Vietnam War

The Vietnam War, 1945-1975, was the successful effort of the Communist Party of Vietnam, led by Ho Chi Minh, to take control of Vietnam. It was a major defeat for the American Cold War policy of containment of Communist expansion. The first stage, 1945-1954, or First Vietnam War involved driving out the French colonial power. In 1954 Vietnam was split into the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (Communist North Vietnam}, and the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam, supported by the United States). The 1954 Geneva Accords scheduled a 1956 referendum on reunification, which, for many reasons, was never held (see Dien Bien Phu and the Geneva Accords, 1954).

War resumed in the late 1950s when the Communists used supporters in the South, officially called the "National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam" or "National Liberation Front" (NLF) (the term "Viet Cong" was widely used but considered derogatory by the NLF) to destabilize and overthrow the government. The U.S. moved from financial aid and advice (before 1964), to large scale military involvement, beginning 1965, to save the government in the South in order to maintain the credibility of its Cold War policy of containment. In May 1959, the Lao Dong Party, in control of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam), created the 559th Transportation Group to build and operate the "Ho Chi Minh" trail to support the NLF and DRV troops in the South.

The Viet Cong were neutralized by 1968, so the regular army of North Vietnam continued as the main Communist force in the war. After 1965, large scale antiwar protests inside the U.S. weakened the Democratic party of President Lyndon B. Johnson. When Republican Richard Nixon took office in 1969 he "Vietnamized" the war by turning the fighting over to the South Vietnamese military, and withdrew American forces. Peace was signed in early 1973 after an American bombing campaign against the North,

In 1975, however, the North Vietnamese army invaded and conquered South Vietnam, as the U.S. followed its treaty agreements not to intervene, as a classic example of nations having interests, not allies.

While some South Vietnamese troops fought bravely, unless there had been major changes in the popular support of the Saigon government, it is unlikely that a permanent peace could have held with massive military aid.

A million Vietnam refugees fled to the U.S. The war spilled over into Laos and Cambodia, which came under Communist control in 1975. The North was aided by China and the Soviet Union; the South was aided by the U.S., Korea, Australia and other countries. Thailand and the Philippines provided major American bases. Nixon shifted American foreign policy away from containment to détente with China and the Soviet Union. Bitter, even violent debates inside the Democratic Party cost it the Presidency.

Introduction

Psychologically, the Vietnam War was almost as traumatic as the Civil War. It is still a painful memory and the subject of ill-tempered debates regarding victory and defeat, imperialism and Communism, good intentions and limited resources, deceit and patriotism. Misinformation abounds on the topic — many have the idea that the United States Army was defeated in combat by a Viet Cong guerrilla force — something that definitely did not happen. This article takes primarily the perspective of the U.S. and secondly that of North Vietnam to explore what was the American military's mission, how was it carried it out, and what were the effects..

While the United States lost none of the battles, somehow it lost the war. From 1964 to 1972 debate raged between "doves" (who wanted the US to cut its losses and get out) and "hawks" (who wanted to win.) Many soldiers believe victory was thrown away because, as General Hamilton H. Howze said when Saigon finally fell to the Communists in 1975, "America itself lost much of its will to fight and the politicians and the press began their program of vilification." Howze's rhetoric says more about the military's role in society and its own battered self image than it does about Vietnam. Much of the intensity of the debate during the 1960s sprang not from what was happening in Asia, but what was happening on the home front. A social revolution saw many people (especially blacks, students and feminists) in revolt against tight restrictive rules and roles that confined individuals into boxes of race, gender, age and class. Favorite targets of the revolt included all traditional sources of order, discipline and hierarchy, such as the police, the military, and the government itself. The social revolt of the 1960s was by no means limited to the US--parallel upheavals took place in Europe, Japan, and even China. The Vietnam War inevitably became the target of opportunity. The history of the small war is unusually complicated because it lasted so long, involved so many twists and turns of policy and strategy. The turnover of Americans was unusually high (2.5 million were stationed there), so that the many veterans each have a different story to tell. To appreciate the complexity it is necessary to start with the French imperialists of the 19th century.

