Totally Confused about Vietnam War

Old Ordie,Shellback-couldn't agree more! Dong Ba Thin 7-69/8-70. Read my bio. The locals didn't like us but wanted what we had. They worked on our compound by day, sent us mortar/rockets by night.

The Aussies were GREAT! STILL are. It wasn't even their fight.

The ROK's kicked some serious a** for us in our area. Much used/under appreciated.

I was there when our flight crew's were told to take a week's worth of stuff & their pillows,strip all U.S. insignia from their flight suits, paint over any designation on their aircraft. Cambodia.

As was said, good times,bad times but it was OUR times.

Be safe, Bro's.

We spent many a week with the carriers up at "Yankee"  . Besides NGFS we provided fleet air defense with out Talos missiles . Good ole Subic bay . Was the main street paved when you were there ? It was either mud or dust back in the 60's . I tried to drink beer for beer with some old salt Ozzie merchant marines in Singapore .......man was i stupid for attempting that !

Good times , bad times , but it was our times .

Thanks

Shellback

... Strange war we participated in ...

Sure was.

About the Ozzies, seems like there were small groups of 'em tucked in just about everywhere in 'Nam.  We had an Ozzie can with us on Yankee, December, '70 through January, '71 or so, along with our regulars.  We spent New Years' Eve, '70, in Subic with them.  Some of my better liberty stories concern drinking with Ozzies, LOL ...  I was friends for a good number of years with a RAN helicopter pilot who was part of the Royal Australian Navy Helicopter Flight Vietnam (RANHFV).  They were integrated into the US Army 135th Assault Helicopter Company in-country, flying Hueys side-by-side with our boys in combat.  When he spoke of his American comrades of those days, he always did so lovingly ... especially those who didn't make it.

You take care, too, bro.

Hey Mark , i was served on the cruiser USS Oklahoma City . We did NGFS missions up and down the coast of VN 1964 thru 1966 .....30 month SEA deployment . Course it wasnt tuff ,being on a ship and all . We even went up the river to Saigon in 64 ............before the Tonkin gulf incident . Anyway my comment is about you thanking the Ozzies . We worked with a few Ozzie spotters on our NGFS missions . That took a while to get used to their accent , especially over a radio with the static . Interesting targets we fired at . On more than one mission we found out that our targets were water buffalo ! The Viet Cong used them for transporting supplies . We had a target count on the 6 inch turret with the silhouette of them critteres on it ! I forget how many we were up to before the captain said they had to be painted out before we headed to Hong Kong .Strange war we participated in .

Take care .

Chrisk-k

... I've only recently got interested in the Vietnam War.  I'm reading a book (Days of Valor) about what happened in '67-'68 (before the Tet Offensive) and I am totally confused! ...

Chris,

Don't feel bad about it ... I was totally confused about it when I was there.  Afterward, it took me 20 years of reading and watching generalized documentaries, such as The 10,000 Day War, before I had even half a handle on what had happened - decades long, non-conventional wars are kind of hard to follow by nature, I guess.

I've been lurking this thread, reading with interest.  All I know well, regarding particulars, is what I did and saw.  More bomb tonnage was dropped in SEA by U.S. forces than was dropped by all sides in WWII, combined.  And yet, we eventually pulled out, mission unaccomplished  ...  nothing conventional about it, that's for sure.  I was a human bomb-loading machine in '70-'71, sixteen hours a day, seven days a week, week-in and week-out, month-in, month-out.  I once asked one of our pilots what we were bombing (our missions were 90% 'Interdiction' of the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos, and that's all we non-aircrew knew).  He looked around, as if to be certain no one else could hear, leaned into my ear, and said, in a whisper, "Trees."  And that about sums it up. 

