asked this before, but would SAC's idea of having 30 x B-52's carry out a low altitude attack on Phuc-Yen, followed by infrastructural attacks on NVN, and eventually right into China and hammering their nuclear reactor (Lop Nor?) which was producing nukes, would have succeeded in quickly subduing Vietnam, and ending China's nuclear threat? Would it have gotten the USSR involved in support of China, or would Russia have been happy to see China subdued? Would the Chinese have sent the hordes over the border?

Yes, these actions do seem a bit nuts, but sometimes audacity has a way of stunning people into silence: Remember the battle of Little Round top? A bayonet charge actually succeeded in holding the line -- you'd have figured they'd have just shot them all figuring "those who live by the blade get shot by those who live by the gun", but it stunned everybody.


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## Zipper730 (Jun 17, 2019)

Shortround6 said:


> They certainly did employ a time delay, otherwise they would have exploded on impact which was not the way they were designed to work. They were not blast bombs depending on a pressure wave through the air to take out objectives. They were deep penetration bombs that were supposed to penetrate 60-100ft into the ground before going off and causing a small, local earth quake to shake the target structures down.


You're right, I'm surprised I forgot about that particular little detail...


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## tyrodtom (Jun 17, 2019)

Beyond a few cities, NVN didn't have many population centers.
Bombing might work ok when your have targets conveniently gathered together.
But they weren't stupid, once they could see we were going to bomb, they started dispersing munitions, truck parks, oil supplies, etc.
They were very good at camouflaging , and we weren't so good at finding.
We ended up just moving dirt around in a lot of instances.

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## tyrodtom (Jun 17, 2019)

Zipper730 said:


> I'm just saying we had the ability to do so.
> 
> Regardless, the facts (as I grasp it) are
> 
> ...



The facts as you grasp it, was when ? 1965 ? 66 ? 67 ?
Evidently you haven't even read the previous post in this thread.

Where would these B-52's fly from? Where would all these munitions come from ?
It took years to gather up all the munitions from around the world, and build the bases for these aircraft to fly from.
Just as it took years to build up the infrastructure to support the bombing of Germany and Japan.

Bomb NVN's infrastructure ? Once you got away from the cities, what infrastructure ??
The NVN leadership weren't stupid, it was no secret we were doing all this preparation for something, not hard to guess why.

One threat was to bomb them (NVN ) back into the stone age.
Out in the country, where most of the North Vietnamese lived, they weren't far from the stone age as it was.
It was a empty threat .

I've never even flew over North Vietnam, but I have been on the ground in South Vietnam in the villages, and I'd think it wasn't all that different in NVN.
It's hard to explain to a person used to modern conveniences just how primitive these people lived, stuff that would today stop the average American in their tracks these people took in their stride daily.

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## Zipper730 (Jun 17, 2019)

tyrodtom said:


> The facts as you grasp it, was when?


Well, Rolling Thunder started in early 1965 right? The planned attack on Phuc Yen was also around the same period.


> Where would these B-52's fly from?


The attack on Phuc Yen would have been out of Guam (Anderson). B-52's were based out of Anderson and U-Tapao RTAFB.

Technically, it's possible to attack from the US, as long as you can refuel the planes, and we had several places where refueling could be carried out from.


> Just as it took years to build up the infrastructure to support the bombing of Germany and Japan.


That's actually a good question: How many bombs did we have before the war started (say mid/late-1938 to late-1941), and from that point, to 1945? How many did we expend versus produce and so forth?


> Bomb NVN's infrastructure?


I assume it was a euphemism for immolating the cities, and hitting the few oil-storage sites we could find.


> One threat was to bomb them (NVN ) back into the stone age.


Wasn't that General LeMay's biography?


> I've never even flew over North Vietnam, but I have been on the ground in South Vietnam in the villages, and I'd think it wasn't all that different in NVN.
> It's hard to explain to a person used to modern conveniences just how primitive these people lived


Did they even have out-houses?


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## tyrodtom (Jun 17, 2019)

The longer range the mission, the more wear and tear on the aircraft, bombers, tankers and escorts. That was why closer to the target bases were used whenever possible.
Rolling Thunder may have started in 65, but very slowly.
Just more a demonstration of what could be done. Impossible to continue at a useful pace because of the supply situation.

Utapao didn't come online until 1967.

Just imagine the logistics involved in getting one B-52 ( bombed up) from the USA, to NVN, and back. That's refueled in the air, and escorted
Remember NVN got it's first Mig-17's in 1964, and SAM's in 1965 .
You need to do this yourself, not take the easy way out and ask someone else the question and let them do the work.


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## Zipper730 (Jun 17, 2019)

tyrodtom said:


> The longer range the mission, the more wear and tear on the aircraft, bombers, tankers and escorts. That was why closer to the target bases were used whenever possible.


Of course, I was just trying to point out that, as part of Chrome Dome, there were plans to attack the USSR from the USA, as well as forward deployed locations (it would also bypass the issue of having to move the munitions from the US). That said, it'd be an exhausting flight.

Fighters and fighter-bombers were based in Thailand since the early 1960's (Korat was 1962 according to what I found), and would be available. For bomber escort, I figure good candidates would have included

F-104C: It might not have been the most advanced design, but it had a gun, could carry 2-4 sidewinders, and could be fitted with a refueling receptacle. It's pilots were generally well-trained, and the aircraft was feared by the USSR. Range was actually pretty good as it had a decent fuel fraction.
F-4B: It lacked a gun, but it had a very good rate of climb and acceleration, had aerial refueling capability, and an acceptable range.
F-106A: I'm not sure when they fitted IFR capability into the F-106A, but it could fly higher and had a lower corner velocity than either the F-104 or F-4, which is a nice-touch, and I think it could fly marginally further when subsonic.
F-5: Not sure when they first grafted on a refueling receptacle, but the aircraft was one of the more maneuverable aircraft of the time, and if it could refuel in mid-air, that would help a great deal, I'd imagine. The fuel-fraction seemed quite good, and the bulk of enemy aircraft were MiG-17's which were subsonic.
As for ground-attack, I would say the following would be the best options based on the time

F-105: It had aerial refueling, a good overall range, even at low altitude, and routinely carried ordinance loads of 3000-6000 pounds. While it's top speed at high altitude wouldn't win speed records, it would outrun damned near anybody down-low, and carried a gun, which gave it an ability to exact a toll on fighter planes, and could also be used for strafing.
F-104: Though it didn't carry the most massive load, it could fly fast with minimal gust-response, and was more agile than the F-105. The fact that it carried a cannon, meant that it could strafe effectively.
F-5: Though it was a bit of a testing operation, the Skoshi Tiger trials showed it was quite adept in the role. It could carry a decent load, it was small and nimble as hell, making it hard to hit from the ground, and was fitted with 2 x 20mm cannon. I'm not sure when the refueling receptacle was added, but that would definitely help.
F-4B: It rode rougher than the F-105, and couldn't fly as far, but it was capable of IFR like the F-105, and could carry an even heavier load. It was also an effective fighter/interceptor.
If USN aircraft were involved, than there would be the A-4 and A-6, of which both were excellent in their own ways.


> Rolling Thunder may have started in 65, but very slowly.


So, it would have worked better had there been carried out in a more rational method (Don't stop for stupid reasons, particularly when it appears something is coming out of it in a useful fashion), and with continuity (keep hitting specified target systems until they're gone), with the only thing to stop you being shortages in ammunition or excessive losses, not silly political matters?


> Utapao didn't come online until 1967.


That is something I did not know...


> Remember NVN got it's first Mig-17's in 1964, and SAM's in 1966?.


Actually, the first SAM was identified in 1965...
Operation Iron Hand - Wikipedia


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## tyrodtom (Jun 18, 2019)

Rolling Thunder started out very slowly, not because of political reasons, but because that's all the logistics could support.
It was a tremendous effort to locate, transport, and refurbish all those munitions stored worldwide, left over from WW2 and the Korean war.
Even a bombing campaign based from the USA, still would have taken great effort because a great deal of those supplies weren't located stateside.

You're a little off on your Korat AFB timeline, it never became operational for USAF fighters till the middle of 1965, when 8, that's 8, F-105s started operating from there.

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## Zipper730 (Jun 18, 2019)

tyrodtom said:


> Rolling Thunder started out very slowly, not because of political reasons, but because that's all the logistics could support. It was a tremendous effort to locate, transport, and refurbish all those munitions stored worldwide, eft over from WW2 and the Korean war.


I would imagine, and yet the F-105's flew pretty good with 750's onboard. Some of them didn't appear to be the newest munitions...


> Even a bombing campaign based from the USA, still would have taken great effort because a great deal of those supplies weren't located stateside.


Really? I would have figured the bulk of it would be here, but OTOH, it does make sense that huge caches would be in Europe...


> You're a little off on your Korat AFB timeline, it never became operational for USAF fighters till the middle of 1965, when 8, that's 8, F-105s started operating from there.


I guess that's what I get for using Wikipedia as a source , I do remember a documentary on the build-up of the Vietnam war. I should probably watch that assuming it's still on YouTube.


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## tyrodtom (Jun 18, 2019)

Our last serious conflict before Vietnam was in Korea, most of the munitions I saw had been stored in the Pacific rim, Okinawa, Philippines, Guam, Japan, western USA and so on.

I think you still don't get it, the problem wasn't some magic combination of aircraft that needed to be used that wasn't tried, it was we didn't have the personnel to man all these new bases, or expanded old bases. Then when they were built we had problems suppling them.
It takes time to get people to enlist, and train them, the USAF couldn't draft the added people they needed.


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## Zipper730 (Jun 19, 2019)

tyrodtom said:


> Our last serious conflict before Vietnam was in Korea, most of the munitions I saw had been stored in the Pacific rim, Okinawa, Philippines, Guam, Japan, western USA and so on.


I remember that Douglas was developing more streamlined weapons as of 1946, I assume some were fielded in the US Navy at least (carrier-based aircraft), were any used in the USAF?


> It was we didn't have the personnel to man all these new bases, or expanded old bases.


I knew the new look policies did reduce expendature on conventional weapons in favor of nuclear ones because they got more bang for our buck and avoided spending ourselves to death. That said, I figured we had more weapons available than you described.


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## Zipper730 (Jun 19, 2019)

Here's some videos I found that seem to provide a fairly decent explanation of the geography and chronology of what was happening




Since I'm interested in accuracy, I'm curious if anybody here has anything that would clarify or point out any flaws in the documentary.



 mikewint

S
 Shortround6

X
 XBe02Drvr
, seem to be a good group of people with which to draw upon for expertise, and tyrodtom is already responding.

As for the bases, I've been looking into the details of that sort, and I've learned the following

*Country*.............*Air-Base*..........*First Operational*.....*Notes*
Guam.................Anderson.........2/3/44.......................USAF
South Vietnam...Tan Son Nhut...9/1961......................USAF
South Vietnam...Bien Hoa.........12/1961.....................USAF

As of the first video... I only saw part of it, and I know there would be five bases in Thailand, one in Okinawa, and so on.


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## mikewint (Jun 19, 2019)

Hard for me to knowledgeably comment on anything USAF or Naval Air related as I was strictly a "groundpounder". Our interactions were pretty much confined to calling in air strikes and/or spotting targets. As to air strikes, the USAF/Navy loved their jets. For what we needed the Jets were too fast to consistently hit small targets and had too little loiter time. I'd take a good old Skyraider any time.
As to the B-52 Arc-Light strikes they were unbelievable, like the hand of God smacking the ground. On several occasions we were tasked with"running"(literally) BDAs after a strike. The REMFs want to know exactly how effective the Arc-Lights were at destroying NVA installations. Now it is hard to describe to someone who has not experienced triple canopy jungle exactly how dense and featureless it was. That dense sea of greenery had no landmarks so while those massive Arc-light strikes chewed up a a lot of jungle they seldom really hurt the NVA and missed more than they hit. Plus the NVA/VC were so dug-in that even when an Arc-Light hit on top of them most survived. The greenery and soft jungle loam absorbed a lot of bomb energy
Throughout the war the Political/Military leaders in Washington were haunted by the "Korea-Syndrome". So as the video portrays there were many, many areas that should have been hit and hit hard that were off limits and remained sanctuaries. Then after days of bombing that were actually being effective and were hurting the NVA the politicos in Washington would call a halt allowing the NVA an opportunity to rebuild and regroup
It's also important to note that the US was facing hardened and trained NVA Regulars equipped with the latest and best Soviet/Chinese military hardware guns/tanks/aircraft/missles. The equal of anything the US/ARVN forces had. 
Ho-Chi-Minh Trail was not a trail but hundreds of paths through Laos every mile of which was under the care of hundreds of NVA who within hours of a strike had the road either repaired or by-passed. Then there are the very simple bicycle paths with each bike carrying a minimum of 200kg(440lbs) of supplies some 60,000 of them. One bike reportedly carried 420kg(924lbs) along the entire trail. In addition walking porters carried 50kg(110lb) loads on their backs. Each porter/bicyclist was assigned about 25 miles of trail which they traveled over and over. Truck parks were covered in the day by movable trees so they could not be seen in the daylight. By 1968 they trail was carrying 10 - 20,000 troops a month and 120 tons of supplies a day into south Vietnam. Without expanding the war into Laos/Cambodia little could be done

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## Dimlee (Jun 19, 2019)

Zipper730 said:


> Once we started attacking NVN, they would pull out all the stops to protect themselves from us: We had greatly more firepower, and technically, could have turned them into an irradiated wasteland.



US could - technically. But could not - politically. And Hanoi was very well aware about constraints and limitations of the Western democracies. There were very smart leaders in Hanoi, including Uncle Ho himself, and they were given a lot of support from Moscow (intelligence and diplomatic - on international level, starting from UN) where leadership has acquired vast experience of manipulating Western policies - since the Civil War in former Russian Empire, almost 50 years before the escalation in Indochina.


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## Dimlee (Jun 19, 2019)

[


Zipper730 said:


> Would it have gotten the USSR involved in support of China, or would Russia have been happy to see China subdued?



USSR (not _Russia_, of course) would not be happy with any US victory. But tensions with China has reached very high level, there were thousands of border incidents each year since 1962 and until the armed conflict at Damansky (Zhenbao) island in 1969. Most probably there would be loud condemnation of US aggression and silent sigh of relief. USSR despite all its power, was ill equipped to fight prolonged ground war in the East.


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## mikewint (Jun 19, 2019)

“I don’t think that unless a greater effort is made by the government to win popular support that the war can be won out there. In the final analysis, it is their war. They are the ones who have to win it or lose it. We can help them, we can give them equipment, we can send our men out there as advisors, but they have to win it, the people of Vietnam, against the communists.”

President John Kennedy in a televised interview with Walter Cronkite on September 2, 1963.


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## swampyankee (Jun 19, 2019)

mikewint said:


> “I don’t think that unless a greater effort is made by the government to win popular support that the war can be won out there. In the final analysis, it is their war. They are the ones who have to win it or lose it. We can help them, we can give them equipment, we can send our men out there as advisors, but they have to win it, the people of Vietnam, against the communists.”
> 
> President John Kennedy in a televised interview with Walter Cronkite on September 2, 1963.



One wonders if the government of South Vietnam ever got advised of that plan. Certainly, having a very senior police official publicly murder a prisoner did very little to show the moral superiority of the government of South Vietnam.


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## tyrodtom (Jun 19, 2019)

swampyankee said:


> One wonders if the government of South Vietnam ever got advised of that plan. Certainly, having a very senior police official publicly murder a prisoner did very little to show the moral superiority of the government of South Vietnam.



If you're talking about the picture of Gen. Ngoc Loan executing Capt. Van Lem of a VC murder squad. 
Lem and his men had just murdered a young officer friend of Loan's, his wife and 6 kids, jn the early morning hours of the 68 Tet Offensive in Saigon .

In hard combat emotions run high.

Eddie Adams, the photographer, regretted taking that picture the rest of his life.

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## Zipper730 (Jun 19, 2019)

mikewint said:


> Hard for me to knowledgeably comment on anything USAF or Naval Air related as I was strictly a "groundpounder". Our interactions were pretty much confined to calling in air strikes and/or spotting targets. As to air strikes, the USAF/Navy loved their jets. For what we needed the Jets were too fast to consistently hit small targets and had too little loiter time.


I am curious how much of it had to do with training. I remember a book about the Grumman Tiger/Super Tiger, written by Corky Meyer, who said that the Swiss were remarkable when it came to hitting targets on the ground -- 90% accuracy. The USN were doing around 40% accuracy in comparison, from what I recall. 

That said, the A-1 was probably more able to be consistently accurate, and their loiter would allow them to both be observers and hitters.


> As to the B-52 Arc-Light strikes they were unbelievable, like the hand of God smacking the ground.


They required (our) troops to be pulled back before they let rip, I'd guess? 


> That dense sea of greenery had no landmarks so while those massive Arc-light strikes chewed up a a lot of jungle they seldom really hurt the NVA and missed more than they hit. Plus the NVA/VC were so dug-in that even when an Arc-Light hit on top of them most survived. The greenery and soft jungle loam absorbed a lot of bomb energy


I never actually thought about that, but it makes sense that it'd cushion the blows. 


> Throughout the war the Political/Military leaders in Washington were haunted by the "Korea-Syndrome".


They were deathly afraid of the Chinese sending a million and a half people across the border, or worse?


> Then after days of bombing that were actually being effective and were hurting the NVA the politicos in Washington would call a halt allowing the NVA an opportunity to rebuild and regroup


Why did we stop? I figure if they were serious about giving up, they'd contact us, or contact somebody, who'd contact us and say "we give up, okay?"


> It's also important to note that the US was facing hardened and trained NVA Regulars equipped with the latest and best Soviet/Chinese military hardware guns/tanks/aircraft/missles. The equal of anything the US/ARVN forces had.


I'm curious what efforts the ARVN did to beat back North Vietnam's advances. They rarely ever mention this in history books. They talk about us, the NVA, the NLF, even the NVAF, but never them. At least they mention fairly little.


> Ho-Chi-Minh Trail was not a trail but hundreds of paths through Laos every mile of which was under the care of hundreds of NVA who within hours of a strike had the road either repaired or by-passed. Then there are the very simple bicycle paths with each bike carrying a minimum of 200kg (440 lbs) of supplies some 60,000 of them. One bike reportedly carried 420kg (924 lbs) along the entire trail. In addition walking porters carried 50kg (110 lb) loads on their backs. Each porter/bicyclist was assigned about 25 miles of trail which they traveled over and over. Truck parks were covered in the day by movable trees so they could not be seen in the daylight. By 1968 they trail was carrying 10 - 20,000 troops a month and 120 tons of supplies a day into south Vietnam. Without expanding the war into Laos/Cambodia little could be done


I thought we did carry out some operations into Laos as early as 1965 with Operation Barrel Roll, with bombing campaigns into Cambodia under Nixon.

I'm curious about what we knew about the Ho Chi Minh trail at what time? I assume frantic efforts were made to disrupt traffic along the trails, but was unsuccessful for one reason or another. I do remember they dropped all sorts of weird gadgetry into the jungles including recorders that looked like turds.



Dimlee said:


> US could - technically. But could not - politically.


Obviously, it was just a physical capability.


> And Hanoi was very well aware about constraints and limitations of the Western democracies.


They knew our limits better than we knew theirs...


> There were very smart leaders in Hanoi, including Uncle Ho himself, and they were given a lot of support from Moscow (intelligence and diplomatic - on international level, starting from UN) where leadership has acquired vast experience of manipulating Western policies


Why is it that the bad guys always know more than the good guys? Is it that in order to get that good, you have to become bad?



