Operation Rolling Thunder

[Zipper730]

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.

 

[Zipper730]

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.

 

[mikewint]

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

 

[Dimlee]

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.

 

[Dimlee]

[

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.

 

[mikewint]

"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.

 

[swampyankee]

"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.

 

[tyrodtom]

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.

 

[Zipper730]

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.

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?

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

1. The Joint Chiefs
2. The Intelligence Services
3. The Secretary of Defense
4. The President of the United States

 

[tyrodtom]

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.

 

[Dimlee]

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.

 

[XBe02Drvr]

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.

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.

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.

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

 

[XBe02Drvr]

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

 

[swampyankee]

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.

 

[XBe02Drvr]

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

 

[XBe02Drvr]

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

 

[mikewint]

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.

 

[XBe02Drvr]

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

 

[mikewint]

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

 

[XBe02Drvr]

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