Lam Son 719/Dewey Canyon II, known in the media at the time as 'The Laotian Incursion', was the only time my air wing (CVW-11) was involved in anythying like a conventional, stand-up fight of any kind during that whole cruise (one battle, really - it depended which side of the border between South Vietnam and Laos you were fighting on as to which 'battle' you were in - I got my battle star for Lam Son 719, which was the Laotian part).  Mostly, though, it was 'where are they", and "where'd they go" kind of stuff, on a large scale.  The typical Vietnamese was NOT on our side.

As for you Afgfanistan/Iraq vets (thank you for your service, BTW), regarding comparisons with Vietnam, all wars are different, one-from-another, of course, but I knew getting in was going to be a hell of a lot easier than getting out, and that none of the locals were really going to be your friend, and I told my wife so at the time.  Understand that the 'Nam vets around you generally 'get it'.  'Nuff said.

I have to say that, politics and ideology aside, I have nothing but respect for the NVA, NVPAF, etc.  They were tough, they were disciplined, they were committed, and they prevailed against two first-world nations (and friends - personal thanks to the Ozzies and the ROKs) in a contest of arms.  Giap should be ranked among the top generals of the 20th Century, if for no other reason than he knew what he had to do to win against overwhelming military force, and he did it.

One last anecdote - We went for five days r 'n r in Hong Kong, about halfway through the deployment.  First thing I saw when I stepped off the launch onto dry land was an English language newspaper in a stand on the dock.  The headline read, "U.S. Denies Laos Bombing" (this was before Lam Son, which made major news around the world).  At the time, I felt like I was in the Twilight Zone.  Now, remembering, it just makes me smile ...

Mark (aka Old Ordie)

Edit - I'll be picking up a copy of Bury Us Upside Down: The Misty Pilots and the Secret Battle for the Ho Chi Mihn Trail, and reading it with great interest ... so, thanks for that. - end Edit

Read anything you can about the 1st. Cavalry

Hans von Hammer

Anyway, that's some of my story..  After I retired in '06, I still watched the news, and it astounded me that the reporting from Iraq was almost exactly the same as during Vietnam.. The mainstream-press just couldn't get their heads wrapped around that, after we destroyed an insurgent attack, killing damn-near all of 'em, they'd report that "one American Soldier was killed and more three wounded" or something like that, right?

But here's what'd p*ss me off.. They almost ALWAYS started the piece with, "A deadly day in Iraq.."... No mention of the fact that we took out 10-20 of the bad guys, just that we took some casualties... They made it sound like we lost every engagement if somebody got it, and damned if I didn't think it was 1966 or 1971 again...  (Dad was there, in-country during those years (fighting in his third war),  and mom & me ate dinner in front of the TV for a year, lol.. ) Militarily-speaking, our casualties 99% of the time were not "Heavy", "Moderate", and weren't "Light".. Militarily, they were insignificant, and remained that way... (Not to those close to the person who was KIA / WIA, but y'all know I mean..)  

Hans

You bring up some good points, and again, in many ways this really does highlight some of the similarities between Iraq/Afghanistan and Vietnam.

I suspect that our experiences in Iraq were vastly different. I was there in '05 when the insurgency in Anbar was really amping up. We got hammered pretty good while I was there. Sure, we killed a lot more than we had killed, but the thing is it was tough to tell how many of those we killed were legit bad guys and how many were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

By the time I got there, the insurgents, like the VC and NVA, had learned they could not stand toe to toe with us or they'd get slaughtered. So they didn't (minus one or two noteable occassions). They didn't engage us directly, so when we lost one or two or six or eight guys, odds are we were not killing any of the bad guys because they were long gone. That was the infuriating part of it. We were not fighting people, we were fighting IEDs and SVBIEDs and IDF. And mostly it was due to the same problem that we faced in Vietnam - we didn't want to go through the political pain to commit the totality of military forces needed to do the job...

bondoman

The Things They Carried is outstanding.

Yup that is a good one...

The Things They Carried is outstanding.

Ah Hans, one can always model figures. Those original SF guys really give some unconventional subjects in  terms of dress and equipment. Everything from native dress to WWII jungle camo, to modified issue stuff and foreign made clothing and weapons.