Dimlee said:


> USSR (not _Russia_, of course) would not be happy with any US victory. But tensions with China has reached very high level, there were thousands of border incidents each year since 1962 and until the armed conflict at Damansky (Zhenbao) island in 1969. Most probably there would be loud condemnation of US aggression and silent sigh of relief. USSR despite all its power, was ill equipped to fight prolonged ground war in the East.


Did we know that? When I say "we", I mean

The Joint Chiefs
The Intelligence Services
The Secretary of Defense
The President of the United States


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## tyrodtom (Jun 19, 2019)

I was just a low ranking E4 to E5 during most of this, but my impression was that some of the bombing halts came because we ran low of bombs to drop.
But nobody wanted to admit it then or now.

I remember some times in Thailand not many missions were planned for some nights, because we had nothing in the bomb dump that was usable.
We were waiting for a convoy to arrive in a few days.

A 50 or 100 truck convoy would arrive and we'd work like fiends to download and store it, then with no sleep transport some to the flightline for use the next day. Or if we were lucky, the missions wouldn't pile on till the next night.
Most of the trail bombing went on at night, they tried to catch convoys moving at night.
During the day they bombed areas where they suspected truck parks were located.
Or if someone got shot down there was a all out effort to recover them, day or night.

The Ho Chi Minh trail evolved through the years. It started as footpaths, then to bike paths, to truck capable dirt roads, then graveled, then hardtopped in some places. In the late 60's or early 70s they even had a fuel pipeline. 

It wasn't just one road, it was multiple, parallel, interconnected, roads.
The usual tactic for destroying a truck convoy was to knock out trucks on the front of the convoy and then at the rear, then you destroy the rest of the trapped convoy by calling in other aircraft.
But you couldn't just trap a convoy on the Ho Chi Minh trail because they could bypass the knocked out trucks on a side trail.


I got a look at some of it from the air in operation Lam Son 719 in early 1971.


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## Dimlee (Jun 20, 2019)

Zipper730 said:


> Why is it that the bad guys always know more than the good guys? Is it that in order to get that good, you have to become bad?



Rhetoric question, isn't it.
Those particular "bad guys" worked and lived for the ultimate goal of "creating the communist society" according to the 3rd Program of CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union) adopted in 1961.
22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union - Wikipedia
Третья Программа КПСС — Википедия
They were on offensive and they researched their enemy as much as they could.


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## XBe02Drvr (Jun 20, 2019)

Zipper730 said:


> That said, the A-1 was probably more able to be consistently accurate, and their loiter would allow them to both be observers and hitters.


In the zoomies world of high and fast, an unglamorous anachronism like "the Spad" was not a career builder for an aspiring pilot aiming to retire as a general, no matter how effective it was in supporting the troops. Kinda like the A10 today. Its only claim to glamour was in the SAR escort role, where not so many pilots survived to dream of wearing stars.


Zipper730 said:


> the Swiss were remarkable when it came to hitting targets on the ground -- 90% accuracy. The USN were doing around 40% accuracy


It's all about your level of dedication to mud moving. For USN, it's an "additional mission" on top of air superiority, recon, fleet defense, and nuclear strike (not to mention ASW, aerial refueling, COD, and SAR, all of which have to operate off the same deck). For the Swiss (and Israelis, and Swedes, and USMC), it's the be-all and end-all, the raison d'être, the core mission. These services view their aviators as soldiers in the sky whose focus is the war on the ground, and train accordingly.


Zipper730 said:


> Why did we stop? I figure if they were serious about giving up, they'd contact us, or contact somebody, who would contact us and say "we give up, okay?".


Can you imagine George Washington and the Continental Congress doing that in 1780 when the war was going badly and the Treasury was bankrupt? No, they had to get the enemy off our soil, come hell or high water. The idea of "North" Vietnamese and "South" Vietnamese was a western imposed concept, not a native one. The ARVN troops could be excused for being less than enthusiastic, fighting for a corrupt, ever-changing government seen as a puppet of foreign powers, against their own people who were displaying a far more plausible sense of patriotism and dauntless determination.


Zipper730 said:


> Why is it that the bad guys always know more than the good guys? Is it that in order to get that good, you have to become bad?


IMHO, because the "bad guys" (by OUR definition) were more dedicated, determined, and goal driven, and had a better grasp of the hearts and minds of the people, with all of the information pipelines that gave them.
Cheers,
Wes

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## XBe02Drvr (Jun 20, 2019)

Dimlee said:


> Those particular "bad guys" worked and lived for the ultimate goal of "creating the communist society" according to the 3rd Program of CPSU (Communist Party of the Soviet Union) adopted in 1961.


Just out of curiosity, here, how many northeners (%) do you think were dedicated ideological communists vs self identified patriots who just wanted the foreigners gone and the country reunified, and viewed Uncle Ho and his approach as the most likely means to that end? Did the average DRVN citizen live and work to create the ideal communist society, or did they just worship Uncle Ho as the "father of his country" with communism as part of the package?
Cheers,
Wes


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## swampyankee (Jun 20, 2019)

XBe02Drvr said:


> Just out of curiosity, here, how many northeners (%) do you think were dedicated ideological communists vs self identified patriots who just wanted the foreigners gone and the country reunified, and viewed Uncle Ho and his approach as the most likely means to that end?
> Cheers,
> Wes



Of course, some of the “dedicated ideological communists” could also have been nationalists who wanted the foreigners gone. 

“Communist threat” was a term applied far too broadly, and a little nuance — not every political protest against military dictatorships, autocratic regimes, or foreign encroachments was communist-inspired until the US reacted against it and the USSR reacted to support it, usually ensuring the local communist co-opted the movement — may have improved the lot of many people outside of the Warsaw Pact and prevented things like Castro’s regime in Cuba.

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## XBe02Drvr (Jun 20, 2019)

swampyankee said:


> Of course, some of the “dedicated ideological communists” could also have been nationalists who wanted the foreigners gone.
> 
> “Communist threat” was a term applied far too broadly, and a little nuance — not every political protest against military dictatorships, autocratic regimes, or foreign encroachments was communist-inspired until the US reacted against it and the USSR reacted to support it, usually ensuring the local communist co-opted the movement — may have improved the lot of many people outside of the Warsaw Pact and prevented things like Castro’s regime in Cuba.


Roger, concur. IMO the US had a bad case of communiphobia combined with cultural ignorance that rendered nuance impossible. The echoes of McCarthyism were still reverberating underground to the extent that many in the power structure looked askance at hippie communes, farm and electric co-ops, credit unions, and even labor unions as communistic erosions of the pure capitalism they held dear. To that might be added social security, the "social safety net", and all remaining vestiges of FDR's New Deal.
McCarthy and his ilk having fairly successfully discredited the "egghead intellectuals" in the public eye, those who might have provided some nuanced counsel to policy makers were suffering from a perceived credibility gap.
IMO, if we had fought the cold war smarter and less hysterically, our economic power would have run the Soviet Union into the ground sooner and with less global bloodshed.
Ain't 20/20 hindsight wunnerful?
Cheers,
Wes

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## XBe02Drvr (Jun 20, 2019)

swampyankee said:


> One wonders if the government of South Vietnam ever got advised of that plan. Certainly, having a very senior police official publicly murder a prisoner did very little to show the moral superiority of the government of South Vietnam.


Which government of South Vietnam? Diem? Cao Ky? "Big" Minh? From Kennedy's speech in '63 to Tet in '68 spans half a decade, at least four governments and seemingly a century in the evolution of the war. That's the problem. There was no "there" there, just a revolving door, and very little sense of a separate nationality from the other half of the Vietnamese people.
A parallel could be made with our own civil war, or war of Yankee aggression, depending on your perspective. The abolitionists of the north were nearly as rabid ideologues as the CPVN, but the leaders and the officers on both sides had served in Congress together and had been classmates at West Point and Annapolis, but they all considered themselves Americans, whether their loyalties were to USA or CSA. Regional values, customs, and ideology varied, but they shared a perceived national identity. The striking difference is that the CSA had a sense of unity and purpose that the RVN lacked.
Cheers,
Wes


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## mikewint (Jun 20, 2019)

The ARVN officer corps, like the government of S. Vietnam, was riddled with nepotism, corruption, and was by and large indifferent to the plight of the peasantry that it was supposed to protect. In addition ARVN was fighting a unconventional, “people’s war” against small units of guerrillas with tactics and doctrine developed by the U.S. Army for conventional conflicts between regular armies. Not surprisingly, it was losing.

The top generals and admirals in Saigon and Washington both held tenaciously to this conventional way of war, despite paying lip service to the counterinsurgency training and doctrine that the war in Vietnam seemed to require. This, coupled with the incompetence of the ARVN forces were a clear signal of the disaster for American prospects in Southeast Asia.
U.S. ground forces when they arrived would be facing off against a superbly organized and highly motivated insurgency that enjoyed widespread support among South Vietnam’s 14 million peasants. The communist-led National Liberation Front in the South was largely an indigenous movement that had been supplied, as I posted earlier, with weapons and well-trained military and political warfare specialists from the People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN) 

The commanding generals of the US from John O’Daniel to William Westmoreland, had all come of age as junior officers in World War II. Under no circumstances could they imagine how a largely guerrilla army with no air force or tanks could possibly defeat the US trained and equipped ARVN forces, let alone the most technologically advanced army on the face of the planet. Their “Victory Disease” blinded them to negative after-action reports detailing the superior tactics and aggressiveness of communist troops, and the glaring deficiencies of the ARVN. These negative reports were routinely dismissed, and the advisers who filed them were told to “get on the team” and were often given negative fitness evaluations and shunted off to career-ending billets. Intelligence reports were routinely doctored, and “the Vietcong capability was always downgraded and reduced.”

So the Army’s trainers organized the ARVN forces on the American model, as a nine-division force designed to repel a conventional invasion from North Vietnam, similar to the one the North Koreans had launched in June 1950 against South Korea.

Hanoi’s strategists however had never for a minute contemplated such an invasion. Instead, the communists launched a well-conceived campaign to break down the legitimacy of the Saigon regime under Ngo Dinh Diem with propaganda, political subversion, and guerrilla warfare. This effort was spearheaded by 15,000 clandestine communist cadres left behind in the South after the French Indochina War, but it grew like wildfire in the countryside, where a shadow government under the direction of the National Liberation Front soon took hold. Diem, an authoritarian Catholic, repressed the Buddhist majority and rival political parties with an iron hand, driving many non-communist southerners into the arms of the NLF.

ARVN’s senior officers were generally reluctant to engage their forces against the Vietcong for fear of taking casualties, and thus incurring the wrath of Diem for “losing face.” And so the dirty work of battling the insurgency fell very heavily on the ill-trained regional and local paramilitary forces, the Civil Guard and Village Self-Defense Corps. They were no match for the Vietcong; in fact, the paramilitary forces became a major source of weaponry for the communists, allowing the insurgency to expand in number and lethality rapidly throughout 1962 and 1963.

From the earliest days of his presidency, John Kennedy, himself a serious student of communist “wars of national liberation,” put pressure on the U.S. Army brass to alter its doctrine and training, and that of the ARVN, to what he called “a new type of war, new in its intentions, ancient in its origins—war by guerrillas, subversives, assassins, war by ambush instead of combat, by infiltration instead of aggression, seeking victory by erosion and exhausting the enemy instead of engaging him … It requires a new kind of strategy, a wholly different kind of force, and therefore a new kind of training.”

JFK’s ideas were greeted with a total lack of enthusiasm by the Army’s senior leadership. Pushed by Washington studies were prepared on counterinsurgency. British experts like Sir Robert Thompson were brought in and consulted. And the subject of counterinsurgency was inserted into the curriculum of military training schools.

However the WWII/Korea model was simply too entrenched in the military mind to be overcome. Thus in the end, the Army took the view that the lethality of conventional combat as waged by U.S. forces was such that no guerrilla force could long survive. A new Army manual in 1962, “Operations Against Irregular Forces”, stated that “most tactics for counterinsurgency remain extensions of, or resemble, small unit tactics for a conventional battlefield.”
Unfortunately dead wrong, the main goal in counterinsurgency has to be patrolling to keep the guerrillas away from the populace, and implementing civic action programs designed to build confidence among the population in the government’s ability to respond to the people’s needs and concerns. Thus, military operations must be closely coordinated with political and social reforms in the countryside or counterinsurgency simply won’t work.

Unfortunately ARVN’s tactics—learned at the feet of its American trainers—were alienating the population they were meant to be winning over. They were too focused on killing guerrillas from afar with supporting arms, rather than providing security to the people. ARVN’s heavy reliance on bombardment of Vietcong strongholds invariably lost the element of surprise, and killed far too many civilians. ARVN generals’ invariably relied on artillery and air support. Generally refusing to close with the enemy and had a total lack of concern over civilian casualties. The US position on these tactics was expressed by Gen. Paul Harkins: “It really puts the fear of God into the Vietcong. And that is what counts.” 

ARVN’s operations against the VC were effectively alienating the population from the Saigon administration and pushing them into the open arms of the communists. Washington and Saigon could simply not comprehend that the war was only 15 percent military and 85 percent political. That is it was not just a matter of killing Vietcong, but of coupling security with the people’s welfare in the countryside.

The VC adhered to a strict code of conduct in their interactions with the villagers. They never stole from them; never molested women; they paid for whatever food they obtained. And they were masters of small-unit infantry tactics that the ARVN had long neglected and that were indispensable in fighting a “people’s war.”

On January 2, 1963 at the Vietcong fortified village of Ap Bac, about 50 miles southwest of Saigon about 350 guerrillas armed only with machine guns (two .50 Brownings) and rifles went up against more than 2,000 ARVN troops and their American advisers (NOTE the term ADVISOR. The US command had NO direct control over ARVN forces). It is also important to note here that the VC had been told two days prior to the attack that it was coming and knew all the details of the attack. Pham Xuan An, a Vietnamese journalist and correspondent for Time, Reuters and the New York Herald Tribune was stationed in Saigon during the war. He had total access to top US and Saigon officials. Unfortunately he was also an NVA spy who supplied information on US and ARVN plans/operations to Hanoi throughout the war.

Just after sunrise ARVN forces walked out of the jungle in open formations across a flat open rice paddy toward the hidden, fortified, and well prepared VC positions. At the first VC volley 30% of the attacking forces were killed outright. Reinforcements then arrived via helo. The VC waited until the helos slowed to land then opened up with the twin Brownings downing 5 helos. ARVN artillery then opened up but it was misdirected and the artillery fire landed among the troop carrier helos as they attempted to land. The APCs then attacked (M113 lightly armored bath tubs with a single .50 in an open mount on top) The machine gunners (sergeants in charge of the troops within the APC) were quickly killed by sniper fire and when the APCs bogged down in the rice paddy mud VC sappers simply tossed grenades into the open top of the M113s. Air support, including bombs, napalm, rockets and machinegun fire had little effect on the hidden and fortified VC positions. The VC stood their ground and ARVN commanders refused to mount follow-up infantry or APC assaults. When the VC began to withdraw from the village, the ARVN field commander refused to give chase, though he had ample assets to do so.

By battle’s end, five U.S. helicopters had been shot out of the sky. The ARVN suffered more than 200 casualties and three American advisors were killed. US General Harkins, claimed that Ap Bac was a victory because the Vietcong had been driven from the village. 

Lt. Colonel JP Vann commanding Advisory Team 4 in the Mekong Delta (where he advised the ARVN 7th Infantry Division) stated flatly: “A miserable damn performance, just like it always is,” to several American correspondents.
Thanks to Vann’s sterling reputation and contacts, he was ultimately able to secure a hearing with the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington about what needed to change if the United States and South Vietnam were to prevail in Vietnam. A couple of hours before he was scheduled to give his briefing, General Maxwell Taylor, chairmen of the JCS, nixed the presentation when he was informed of its substance. He didn’t want bad news on the record.

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## XBe02Drvr (Jun 20, 2019)

mikewint said:


> However the WWII/Korea model was simply too entrenched in the military mind to be overcome.


There it is folks, from our man on the scene. Thank you, Mike!
All those weekends in 1966 and 67 crawling around Ft Devens in blackened fatigues and coolie hats, scaring the crap out of draftees on their way to the 'Nam, the coming disaster was evident to me unless some major changes were to happen. When the time came to check in for the last two years of ROTC, I decided not to voyage on the Titanic. If I had been in "regular" ROTC, I wouldn't have had that eye-opening experience. Thank you again, Mike, for your service and your insight.
Cheers,
Wes


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## mikewint (Jun 20, 2019)

Wes, Thank you, but I always think that if anyone really knew what I did in Vietnam they wouldn't thank me.
Also I wish I could claim some kind/type of military knowledge and/or insight but I fail there too. Perhaps because I was an outsider with zero military training that the futility of what we were doing became so very apparent even to me. With our overwhelming forces we could take any enemy stronghold but then we turned around, boarded our Helos and left. An hour or so later the VC were back and all those Americans had died for nothing.
Another serious problem we had was our program of "Tour of Duty". Survive your year and it was back to the World. Time and time again I saw people who really understood and had the hard won skills to deal successfully with the VC/NVA reach the end of their tour and leave only to be replaced with some 90 day wonder who knew nothing of the real Vietnam
I don't know if the Chinese would have stepped in had we marched North as we did in Korea but I suspect that they would have.
I didn't blame the ranks of the ARVN forces for their lacks. The vast majority of them weren't even drafted they were forcefully impressed. Recruiting groups of Diem's men would simply enter a village, round up every male from 12 to 60, select the ones that were at least somewhat physically able, and march them off to a training camp where they were given a uniform and a rifle and told that they were now soldiers. ARVN desertions easily numbered over 10,000 a month. The vast majority of ARVN soldiers simply had no loyalty to Saigon or its leaders or S. Vietnam as a country. Now Hanoi had its deserters as well and we saw several of them a week but they were a trickle to the South's hemorrhaging. Hanoi's troops had something to fight for and a charismatic leader who very successfully portrayed himself as a man of the people who wanted Vietnam for the Vietnamese. Uncle Ho had what we need to earn, the Hearts and Minds of the people

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## XBe02Drvr (Jun 20, 2019)

mikewint said:


> I always think that if anyone really knew what I did in Vietnam they wouldn't thank me.


Amen, brother. Almost every VN combat vet I've ever spoken with feels the same. My best friend from our high school track team shot three kids in a tunnel as they swung their AKs toward him, and it haunts him to this day. And he's one of many whose stories I've heard. None of you guys have to buy your own beers if I'm around.
Cheers,
Wes

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## tyrodtom (Jun 20, 2019)

Each ARVN battalion commander was allotted so much money for each troop under his command.
This money was to be used to pay and feed the soldier.
So it was in the commanders best interest to not get men killed, and if they did get killed delay reporting the deaths as long as possible.
The same delay was used in reporting desertions also.
So nobody really knew just what the combat strength was of any ARVN unit at any time.

Most ARVN saw very little of their pay, most of it was held back for their family in case they were killed, or injured. That was the tale.
The reality was that if they died, their family usually got nothing, if they got seriously injured, that was just too bad.
It didn't take most ARVN long to figure most of that money was finding it's way to the commanders secret bank account in other countries.

The ARVN and the VC got their recruits from basically the same pool of people, and the VC recruiting methods often wasn't any gentler than the ARVN.
But the battle toughness of the usual VC unit made the typical ARVN unit look like sissies.
Of course there were sometimes exceptions.
But evidently the VC did a much better job of convincing their recruits they had a cause worth dying for

When I was in Vietnam in 1970-71, my 1st SGT was a veteran of combat in WW2 and Korea, wore a CIB with 2 stars. Never saw him in his Army dress uniform so I don't remember what other awards he might have had.
By anyone's measure this man was a battle hardened veteran.