Origins

French "Indochina" Background

In the late 19th century the French expanded their global empire to southeast Asia, by acquiring control of Vietnam, and the neighboring countries of Cambodia and Laos. The Chinese war lords who had been in charge were expelled, replaced by a French governor supported by rotating units of the French army and several thousand French civil servants. Few Frenchmen permanently settled in Indochina. Below the top layer of imperial control, the civil service comprised French-speaking Catholic Vietnamese; a nominal "Emperor" resided in Hue. Paris had hoped to make a profit from its empire, but instead the expenses of building roads, railroads, ports, utilities, schools and other infrastructure, not to mention the military and civil service salaries, far outpaced the modest profits from rice and rubber exports. Little industry developed and 80% of the population lived in villages of about 2000 population; they depended on rice growing. Most were nominally Buddhist; about 10% were Catholic. Minorities included the Chinese merchants who controlled most of the commerce, and Montagnard tribesmen in the thinly populated Central Highlands. Vietnam was a relatively peaceful colony; sporadic independence movements were quickly suppressed by the efficient French secret police.

Ho Chi Minh (1890–1969) and fellow students founded the Vietnamese Communist Party party in Paris in 1929, but it was of marginal importance until World War II. In 1940 and 1941 the Vichy regime yielded control of Vietnam to the Japanese, and Ho returned to lead an underground independence movement (which received a little assistance from the O.S.S., the predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency CIA).

President Franklin D. Roosevelt detested French colonialism, but Truman was more interested in helping restore French prestige in Europe, so he helped them to return in 1946. In contrast with other Asian colonies like India, Burma, the Philippines and Korea, Vietnam was not given its independence after the war. As in Indonesia (the Dutch East Indies), an indigenous rebellion demanded independence. While the Netherlands was too weak to resist the Indonesians, the French were strong enough to just barely hold on. As a result Ho and his "Viet Minh" launched a guerrilla campaign, using Communist China as a sanctuary when French pursuit became hot. When the Korean War erupted in 1950, Washington saw Vietnam as another target of Communist expansion, and began to fund about three-fourths of the French military efforts. However, the goals of Washington and Paris were incompatible. Washington wanted a democratic Vietnam independent of both France and Communism, while Paris was more interested in restoring its old empire than in fighting Communism. In 1950 the U.S. officially recognized the theoretical independence of the "State of Vietnam," even though Paris kept control of its foreign and military policy.

Dien Bien Phu and the Geneva Accords, 1954

To cut Viet Minh supply lines from China, the French built a fort at remote Dien Bien Phu. In 1954, 12,000 defenders were surrounded and battered by General Vo Nguyen Giap, who were surprised by the enemy's artillery, supplied by China but carried by human porters over seemingly impassible terrain. Paris begged Washington for air strikes. The US Navy wanted to send its aircraft carriers into action but the US Army demurred, arguing it would be "a dangerous strategic diversion of limited U.S. military capabilities... [to] a non-decisive theatre." For the Army, containment meant holding back the Russian divisions in central Europe, not chasing guerrillas in Asian jungles. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, the man who led the war against Germany in 1944-45 and who commanded NATO in 1950, agreed with the Army. With the Korean stalemate resolved only a few months earlier, he rejected the advice of hawkish aides (including Vice President Richard Nixon) and refused to fight another land war in Asia.

Dien Bien Phu surrendered, the French government collapsed, and a Socialist government with Communist support came to power in Paris, pledged to get out of Vietnam in 30 days. The American policy of bankrolling the French had failed. At the 1954 Geneva Conference, the French signed agreements with the Viet Minh that amounted to a surrender; the French did not consult the government in Saigon. Because of American pressure, however, Paris did not give Ho Chi Minh all he demanded (he demanded all of Vietnam). A permanent cease fire was promised, and the country was split along the 17th parallel, with the north turned over to Ho's Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV). The French promised to leave the southern half, which for the time being would continue as the independent State of Vietnam with the Emperor as head of state and a Catholic anti-communist as premier. The Geneva Accords called for "free general elections by secret ballot" in 1956 to unify the country. Washington and Saigon both rejected the Geneva Accords: they were both determined to build an independent, anti-Communist South Vietnam, but, in the militant anticommunism of the time, a democratic Vietnam was not a priority.