And some very valid points on the reporting for todays wars. I do have a feeling there were more than a few current ones influenced by those and the style of reporting from that war. I pretty much stopped watching the news reports out of there due to that style.

As for reading material. I have read more good books on this subject than I can easily recount. Novels and non fiction, the stuff is abundant. The 13th Valley, A Reckoning for Kings, Flight of the Intruder and Rolling Thunder  are some of the fiction works that I think are outstanding. In non fiction Bat 21, We Were Soldiers Once... and Young, The Raid, Thud Ridge, Phantom Soldiers (both volumes) and One Day in a Long War are certainly worth one's time to read.

All this talk on Vietnam stuff certainly has me inspired as well, and I am planning on running a Vietnam GB, but after I wrap up my Korean War one next July. I will start floating the interest balloons late next year.

B-17 Guy

bbrowniii:

 

In many ways, there are some parallels to be drawn between this scenario from the Vietnam era and what we face (faced) in Afghanistan and Iraq today. Not a one to one comparison by any stretch, but the same type of assymetric warfare that means there really is no 'front' - the enemy can, and will, attack anywhere, anytime.

 

I agree with this. I cant speak for afghanistan but iraq was very much like this, we even had locals coming in the wire and working for us. I asked once why we see so many differant people and was told that alot of the locals were being killed for working for us. I was in a transportation company that only hauled fuel from one base to the next, thats all we did.

Not a bad summarization... My time in the 'Stan was initially a 6-month deployment, as I was attached to an SF Group (no sneaky pete sh*t for me.. I was a "Bob from the FOB")... The locals were ALL hostile, regardless of who they supported... We were polite, we were professional, and we had a plan to kill everyone we met... I was with an Engineer Battalion, where our mission was mine-hunting...

Soviet mines, that is... The place was lousy with 'em, even after all those years since Ivan went home with his tail 'tween his legs.. Being a Chem-dawg, I got to go hunt the Grey-painted ones, if any were found... We blew mines in-place, either a MCLC or up-close with TNT and C-4,  but you cant do that with a freakin' VX-filled mine.. Those're nasty b*tches ya gotta do the old-fashoined way, and do it in MOPP-4.. Luckily, we didn't find any, and none were ever found as far as I know.. But I practiced a LOT..  There only has to be ONE mine in a mine-field for things to be a little sporty..

Never had a IED incident, the Tangos hadn't started that at that time...  But we found a LOT of AT-mines that damn-sure coulda found their way into the wrong hands..

Hiowever, I digress..

Iraq, in the beginning (I was the Ops-Sergeant in the 3rd ID NBCCC in March of '03).  We were in a classic, force-on-force, set-piece battle with Iraqi Army units, and we absolutely destroyed them (shades of '91.. Guess their commanders forgot we'd met 'em before), their Army was no more after about two weeks...  (BTW, THAT was what President Bush was referring to during his "Mission Accomplished" speech on the carrier..)

Anyway, that's some of my story..  After I retired in '06, I still watched the news, and it astounded me that the reporting from Iraq was almost exactly the same as during Vietnam.. The mainstream-press just couldn't get their heads wrapped around that, after we destroyed an insurgent attack, killing damn-near all of 'em, they'd report that "one American Soldier was killed and more three wounded" or something like that, right?

But here's what'd p*ss me off.. They almost ALWAYS started the piece with, "A deadly day in Iraq.."... No mention of the fact that we took out 10-20 of the bad guys, just that we took some casualties... They made it sound like we lost every engagement if somebody got it, and damned if I didn't think it was 1966 or 1971 again...  (Dad was there, in-country during those years (fighting in his third war),  and mom & me ate dinner in front of the TV for a year, lol.. ) Militarily-speaking, our casualties 99% of the time were not "Heavy", "Moderate", and weren't "Light".. Militarily, they were insignificant, and remained that way... (Not to those close to the person who was KIA / WIA, but y'all know I mean..)  