He wasn't a big fan of our tactics in Vietnam. 
I heard him say one time we were losing the war because of the helicopter. 
With us being a Army aviation unit, that was sacrilege to our young ears.
And various other times he'd say " I think we're making enemies faster than we can kill them "

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## mikewint (Jun 21, 2019)

Wes, I was a young, naive country boy who had never shot and killed anything that I did not intend to eat. I could not in any sense of the word even think of shooting another human. Drafted with no way out, except Canada, two years pre-Med at UofI under my belt, I thought - "well you can draft me but you can't make me kill another human." Make me a Medic, a 'Good Guy' who only wants to help everyone - Yea, I know, go back and re-read: Young & Naive!!
Initially assigned to the 8th Field Hospital I hated every minute and all my training was wasted there - cleaning ORs, emptying bed pans, changing dressings was not what I trained for. Along came Hearts and Minds and they were looking for volunteers (Young/Naive) to open roving clinics in the Highlands, effectively making friends with/keeping them out of the hands of the VC/NVA with the disenfranchised Nungs and Yards. Scared spit-less initially I quickly came to love/admire/respect these noble people. After the first few trips I even stopped carrying a gun (Young/Naive remember). 10 months into my first tour a VC company raided the village and hospital that I had established. They killed everyone they could men, women, children, patients, and within an inch or so unarmed stupid me. Field Hospital-Japan-Walter Reed followed and I healed. Returned to Vietnam, I was no longer young nor naive and I wanted payback

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## XBe02Drvr (Jun 21, 2019)

mikewint said:


> I was no longer young nor naive and I wanted payback


That payback is history now. Payback (forward) for all of us now is to be the best possible influence on the future we can be.
Shalom,
Wes

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## Dimlee (Jun 22, 2019)

XBe02Drvr said:


> Just out of curiosity, here, how many northeners (%) do you think were dedicated ideological communists vs self identified patriots who just wanted the foreigners gone and the country reunified, and viewed Uncle Ho and his approach as the most likely means to that end? Did the average DRVN citizen live and work to create the ideal communist society, or did they just worship Uncle Ho as the "father of his country" with communism as part of the package?
> Cheers,
> Wes



Good question and valid one and the one which can not be answered. One can only speculate about this statistics - until the day when archives open in Hanoi. And that day might never come or the archives will disappear.
Why I think so. There is example of USSR. Until now it's hard to answer similar question ("how many... were ideological communists vs patriots...") regarding USSR citizens involved in WWII. How many were "dedicated" believers, now many just wanted the invaders gone, how many welcomed the invaders or wanted to stay away of all that... No free press, no polls, no sociological studies. NKVD/MGB (KGB later) acted as a sociology center and submitted reports on regular basis. Some of them survived in archives. But there is no way to cross check them or to compare to alternative sources.


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## swampyankee (Jun 25, 2019)

Dimlee said:


> Good question and valid one and the one which can not be answered. One can only speculate about this statistics - until the day when archives open in Hanoi. And that day might never come or the archives will disappear.
> Why I think so. There is example of USSR. Until now it's hard to answer similar question ("how many... were ideological communists vs patriots...") regarding USSR citizens involved in WWII. How many were "dedicated" believers, now many just wanted the invaders gone, how many welcomed the invaders or wanted to stay away of all that... No free press, no polls, no sociological studies. NKVD/MGB (KGB later) acted as a sociology center and submitted reports on regular basis. Some of them survived in archives. But there is no way to cross check them or to compare to alternative sources.



We ask the same question about 
Confederate soldiers from our Civil War, Italian fascists, and German soldiers of WWII. I think the answer is in their behaviors post-war.


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## Dimlee (Jun 26, 2019)

swampyankee said:


> We ask the same question about
> Confederate soldiers from our Civil War, Italian fascists, and German soldiers of WWII. I think the answer is in their behaviors post-war.



Probably. 
But if the country of the soldier in question remains authoritarian and does not allow free speech, can we really understand what their behavior mean? It took 50 years or more for surviving Red/Soviet Army veterans to start talking openly about their experiences but not so many survived to tell their stories. Saigon has fallen 44 years ago...


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## swampyankee (Jun 26, 2019)

Dimlee said:


> Probably.
> But if the country of the soldier in question remains authoritarian and does not allow free speech, can we really understand what their behavior mean? It took 50 years or more for surviving Red/Soviet Army veterans to start talking openly about their experiences but not so many survived to tell their stories. Saigon has fallen 44 years ago...



I know a small number of NVA veterans have been interviewed, but the government in Hanoi is, as you said, authoritarian. It's unlikely to let any of them speak without vetting what they're going to say. One of the side effects of the Cold War was that many nationalist movements and pro-democracy movements were, somehow, conflated with or co-opted by communists. In either case, the US would get involved, pretty much guaranteeing that either would become communist controlled. I think this was very close to happening with the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa (Hoover was convinced the entire civil rights movement was communist; Reagan was opposed to sanctions likely because he felt the ANC was too left wing).

I've long thought the best way to defeat communism was to promote robust democracy and policies social mobility as most of the countries which have gone communist had neither. Indeed, the only one that had either that even came vaguely close may have been Chile. I'm actually surprised that it didn't in reaction to Pinochet.

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## Barrett (Jun 27, 2019)

Since LBJ has been quoted on this thread regarding Thanh Hoa Bridge, here's a relevant connection. Steve and I spent 5 years on it, and found it worth the effort.

Amazon product

As for LeMay nuking NVN, that was impossible. He couldn't make the decision, and he reached mandatory retirement in early 65. I confirmed that in my bio, which was the first one published after his death.


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## Zipper730 (Jun 28, 2019)

mikewint said:


> “I don’t think that unless a greater effort is made by the government to win popular support that the war can be won out there. In the final analysis, it is their war. They are the ones who have to win it or lose it. We can help them, we can give them equipment, we can send our men out there as advisors, but they have to win it, the people of Vietnam, against the communists.”


And the ARVN was not properly trained for a counter-insurgency operation, were riddled with corruption, and didn't give a crap about the people it was to protect.

I'm guessing any attempt at guerrilla training required them to train in places that some Ambassador wouldn't allow, right?


> The top generals and admirals in Saigon and Washington both held tenaciously to this conventional way of war, despite paying lip service to the counterinsurgency training and doctrine that the war in Vietnam seemed to require.


Why?


> The commanding generals of the US from John O’Daniel to William Westmoreland, had all come of age as junior officers in World War II. Under no circumstances could they imagine how a largely guerrilla army with no air force or tanks could possibly defeat the US trained and equipped ARVN forces, let alone the most technologically advanced army on the face of the planet.


And yet partisans and commando units were often small and exacted a punishing toll on the Germans at times. While they might have received assistance from the British, these guys were receiving assistance from the Soviet Union, so it's just a different country.

I'm surprised nobody moved to just remove Westmoreland.


> These negative reports were routinely dismissed, and the advisers who filed them were told to “get on the team” and were often given negative fitness evaluations and shunted off to career-ending billets. Intelligence reports were routinely doctored, and “the Vietcong capability was always downgraded and reduced.”


Which served to make intel all but useless as nobody would risk telling the truth if it would get their career scuttled...


> So the Army’s trainers organized the ARVN forces on the American model, as a nine-division force designed to repel a conventional invasion from North Vietnam, similar to the one the North Koreans had launched in June 1950 against South Korea.


If JFK understood that this was a method, why didn't anybody operate along those lines? I know he was killed in 1963, but I'm surprised nobody after him in the military or the civilian leadership got it. There seemed to be few people in the US military that wanted to train along a counter-insurgency model (General Blackburn).


> Hanoi’s strategists however had never for a minute contemplated such an invasion. Instead, the communists launched a well-conceived campaign to break down the legitimacy of the Saigon regime under Ngo Dinh Diem with propaganda, political subversion, and guerrilla warfare.


Of course, they only attempted massive conventional campaigns a few times.


> ARVN’s senior officers were generally reluctant to engage their forces against the Vietcong for fear of taking casualties, and thus incurring the wrath of Diem for “losing face.”


However once Ngo Diem was killed, what happened after that point?


> battling the insurgency fell very heavily on the ill-trained regional and local paramilitary forces, the Civil Guard and Village Self-Defense Corps.


Was there anyway of finding skilled groups of people that could be properly trained and united around the basic cause of not having their homes overrun and not being under Communist control? I'm sure there's a share of outrages they committed that could be used to stoke up the feelings of indignation.

Were these people trained by us, or by the ARVN?


> JFK’s ideas were greeted with a total lack of enthusiasm by the Army’s senior leadership. Pushed by Washington studies were prepared on counterinsurgency. British experts like Sir Robert Thompson were brought in and consulted. And the subject of counterinsurgency was inserted into the curriculum of military training schools.
> 
> However the WWII/Korea model was simply too entrenched in the military mind to be overcome. Thus in the end, the Army took the view that the lethality of conventional combat as waged by U.S. forces was such that no guerrilla force could long survive.


I'm surprised they didn't realize what the UK, and the OSS did in WWII. They were quite effective, and when combined with airpower (I don't just mean bombing cities like some pyromaniac, I mean using aircraft to interdict and perform air support).

I'm also surprised their conclusions would involve only small unit operations instead of working with the population. Didn't the USMC have some expertise on counter-insurgency programs? I remember they wrote a manual. I'm surprised nobody had any memory of that detail.

Regardless, war is a continuation of policy by other means: Which means options can range from political with varying ranges of force, right on up to total war.


> ARVN’s operations against the VC were effectively alienating the population from the Saigon administration and pushing them into the open arms of the communists. Washington and Saigon could simply not comprehend that the war was only 15 percent military and 85 percent political. That is it was not just a matter of killing Vietcong, but of coupling security with the people’s welfare in the countryside.


I'm surprised JFK realized this, and nobody else did.


> The VC adhered to a strict code of conduct in their interactions with the villagers. They never stole from them; never molested women; they paid for whatever food they obtained. And they were masters of small-unit infantry tactics that the ARVN had long neglected and that were indispensable in fighting a “people’s war.”


Sure, you don't wnat to tick off the people you want to win over...


> Thanks to Vann’s sterling reputation and contacts, he was ultimately able to secure a hearing with the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington about what needed to change if the United States and South Vietnam were to prevail in Vietnam. A couple of hours before he was scheduled to give his briefing, General Maxwell Taylor, chairmen of the JCS, nixed the presentation when he was informed of its substance. He didn’t want bad news on the record.


This was all in 1963... I'm surprised nobody changed anything or got anything from 1963 to 1965.


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## XBe02Drvr (Jun 28, 2019)

The top generals and admirals in Saigon and Washington both held tenaciously to this conventional way of war, despite paying lip service to the counterinsurgency training and doctrine that the war in Vietnam seemed to require.
Why?

As Mike explained, they learned their lessons in WWII and Korea. Minds grow rigid with age and responsibility. Despite all the activities of the resistance and the partisans in WII, it took a massive conventional effort to bring the war to a close. This carried a lot more weight than the faraway lessons of the American Revolution. And there was a cultural angle too. Living in the comfort and convenience of DC and never having had to scramble for a living or live under a corrupt and repressive regime, how could they be expected to understand the mindset of the Vietnamese or the nature of the VC political campaign? Americans are used to thinking of military and political as separate arenas, which I think is our greatest weakness.


Zipper730 said:


> Which served to make intel all but useless as nobody would risk telling the truth if it would get their career scuttled...


BINGO!


Zipper730 said:


> However once Ngo Diem was killed, what happened after that point?


Revolving door. One regime after another, all equally corrupt and equally out of touch with the common people.
Cheers,
Wes

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## tyrodtom (Jun 28, 2019)

Replace Westmoreland, who ?? And with whom ??
I don't think you realize how far up in the chain of command Westmoreland was.
He was a General, 4 stars, only two men between him and the President in the chain of command.
Admiral Sharpe, just above him, was pretty much of the same opinion as Westmoreland.

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## mikewint (Jun 29, 2019)

Not to mention he LOOKED, every inch of him, the part. It would be hard to design from the ground up, someone who better, at least visually (and Vietnam was a TV war) looked like he had everything in the country under his total control.
As the old saying goes "Generals are always prepared to fight the last war". Now when wars were fought the same way over and over with few changes in weapons tech this was a workable plan. BUT starting with the American War of Northern Aggression weapon tech began to make the old ways of battle a death sentence. The Boer War, the Russo-Japanese and the massive death toll of WWI SHOULD have taught the generals that the old tactics were suicidal against new weapons.
A couple of two three instances from WWII: the U.S. Army, for example, came up with a unique armored doctrine that envisioned tanks actually avoiding tank-to-tank combat on the battlefield. Beating enemy armor was the job of another vehicle altogether, the “tank destroyer”–big gun, lightly armored, sometimes open-topped with little or no crew protection. The British army came into the war enamored of light armor, “tankettes”, and independent “jock columns,” all of which were unable to stand up to the pounding inherent in modern combat. The French intended to fight a rigidly controlled “methodical battle,” and instead found themselves in a maneuver contest with the Wehrmacht. The Soviet Army had a well formulated and ambitious interwar doctrine called “deep battle”–and indeed it did spend the first two campaigning seasons moving deeply, unfortunately all the movement was in reverse. The Imperial Japanese Army devised perhaps the most mistaken idea of all: that the “warrior spirit” of their officers and men would make up for a clear inferiority in material and technology. Their casualty statistics–even in places like Guadalcanal, where the numerical odds were fairly even–were staggering.
IMHO we can again see this again in action when the United States fought in Vietnam with forces equipped for a rerun of the Second World War. Now let me hasten to add that beyond a shadow of a doubt the U.S. Army did much better on the battlefields of Vietnam than was generally acknowledged. The much ballyhooed Tet Offensive was ultimately a total disaster fore the VC. But a political model of war drawn from the 1940's did us great harm. How do you win a war when you’re not allowed to occupy an enemy’s home country, when his economic base is off-limits, when the NVA leadership were indifferent to the human cost of engaging American power, and most of all when the US public expected the war to end with the clarity and finality that was achieved in 1945?

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## Zipper730 (Jul 2, 2019)

XBe02Drvr said:


> Minds grow rigid with age and responsibility.


That makes sense, I'm still surprised they didn't know or remember much about the resistance of partisans.


> Americans are used to thinking of military and political as separate arenas, which I think is our greatest weakness.


That's an interesting point, why is this so?


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## XBe02Drvr (Jul 3, 2019)

*a*


Zipper730 said:


> That makes sense, I'm still surprised they didn't know or remember much about the resistance of partisans.


LBJ was a domestic issues politician. McNamara was an industrial whizkid beancounter. Neither was a student of history or international affairs or of eastern culture. What they "knew" was that insurgencies and liberation movements, while they can damage and embarras a major power, can seldom subject it to outright defeat. It stands to reason, doesn't it? A bunch of barefoot, ragtag, radicals hiding in the woods haven't a chance against the most powerful army in the world, right?


Zipper730 said:


> That's an interesting point, why is this so?


Look at our history. The USA came into being as a rebellion against what was in effect a military dictatorship. Our founding fathers had a deathly fear of military power and refused to establish a standing army or navy, preferring the militia approach to domestic defense. As our stature in the world grew and our frontiers and foreign trade expanded this became more and more impractical. Indian wars, internal rebellions, and foreign interference with our merchant shipping quickly outgrew the capabilities of the militia system. By 1812 we had a small standing army and a six frigate navy. And along with these we had a new class of citizen, the professional military man. This re-awakened the old fears of military power and re-emphasized the importance of civilian control over the military *and the separation of military activity from political activity.* And it's worked. (after a fashion) How many times in its 243 year history has the US suffered a military coup d'etat? None. How many times has this separation of military thinking and political thinking led to disastrous mistakes in conflicts and foreign affairs? Too many to count.
It's a two-edged sword.
Cheers,
Wes

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## swampyankee (Jul 3, 2019)

XBe02Drvr said:


> *a*
> LBJ was a domestic issues politician. McNamara was an industrial whizkid beancounter. Neither was a student of history or international affairs or of eastern culture. What they "knew" was that insurgencies and liberation movements, while they can damage and embarras a major power, can seldom subject it to outright defeat. It stands to reason, doesn't it? A bunch of barefoot, ragtag, radicals hiding in the woods haven't a chance against the most powerful army in the world, right?
> 
> Look at our history. The USA came into being as a rebellion against what was in effect a military dictatorship. Our founding fathers had a deathly fear of military power and refused to establish a standing army or navy, preferring the militia approach to domestic defense. As our stature in the world grew and our frontiers and foreign trade expanded this became more and more impractical. Indian wars, internal rebellions, and foreign interference with our merchant shipping quickly outgrew the capabilities of the militia system. By 1812 we had a small standing army and a six frigate navy. And along with these we had a new class of citizen, the professional military man. This re-awakened the old fears of military power and re-emphasized the importance of civilian control over the military *and the separation of military activity from political activity.* And it's worked. (after a fashion) How many times in its 243 year history has the US suffered a military coup d'etat? None. How many times has this separation of military thinking and political thinking led to disastrous mistakes in conflicts and foreign affairs? Too many to count.
> ...



Supposedly, a military coup was very close early in FDR's first term in office.


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## mikewint (Jul 3, 2019)

swampyankee said:


> Supposedly, a military coup was very close early in FDR's first term in office.



If you're thinking of the 'Wall Street Pusch' that was in 1933 and was not military. A group of wealthy Wall Street financiers believed that America should be headed by a Fascist dictator and not FDR, who was suspected of being a communist. So, they began to plot a coup d'état that would later come to be known as the Wall Street Putsch.
The conspirators included Gerald MacGuire, a bond salesman; Bill Doyle, commander of the Massachusetts American Legion; investment banker *Prescott Bush, the father of George H. W. Bush* and grandfather of George W. Bush; and other wealthy bankers. 

The plotters need a General to lead the coup and so approached retired Major General Smedley Butler, who was at that time the most decorated soldier in U.S. history. After his military career, however, Butler became a vociferous critic of war and an influential figure in the Bonus Army, a group of 43,000 World War I veterans and their families, who were camped in Washington to demand the early payment of the veteran's bonus promised to them for their service (These veterans were eventually attacked by regular army Calvary units lead by Douglas Mac and a six tank unit lead by Patton).

The bankers were to finance a 500,000 man army lead by Butler who would proceed to overthrow FDR and reduce him to a ceremonial position. The actual governmental power would be held by a Sectary of General Affairs (essentially a Fascist dictator). After meeting with the men several times and learning of the extent of their plan, Butler went to Congress to expose them as traitors. When news broke, nobody really believed that such a coup attempt could even be considered, let alone planned or put into action. Initially, Congress's reaction was similar, but with Butler's testimony and the testimony of reporter Paul French they began to take it more seriously and investigated the subject. The Congressional investigation found that Butler was telling the truth about the existence of the plot, but Congress felt that the plot had little chance of success and so nobody was prosecuted, in fact, some later went on to serve in office, such as Prescott Bush.

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## Zipper730 (Jul 4, 2019)

XBe02Drvr said:


> LBJ was a domestic issues politician. McNamara was an industrial whizkid beancounter. Neither was a student of history or international affairs or of eastern culture.


True enough


> What they "knew" was that insurgencies and liberation movements, while they can damage and embarras a major power, can seldom subject it to outright defeat.


While they couldn't take the war straight to our shores, they could kill a lot of our people.

I'm surprised there were so few people in the military that knew so little about resistance movements. It seems that, it would have either ruined their careers to raise the issue or, they would have only known if they were in the CIA, or some form of covert operations group.


> Look at our history. The USA came into being as a rebellion against what was in effect a military dictatorship. Our founding fathers had a deathly fear of military power and refused to establish a standing army or navy, preferring the militia approach to domestic defense.


