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Major Wars In Vietnam10/22/2021
Bombing raids against North Vietnam, conducted in response to attacks by North Vietnamese patrol boats on the destroyer USS Maddox in the Tonkin Gulf, occurred a half-century ago this August. In reality, it was an international war between the French at first and then the United States and its allies on the side of South Vietnam, and the Communist Bloc on the sideFor most of the world’s population, America’s air wars in Vietnam are now ancient history. The Vietnam War lasted from 1 November 1955 to 30 April 1975, officially between North Vietnam (North Vietnam) and South Vietnam (South Vietnam).But a combination of American overconfidence, Cold War tensions and imperialist ten.Timeline 1887: The roots of the Vietnam War begin when France colonizes the country. 1 Less than 2 years later, Cambodia, Laos, and South Vietnam were communist countries.The Vietnam War began in good faith, by good people with good intentions. When the last raid by B-52s over Cambodia on August 15, 1973, culminated American bombing in Southeast Asia, the United States had dropped more than 8 million tons of bombs in 9 years. Four million tons fell on South Vietnam—America’s ally in the war against communist aggression. Three million more tons fell on Laos and Cambodia—supposedly “neutral” countries in the conflict. That effort, and the Linebacker campaigns that followed, dropped a million tons of bombs on North Vietnam.Kennedy sent the first American troops into Vietnam, Martin Luther King issued his first public statement on the war.Led by RB-66 Destroyer, pilots flying Air Force F-4C Phantoms drop bombs on communist military target in North Vietnam, August 1966 (U.S. 1950: The Viet Minh and Chinese troops, armed with Soviet military equipment, attack French outposts in Vietnam.Four years after President John F. Communist Ho Chi Minh leads a nationalist guerrilla fight to declare independence. 1945: France takes Vietnam back.Yet the two questions are intimately related, and answering them reveals the enormous impact that a political leader can have on the design and implementation of an air strategy, especially in a limited war. Did the inability of bombing—and innumerable airlift and reconnaissance sorties—to prevent the fall of South Vietnam demonstrate the limits of airpower, or did it reveal that the strategy that relied heavily on airpower’s kinetic application to achieve success was fundamentally flawed? From the perspective of 50 years after the bombing began, and 40 years after the last bomb fell, the answer to both questions remains yes. Blast injuries, often from beneath the injured. As a consequence, the rate of major amputations as a percentage of all battle injuries actually increased to 3.4 from 1.4 in Korea and 1.2 in World War I.
His successor, President Richard Nixon, pursued a much more limited goal that he dubbed “peace with honor”—a euphemism for a South Vietnam that remained noncommunist for a so-called decent interval, accompanied by the return of American prisoners of war (POWs). For President Lyndon Johnson, victory meant creating an independent, stable, noncommunist South Vietnam. Much of the problem in Vietnam, though, was that the definition of victory was not a constant. Airpower was a key “means” to achieve the desired “ends”—victory—and how American political and military leaders chose to apply that means to achieve victory yielded the air strategy they followed. Vietnam War Cold War-era proxy war that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975.The reliance on airpower to produce success in Vietnam was a classic rendition of the “ends, ways, and means” formula for designing strategy taught today at staff and war colleges worldwide. The legacies of the air wars there remain relevant to political and military leaders grappling with the prospects of applying airpower in the 21 st century.The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the Vietnam War. To achieve true victory in Vietnam, both the positive and negative objectives had to be obtained—a truism for any conflict. Equally important, though, were the negative political goals—those achievable only by limiting military force. They defined the positive political objectives sought—those that could be achieved only by applying military force. Flip book publisherDoing so, he feared, would cause the American public to turn away from the Nation’s disadvantaged to focus instead on its military personnel in harm’s way. 3 Achieving the Great Society became an important negative objective for Johnson, one that would prevent him from applying extensive military force. While he did not intend to lose “that bitch of a war” in Southeast Asia, he also had no intention of surrendering “the woman really loved,” the Great Society programs aimed at reducing poverty and achieving racial equality. Johnson’s Use of Airpower in VietnamPresident Johnson had a multitude of negative objectives that prevented him from applying massive military force in Vietnam. Although they knew that the indigenous Viet Cong contributed more manpower to the enemy’s cause than did the North Vietnamese army (NVA), they also believed that the Viet Cong (VC) could not fight successfully without North Vietnamese assistance. American political and military leaders believed that they had to defeat North Vietnam to stop the insurgency in the South and create a stable government there. Exerting too much force against North Vietnam would make the United States appear as a Goliath pounding a hapless David, and likely drive small nations searching for a benefactor into the communist embrace.Those negative objectives combined to produce an air strategy founded on gradual response, particularly for President Johnson’s bombing of North Vietnam. Finally, Johnson was concerned about America’s worldwide image, with the globe seemingly divided into camps of communism and capitalism. Senator on the Armed Services Committee, he had seen firsthand what could happen when American leaders miscalculated regarding China during the drive to the Yalu River in the Korean War, and he aimed to prevent a similar mistake in Vietnam. Major Wars In Vietnam Trial Complexes InYet that combined force needed only 34 tons of supplies a day from sources outside of South Vietnam—an amount that just seven 2½-ton trucks could carry and that was less than 1 percent of the daily tonnage imported into North Vietnam. VC and NVA forces in August 1967 numbered roughly 300,000, of whom 250,000 were Viet Cong. Together, they fought an average of one day a month from 1965 to 1968, and as a result, their external supply requirements were minimal. Battles such as Ia Drang and Khe Sanh, as well as the Tet Offensive, were anomalies during the Johnson presidency for most of his time in office, the Viet Cong and their North Vietnamese allies rarely fought at all. Denied assistance, the insurgency would wither away, and the war would end with America’s high-tech aerial weaponry providing a victory that was quick, cheap, and efficient.Those assumptions provided the foundation for President Johnson’s air strategy against North Vietnam, and all of them were seriously flawed. Rolling Thunder would creep steadily northward until it threatened the nascent industrial complexes in Hanoi and Haiphong, and North Vietnamese President Ho Chi Minh, being a rational man who certainly prized that meager industry, would realize the peril to it and stop supporting the Viet Cong. Air Force)For President Johnson, the real problem was translating the application of military force into a stable, noncommunist South Vietnam, and doing so in a way that minimized American involvement and the chances of a broader war with China or the Soviet Union while also maximizing American prestige on the world stage. 5In May 1967, Air Force F-100 Super Sabre fires salvo of rockets at jungle target in South Vietnam (U.S. In 19, 2 years that together claimed 25,000 American lives, more than 6,000 Americans died from mines and booby traps. Still, in fighting an infrequent guerrilla war, the VC and NVA could cause significant losses. Hikaru no go fanfiction6 No amount of American airpower could sustain such regimes. The governments that followed—those of presidents Nguyen Cao Ky and Nguyen Van Thieu—were corrupt and out of touch with the Southern populace. After enduring seven different regime changes—including five coups—in 1964, South Vietnam’s political leadership faced another crisis on the eve of Rolling Thunder, delaying the start of the air campaign by 2 weeks before a semblance of order returned to Saigon. The original Rolling Thunder raids in March and April 1965 bolstered the morale of many South Vietnamese who desired a noncommunist government, but the South’s government was in shambles. ![]()
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