Anyway, I don't wanna rant, because that's echelons above and beyond what was asked.. 

The Vietnam War is really, from a a modeler's stand-point, about the best era to model in, due to the VAST numbers and types of equipment, aircraft, and vehicles used (to include almost everything in NATO and the WARPAC, ranging from  WW2-M3 "Grease-guns" or MG42s, M2 Carbines, etc. to "Buck Rogers" stuff that was built to go to the MOON...  Doesn't matter if you're a WW2-era modeler or not, the WW2/Korean War stuff was there, lol..

All this talk about Vietnam is kinda gettin' me inspired...  AND,, you can bet that LZ X-ray will be involved one way or another.... I read Hal Moore's book too,  We Were Soldiers Once... And Young is outstanding...

But there are a few more I've got rated right up there with it, with a couple that're great for Huey, Cobra, , and Loach-freaks, and that's Chickenhawk, by Robert Mason, and CW2 by Layne Heath, and for a great look about one SF El-Tee's experiences is Once a Warrior King,  by David Donovan... This one is REALLY griiping, and it's not a "propaganda piece", nor is it a novel.. Just what one US Army SF First Lieutenant saw and experienced during his first combat command... 

 The book really gets into what it was like living and fighting the VC alongside the locals (mostly Montagnards, but with some ARVN)..   As the CO of a MAT (Military Advisory Team) protecting the village of Tram Chim, along with its people (almost totally cut off from any US troops for help or back-up, except the weekly Huey that resupplied them) from the VC and how they practically had "go native" while they were there...

First-hand accounts of how the VC really were, how they'd sweep into a village and just flat extort, rape, and murder their way through it in order to try and coerce the locals to turn against the US forces..  I definately see some paralells between Vietnam and the Operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.. As the poet said, "The more things change, the more thay stay the same" ...

Not much to model though ('cept the Huey or a sampan, or the one 81mm mortar-pit they had to defend the camp) ... 

bbrowniii

 

In many ways, there are some parallels to be drawn between this scenario from the Vietnam era and what we face (faced) in Afghanistan and Iraq today. Not a one to one comparison by any stretch, but the same type of assymetric warfare that means there really is no 'front' - the enemy can, and will, attack anywhere, anytime.

I agree with this. I cant speak for afghanistan but iraq was very much like this, we even had locals coming in the wire and working for us. I asked once why we see so many differant people and was told that alot of the locals were being killed for working for us. I was in a transportation company that only hauled fuel from one base to the next, thats all we did.

Definitely on my list as I only recently heard about it.

Di ck Rutan was a Misty pilot.

For a broader understanding of the war, I'd suggest looking at the political background as much as the action accounts. A good book in that regard is Fire In the Lake by Frances Fitzgerald.

Others to read are The Best and the Brightest  and A Bright and Shining Lie.

Fitzgerald in particular gives much depth to the French colonial experience and how that significantly altered Ho's previously pro-American position.

Following the defeat of the Japanese, the country was divided in two with British control of the South and Chinese control of the North, pending eventual return of the colony to France. During the long and complicated struggle for power in late 1945 and 1946, the British in part retained the Japanese forces as security against Viet Minh temporary governance and Communist insurgencies. Imagine how unpopular that concept was- fully armed Japanese forces welcoming in the French to resume their rule. Such strange political events are a continuous feature of the history of the country.

Another good book about the war in Vietnam is called Bury Us Upside Down: The Misty Pilots and the Secret Battle for the Ho Chi Mihn Trail. It is by Rick Newman and Don Sheppard.

The book is interesting in its own right, but is also a good tale of both the futility of many aspects of the US strategy and the resilience and resourcefulness of the North.

SuppressionFire

stikpusher,

Thanks for polishing up some of my points, pulled from the depths of my memory late at night I may have misinterpreted some facts. I did not know Russia and China officially backed the North.