True, but there was the OMGUS...



mikewint said:


> If you're thinking of the 'Wall Street Pusch' that was in 1933 and was not military. A group of wealthy Wall Street financiers believed that America should be headed by a Fascist dictator and not FDR, who was suspected of being a communist. So, they began to plot a coup d'état that would later come to be known as the Wall Street Putsch.
> 
> The conspirators included Gerald MacGuire, a bond salesman; Bill Doyle, commander of the Massachusetts American Legion; investment banker *Prescott Bush, the father of George H. W. Bush* and grandfather of George W. Bush; and other wealthy bankers.
> 
> ...


I'm amazed they didn't give it the college try anyway. I'm guessing if they did...

It would serve to villify FDR as a totalitarian cracking down on business, and proving he's a commie
It would potentially set up circumstances that would set in motion a more aggressive plot


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## XBe02Drvr (Jul 4, 2019)

Zipper730 said:


> True, but there was the OMGUS...


The one shining example of military-political planning and action that got it right. But that was overseas, not domestic to the US.
Cheers,
Wes


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## XBe02Drvr (Jul 4, 2019)

Zipper730 said:


> I'm surprised there were so few people in the military that knew so little about resistance movements.


There were many in the service who knew and understood, but they were voices in the wilderness, not to be heard over the roar of the heavies. Besides, most of those in the know were in the special ops community, the "ugly stepchild", the "snake eaters", the "filthy, nasty, not fit to be seen in polite society" types who were an embarrassment to "civilized" soldiers. Our ROTC company advisor was one. He was a Special Forces Captain, then Major, just returned from "Never Neverland" (Laos), who was never comfortable in his class As, didn't even own a "Mess Dress" uniform, was regularly excluded from ROTC detachment parties and the Military Ball, and in the field, had the instincts of a panther.
Cheers,
Wes

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## tyrodtom (Jul 4, 2019)

The military is not different from any other organization with a lot of people in it, you've always got a hierarchy, or bureaucracy .

If you work at a car dealership, the mechanics, or detail people, don't try to tell the salesmen how to sell cars.
1-In some dealerships your chances of promotion or a raise is governed by how well you do your job.
2- In some others it is governed by how well you back the boss, no matter what he wants.
But in either situation the SOP was, don't buck the boss, if you do, you'd be wise to have another job already lined up.

That second method sounds like the military SOP in some the places I was stationed.
But in the military you don't have the option of another job of your choice.
The superior you just pissed off is going to make that choice, and you're probably not going to like it.

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## XBe02Drvr (Jul 4, 2019)

tyrodtom said:


> But in the military you don't have the option of another job of your choice.
> The superior you just pissed off is going to make that choice, and you're probably not going to like it.


Amen, brother. That's why the step from TraDevMan 2nd Class to PFC (Proud F___ing Civilian) is a promotion!
Cheers,
Wes


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## mikewint (Jul 4, 2019)

Counterinsurgency actually began in Vietnam during the Indochina War (1946-1954). The French created military-civilian teams, which performed civil functions in conjunction with military operations aimed at establishing French control over areas dominated by the communist Viet Minh. These efforts were unfortunately undermined, by French unwillingness to give the non-communist Vietnamese real independence—the prime political goal motivating all Vietnamese.

After the Geneva Accords were signed, Ngo Dinh Diem emerged as the person who finally achieved complete independence, overthrowing Emperor Bao Dai and establishing the Republic of Vietnam. This gained him widespread popular support. In addition a reformed South Vietnamese army had a positive set of civic action–oriented attitudes toward the civilian population. These reforms earned the South popular support while defeating sectarian insurgencies, and began to wean villagers’ allegiance away from the Viet Minh.

Once firmly in power, however, Diem became more dictatorial favoring the Catholic minority and alienating the Buddhist majority. Diem’s mistakes were compounded by the US decision to take the Vietnamese Army entirely out of the internal security role it had played and convert it into a conventional regular army—trained, organized into corps and divisions, and equipped to confront an overt North Vietnamese invasion along WWII lines.

A poorly trained, inadequately equipped Civil Guard took over rural security, supported under the U.S. aid program by a Michigan State University contract team consisting mainly of retired U.S. police officials as advisers. The United States did not support the Diem government’s effort to reach the rural population by sending civilian civic action teams into the villages until it was too late.

In 1961, the Kennedy administration decided to take a stand in Vietnam against further communist expansion in Asia. The Kennedy strongly favored counterinsurgency but the military defined this as a traditional military combat approach with an overlay of Special Forces. Whereas Kennedy saw it as an effort to address the security, political and economic sides of the conflict where it mattered most—at the village level. American military advisers were inserted at all Vietnamese army levels down to the provinces. CIA efforts supported irregular defense forces among the mountain tribes.

In 1962, USAID became involved in counterinsurgency, the Saigon aid mission was reorganized, with a new special office called Rural Affairs that assigned representatives to each province. The South Vietnamese had begun their own counterinsurgency approach, the Strategic Hamlet Program, a self-defense, self-government effort focused on the smallest rural settlement, the hamlet. After some initial progress, the program was failing as villagers were forcibly relocated from homes and lands they had held for generations into poorly built, poorly equipped, and poorly supplied government camps.

While U.S. provincial military advisers strongly supported the local self-development and self-defense program, at upper echelons MACV focused on conventional warfare. The Vietnamese army was advised to undertake large unit sweeps, which often turned up empty-handed as Viet Cong units melted away. This mistake was compounded by the overuse of airpower to attack villages and by blind artillery fire into predetermined areas thought to harbor Viet Cong. The VC would occupy a village long enough to attract government attention then escape into the jungle just before the bombardments. Every dead villager created more volunteers for the VC.

Essentially the war was being fought on two different levels. One was local, through the hamlet program aimed at protecting and winning over the civilian population. At most regular Vietnamese army unit levels, however, the main objective was to win the war by killing Viet Cong (with insufficient concern about the adverse effects of such tactics on the civilian population).

Whatever progress was being made came to a crashing halt on Nov. 1, 1963, when President Diem was ousted and killed. The generals leading the coup were opposed to continuing the hamlet program. Almost all province chiefs, good and bad, were replaced; and most paramilitary units providing outside-the-hamlet security were disbanded. When the junta finally agreed to continue the hamlet effort under a different name, another coup occurred. The new coup leader, General Nguyen Khanh seemed to be fully in charge, and U.S. officials believed that the war would suddenly be prosecuted with renewed focus and energy.

Instead, Khanh’s attempts at one-man-rule backfired; political chaos ensued, and military cohesion declined. The absence of an acceptable Vietnamese political way forward undermined everything else, not the least the effort to counter the insurgency. Compounding the confusion, a new USAID mission director decided that much of the Rural Affairs program was wrong. He abolished the joint provincial committees and returned decision-making to Saigon. Just when direct funding of counterinsurgency at the provincial level was most needed, it was largely cut off by our own actions.

There was a refocus on counterinsurgency after Henry Cabot Lodge returned as ambassador in mid-1965, but it received mainly lip service from General William Westmoreland, the MACV commander.

As a result Each agency ran its own counterinsurgency program until the end of 1966, when a combined civilian effort was attempted. Called the Office of Civil Operations and directed by Deputy Ambassador William Porter, it too failed. Finally, after a pitched interagency battle in Washington in which President Johnson’s special assistant for Vietnam, Robert Komer, prevailed, U.S. counterinsurgency was put directly under MACV.

In late 1967, for the first time, American support for Vietnamese counterinsurgency became a fully integrated military and civilian effort. On the political front the newest Vietnamese government under Prime Minister Nguyen Cao Ky and then President Nguyen Van Thieu consolidated itself, it was reorganized to give prime importance and support to counterinsurgency.

Then came Tet. The 1968 Viet Cong Tet Offensive, which undermined American public support for the war, opened the way counterinsurgency success. Generally regarded in the United States as a victory for the North, the offensive was actually a spectacular setback in the insurgents’ ability to continue controlling the Vietnamese countryside. They lost most of their best political cadre and fighting units in Tet and significant segments of the population mobilized against them. The nature of American military leadership also changed with the June 1968 replacement of General Westmoreland by General Creighton Abrams, who strongly supported counterinsurgency.

The new counterinsurgency initiative included an intelligence and armed action program directed at the local Viet Cong infrastructure. Originated by the South Vietnamese, it became known as “Phoenix.” Armed provincial teams conducted raids against the local insurgency to remove its members from the battlefield by capture, if possible to gain intelligence. While excesses did occur, the program acquired a bad reputation in the United States based largely on unsubstantiated congressional testimony. North Vietnamese comments after the war would give considerable credit to Phoenix for causing local Viet Cong political and military cadre leaders to move to neighboring Cambodia.

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## fubar57 (Jul 4, 2019)

Counterinsurgency in Vietnam: Lessons for Today | The Foreign Service Journal - April 2015


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## Zipper730 (Jul 5, 2019)

XBe02Drvr said:


> The one shining example of military-political planning and action that got it right. But that was overseas, not domestic to the US.


Vietnam was overseas too. Was there any other function in the US Army that functioned or could adopt OMGUS like functions?


> There were many in the service who knew and understood, but they were voices in the wilderness, not to be heard over the roar of the heavies.


And the heavies were the big army, big bomber kind of guys? At least in WWII, the President was good enough a student of history to understand what had to be done, and could throw his weight around to make it happen.


> Besides, most of those in the know were in the special ops community, the "ugly stepchild", the "snake eaters", the "filthy, nasty, not fit to be seen in polite society" types who were an embarrassment to "civilized" soldiers.


I didn't know they were viewed that way. The way I'd have seen it is, war is ugly, sure I guess there's a natural interest in not just killing but wearing spiffy uniforms and looking fabulous (in a non homosexual kind of way) doing it -- and good manners seems to help make killing look better too.

Didn't the Marines have COIN expertise? I'm not sure if anybody answered this before...

Also there was General Landsdale, post 1963 he served in intelligence circles. He seemed fairly level headed in handling these matters.



mikewint said:


> Counterinsurgency actually began in Vietnam during the Indochina War (1946-1954). The French created military-civilian teams, which performed civil functions in conjunction with military operations aimed at establishing French control over areas dominated by the communist Viet Minh. These efforts were unfortunately undermined, by French unwillingness to give the non-communist Vietnamese real independence—the prime political goal motivating all Vietnamese.
> 
> After the Geneva Accords were signed, Ngo Dinh Diem emerged as the person who finally achieved complete independence, overthrowing Emperor Bao Dai and establishing the Republic of Vietnam. This gained him widespread popular support. In addition a reformed South Vietnamese army had a positive set of civic action–oriented attitudes toward the civilian population. These reforms earned the South popular support while defeating sectarian insurgencies, and began to wean villagers’ allegiance away from the Viet Minh.
> 
> Once firmly in power, however, Diem became more dictatorial favoring the Catholic minority and alienating the Buddhist majority. Diem’s mistakes were compounded by the US decision to take the Vietnamese Army entirely out of the internal security role it had played and convert it into a conventional regular army—trained, organized into corps and divisions, and equipped to confront an overt North Vietnamese invasion along WWII lines.


I guess we just assumed we knew better than the ARVN did.


> A poorly trained, inadequately equipped Civil Guard took over rural security, supported under the U.S. aid program by a Michigan State University contract team consisting mainly of retired U.S. police officials as advisers.


I assume they either needed the ARVN to do what it did before we got in, or a far tougher guard than they got?


> In 1961, the Kennedy administration decided to take a stand in Vietnam against further communist expansion in Asia. The Kennedy strongly favored counterinsurgency but the military defined this as a traditional military combat approach with an overlay of Special Forces. Whereas Kennedy saw it as an effort to address the security, political and economic sides of the conflict where it mattered most—at the village level. American military advisers were inserted at all Vietnamese army levels down to the provinces. CIA efforts supported irregular defense forces among the mountain tribes. . . . Essentially the war was being fought on two different levels. One was local, through the hamlet program aimed at protecting and winning over the civilian population. At most regular Vietnamese army unit levels, however, the main objective was to win the war by killing Viet Cong (with insufficient concern about the adverse effects of such tactics on the civilian population)


Which alienated us...


> Whatever progress was being made came to a crashing halt on Nov. 1, 1963, when President Diem was ousted and killed. The generals leading the coup were opposed to continuing the hamlet program. Almost all province chiefs, good and bad, were replaced; and most paramilitary units providing outside-the-hamlet security were disbanded.


And this had to do with the Vietnamese decisions?


> When the junta finally agreed to continue the hamlet effort under a different name, another coup occurred.


It must have felt like every force in the Universe was getting in our way...


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## XBe02Drvr (Jul 5, 2019)

Zipper730 said:


> At least in WWII, the President was good enough a student of history to understand what had to be done, and could throw his weight around to make it happen.


LBJ was not even a patch on FDR's sleeve. And RMN, "tricky dick", was a snake.


Zipper730 said:


> Didn't the Marines have COIN expertise?


Yes, somewhere down in the weeds some of them did. But again, it wasn't a matter of expertise, it was a matter of clout. Remember, the Corps is not its own master; it's a subsidiary of the Navy, the most traditional, hidebound service in the US pantheon. We squids used to joke that the jarheads were useful for guarding the gate, taking out the trash, and any other dirty jobs the CO saw fit to assign, like bivouacking out along the perimeter fence to keep the hippies from infiltrating. "Some of them can be nice guys, some of my best friends are jarheads, but you wouldn't want your sister to marry one."
Cheers,
Wes


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## mikewint (Jul 5, 2019)

Zipper730 said:


> we knew better than the ARVN did.


Indeed as it has been pointed out multiple times the US was THE SuperPower with every lethal whizbang ever invented and were itching to use them in the real world against a real enemy. A bunch of ragtag rice farmers had absolutely NO chance against the awesome power that the US could bring to bear. The US was fighting the Second World War all over again.
Counterinsurgency just does not have the flash and panache that Jets, bombs, rockets, arty, etc. have. Victory, if it comes is slow and totally non-spectacular

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## Zipper730 (Jul 5, 2019)

tyrodtom said:


> Replace Westmoreland, who?? And with whom ??
> I don't think you realize how far up in the chain of command Westmoreland was.


From what I remember once a person makes 1 star, there's no minimum interval between promotions. So, while the President would have to give the order: You could take any General that knows his shit, bump him up over all the others and put him in charge, in theory.

I'm not sure if anybody in office had the cajones to do that (I'm almost certain it would ruffle a few feathers).



XBe02Drvr said:


> LBJ was not even a patch on FDR's sleeve. And RMN, "tricky dick", was a snake.


Well, snakes are actually quite effective sometimes. They are often difficult to detect, under the radar; they rarely strike unless they can assure victory and; their bite usually kills.

Okay, maybe that's a bit overboard...


> Yes, somewhere down in the weeds some of them did. But again, it wasn't a matter of expertise, it was a matter of clout. Remember, the Corps is not its own master; it's a subsidiary of the Navy, the most traditional, hidebound service in the US pantheon.


Actually the USAF might have been the most rigid when it came to doctrine. The USN was more traditional when it came to that shellback thing with crossing the equator, and some silly superstitious stuff, but they have proven able to adapt better than the USAF in many cases (no offense to anybody who served in the USAF, and if you served in the USAAF, don't worry -- you were part of the Army back then).



mikewint said:


> Indeed


So, it was a matter of complete hubris on the part of our country?


> US was THE SuperPower with every lethal whizbang ever invented and were itching to use them in the real world against a real enemy.


And yet, we lost to a bunch of ragtag rice farmers. Back in the 1770's the British probably felt the same way about us, and we won through a combination of proper battles, dirty fighting, and a bit of both at times.


> Counterinsurgency just does not have the flash and panache that Jets, bombs, rockets, arty, etc. have. Victory, if it comes is slow and totally non-spectacular


Yeah but counter-insurgency that includes jets, bombs, rockets, and artillery does bring some flash and panache (j/k).


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## mikewint (Jul 5, 2019)

Zipper730 said:


> So, it was a matter of complete hubris on the part of our country?
> And yet, we lost to a bunch of ragtag rice farmers. Back in the 1770's the British probably felt the same way about us, and we won through a combination of proper battles, dirty fighting, and a bit of both at times.
> Yeah but counter-insurgency that includes jets, bombs, rockets, and artillery does bring some flash and panache (j/k).


Geo Wash fought the British in almost exactly the same way as the VC/NVA fought us. Geo knew that he did not have to beat the British he just had to survive. Only after 1778 when he had French Military and Naval support did he actually seek decisive battles with the British. His defeat of Cornwallis at Yorktown was only possible because the Continental Army had been bolstered by 7800 French troops and the French Fleet had attacked and driven off the British fleet

Small units handle local counterinsurgency operations more effectively than do large forces. These small units are usually company sized, operating within a community or group of communities. When these companies become associated with a particular community over a period of time, they gain the trust of the villagers and thus can develop the intelligence necessary to identify and destroy the insurgents.
But the American way of war generally has been to substitute firepower for manpower. As a result, US forces have frequently resorted to firepower in the form of artillery or air any time they make contact. This creates two negatives in a counterinsurgency. First, massive firepower causes collateral damage, thereby frequently driving the locals into the arms of the insurgents. Second, it allows insurgents to break contact after having inflicted casualties on friendly forces. Insurgent forces when located must be attacked with ground forces to gain and maintain contact in order to completely destroy the insurgent force. This requires that the counterinsurgency force must be larger than the insurgent force. The unit that makes the initial contact with the insurgent force requires rapid augmentation to maintain pressure against the fleeing force, envelop it, and destroy it. Company commanders have to be able to call in ready reserve units at any time to accomplish the encirclement. Insurgent forces cannot be allowed to slip away just to reform and attack again at a future date taking vengeance on the village that informed on them.
.

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## XBe02Drvr (Jul 5, 2019)

Zipper730 said:


> The USN was more traditional when it came to that shellback thing with crossing the equator, and some silly superstitious stuff, but they have proven able to adapt better than the USAF in many cases


The Navy of today is not the Navy of Vietnam days.


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## Zipper730 (Jul 11, 2019)

XBe02Drvr said:


> The Navy of today is not the Navy of Vietnam days.


I was talking about the Vietnam era USN


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## XBe02Drvr (Jul 11, 2019)

mikewint said:


> the American way of war generally has been to substitute firepower for manpower


That's why I began having doubts about a favorable outcome in Vietnam right after the Tonkin Gulf incident and the influx of large numbers of US conventional troops, though I was still in high school.


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## XBe02Drvr (Jul 11, 2019)

XBe02Drvr said:


> the Navy, the most traditional, hidebound service in the US pantheon.





Zipper730 said:


> they have proven able to adapt better than the USAF in many cases.





XBe02Drvr said:


> The Navy of today is not the Navy of Vietnam days.





Zipper730 said:


> I was talking about the Vietnam era USN


Well I was in the Vietnam era USN, and I can tell you it needed to adapt a lot more than it actually did.
Cheers,
Wes


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## Zipper730 (Jul 11, 2019)

XBe02Drvr said:


> Well I was in the Vietnam era USN, and I can tell you it needed to adapt a lot more than it actually did.


Probably true, but compared to the USAF, they were adapting at a considerable rate -- the USAF was quite sluggish.


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## Zipper730 (Jul 11, 2019)

Would LBJ finding any General (1-star or more) who knew his shit, and use his executive power to boost him to General (the President can do this) have been politically dangerous at the time?


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## XBe02Drvr (Jul 11, 2019)

Zipper730 said:


> Would LBJ finding any General (1-star or more) who knew his shit, and use his executive power to boost him to General (the President can do this) have been politically dangerous at the time?