There are stories that Russian pilots flew North Vietnamese MiGs during the war. Other stories tell the tale of a white pilot being killed by villagers after he parachuted down and the villagers being punished because he was one of theirs (Soviet). Still officially denied though.

Agreed the Vietnam war makes for excellent reading material.

A series of books by author Garry R. Linderer and who served with the special forces during the conflict are excellent material to read:

'Phantom Warriors' 'Six Silent Men' 'Eyes Behind the Lines' and 'The Eyes of the Eagle'

I like the format of each chapter being a mission the LRRP's did. This makes the book easy to pick up after a few days or weeks as you do not loose the story line. I highly recommend 'Six Silent Men' After reading it I gave the book to a friend who worked shifts. When he was done it was passed along to several of his co-workers who all gave it two thumbs up.

Of course the conflict was the subject (In my humble opinion) of the best war movies ever made:

'Apocalypse Now' 'Full Metal Jacket' 'Uncommon Valor' and 'Platoon'

I know that there were ground forces offshore and in neighboring areas well before the "official" actual landings in early 1965. I served with 2 different SF sergeants who were in Laos in 1963/1964. But from all that I have read where regular US ground forces were committed to stay on land "boots on the ground" and not as part of any exercise or contingency 'in and out' was in Spring 1965 with the Marines landing at DaNang and the 173rd Airborne into Bien Hoa. And of course the carriers on station in the Gulf of Tonkin and South China Sea for Pierce Arrow, Flaming Dart, etc. But from a historic perspective, (and IIRC the dates where the campaign and service medals are awarded) the August 1964 timeframe is the time considered as the official start dates. I do enjoy reading all that I can find on the subject.

Stik, you may want to dig a little deeper concerning those start dates

There is a very simple point of logic that gets missed by many writers concerning that "start date" being the Tonkin Gulf Resolution,,,,,,which was an answer to the Tonkin Gulf Incident

I have physically read the orders of Marines that were on the USS Tortuga before August,,,,one of which was sent from the Tortuga off the coast of Vietnam to retrain at Millington, near the very end of July 1964,,,,,,making his "first tour off the coast of Vietnam" not count towards his final total of three tours there, those were all on the ground with Aircraft Squadrons

so,,,,,we know there was an Amphib landing force in the Gulf in July,,,,I don't have the exact start date of that "up and down the coast cruise",,,,,,but, the July date is firm

the point of logic?,,,,,,,,2 carriers were involved in the Tonkin Gulf Incident,,,,,so,,,,,,ummm,,,,,,they were already deployed there,,,,,,and we had already lost aircraft in Recce shoot downs, conducted from carriers that had rotated out before the Connie and Tico's famous nights in August

Ranger, Kittyhawk, and Bonnie D1ck had all been there just before the Incident

Rex

stikpusher,

Thanks for polishing up some of my points, pulled from the depths of my memory late at night I may have misinterpreted some facts. I did not know Russia and China officially backed the North.

plastickjunkie

If you can, read "We Were Soldiers Once...And Young" written by retired Lt. Gen Hal Moore. Excellent reading about then Lt. Col. Hal Moore leading the 7th Air Cav. at the Battele of Ia Drang Valley. The movie is good but a few events differ from the book.

One of my favorite war movies.

If you can, read "We Were Soldiers Once...And Young" written by retired Lt. Gen Hal Moore. Excellent reading about then Lt. Col. Hal Moore leading the 7th Air Cav. at the Battele of Ia Drang Valley. The movie is good but a few events differ from the book.

Without getting into the politics- a few clarifications to Suppresion Fire's pot:

North Vietnam was officially backed by Russia and China politicially and militarily. It was far more than mere lip  service and moral support of unofficial support. Military hardware from bullets to the latest MiGs and SAMs, tanks and heavy artillery, were provided to the North, as well as technicians, advisors, etc.