How could LBJ, who DIDN'T know his shit, hope to recognize a general who did? This counter insurgency shit was like rocket science: who knew? Well, there's always those mealy mouth, egg head academics who claim to know, but they're all half commie, so how can you believe them? Guess I'll just have to trust my generals. They're convincing my man Bobby Mac that there's progress, and he's the expert, so who am I to doubt it?
Cheers,
Wes


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## tyrodtom (Jul 11, 2019)

Zipper730 said:


> Would LBJ finding any General (1-star or more) who knew his shit, and use his executive power to boost him to General (the President can do this) have been politically dangerous at the time?



Have you ever worked for any company with more than 10 people ??
That would work just as well in the military, as it would work in any civilian corporation, ie, not too well.
Like taking the new bag boy in a grocery store, and suddenly putting him over people who've worked there for 10 years. 

Why would Johnson see the need to replace Westmoreland ?
Until the Tet of 68, Johnson thought the war was going fine, he believed most of the reports coming from his chosen sources


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## michael rauls (Jul 11, 2019)

I have a couple thoughts/ impressions on Vietnam to throw out there for comment by those obviously alot more knowledgeable on the subject than I.
One, durring the Easter offensive in I believe 73 after we had mostly pulled out the North invaded the South and the South prevailed with only some air cover from us in pretty short order. Only after most all aid to the South had been cut off by Congress was the North able to prevail in 75. This seems to suggest that the South was militarily viable from 73 on at at least had the aid and aircover been continued which if true would be a real tragedy as it would mean that the war had for all practical purposes been won and and we just threw it away for whatever political reasons and all those lives were just wasted.
Also, it seems like an all out bombing campaign of the North, not a measured on and off one would have gone a long way to convince the North to sit down at the negotiations for real and discontinue their aggression and aid to the VC.
Thoughts anyone?


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## tyrodtom (Jul 11, 2019)

michael rauls said:


> I have a couple thoughts/ impressions on Vietnam to throw out there for comment by those obviously alot more knowledgeable on the subject than I.
> One, durring the Easter offensive in I believe 73 after we had mostly pulled out the North invaded the South and the South prevailed with only some air cover from us in pretty short order. Only after most all aid to the South had been cut off by Congress was the North able to prevail in 75. This seems to suggest that the South was militarily viable from 73 on at at least had the aid and aircover been continued which if true would be a real tragedy as it would mean that the war had for all practical purposes been won and and we just threw it away for whatever political reasons and all those lives were just wasted.
> Also, it seems like an all out bombing campaign of the North, not a measured on and off one would have gone a long way to convince the North to sit down at the negotiations for real and discontinue their aggression and aid to the VC.
> Thoughts anyone?



In 1973, SVN didn't prevail with just some aircover by the US, they prevailed with massive air cover by the US.
Sure I guess the South could have been saved, for awhile, if we committed massive resources to bomb NVN into a temporary halt, where they'd have to halt to rebuild their own part of Vietnam.

But how long would that last ?
Would SVN use the time to reform their government ? I don't think so, and without that reform they, and the US, if we kept backing them,, would be facing the same insurgency again in a few years .


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## mikewint (Jul 11, 2019)

The Vietcong were basically defeated by the beginning of 1972, which is why the North Vietnamese launched a huge conventional offensive at the end of March of that year. During the Easter Offensive of 1972, the biggest campaign of the war, the South Vietnamese Army was able to hold onto every one of the 44 provincial capitals except Quang Tri, which it regained a few months later. During this offensive ARVN forces had relied almost entirely on American air support.

IMHO, if the United States had provided that level of support in 1975, when South Vietnam collapsed in the face of another North Vietnamese offensive, the outcome might have been at least the same as in 1972.
But intense lobbying of Congress by the antiwar movement, especially in the context of the Watergate scandal, helped to drive cutbacks of American aid in 1974. Combined with the impact of the world oil crisis and inflation of 1973-74, the US withdrew almost all support for ARVN forces and the results were devastating for the south. The triumphant North Vietnamese commander, Gen. Van Tien Dung, wrote later: President Nguyen Van Thieu of South Vietnam was forced to fight "a poor man's war."

Evidence from Soviet Communist Party archives suggests that, until 1974, Soviet military intelligence analysts and diplomats never believed that the North Vietnamese would be victorious on the battlefield. Only political and diplomatic efforts could succeed. Moscow thought that the South Vietnamese government was strong enough to defend itself *with a continuation of American logistical support*.

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## Zipper730 (Jul 11, 2019)

XBe02Drvr said:


> How could LBJ, who DIDN'T know his shit, hope to recognize a general who did?


That's a good point -- he didn't seem very good at that sort of thing. He also seemed to lack advisors he trusted who would be able to tell him such things.

Did he know anything about General Landsdale, or knew anybody who did realize he had a level-headed approach?


> This counter insurgency shit was like rocket science: who knew? Well, there's always those mealy mouth, egg head academics who claim to know, but they're all half commie, so how can you believe them? Guess I'll just have to trust my generals. They're convincing my man Bobby Mac that there's progress, and he's the expert, so who am I to doubt it?


I think there was also a distrust in some of the Generals, particularly those in the US Air Force: Some might have been seen as dangerously unhinged, and almost eager to take the situation to full blown total war and expand the war right into China and possibly the USSR.



tyrodtom said:


> Have you ever worked for any company with more than 10 people?


Yep


> Like taking the new bag boy in a grocery store, and suddenly putting him over people who've worked there for 10 years.


That's not a very precise analogy, most BG's would have been in the service at least 25 years, so they'd probably be quite experienced.


> Why would Johnson see the need to replace Westmoreland? Until the Tet of 68, Johnson thought the war was going fine, he believed most of the reports coming from his chosen sources


And the war became unpopular around 1968. I'm guessing his "chosen sources" told him just what he wanted to hear, right?



michael rauls said:


> Also, it seems like an all out bombing campaign of the North, not a measured on and off one would have gone a long way to convince the North to sit down at the negotiations for real and discontinue their aggression and aid to the VC.


Like set all the cities in NVN on fire?



mikewint said:


> Evidence from Soviet Communist Party archives suggests that, until 1974, Soviet military intelligence analysts and diplomats never believed that the North Vietnamese would be victorious on the battlefield.


That is something interesting...


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## XBe02Drvr (Jul 11, 2019)

Zipper730 said:


> And the war became unpopular around 1968. I'm guessing his "chosen sources" told him just what he wanted to hear, right?


It's always dangerous to point out that the emperor has no clothes.

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## XBe02Drvr (Jul 11, 2019)

Zipper730 said:


> That's not a very precise analogy, most BG's would have been in the service at least 25 years, so they'd probably be quite experienced.


But in this case, the "grocery store" was the Pentagon, where the bag boy analogy fits.
Cheers,
Wes


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## mikewint (Jul 11, 2019)

During World War II, Westmoreland fought with a battalion in North Africa and Sicily, and was chief of staff of the U.S. Army’s Ninth Division when it entered Germany in 1944. In the Korean War he served as commander of the 187th Regimental Combat Team. In 1955, at 42, Westmoreland was promoted to major general, becoming the youngest man to have achieved that rank in the U.S. Army. He was given command of the 101st Airborne Division in 1958 and became superintendent of West Point two years later. A few months after the Kennedy assassination, newly inaugurated President Lyndon Johnson chose Westmoreland to go to Vietnam as deputy to General Paul Harkins, then head of MACV. In June 1964, he became a full four-star general, and replaced Harkins in command of U.S. forces in Vietnam. So all of Westmoreland's concepts of war, battle strategy, and victory were shaped by his WWI and Korean experiences.

State Department officials had maintained back in October 1963 that that statistical evidence pointed not to success but to mounting troubles against the Vietcong, Pentagon officials—both civilian and military—had rejected those arguments. Thus LBJ was encouraged to follow his first impulse as the new president: shift the war into higher gear. Meeting with his top civilian advisers on Vietnam, LBJ told them to forget about the counterinsurgency social, economic, and political reforms that Kennedy had stressed had to occur. Now Victory in the military conflict became the new administration’s top priority.

As I posted in the past nobody in the chain of command was really competent to critique Westmoreland’s performance. Lyndon Johnson had no understanding of military affairs whatever, nor did Robert McNamara. General Earle Wheeler was essentially a staff officer with virtually no troop leading experience, much less experience in actual combat operations.
Now General Harold K. Johnson was an authentic battlefield hero, and he was fundamentally at odds with Westmoreland’s approach, but he was not in the chain of command. As a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he theoretically had some influence there, but LBJ and McNamara were impervious to advice from the Joint Chiefs.

Thus, almost by default, Westmoreland was left to go his own way, year after bloody year.

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## Zipper730 (Jul 11, 2019)

X
 XBe02Drvr


Wes, it seems that the biggest thing at the time were x things that were causing a lot of trouble

A one size fits all mentality: There seemed to be a pervasive attitude that what worked in previous wars would work in this case.
We armed ARVN as a conventional force rather than a counter-insurgency organization that could actually do (and was actually doing) stuff.

Distrust in certain officials: Particularly the USAF.
The USAF was based mostly on one mission: Total War.
They invariably favored nuclear weapons over conventional war
They invariably favored busting cities over supporting ground-forces.
They viewed CAS as a mission who's value only mattered insofar as it kept the Army's hands off that mission: Ironically, they were supposed to make available a certain number of tactical aircraft for the US Army's use.

General LeMay and his disciples were just a little too quick to push the big red-button, even when their decisions weren't excessively trigger happy
They were unconcerned in the conflict escalated outside of Vietnam and into China: They seemed to almost welcome it, as it'd allow them to hammer Lop Nor (not sure if that continued into 1965, but I could imagine it would still be something they'd want to hit as it would prevent anymore nuclear weapons being built).
They were unconcerned if the conflict escalated into a full blown nuclear weapons exchange: After all, they figured they could deliver more damage than could be done in return (maybe true, but when you engage in a nuclear exchange that kills 15% of the global population in the short-term, and probably sets in motion complications that serves to wipe out much, or all of, the remaining 85% over the next few years, it might not matter who wins.)


Misplaced trust in certain officials.
Robert McNamara: While I could imagine he was a spectacular mathematician, and could have probably made a great professor or analyst, he was not a spectacular Secretary of Defense (Ironically, he didn't even think he'd be qualified for the job at first, but was persuaded to take the position).
On the bright side, he did...
Prevent Operation Northwoods from lighting off: It called for setting up an excuse for war with Cuba, it involved actions that would have killed American servicemen, American civilians, involved frame-ups of people that would be punished for crimes they didn't commit; it would have resulted in an invasion of Cuba, that would have likely been undesired by the Cuban populace (Castro did have some supporters). To avoid a political discussion -- you can just do your own research on Wikipedia as a starting point -- it's now well-known.
Created a joint-designation system for aircraft and missiles.
Focus more effort on flexible response (something that had been proposed here and there from 1954-1957), and should have been implemented years earlier.
Create the DIA which meant the DoD had some direct control over intel matters: Even the USSR had two intelligence services.


General Westmoreland: He really didn't understand counterinsurgency, and figured using the tactics of before would work.

As well as Johnson not really understanding much about matters involving the military, and knowing what people he should pick as qualified leaders (admittedly, easier said than done)


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## tyrodtom (Jul 11, 2019)

What was Westmoreland faced with when he was put in charge of MACV.
A ARVN that was untrained, largely incompetent, and corrupt.
Those first two takes time to change. 
That last fault was the stumbling block, how to motivate SVN to root out the corruption that was probably one of the VC's best recruiting tools.

Meanwhile Westmoreland had the US forces, already trained, already competent, not riddled with corruption.
He went in thinking he could have the situation under control with his own people in less time than he could correct all the faults with the ARVN.

Well he was wrong, and it's easy to pick apart his methods 50 years later.
But knowing only what he knew at the time could any of us bag boys have done any better ?

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## XBe02Drvr (Jul 11, 2019)

tyrodtom said:


> But knowing only what he knew at the time could any of us bag boys have done any better ?


Any ranking Special Forces officer could have done it better. But that would never happen.

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## XBe02Drvr (Jul 11, 2019)

Zipper730 said:


> Wes, it seems that the biggest thing at the time were x things that were causing a lot of trouble


Zip, go back and read all of MikeWint's and TyrodTom's posts on this topic. They were there, they saw it firsthand, and they are gracious enough to clearly and eloquently share their experiences with us despite the pain it causes. Stop trying to wrap it up into neat little "rules of thumb", and accept it in all its complexity and contradictions. It was what it was.
Cheers,
Wes


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## michael rauls (Jul 11, 2019)

Zipper730 said:


> That's a good point -- he didn't seem very good at that sort of thing. He also seemed to lack advisors he trusted who would be able to tell him such things.
> 
> Did he know anything about General Landsdale, or knew anybody who did realize he had a level-headed approach?
> I think there was also a distrust in some of the Generals, particularly those in the US Air Force: Some might have been seen as dangerously unhinged, and almost eager to take the situation to full blown total war and expand the war right into China and possibly the USSR.
> ...


No I didn't mean burn down all the cities in North Vietnam. I don't think that would accomplish anything except earn alot of bad will. 
I meant a concerted all out effort against targets that would directly or indirectly affect the Norths capability to make or supply war. I suspect, although there is no way to prove it of course, that had we done this from the get go instead of a piece meal measured effort there's a good chance we could have avoided the whole slow grind that wasted so many lives for nothing.
Certainly we would have got to where we were in 73 where the the South was militarily viable with the help of air support a whole lot quicker with a whith lot less loss of life........on both sides.
Of course this could still be sabotaged by a lack of political reforms but militarily it would seem to be a better course. At least to me.

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## michael rauls (Jul 12, 2019)

XBe02Drvr said:


> Just out of curiosity, here, how many northeners (%) do you think were dedicated ideological communists vs self identified patriots who just wanted the foreigners gone and the country reunified, and viewed Uncle Ho and his approach as the most likely means to that end? Did the average DRVN citizen live and work to create the ideal communist society, or did they just worship Uncle Ho as the "father of his country" with communism as part of the package?
> Cheers,
> Wes


I think there's alot of wisdom in what you are saying here. It seems to me that the macro issues in any conflict may be clear and delineate a contrast between good and bad but when you drill down to the individual things get alot more complex and individuals may be good or bad or somewhere in between and the reasons they are there may have little or nothing to to do with the big issues. Maybe if were up to them but for a sense of duty they wouldn't be there at all.

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## mikewint (Jul 12, 2019)

XBe02Drvr said:


> Any ranking Special Forces officer could have done it better


They were already in place but:
Started in August 1959 a special NVA Army Group the 559th Transportation Group had created the Truong Son route from Ha Tinh Provence to various S Vietnamese destinations. We would eventually name this the HO Chi Minh Trail (for the next 16 years Hanoi insisted it had no role in the fighting in S Vietnam.) This part of Laos was unmapped wilderness covered by heavy jungle, aerial recon was useless thus it formed a perfect infiltration route into S Vietnam.
The CIA had recruited French coffee planters who normally traveled along Rte 9 to watch for any activity but they saw nothing as most movement occurred at night. At Nha Trang American GBs and SEALS worked to train ARVN's 1st Observation Group. During 1961-1962 the group made 41 recons onto Laos but they were very cautious and learned little. The CIA recruited Montagnard tribesmen to penetrate the area but they could not comprehend paper maps so their observation could not be pinned down to a precise location. Next the CIA formed a special VNAF squadron headed by Nguyen Cao Ky commander of Saigon's Tan Son Nhut airbase (eventually he would head the VNAF and become S Vietnam's president. Flying unmarked and unarmed C-47s Ky and his pilots would drop groups of from 3 to 8 agents, trained by GBs and CIA personnel, into Laos. The drops began in May 1961. The first team ATLAS never made contact and their plane also disappeared. Next Team Castor was dropped into N Vietnam. Three months would pass when, in a much publicized event, Hanoi put three ATLAS survivors on trial. Within days CASTOR went silent. From the faulty information received it became obvious that teams DIDO and ECHO had been captured and turned. The last Team TARZAN went silent.
Then came the CIA Bay of Pigs debacle. A Presidential Commission found that the CIA could not exert sufficient control over large scale operations and they were ordered to turn over all large scale operations including their operations in Vietnam to the military by November of 1963.
Then on 1 Nov 1963 Diem was overthrown and killed. Three weeks later Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.
Finally on 24 Jan 1963 MACV had its covert unit ready to take over CIA operations termed initially the Special Operations Group. However after a few months of operations the military decided that this sounded too militaristic and changed the name to Studies and Observations Group. The Group was staffed by GBs, SEALS, and Air Commandos and answered directly to the Joint Chiefs in Washington.
In April 1964 McNamara arrived in Saigon and suddenly ordered ARVN forces to recon west of Khe Sanh without any type of US leadership. Operation "Leaping Lena" was underway. By 24 June five teams of poorly trained unmotivated Vietnamese were ready?? The eight man teams were literally forced at gunpoint onto aircraft and parachuted into N Vietnam. By 1 July only 4 of the original 40 managed to return. They reported that all teams had been quickly located and eliminated. The 4 survivors reported crossing networks of roads and trails invisible from the air. Truck convoys, bicycles, and NVA were everywhere.
On 8 March 1965 TV cameras recorded the first US Marine troops wading ashore at Danang and the Studies and Observation Group was finally allowed to infiltrate along the Ho Chi Minh Trail using GB lead recoon teams AND and a new Commander was enroute: Col. Donald Blackburn the Philippine "Headhunter". In 1941 Blackburn escaped the Japanese "Death March" and in the northern Luzon mountains began training Filipino resistance fighters. These Igarote tribesmen had been headhunters in the 1800s. When MacArthur returned Blackburn's headhunters numbered over 20,000 guerrilla fighters.
As one of the worlds foremost guerrilla experts Blackburn developed his plan to uncover, control, contain, and eliminate the Trail:
Phase I - Recon teams of 3 GBs and 9 tribesmen (initially all Nungs) would explore southern Laos finding NVA bases and troop concentrations and then direct air strikes on them.
Phase II - Company sized raiding units or "Hatchet Forces" would be recruited and trained. These Hatchet forces would execute lightning heliborne attacks on targets identified by the recon teams. They would land, sweep through, destroy a target and be gone before the enemy could react.
Phase III - Thousands of Laotian tribesmen would be recruited to attack the NVA at every opportunity forcing them to mass together for security effectively creating targets for the recon and hatchet forces.

Needless to say Blackburn's plan made too much sense and was opposed by William Sullivan ambassador to Laos. Blackburn could only operate in two small boxes along the S Vietnamese border, all airstrikes had to come from Thailand, and helo insertions were banned. Blackburn's raiders would have to walk in to Laos.

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## Zipper730 (Jul 12, 2019)

XBe02Drvr said:


> Zip, go back and read all of MikeWint's and TyrodTom's posts on this topic. They were there, they saw it firsthand, and they are gracious enough to clearly and eloquently share their experiences with us despite the pain it causes.


Okay


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## michael rauls (Jul 12, 2019)

mikewint said:


> They were already in place but:
> Started in August 1959 a special NVA Army Group the 559th Transportation Group had created the Truong Son route from Ha Tinh Provence to various S Vietnamese destinations. We would eventually name this the HO Chi Minh Trail (for the next 16 years Hanoi insisted it had no role in the fighting in S Vietnam.) This part of Laos was unmapped wilderness covered by heavy jungle, aerial recon was useless thus it formed a perfect infiltration route into S Vietnam.
> The CIA had recruited French coffee planters who normally traveled along Rte 9 to watch for any activity but they saw nothing as most movement occurred at night. At Nha Trang American GBs and SEALS worked to train ARVN's 1st Observation Group. During 1961-1962 the group made 41 recons onto Laos but they were very cautious and learned little. The CIA recruited Montagnard tribesmen to penetrate the area but they could not comprehend paper maps so their observation could not be pinned down to a precise location. Next the CIA formed a special VNAF squadron headed by Nguyen Cao Ky commander of Saigon's Tan Son Nhut airbase (eventually he would head the VNAF and become S Vietnam's president. Flying unmarked and unarmed C-47s Ky and his pilots would drop groups of from 3 to 8 agents, trained by GBs and CIA personnel, into Laos. The drops began in May 1961. The first team ATLAS never made contact and their plane also disappeared. Next Team Castor was dropped into N Vietnam. Three months would pass when, in a much publicized event, Hanoi put three ATLAS survivors on trial. Within days CASTOR went silent. From the faulty information received it became obvious that teams DIDO and ECHO had been captured and turned. The last Team TARZAN went silent.
> Then came the CIA Bay of Pigs debacle. A Presidential Commission found that the CIA could not exert sufficient control over large scale operations and they were ordered to turn over all large scale operations including their operations in Vietnam to the military by November of 1963.
> ...


Col. Blackburns 3 phase plan sounds so good and makes so much sense it's hard to believe it wasn't adopted.


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## mikewint (Jul 13, 2019)

michael rauls said:


> it wasn't adopted.


That is just ONE of the MOST frustrating things about that so called war. Again I am absolutely not an expert and I saw only a very small piece of that conflict but the US, IMHO-IMHO- suffered severely from China/Korea-phobia. Then to compound things we wanted to project an image of "we're the good guys" and "we're not picking on the little guy". The NVA had invaded northern Laos and something like 3-4 provinces we're under their direct control. This allowed them to skate around the Geneva Accords that established Laos as a neutral state and required all foreign troops to leave the country. Thousands of NVA troops and hundreds of tons of supplies moved along the Ho Chi Minh trail.
In light of what the NVA was and had done in Laos Blackburn's plan made total sense but violated the Accords so we danced around the issue while the NVA ignored them. So as it always did POLITICAL issues controlled the prosecution of the war and we fought with one hand tied behind our backs.
Compounding the Political restrictions we had a MILITARY mindset that "If we killed enough of them they'll quit". I don't need 4 years at West Point to know than if the VC came into my town and killed members of my family my only thought would be revenge. Every village sweep, air strike, arty bombardment that killed a non-VC recruited 10 to replace him.
Then to put icing on the cake that ridiculous idea of engaging the VC/NVA in set battles on some hill or valley, killing most of them at the cost of +100 US lives, and then simply leaving. You could still hear the departing helos as the VC/NVA returned to the area
Take the "riddle of Khe Sahn" as a perfect example. It was deliberately located in a valley in VC/NVA controlled territory, exactly as had the French had located Dien Bien Phu and for the same reason, i.e. lure the VC/NVA into a set battle and use superior forces to eliminate them. MACV got what it asked for just as had the French. From 21 Jan to 6 April 1968 the VC/NVA forces pounded the base and its outposts. 274 Americans were KIA and 2541 were WIA in the siege itself followed by 1215 KIA and 5038 WIA in the relief and evacuation operations. The end result was as it always is/was the base was abandoned in July. VC/NVA troops immediately occupied the area giving them control of a strategically important area which allowed them to extend their lines of communication and supply further into S Vietnam

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## Dimlee (Jul 14, 2019)

mikewint said:


> Evidence from Soviet Communist Party archives suggests that, until 1974, Soviet military intelligence analysts and diplomats never believed that the North Vietnamese would be victorious on the battlefield. Only political and diplomatic efforts could succeed. Moscow thought that the South Vietnamese government was strong enough to defend itself *with a continuation of American logistical support*.



As someone who can read Russian, I can confirm that. Just one small correction - USSR leadership did not believe in NVN success until about March 1975. Allegedly, Soviet advisors were very sceptical before the Ho Chi Minh Campaign initial successes proved them wrong.
Saying above, role of the USSR during post Paris Accords period remained poorly studied. It was somewhat ambiguous and relationships with Hanoi were complicated. I wonder whether Moscow was really interested in the Fall of Saigon and complete unification in 1975. The question remains open until the archives will be declassified... in next 30 years probably.

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## Dimlee (Jul 14, 2019)

I browsed through Amazon and selected e-books focused on Rolling Thunder.
This is my wish list for future reading (multiple links consolidated in one):
Rolling Thunder - TRSURL

And by the way, Mark Berent's book is free on Amazon now.


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## swampyankee (Jul 14, 2019)

The _real_ question wasn't whether the US could militarily defeat the NVA and Viet Cong (largely overlapping but not identical organizations) but whether the South Vietnamese elites -- the group being supported by the US -- could actually form a functional government. To some extent, it seems some, such as Ngô Đình Diệm, may have been badly tainted by association with the French imperial government and had little credibility as nationalists. I think here, the difference between South Korea and South Vietnam is stark: regardless of the flaws* of Syngman Rhee, he was definitely a Korean nationalist.


----

* For one, he was probably responsible for at least 14,000 extra-judicial murders and close to 300,000 during the National Defense Corps incident.

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## fubar57 (Jul 14, 2019)

WOW!!! The War We Could Have Won


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## Zipper730 (Jul 14, 2019)

mikewint said:


> Then came the CIA Bay of Pigs debacle. A Presidential Commission found that the CIA could not exert sufficient control over large scale operations and they were ordered to turn over all large scale operations including their operations in Vietnam to the military by November of 1963.


Ironically, the JCS hated Kennedy so much that they worked with the CIA.


> Finally on 24 Jan 196*4* MACV had its covert unit ready to take over CIA operations termed initially the Special Operations Group. However after a few months of operations the military decided that this sounded too militaristic and changed the name to Studies and Observations Group. The Group was staffed by GBs, SEALS, and Air Commandos and answered directly to the Joint Chiefs in Washington.


It seemed like a smart idea, with people at the helm who knew their shit.


> In April 1964 McNamara arrived in Saigon and suddenly ordered ARVN forces to recon west of Khe Sanh without any type of US leadership. Operation "Leaping Lena" was underway. By 24 June five teams of poorly trained unmotivated Vietnamese were ready?? The eight man teams were literally forced at gunpoint onto aircraft and parachuted into N Vietnam. By 1 July only 4 of the original 40 managed to return. They reported that all teams had been quickly located and eliminated. The 4 survivors reported crossing networks of roads and trails invisible from the air. Truck convoys, bicycles, and NVA were everywhere.


I assume poison gas would probably be frowned upon? I figure it would probably be possible to just exterminate everything under those trees and, if we were accused of using poison gas, one could just call it Commie propaganda (there had been cases in Korea where claims of bio-weapons use was discredited via this route, though in that case, I don't think we actually used them).


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## tyrodtom (Jul 14, 2019)

Zipper730 said:


> Ironically, the JCS hated Kennedy so much that they worked with the CIA.
> It seemed like a smart idea, with people at the helm who knew their shit.
> I assume poison gas would probably be frowned upon? I figure it would probably be possible to just exterminate everything under those trees and, if we were accused of using poison gas, one could just call it Commie propaganda (there had been cases in Korea where claims of bio-weapons use was discredited via this route, though in that case, I don't think we actually used them).



You need to provide a little proof of that first statement , while the JCS probably wasn't too fond of JFK.
What's your definition of " worked with the CIA" ?

Just as bombing needs the enemy to concentrate, and we need to know where they are, is even more true with poison gas, plus with the added complication of weather, ( wind direction)

I think we did use some poison gas in Vietnam, in the tunnel complexes . 
Tear gas can be fatal if that's all you've got to breathe, like in a enclosed area.
Then look up Adamsite, a very advanced form of tear gas that makes you vomit and lose control of your bowels., in addition to tear gases usual effects.
I suspect we used adamsite, but I've never seen any proof. But I do know we stored it. 

As inept as we were with the bombing, I'd hate to think how many non combatants we'd kill using the more advanced poison gases dropped by aircraft.

I don't think you realize how some of our miss steps in Vietnam came to public knowledge ( My Lai, etc. ) Some came to light because a few troops who participated in the operation wrote home to their congressman . Not everything was dirt dug up by the press. Some people have moral values.
IMO using poison gas might stretch some peoples moral limits a little too much.


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## Zipper730 (Jul 14, 2019)

tyrodtom said:


> You need to provide a little proof of that first statement


I can't provide proof of it, but the fact that so many people wanted JFK dead.

JFK threatened to dismantle the CIA's covert operations capability
JFK clashed with the top-brass
Defense contractors lost lots of money in McNamara's cuts (the XB-70)
The Mafia was getting the screws put to it by RFK and would probably love to have seen JFK gone
JFK wanted to add silver notes as well as gold notes, which might have been seen negatively to the Federal Reserve
The CIA serves the interests of international banking: It's not a coincidence that so many people who manned the OSS and CIA were Wall Street connected



> What's your definition of "worked with the CIA"?


They worked together to kill him.


> Just as bombing needs the enemy to concentrate, and we need to know where they are, is even more true with poison gas, plus with the added complication of weather, ( wind direction)


True enough, I just figured whenever they found trails, that would be a place to drop.


> Then look up Adamsite, a very advanced form of tear gas that makes you vomit and lose control of your bowels, in addition to tear gases usual effects.


Sounds pretty nasty, though it seems a step up from Sarin (which appears to be greatly more lethal).


> As inept as we were with the bombing, I'd hate to think how many non combatants we'd kill using the more advanced poison gases dropped by aircraft.


Good point


> I don't think you realize how some of our miss steps in Vietnam came to public knowledge (My Lai, etc.) Some came to light because a few troops who participated in the operation wrote home to their congressman. Not everything was dirt dug up by the press. Some people have moral values.


I didn't realize there were many leaks in that fashion.


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## tyrodtom (Jul 15, 2019)

Zipper, I'm not interested in your BS conspiracy theories .

As for the effectiveness of poison gas, IMO not nearly as effective as generally thought.
When it was used in WW1, they knew within 50-100 yards where their targets were, and they blanketed that area with gas shells. or early uses was gas canisters, when the wind was right. Thousands of tons of gas. That is what you don't seem to know, how much gas you have to blanket a area with when you know where your target is.
How much gas would you have to use to kill targets that you weren't sure where they were? How would mountains and wind effect this ?
It takes very little of most poison gases to kill, but it isn't target seeking, you have to blanket the whole area, And the people you want to kill has to breath it. Meanwhile you have to hope the wind doesn't blow it away, or it doesn't roll downhill where it's useless.

Plus I wonder if any gas would even reach the ground in a triple canopied jungle. 
Napalm often didn't, but it was still effective because it depleted the oxygen, and people nearby would suffocate.

To blanket large areas of jungle with poison gas would have used vast quantities of gas, impossible to keep secret, and probably a waist of effort too.

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## Zipper730 (Jul 15, 2019)

tyrodtom said:


> Zipper, I'm not interested in your BS conspiracy theories .


Okay, I'll drop it, but I want to be clear I didn't just pull this out of my rectum.


> As for the effectiveness of poison gas, IMO not nearly as effective as generally thought


Yeah, I don't think that'd be a good idea. It'd look bad politically as well.


> Napalm often didn't, but it was still effective because it depleted the oxygen, and people nearby would suffocate.


I do remember a chemical compound that the Germans toyed with called Chlorine Trifluoride (ClF3), which was also viewed as a potential rocket oxidizer.

I'm not sure how reliable storage for this stuff would be, but I do remember that the Germans saw it as too dangerous, and NASA gave up on it after a large tank blew up and set damned near everything nearby on fire (including concrete of all things): That said, it reacts with nearly anything including air, water, vegetable matter, humans, even ash (and concrete), as it's actually better at oxidizing than air itself.

It could be stored in certain types of metals by blowing fluorine gas inside the tanking structure, which produced an oxidization layer: The problem is, if the stuff were to become dislodged, all hell would break loose. Fluorine burns brutally, even Halon gas will ignite in the presence of ClF3 (something which is normally an effective fire-retardant).

That said, it would be able to get a forest fire going, even in a jungle: As a bonus, it would produce hydrofluoric acid as a byproduct which, while not all that low in pH, it's highly corrosive, and toxic as fuck (if I recall something like a couple of square inches would be lethal).


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## mikewint (Jul 15, 2019)

Once again we can get into a semantics argument over the exact definition of Poison not to mention that Army Field Manual 27-10, *Law of Land Warfare*, says “the United States is not a party to any treaty, now in force, that prohibits or restricts the use in warfare of toxic or non-toxic gases, or smoke or incendiary materials, or of bacteriological warfare.”
It is also important to note that the United States had been one of the principals of the 1925 Geneva Conference which outlawed the use of asphyxiating, poisonous, or other gases. Nevertheless, the State Department eventually sent the Defense Department a memo agreeing that the non-lethal agents were legal but included a long list of stringent limitations on their use.

Now the collision between Politicians and the Pentagon begins. As far as the Military is concerned the answer is either yes or no. Putting nit picking restrictions on weaponry in the midst of a war was simply the State Department kidding themselves. The Military view was simple, when the crunch comes, the Pentagon sets the requirements and State finds the reasons why it’s legal.

The United States began equipping the South Vietnamese Army with two of its three standard riot control, or non-lethal, gases in 1962 under the existing Military Assistance Program (MAP). The agents were CN, the standard tear gas used to quell civil disorders, and CS, the newly developed super tear gas. The third riot control agent, DM (adamsite), a nausea-producing gas, did not reach Vietnam until 1964. Riot control gases are described by Army field manuals as agents that “produce temporary irritating or disabling physiological effects when in contact with the eyes or when inhaled. Riot control agents *used in field concentration* do not permanently injure personnel.”

The gases are actually solids that are disseminated as aerosols via grenades/canisters. The first two are agents that have been in the military arsenal for decades. Both CN and DM were invented in the latter days of World War I, and CS was reportedly developed by the British in the 1950s and adapted later on for United States use.

Not exactly a “poison gas” as such but during Operation Ranch Hand, from 1961 to 1971, the U.S. military sprayed a range of herbicides (over 20 million gallons) across more than 4.5 million acres of Vietnam. The intent was to destroy the forest cover and food crops used by enemy North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops.
U.S. aircraft sprayed roads, rivers, canals, rice paddies and farmland with powerful mixtures (up to 10 times the standard dosage) of herbicides. Obviously sprays can and did drift so the crops and water sources used by the non-combatant native population of South Vietnam were also hit. In addition to aircraft spraying these herbicides were also sprayed from trucks and hand-sprayers around U.S. military bases to produce clear fire zones and prevent infiltration by sappers. The various herbicides used during Operation Ranch Hand were referred to by the colored marks on the 55-gallon drums in which the chemicals were shipped and stored.

The most used herbicide (13 million gallons) was Agent Orange which was only one of the “Rainbow Herbicides” used by the U.S. military. There was also Agent Pink, Agent Green, Agent Purple, Agent White and Agent Blue. Each of these had different chemical compositions and additives in varying strengths. Like Agent Orange they were sprayed in concentrations well beyond the recommended amounts.

While these herbicides did not directly target human life Agent Orange did contain significant amounts of 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin, often called TCDD, a type of dioxin. Now I would hasten to point out that this dioxin was not intentionally added to Agent Orange; rather, dioxin is a byproduct that was produced during the manufacturing of the herbicides and as such was found in varying concentrations in all the different herbicides used in Vietnam. The TCDD found in Agent Orange is the most dangerous of all the dioxins.

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## tyrodtom (Jul 15, 2019)

Zipper730 said:


> Okay, I'll drop it, but I want to be clear I didn't just pull this out of my rectum.
> Yeah, I don't think that'd be a good idea. It'd l





Zipper730 said:


> Okay, I'll drop it, but I want to be clear I didn't just pull this out of my rectum.
> Yeah, I don't think that'd be a good idea. It'd look bad politically as well.
> I do remember a chemical compound that the Germans toyed with called Chlorine Trifluoride (ClF3), which was also viewed as a potential rocket oxidizer.
> 
> ...



I don't see why you even waste our time posting about chlorine trifluoride, even the Germans, as desperate as they got, decided it was too dangerous for real world tactical use.

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## mikewint (Jul 15, 2019)

N-Stoff or Substance-N was tested by the Nazis as a flamethrower-type weapon or Napalm-type canister that would literally burn through anything and everything it even corrodes platinum and gold metals. Only nitrogen and the inert gasses won't react with it. It can be stored in metal (steel, copper, aluminium) containers IF a bit of fluorine gas is injected into the cylinders to forms a metal fluoride protective layer (much like Oxygen reacts with Aluminium to form a protective Aluminium Oxide coating on the metal). HOWEVER anything which disturbs or disrupts this protective layer allows the ClF3 to contact the actual and the results are explosive. So if you could squirt the stuff onto a reinforced concrete blockhouse the ClF3 would burn through the concrete, and anything else, very quickly and as an added bonus produce clouds of corrosive and toxic HF (Hydrofluoric acid). The Nazis did produce 30-50 tones of the stuff but all of the above problems prevented its battlefield use.

The SPILL - No it wasn't NASA though NASA did play around with the stuff as a hypergolic agent that would react instantaneously with any fuel. It is an excellent rocket fuel igniting instantly with any fuel at over 7000F. BUT as with its war usage the immense difficulties in handling it both out of and inside the rocket were too difficult to over come on a consistent basis...one minor oversight triggered massive explosions.
General Chemical Co. in Shreveport Louisiana, back in the early 1950s, was preparing to ship a one ton steel tank of ClF3. The tank had been cooled with dry ice to make it easier to load the ClF3 into the tank. Unfortunately the extreme cold had made the steel very brittle and while they were loading the container onto a dolly the steel container split dumping the ClF3 onto the concrete floor. Within a minute or so the ClF3 had burned explosively through a foot (30cm) of concrete and through 3 feet (90cm) of gravel below the concrete. The toxic, corrosive gasses formed by the burning corroded and destroyed everything in the warehouse. The man who had been steadying the tank was blown over 500ft away.

Hydrofluoric acid - you are correct, as an acid it is very mild, vinegar (Acetic acid) is a stronger acid. But HF has some very unique properties having nothing to do with acidic qualities. In the lab we used it to etch glass. The glass container was coated with paraffin then you scratched off the paraffin with a stylus exposing the glass underneath. HF would then be poured/brushed onto the class and allowed to eat away at the glass (the clear glass becomes frosted where the paraffin was removed). The real fun part of all this is HF's ability to react with human tissue. Hydrofluoric acid is rapidly absorbed through the skin, whereupon it selectively attacks bone and interferes with nerve function (so there is no pain initially involved), often causing fatal fluorine poisoning. The death and destruction of the burned tissues is not noticeable for days after exposure. 
In 1994, an Australian lab technician was unfortunate enough to spill around one hundred milliliters of hydrofluoric acid in his lab, splashing both thighs. Despite immediately washing the area and submerging himself in water until the ambulance arrived, his condition deteriorated to the point where his right leg had to be amputated. Despite this, he died of multiple organ failure fifteen days after the spill.