US active involvement on the ground was roughly 8 years. The Tonkin Gulf Resolution was passed in August 1964 and can be seen as the point where active overt commitment began. Regular ground force combat units ( not SF or Advisors) first arrived in country (South Vietnam) in March 1965. The last ones were withdrawn in early 1973, roughly 8 years later.

And the North actually tried regular force on force engagements twice while US forces were involved, with the hope/aim of inspiring the "general uprising" of the populace of the South. Tet 1968 and the Easter Offensive of 1972 (a full on Soviet style conventional invasion across the DMZ and out of Cambodia) during the US withdrawl. In both cases after achieving initial gains they were soundly defeated on the battlefield in the long run with heavy losses and forced to revert to guerilla (not gorilla) warfare to rebuild their forces with Soviet and Chinese assistance.

and it is choice inspirational material for lots of great modeling subjects from leftover WWII aircraft to the highest technology land sea and air weapons from the US and USSR of that era.

By the numbers and in theory the US was winning the war in Vietnam.

The goal was to succeed by attrition and force the North into treaty talks. With a ratio of over 10 to 1 enemy troops KIA vrs US combat losses the strategy failed to work for several reasons. The main one being men and material pouring in from neighboring countries, which also provided sanctuary from attack. Unofficially the North was backed by Russia and China.

Even with a flawed strategy the US fielded superior equipment and air support which the North did not have. Added to this was the sheer volume of artillery support from land and sea. 

The Vietnamese theory of attrition was time. In conflict already for decades the population with a defiant, stubborn attitude fully backed their leader. Ho Chi Min realized eventually even a superpower would tire of war in his country. Dug in for the long haul his strategy of going underground and fight a Gorilla style hit and run war was the only way to survive and resist. Yet the one factor stronger than steel and lead tipped the balance.

For the first time in history the media was allowed to film and photograph all aspects of the conflict. Shocking images filled the news each night and public disapproval with mounting troop losses over 10 years caused the US to withdraw.

I was part of the gun fire support crew on my cruiser . We did fire missions in support of mostly the USMC up and down the coast of south Vietnam 1964 - thru 66 . As part of the gun fire crew i was able  to go ashore in Da Nang and visit with some of the Marines that we had been supporting at a location north of there. Their location was on a hill top overlooking a peaceful valley . The Marine i was with told me that some of those people out there would be attacking their position at night . Sure enough it happened . Its kinda like trying to kill an ant hill one ant at a time with 12 gauge shot gun when it enters your yard and then not eliminating their ant hill because you can only blow up their supply routes ..........................................

Hans von Hammer

US troops really controlled the piece of ground they were standing on (usually), out to the max-effective range of an M-16 (460 meters, or as far as they could see, which was about 25 meters in the bush), along with the ground inside the wire... Everything else was Victor Charlie's AO (prior to the '68 Tet Offensive)...   When you stepped outside the wire and went into the bush, out of sight of the wire, you were in Charlie's yard... 

In many ways, there are some parallels to be drawn between this scenario from the Vietnam era and what we face (faced) in Afghanistan and Iraq today. Not a one to one comparison by any stretch, but the same type of assymetric warfare that means there really is no 'front' - the enemy can, and will, attack anywhere, anytime.

Amen -Hammer !

                                                                                  The Original

                                                                       Mike Oscar Juno Oscar

                                                                                 Outcast !

                                            End Transmission-Semper Fi

I prefer the quote of an anonnymous GI that's on one of my old Zippo lighters...

"Give me your hearts and minds or I'll burn your #*$%in' hooch down..."

This is the kind of war you get when politicians are in charge instead of generals.

This line in Shakespeares Julius Caesar  “Cry ‘Havoc!’ and let slip (loose) the dogs of war”  pretty much sums up the way to do it if you really want to win a war.

I used to work with a guy who found some targets for New jerseys' guns in that time/area. Intersting stories. I would love to see a kit of New Jersey in her  Vietnam or Korean War fitting.