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## swampyankee (Jul 15, 2019)

If you want to be diverted by dangerous chemicals, look for Derek Lowe’s blog topic “Things I won’t work with” and John D. Clark’s book, _Ignition!_

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## mikewint (Jul 16, 2019)

Excellent choices. A large part of the Manhattan Project was developing methods to produce, handle, and store Fluorine gas. F2 gas is really nasty stuff and there is very little that it does not react with it by bursting into flame. Even ceramics and water burn in F2. The Manhattan people needed to react Uranium with F2 to produce UF4 the only gaseous Uranium compound. The U238 Fluoride is heavier than the U235 Fluoride and as such the U238 tetrafluoride has a slower rate of diffusion. At the time, the only way to separate the two isotopes. 
ClF4 makes Fluorine gas look like water in comparison


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## Barrett (Jul 18, 2019)

Zipper730 said:


> Would the incineration of Hanoi resulted in any of the following if it was implemented around 1965
> 
> Chinese hordes coming across the border
> Other escalation of war
> Outrage at home



Steve and I examine that situation in Dragon's Jaw (Shameless Hype Dept, see below.) We realized that what is (apparently) never-ever mentioned was the domestic situation in China during the period: Cultural Revolution, Great Leap Forward, widespread famine and ongoing feuds with Russia. Thing is: the LBJ/RSM cabal had to know all of that but still clung to the Wider War tarbaby. Being cynical, one might say that the outcome from the US perspective likely would not have been worse than what actually happened. Amazon product

As for LeMay, in researching his first posthumous bio, it became evident that he and maybe Marine Commandant Greene were the only JCS members with any willingness to stand up to LBJ/McNamara/Taylor/et al. But LeMay timed out in February 65 so he was never in a position to exert much influence. His successor, McConnell, was a Johnson drinking buddy...enough said.


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## Zipper730 (Jul 18, 2019)

Barrett said:


> Steve and I examine that situation in Dragon's Jaw . . . . We realized that what is (apparently) never-ever mentioned was the domestic situation in China during the period: Cultural Revolution, Great Leap Forward, widespread famine and ongoing feuds with Russia. Thing is: the LBJ/RSM cabal had to know all of that but still clung to the Wider War tarbaby.


Weird


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## tyrodtom (Jul 19, 2019)

It was a while before it was known just how destructive the great leap forward, the red guards, etc. was.
Lots of rumors were coming out of China at the time, some of it just seemed too good to be true.

The border clashes between the USSR and China was known about as they happened, even by the general public.
Some public officials, and newspapers, treated the information as if it was just a play act put on by the communists, to try to lure us into dropping our guard.

America was a suspicious country then, saw commies behind every tree.


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## swampyankee (Jul 19, 2019)

tyrodtom said:


> It was a while before it was known just how destructive the great leap forward, the red guards, etc. was.
> Lots of rumors were coming out of China at the time, some of it just seemed too good to be true.
> 
> The border clashes between the USSR and China was known about as they happened, even by the general public.
> ...



This hasn’t ended. Witness some of the political rhetoric regarding just about any current US politician as far to the left as Nixon


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## XBe02Drvr (Jul 19, 2019)

swampyankee said:


> This hasn’t ended. Witness some of the political rhetoric regarding just about any current US politician as far to the left as Nixon


The rhetoric on both sides has swung further and further to the extremes. The DMZ between has become a tiger pit full of poisoned punji stakes. We've seen this before. Which side prevails in the end has huge implications on the global geopolitical stage. Compare France and Germany in the late 30s, or Russia in the 19teens.
Now back to Thud Ridge.
Cheers,
Wes


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## mikewint (Jul 19, 2019)

XBe02Drvr said:


> Now back to Thud Ridge.


For any of you wondering at that reference: THUDS refers to the F-105 Thunderchief aircraft and the ridge refers to a terrain feature running NW about 30 klicks from Hanoi. It served as a waypoint and terrain masking feature for the incoming 105s attacking Hanoi. Later in the war the NVA would install anti-aircraft guns along the ridge using heavy lift helos to get the guns to the top of the 5000 ft high ridge


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## fubar57 (Jul 19, 2019)

From Here...Thuds, the Ridge, and 100 Missions North | Page 1 | Military Aviation | Air & Space Magazine

"The F-105s would then head into North Vietnam, flying at 18,000 to 20,000 feet. Going into PAK VI, the pilots followed two main approaches. One took them out over the Gulf of Tonkin, where they then turned to the attack. The other took them along a mile-high branch of the Day Truong Son (Long Chain of Mountains). Paralleled on the south by the Red River, this narrow complex of karsts and dense-canopy forest points southeast toward Hanoi. Americans called it Thud Ridge, after the men who were lost there and the F-105 detritus littering its rough slopes"


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## Zipper730 (Jul 20, 2019)

tyrodtom said:


> It was a while before it was known just how destructive the great leap forward, the red guards, etc. was.
> Lots of rumors were coming out of China at the time, some of it just seemed too good to be true.


The Great Leap Forward was 1968 to 1962 right?


> The border clashes between the USSR and China was known about as they happened, even by the general public.


When did these occur?


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## tyrodtom (Jul 20, 2019)

Zipper730 said:


> The Great Leap Forward was 1968 to 1962 right?
> When did these occur?


It sounds like you've got the Great Leap Forward, ( 58-62) and Cultural Revolution ( 66-76) confused. Google them.

The serious border clashes happened in early 1969. Lasted most of the year.


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## swampyankee (Jul 20, 2019)

XBe02Drvr said:


> The rhetoric on both sides has swung further and further to the extremes. The DMZ between has become a tiger pit full of poisoned punji stakes. We've seen this before. Which side prevails in the end has huge implications on the global geopolitical stage. Compare France and Germany in the late 30s, or Russia in the 19teens.
> Now back to Thud Ridge.
> Cheers,
> Wes


Or the US in the 1850s

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## XBe02Drvr (Jul 20, 2019)

swampyankee said:


> Or the US in the 1850s


Roger. Concur. I was trying to leave US politics and history out of it. The tribalization and political polarization and "militarization" of the middle ground seems to be a global phenomenon these days. Dissent=treason; politically, culturally, and ethnically. Do we need any further proof that the earth is already over-populated?
On that cheery note, 'nuff said.
Wes

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## swampyankee (Jul 20, 2019)

This is, inherently, a very political topic which, alas, still has repercussions in politics of today. 

I think there were two major political fallacies in place during the Vietnam War. The first was that all US wars _must_ be crusades to an ultimate, indisputable victory and the second was the sunk cost fallacy: the war must continue until all the US deaths are avenged. 

A third, historical fallacy is the "action" which resulted in the Golf of Tonkin resolution. Investigation seems to indicate that the purported action never happened.


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## fubar57 (Jul 20, 2019)

Tick....tick....tick.....

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## swampyankee (Jul 20, 2019)

fubar57 said:


> Tick....tick....tick.....



Do note that I'm not criticizing the bravery of the vast majority of US servicemen*, nor am I criticizing the patriotism or character of the people in charge of the war. One can be wrong while being both patriotic and of good character.

I think Vietnam also brought numerous problems with the way the US military was training and planning, most of which have been corrected**. It was also during a very turbulent time _within_ the US, as an oppressed minority's struggle for equal rights was coming to a head after being suppressed by state (and local) governments*** and, bluntly, state-endorsed terrorist organizations and strongly biased law enforcement practices.


______

* Women were not in combat, although this doesn't mean that servicewomen in theatre were necessarily safe.

** One that the US Armed Forces seem to have fixed, quite a lot better than both the private sector and many local and state government agencies, is bias in promotion and assignment.

*** with the acceptance of the executive branch federal government, at least until President Eisenhower federalized the Arkansas National Guard and sent in the US Army.


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## mikewint (Jul 20, 2019)

swampyankee said:


> Investigation seems to indicate that the purported action never happened.


The Tonkin Gulf Resolution was President Johnson's key to unlocking public and congressional support for greater U.S. involvement in Vietnam, and the key to the resolution was LBJ's brilliant manipulation of the press. It is, perhaps, the best example of how presidential news management can shape public policy. In early August 1964, North Vietnamese PT boats and a U.S. destroyer did battle in the Gulf of Tonkin. Other than those two facts virtually every other report was either misleading or even false. Contrary to the New York Times report that the U.S. destroyer "was on a routine patrol when an unprovoked attack took place" the destroyer Maddox was on an intelligence gathering operation near an area where the U.S. had twice attacked North Vietnam the day before. In fact, evidence suggests that the second attack by North Vietnamese PT boats never happened. Real or not, when heavily reported in the media, it became the public rationale for retaliation and increased U. S. involvement in Vietnam-a policy change decided upon before the Gulf of Tonkin incident.

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## Zipper730 (Jul 20, 2019)

tyrodtom said:


> It sounds like you've got the Great Leap Forward, ( 58-62) and Cultural Revolution ( 66-76) confused.


So, at the start of the air war in Vietnam (1964-1965), this would have largely been a non-issue?


> The serious border clashes happened in early 1969. Lasted most of the year.


Were things sour in 1964-1965, and did we know it if they were?



swampyankee said:


> I think there were two major political fallacies in place during the Vietnam War. The first was that all US wars _must_ be crusades to an ultimate, indisputable victory and the second was the sunk cost fallacy: the war must continue until all the US deaths are avenged.


Did all nations think this way?


> A third, historical fallacy is the "action" which resulted in the Golf of Tonkin resolution. Investigation seems to indicate that the purported action never happened.


Well, there were two battles. The first one did happen, the second one didn't...



mikewint said:


> The Tonkin Gulf Resolution was President Johnson's key to unlocking public and congressional support for greater U.S. involvement in Vietnam, and the key to the resolution was LBJ's brilliant manipulation of the press. It is, perhaps, the best example of how presidential news management can shape public policy.


Basically you don't win on facts, you win on persuasive narratives.


> In early August 1964, North Vietnamese PT boats and a U.S. destroyer did battle in the Gulf of Tonkin. Other than those two facts virtually every other report was either misleading or even false. Contrary to the New York Times report that the U.S. destroyer "was on a routine patrol when an unprovoked attack took place" the destroyer Maddox was on an intelligence gathering operation near an area where the U.S. had twice attacked North Vietnam the day before.


And the second attack didn't even happen, even the ship's CO attested to this. The sonarmen were hyper-vigilant, and some people have a way of interpreting things through a lens (in this case, of potential impending combat), and weather was bad: The weather produced false returns, some of appeared close enough to pose a threat: So they fired, and basically created some cool splashes; the ship began evasive action and they misinterpreted either their own acoustical signature, or another friendly ship for a torpedo.


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## mikewint (Jul 20, 2019)

On 15 Dec 1963 McNamara issued OPLAN-34A calling for covert attacks on N Vietnam as retaliation for their support of the VC in S Vietnam. To implement these covert attacks along N Vietnam's coast the CIA had acquired several 88 foot high-speed Norwegian Nasty-class PT boats. They were light, heavily armed and at over 47 knots bat-out-hell fast. Political deniability absolutely forbade the use of Americans to crew the Nastys but the Vietnamese used to tiny runabouts and Junks just could not master the high speed maneuvering of the Norwegian PTFs. Consequently the CIA additionally hired the Norwegian skippers to instruct and handle the high speed runs of the PTFs. The Norwegians were NOT Americans but a Caucasian at the helm of a covert boat in N Vietnamese waters would put a real strain on that deniability but McNamara insisted that the raids commence without delay. So on 16 Feb 1964 three Nastys attempted to destroy a bridge but failed under heavy coastal fire. A few nights later another attempt was made but also failed. By early summer the Norwegian skippers were making quite a reputation for themselves in Danang getting involved with Vietnamese girls and the police. Deniability was wearing very thin.
By July the Nastys had destroyed five targets in N Vietnam and two major hit-and-run, over-the beach attacks on 9 and 25 July. On 30 July five Nastys attacked and destroyed several coastal radar sites almost to Haiphong itself. It was two days later when NVA PT boats attacked the Maddox. LBJ had been informed of the Nasty raids but made no mention of them when he warned Hanoi that another attack "would have dire consequences". A second Destroyer the Turner Joy was ordered to reinforce the Maddox.
On 3 August Nastys destroyed another coastal radar site and on 4 August in heavy weather and rough seas the Turner and Maddox began to receive radar and sonar signals that they assumed was another attack. As a result the two ships spent 4 hours maneuvering and firing at these signals. They reported sinking two N Vietnamese PT boats although no wreckage or bodies had been found.
At 13:27 Herrick (Captain of the Maddox) sent the first of three cables stating that the second attack had probably not occurred. At 14:30 Herrick cabled that all actions should be suspended until daylight reconnaissance could be made. At 16:00 Herrick cabled that the details of the attack were still confused and contradictory. However McNamara decided against informing LBJ about these new reports of a possible non-attack

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## tyrodtom (Jul 20, 2019)

Zipper730 said:


> So, at the start of the air war in Vietnam (1964-1965), this would have largely been a non-issue?
> Were things sour in 1964-1965, and did we know it if they were?
> 
> Did all nations think this way?
> ...



The Great Leap forward killed probably millions of Chinese, among it's other results, there's no way it couldn't have effected China's ability to supply NVN, just 2 years later.
Then by 1966, the cultural revolution was going on, that probably didn't enhance China's abilities either.

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## tyrodtom (Jul 20, 2019)

I remember in early 1975, I kept up with the news during SVN's collapse , when I got the news of the NVN tanks busting through the gates at the presidential compound in Saigon, I took off from work.

I went up on top of a local mountain , thought about my friends and cousin who gave up their lives for a lost cause, I cried like a baby.

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## Zipper730 (Jul 21, 2019)

mikewint said:


> On 15 Dec 1963 McNamara issued OPLAN-34A calling for covert attacks on N Vietnam as retaliation for their support of the VC in S Vietnam.


This is actually a fairly smart move: It avoids the public outcry a regular war provides, yet allows NVN to be struck.


> To implement these covert attacks along N Vietnam's coast the CIA had acquired several 88 foot high-speed Norwegian Nasty-class PT boats. They were light, heavily armed and at over 47 knots bat-out-hell fast. Political deniability absolutely forbade the use of Americans to crew the Nastys but the Vietnamese used to tiny runabouts and Junks just could not master the high speed maneuvering of the Norwegian PTFs. Consequently the CIA additionally hired the Norwegian skippers to instruct and handle the high speed runs of the PTFs. The Norwegians were NOT Americans but a Caucasian at the helm of a covert boat in N Vietnamese waters would put a real strain on that deniability but McNamara insisted that the raids commence without delay.


I'm curious if it would have been workable to crew the ships with Japanese, Taiwanese, or some other Asian group...


> On 3 August Nastys destroyed another coastal radar site and on 4 August in heavy weather and rough seas the Turner and Maddox began to receive radar and sonar signals that they assumed was another attack. As a result the two ships spent 4 hours maneuvering and firing at these signals. They reported sinking two N Vietnamese PT boats although no wreckage or bodies had been found.
> At 13:27 Herrick (Captain of the Maddox) sent the first of three cables stating that the second attack had probably not occurred. At 14:30 Herrick cabled that all actions should be suspended until daylight reconnaissance could be made. At 16:00 Herrick cabled that the details of the attack were still confused and contradictory. However McNamara decided against informing LBJ about these new reports of a possible non-attack


That I didn't know: I just figured the President had committed to a war and didn't care about the facts.


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## mikewint (Jul 21, 2019)

tyrodtom said:


> thought about my friends and cousin who gave up their lives for a lost cause, I cried like a baby.


You are far from alone, I was back in the world by then but I had spent time at Lang Vei 8 klicks (5mi) west of Khe Sanh on the Xe Kong river (right on the Laotian border). As such I knew many of the GBs and Yards stationed there. Eventually I heard the details of the battle from the few that survived. On 30 Jan and NVA deserter arrived at Lang Vei and warned that NVA forces with tanks were en route. MACV Saigon refused to credit the report. On 1 & 4 Feb recon teams from the camp had discovered concealed fords across the Xe Kong and tank tracks on the banks. Saigon was informed but again refused to credit he GBs saying that they had seen bulldozer tracks. On 6 Feb 1968 near midnight 3 infantry battalions, 2 sapper companies, and for the first time in Vietnam 2 armored companies (11 PT-76 Soviet tanks) attacked the camp. The GBs had been supplied with the new M-72 LAW rockets but about half mis-fired and those that did actually fire simply bounced off or exploded harmlessly against the tanks.
Fortunately the camp had 105mm recoiless rifles. Using the 105 firing the only 3 HE rounds available three tanks were knocked out
The Marines at Khe Sanh had an agreement with the Lang Vei GB to come to their aid when necessary. The GB CO requested Marine support twice and was denied. SF headquarters in DaNang requested marine support and were also denied. Available GBs volunteered to go to the aid of Lang Vei but needed helos. The Marine CO refused to allow his helos to be used. Eventually Westmorland who happened to be in DaNang over-ruled the Marine CO and ordered a 50-man relief force to be formed.
Of the 24 SF at the camp 7 were KIA, 11 WIA and 3 were captured. 316 Yards were KIA, 75 WIA and 253 captured


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## Zipper730 (Jul 21, 2019)

mikewint said:


> You are far from alone


I could imagine, losing people you care about is traumatic.


> I was back in the world by then but I had spent time at Lang Vei 8 klicks (5mi) west of Khe Sanh on the Xe Kong river (right on the Laotian border). As such I knew many of the GBs and Yards stationed there.


What's a Yard?


> Eventually I heard the details of the battle from the few that survived. On 30 Jan and NVA deserter arrived at Lang Vei and warned that NVA forces with tanks were en route. MACV Saigon refused to credit the report.


Were the tanks moving through the jungles or on land? Could some RF-4's been used to spot them?


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## tyrodtom (Jul 21, 2019)

Zipper730 said:


> I could imagine, losing people you care about is traumatic.
> What's a Yard?
> Were the tanks moving through the jungles or on land? Could some RF-4's been used to spot them?



A Yard is slang for Montagnards. 
Now your next question probably is whats a montagnard ? Google it.

There wasn't much of Vietnam that wasn't jungle, in one form or another. Around Khe Sanh it was mountains and highland jungle.
Our then state of the art air recon wasn't very good at picking up anything in thick jungle.
Slow moving recon aircraft and helicopter flights could if they had a reasonably small area to search, but that wasn't much help if you had huge areas to search.


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## mikewint (Jul 21, 2019)

Zipper730 said:


> through the jungles or on land?


Like everything that the NVA used, they, tanks came down along the Ho Chi Minh trail. The PT-76 Soviet tanks were light amphibious tanks so a part of their trip from the north had been made by swimming the Xe Dong river.
On 22 Jan the 33rd Royal Laotian Battalion had been attacked by the NVA at their base at Ban Pho 12 klicks from Lang Vei. On 24 Jan an Air Force FAC spotted 5 tanks moving along Hwy 9 (Lang Vei was situated on Hwy 9). The FAC called in an air strike and one tank was destroyed. On that same day the Laotian 33rd Battalion and their families arrived at Lang Vei seeking asylum. The Laotian commander reported the earlier attack and the fact that it had been lead by tanks. (The Laotion troops were clean, unwounded, and their weapons had not been fired) They were sent to the Old Lang Vei camp.
The possibility of a tank attack was becoming more real. On 30 Jan NVA Private Luong Dinh Du wandered into Lang Vei. He walked right past the dozing Montagnard gate guards and into the team house, causing everyone to dive for cover. His unit had been attacking Khe Sanh and had suffered heavy causalities. He had found a Chieu Hoi and readily answered all questions confirming the presence of tanks.
Lang Vei requested anti-tank weapons and 100 LAWs were air-dropped into the camp. The Lang Vei SF were prepared for tanks but thought that they would be used in a support role, firing their cannons from out of the jungle. Lang Vei bunkers, wire, Claymores, etc. were well placed and strong enough to hold a human wave attack. No one expected the tanks to lead the attack crushing everything in their path
Nonetheless when the Lang Vei CO made his first call for help the J-2 officer refused to believe the tanks were in the attack: "There are NO tanks in Vietnam"


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## michael rauls (Jul 21, 2019)

tyrodtom said:


> I remember in early 1975, I kept up with the news during SVN's collapse , when I got the news of the NVN tanks busting through the gates at the presidential compound in Saigon, I took off from work.
> 
> I went up on top of a local mountain , thought about my friends and cousin who gave up their lives for a lost cause, I cried like a baby.


That must have felt crushing. I can only try to imagine what that must have been like.
So many good men gone for nothing. And I don't think it had to be that way.

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## XBe02Drvr (Jul 22, 2019)

Zipper730 said:


> Could some RF-4's been used to spot them?


Under triple canopy jungle? Get real, man! Slaloming between the towers of karst in a fast mover aircraft while trying to photo through the foliage is a good way to win yourself a DFC. (Died Flying Cross)


michael rauls said:


> So many good men gone for nothing.


Fifty-eight thousand of them, including friends, classmates, and boot camp buddies of mine. Nearly a quarter of my boot camp company got sent to Corpsman school, then banished to the Marine Corps. The word on the street was that if you got orders to Fleet Marine Force, you'd never see the Navy again. In almost a year of training, from first induction to first permanent duty station, I was trained by, supervised by, worked with, or worked for senior petty officers of just about every rate in the Navy, but never a Hospital Corpsman. Stateside it seemed there were never enough of them to go around, and they were not to be seen performing collateral duty in training commands like the other rates. OTOH, there were plenty of them crawling around in the rice paddies. It would take big brass ones to walk into combat unarmed and "not quite a Marine" with the real McCoy, methinks.
Cheers,
Wes

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## Zipper730 (Jul 22, 2019)

mikewint said:


> Like everything that the NVA used, they, tanks came down along the Ho Chi Minh trail. The PT-76 Soviet tanks were light amphibious tanks so a part of their trip from the north had been made by swimming the Xe Dong river.


So they were heavily covered by jungles, and amphibious designs could cross rivers.


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## XBe02Drvr (Jul 22, 2019)

Zipper730 said:


> So they were heavily covered by jungles, and amphibious designs could cross rivers.


None of this stuff is rocket science. Read up on it.


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## Zipper730 (Jul 22, 2019)

XBe02Drvr said:


> None of this stuff is rocket science. Read up on it.


I just wanted to make sure I understood and were on the same page. I didn't see your message when I responded to Mike's


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## mikewint (Jul 22, 2019)

I'm not sure that I can even begin to describe the triple canopy jungle, the monsoon rains, rice paddies fertilized with human and animal waste, heat, humidity, snakes, leeches, ticks, mosquitoes with Malaria, and RATS!!
The Central Highlands were cooler and less humid but were still part of that relentless jungle full of biting, stinging, poisonous, disease carrying critters. Then came the Monsoons with sheets of rain so heavy that it was hard to breath. Rain that seemed never to end. Rain that penetrated everything and soaked everything so you were never dry. The ground turned into mud pits 2 -3 feet deep filled with leeches. Critters like snakes and rats headed for any semi-dry place they could find, i.e. our hooches.

There were 58,209 American deaths in the Vietnam war.
10,875 of them were not combat related.
1,207 died of drowning or suffocation
482 died of illness.
118 died of Malaria.
42 died from having a stroke.
22 died of Hepatitis.
382 committed suicide.
Some came down with illness from exposure to Agent Orange.
1,326 died from misadventure.


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## XBe02Drvr (Jul 22, 2019)

mikewint said:


> 1,326 died from misadventure.


IE: fragging, bar fights, mutiny, animal encounters, motor vehicle and ordnance accidents, conflicts with indigenous, etc? Carrier flight deck accidents included? Or were they excluded as "not in country"?


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## mikewint (Jul 22, 2019)

Not entirely sure but at the time I DEROS out Fraggings were unheard of. They happened more in the 70s when everyone knew that the US was pulling out and no one wanted to be the last man KIA in Vietnam. It is also important to remember that Judges often gave young men convicted of drugs and various violent crimes a choice of jail or the Army. As a result the Army of 60-72 was composed of large numbers of criminals, drug addicts, and sociopaths.
I have seen various stats that set the number of fraggings at around 900 with 99 deaths. These numbers are from 1969 - 1972. Stats were not kept prior to 1969. Fragging by Army definition is ONLY by explosive device, i.e. grenades. NCOs/Officers killed by "friendly" firearm fire are very difficult to count in a combat situation. AK-47s were easily obtainable. Fraggings can also be difficult to count in a combat situation. A grenade tossed into a foxhole or tent could have easily come from a sapper. Trying to get an enlisted to rat on another proved almost impossible. As a consequence only TEN!! fraggers were ever identified an prosecuted by the ARMY.
Fragging and the resultant breakdown of discipline in the latter war years is one of the main reasons the US ended conscription in 1973 resulting in an all volunteer force and the kinder, gentler basic training of today.

My understanding of the stats is that MISADVENTURE refers to "Friendly" Fire. A horses-ass euphemism if I ever heard one.

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## tyrodtom (Jul 22, 2019)

My last year in the Army was spent in Germany.
The Army Times came out every week, and always had a casualty list, I checked it every week.
By late 71 through 73 the war was winding down, but I still would sometimes see a name I thought I knew.

My room mate from flight training was listed as "missing, not as a result of hostile action " I never did find out, for sure, what happened to him.
According to a guy in his unit, he went to town, and was never seen again.

I've never been to the wall in DC, but I have seen the traveling wall, but I forgot to check for his name.


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## Zipper730 (Jul 22, 2019)

mikewint said:


> I'm not sure that I can even begin to describe the triple canopy jungle, the monsoon rains, rice paddies fertilized with human and animal waste, heat, humidity, snakes, leeches, ticks, mosquitoes with Malaria, and RATS!!


Sounds like it truly stinks, plus the rats present a concern of rabies (100% fatal), and Malaria is also genuinely fucked up.


> Not entirely sure but at the time I DEROS out Fraggings were unheard of.


What does DEROS mean, and when did you serve in Vietnam?


> They happened more in the 70s when everyone knew that the US was pulling out and no one wanted to be the last man KIA in Vietnam. It is also important to remember that Judges often gave young men convicted of drugs and various violent crimes a choice of jail or the Army. As a result the Army of 60-72 was composed of large numbers of criminals, drug addicts, and sociopaths.


Well 20% of the criminal population are sociopathic or psychopathic.


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## fubar57 (Jul 22, 2019)

First hit in Google, learn to use the freakin' thing and save us all these "quotes"

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## tyrodtom (Jul 23, 2019)

Zipper730 said:


> Sounds like it truly stinks, plus the rats present a concern of rabies (100% fatal), and Malaria is also genuinely fucked up.
> What does DEROS mean, and when did you serve in Vietnam?
> Well 20% of the criminal population are sociopathic or psychopathic.
> That few?
> ...



Zipper it seems you always feed a little false information into most of your reply/question returns.
For one Rabies is not 100% fatal, if you wait for the onset of the symtoms of the disease, you chances aren't good at all, but if you get treated within a reasonable period of the infection your chance of recovery is very good.
I know a survivor. 
Dogs, racoons, etc. were know, and encountered in my part of the country in the late 50s and early 60s.
I shot a suspected rabid dog myself when I was about 15.
Some of your questions, like that last one, has me wondering what planet you grew up on.


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## Zipper730 (Jul 23, 2019)

tyrodtom said:


> Zipper it seems you always feed a little false information into most of your reply/question returns. For one Rabies is not 100% fatal, if you wait for the onset of the symtoms of the disease, you chances aren't good at all, but if you get treated within a reasonable period of the infection your chance of recovery is very good.


I meant if PEP wasn't provided right away. You'd have to have treatment within reach, and be able to get medevac to you within a few days.


> I know a survivor.


Really? I only know of two cases, both of which were recent (Jeanna Giese who was given the Milwaukee protocol; and another person who, far as I know, was unnamed, and was given PEP after symptoms appeared, but survived because of this).


> Some of your questions, like that last one, has me wondering what planet you grew up on.


Earth post November 17, 1983...


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## tyrodtom (Jul 23, 2019)

Zipper730 said:


> I meant if PEP wasn't provided right away. You'd have to have treatment within reach, and be able to get medevac to you within a few days.
> Really? I only know of two cases, both of which were recent (Jeanna Giese who was given the Milwaukee protocol; and another person who, far as I know, was unnamed, and was given PEP after symptoms appeared, but survived because of this).
> Earth post November 17, 1983...


 I thought I made clear it was a rabies case treated well before onset of symptoms, 1 or 2 days after he was bit.


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## Zipper730 (Jul 24, 2019)

tyrodtom said:


> I thought I made clear it was a rabies case treated well before onset of symptoms, 1 or 2 days after he was bit.


Uh, I didn't notice that detail. Regardless, you should read about the Jeanna Giese case, it's pretty fascinating (fucked up, but fascinating).

BTW: I don't "feed in false information" -- I'm not trying to deceive anybody.


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## XBe02Drvr (Jul 25, 2019)

Zipper730 said:


> BTW: I don't "feed in false information" -- I'm not trying to deceive anybody.


Nobody's accusing you of deliberate deceit, Zipper. It's just that in your habit of paraphrasing other people's posts to enhance your understanding, you often choose words that change the meaning or implication of the original thought. I'm sure you don't mean it that way, but it comes off to some of the wordsmiths around here as "putting words in their mouths" that they didn't intend.
Cheers,
Wes


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## mikewint (Jul 25, 2019)

RATS: rats were literally everywhere in Vietnam though surprisingly few around major cities and villages. My first trip through a Vietnamese open-air market gave me the answer. Rats were a major food item and hundreds of skinned, roasted, rat carcasses were sold. The meat was a bit "gamey" a lot like rabbit/squirrel (both of which are after all rodents).
The largest rat concentrations were around US bases mostly due to the large amounts of garbage produced and dumped usually nearby. Fire bases were especially bad since, generally, garbage was simply dumped over the edge of the base into some ravine. Rat breeding/feeding heaven with a single pair producing 2000 offspring a year. Now as to the rats themselves we're NOT talking about those cute little white lab rats or even the city rats you may have encountered. These dark-brown monsters were the size of a large cat, easily 15 to 18lbs (7 to 8kg) with no fear of man. In the jungle we developed a way of wrapping yourself up in your poncho so no skin showed as you slept, else you'd wake up to find a rat gnawing on your fingers or !!! Woke-up more than once to find one sitting on my chest. US commercial rat traps were a joke. The rats would trip them and then just walk off trap and all.
In a brilliant idea we offered a bounty on dead rats. Starting out we might get 5-10 a day, then after about three weeks or so the numbers began to climb. After about a a couple of months 20-40 a day or more...Either the villagers were fantastic rat-catchers or.... After a bit of searching we found the village rat-farm. If the Dinky-dau Americans wanted rats, they were going to supply them

RABIES: Being involved more in the villages/training programs/clinics and occasional combat missions I really can't recall any rabies cases personally. However animal bites were either ignored or if serious sent to a field hospital for evaluation. With all the bats, monkeys, and free-roaming village dogs in Vietnam rabies was a major problem. On the US side the danger was from US troops keeping "pets": tigers, cheetahs, bears, roe deer, monkeys, dogs, and cats. The primary threat for rabies infection in Vietnam came from one specific mammal: young puppies. In fact, over 25% of the dogs’ rabies cases were diagnosed in puppies 8 to 16 weeks of age. These puppies posed a particularly insidious threat to humans because they were almost always asymptomatic when they died. Thus the bitten human seldom if ever sought out medical treatment and the pups were not available for testing as they had probably been eaten by that time. YES, dog meat was another culinary Vietnam diet staple (Bar-B-Que dog ribs were pretty tasty)
The Pasteur Institute in Saigon surveyed Saigon, Na Trang, and Da Lat in 1966 and estimated that, in just these three cities, at least 10,122 Vietnamese were potentially exposed to the virus; 4,845 received postexposure prophylaxis (PEP) treatment; and six people died. Of the 470 animal specimens examined during this time, 51% were positive for rabies.
1,506 US military personnel were potentially exposed to rabies; 628 were treated with rabies PEP; and 21.5% of rabies specimens submitted to military laboratories tested positive for the rabies virus
As a result the US Military Veterinary service started a massive campaign to vaccinate US Military "pets" and Village dogs in villages near US bases.
In 1969, there were 2,967 potential rabies exposures within the US Army forces in Vietnam, resulting in 1,628 patients receiving rabies PEP.
From January to June 1969, 17.8% of dog specimens submitted to the laboratory tested positive for rabies. Additionally, none of the cat, monkey, bat, or rodent samples submitted tested positive.
By 1970, these numbers had decreased to 1,905 and 1,039, respectively.

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## Zipper730 (Jul 25, 2019)

mikewint said:


> RATS: rats were literally everywhere in Vietnam though surprisingly few around major cities and villages. My first trip through a Vietnamese open-air market gave me the answer. Rats were a major food item and hundreds of skinned, roasted, rat carcasses were sold. The meat was a bit "gamey" a lot like rabbit/squirrel (both of which are after all rodents).


Though this might sound stupid, but do cooking temperatures kill the Rabies virus?


> Now as to the rats themselves we're NOT talking about those cute little white lab rats or even the city rats you may have encountered. These dark-brown monsters were the size of a large cat, easily 15 to 18lbs (7 to 8kg) with no fear of man. In the jungle we developed a way of wrapping yourself up in your poncho so no skin showed as you slept


I assume this was passed along to newer units coming in?


> RABIES: Being involved more in the villages/training programs/clinics and occasional combat missions I really can't recall any rabies cases personally. However animal bites were either ignored or if serious sent to a field hospital for evaluation.


And I guess the rabies cases were usually the serious cases that ended up resulting in a medevac?


> With all the bats, monkeys, and free-roaming village dogs in Vietnam rabies was a major problem.


Bats are a common source of rabies in the US as well. I guess it spreads to the dogs from the rats, and the dogs and cats eat the rats (and in doing so prevent them from proceeding to bite and infect people).


> over 25% of the dogs’ rabies cases were diagnosed in puppies 8 to 16 weeks of age. These puppies posed a particularly insidious threat to humans because they were almost always asymptomatic when they died.


Yikes


> Additionally, none of the cat, monkey, bat, or rodent samples submitted tested positive.


That's interesting. I do know that cats an somehow go asymptomatic for up to a year. That said, if they tested them, they basically decapitated them and examined the brain itself.


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## mikewint (Jul 26, 2019)

Zipper730 said:


> do cooking temperatures kill the Rabies virus?


The rabies lyssavirus is a fragile virus in that drying out, sunlight, and heat can deactivate (NOT kill, virus particles are NOT alive to begin with) it. Freezing will not deactivate the virus.
Rabid animals dot not always appear to be rabid. The lyssavirus will begin to appear in the saliva of a affected animal in from three to six days *before *the animal shows physical signs of the disease. Next, the lyssavirus is concentrated in the brain, spinal cord, and saliva NOT in the blood, urine, or feces. In the latter stages viral particles can appear in muscle tissue but again the major concentrations are in the brain, spinal cord, and salivary glands.
Street vendors in Vietnam were not under any kind of government health/sanitary controls or regulations. So eating anything on the street was akin to Russian Roulette. Dead animal carcasses hung in the open air from vendors stalls waiting for a buyer. Other vendors kept their animals alive so that potential buyers could see that the animals were healthy. Once selected the vendors would kill the animal on the spot and skin/butcher it if asked. Again under zero sanitary controls.
Recently there were two cases of rabies in men from Hanoi, in Vietnam. One had no _known _history of an animal bite or other rabies exposure, while the other had been bitten a month before becoming sick by a non-rabid dog (the dog was still healthy when the man developed rabies – if the dog had been rabid at the time of the bite it would have died within two weeks). *Both patients had butchered and eaten either a dog or cat, including the brain, within 3-8 weeks of becoming sick.*


The first patient had *butchered and eaten a dog* that had been killed in a traffic accident. He took out the dog’s teeth before butchering it, thinking that this would protect him if the dog had rabies (because rabies is so often associated with bites, he likely didn’t realize the virus is actually in the saliva and brain tissue). The skull was opened to remove the brain. The man wore work gloves, and didn’t report any injuries during butchering. All parts of the dog that were eaten were cooked first. No one else that ate any part of the dog got sick.
The second patient had *butchered and eaten a sick cat* that had been acting abnormal for a few days. Again, all parts of the cat that were eaten were cooked first, and no one else that ate any part of the cat got sick. However, the man who developed rabies had prepared the cat’s brain for cooking using his bare hands.
In both cases, the affected people were exposed to animals that were sick (cat) or may have been sick (dog hit by car). *Only the people who butchered the animals got rabies*, while no one else who ate the animals got sick. It is most likely that the two men were exposed to rabies virus during butchering, through contact of infected nervous tissue (e.g. brain) with any tiny bit of broken skin, or even possibly the eyes, nose or mouth, before the tissue was cooked. In Vietnam,_butchering _ (not eating) dogs is a recognized risk factor for developing rabies. *It is extremely unlikely that eating cooked meat from a rabid animal would result in transmission of rabies to a person.*

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## Zipper730 (May 7, 2021)

mikewint said:


> The Tonkin Gulf Resolution was President Johnson's key to unlocking public and congressional support for greater U.S. involvement in Vietnam, and the key to the resolution was LBJ's brilliant manipulation of the press. It is, perhaps, the best example of how presidential news management can shape public policy. In early August 1964, North Vietnamese PT boats and a U.S. destroyer did battle in the Gulf of Tonkin. Other than those two facts virtually every other report was either misleading or even false. Contrary to the New York Times report that the U.S. destroyer "was on a routine patrol when an unprovoked attack took place" the destroyer Maddox was on an intelligence gathering operation near an area where the U.S. had twice attacked North Vietnam the day before. In fact, evidence suggests that the second attack by North Vietnamese PT boats never happened.


Actually, the second attack was the result of bad weather, hypervigilance bordering on paranoia, and something that the task force commander, the ships captain, or both basically said they weren't sure even happened.

This was known since at least 1988 (Going Downtown mentioned this).

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## tyrodtom (May 7, 2021)

Zipper730 said:


> Actually, the second attack was the result of bad weather, hypervigilance bordering on paranoia, and something that the task force commander, the ships captain, or both basically said they weren't sure even happened.
> 
> This was known since at least 1988 (Going Downtown mentioned this).



1988 ???
You're forgetting the Pentagon Papers, that came out in 1971.

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## Thumpalumpacus (May 7, 2021)

This thread has been one hell of a read -- I've learned a lot this afternoon. Much appreciation to those who've contributed to it, and much respect especially to those of you who've shared your experiences.

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## SaparotRob (May 7, 2021)

mikewint said:


> The rabies lyssavirus is a fragile virus in that drying out, sunlight, and heat can deactivate (NOT kill, virus particles are NOT alive to begin with) it. Freezing will not deactivate the virus.
> Rabid animals dot not always appear to be rabid. The lyssavirus will begin to appear in the saliva of a affected animal in from three to six days *before *the animal shows physical signs of the disease. Next, the lyssavirus is concentrated in the brain, spinal cord, and saliva NOT in the blood, urine, or feces. In the latter stages viral particles can appear in muscle tissue but again the major concentrations are in the brain, spinal cord, and salivary glands.
> Street vendors in Vietnam were not under any kind of government health/sanitary controls or regulations. So eating anything on the street was akin to Russian Roulette. Dead animal carcasses hung in the open air from vendors stalls waiting for a buyer. Other vendors kept their animals alive so that potential buyers could see that the animals were healthy. Once selected the vendors would kill the animal on the spot and skin/butcher it if asked. Again under zero sanitary controls.
> Recently there were two cases of rabies in men from Hanoi, in Vietnam. One had no _known _history of an animal bite or other rabies exposure, while the other had been bitten a month before becoming sick by a non-rabid dog (the dog was still healthy when the man developed rabies – if the dog had been rabid at the time of the bite it would have died within two weeks). *Both patients had butchered and eaten either a dog or cat, including the brain, within 3-8 weeks of becoming sick.*
> ...


Good to know!


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