Some observers thought Ho was so popular for having driven the French out that he might have won a free election in the South in 1956. Antiwar critics years later said that the South Vietnam regime was inherently illegitimate because it did not abide by the election clause in the Accords. These critics said that since Ho Chi Minh “might” have won a hypothetical free election, therefore he represented true democracy.

What the critics missed was that these hypothetical free elections were quite impossible in 1954, or 1956 or any other time, because the Communists would never permit free campaigning against Communism, any more than the southern leader, Ngo Dinh Diem held free and honest elections in the Republic of Vietnam. Neither side holding power was interested in democratic reform.

Ho's DRV was totally controlled by Communist cadres which systematically tracked down and imprisoned or executed all its critics, village by village, street by street. In 1956 instead of holding an election in the North, Ho used his army to suppress peasants who protested "land reform"; thousands were shot. Allowing genuine opposition parties to solicit votes--and then yielding power to them if they won a majority--was totally incompatible with its precepts. The DRV never intended to hold free elections in 1956, and never before or since has held any.

Promoting the Diem Regime, 1954-63

The United States rejected the Geneva Accords as a violation of the principles of self determination and containment. It worked to build up the new, independent nation of South Vietnam (SVN), by funding local and national economic and administrative infrastructures. In July 1954 Ngo Dinh Diem became premier in Saigon.

Diem and his powerful brothers were nationalists who were both anti-French, of an authoritarian Mandarin/Confucianist ethos and anticommunist. As leaders of the Catholic minority, they won considerable sympathy and support in the Catholic anticommunist circles in the US, notably from Francis Cardinal Spellman of New York and the Kennedy family. As soon as the Communists came to power in the North, some 800,000 refugees (mostly Catholic) fled to South Vietnam. They provided most of the leadership and support for its government (GVN) and its army (ARVN), in part because the Diem government discriminated against mainstream Buddhists and various Vietnamese sects, such as the Cao Dai and Hoa Hao. American financial aid and military advisors replaced the French, and SVN under Diem took its place among the world's newly independent nations.

North and South Vietnam had approximately equal populations of about 16-18 million in the 1960s; the US had 200 million.

The Eisenhower Administration, eager to formalize the containment system by treaty, in 1954 set up the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO). The US promised to aid SEATO signatories that were attacked by a Communist power. The French (still committed to the Geneva Accords) vetoed membership for SVN. To get around this French veto, Washington had inserted in the Treaty a vague protocol that seemed to give Saigon some sort of guarantee, even though it was not allowed to sign the Treaty or become part of SEATO. Furthermore, Eisenhower decided not to sign a mutual defense treaty with SVN in order to avoid over-commitment. Instead the US relied on the highly ambiguous SEATO Treaty, which was ratified by the Senate with little discussion of Vietnam. By default it became the chief legal base for US involvement in Vietnam, until the subsequent Gulf of Tonkin resolution

In 1960, Eisenhower had 900 American advisors in SVN to bring its army up to world standards. That same year Hanoi's ruling Politburo established the "National Liberation Front" (NLF) as its political arm in the South, and the "Viet Cong" as the military arm. The rank and file were southerners, the leadership was northern. The Viet Cong tactics were based on guerrilla strikes that would assassinate local officials and village leaders favorable to Saigon, occasionally attack an isolated ARVN detachment, and when needed seize ("tax") village food stocks or kidnap ("draft") young men. The Communist goal was "liberation" of the South from capitalism and westernism. The NLF had a few shadow formations in the cities, where it did poorly; Washington was baffled why it did so well in the countryside.

Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara told President John F. Kennedy in 1961 it was "absurd to think that a nation of 20 million people can be subverted by 15-20 thousand active guerrillas if the government and the people of that country do not wish to be subverted." McNamara, a manufacturing executive and expert in statistical management, had no background in guerilla warfare, and rejected advice from area specialists and military officers, preferring to consult with his personal team, often called the "Whiz Kids". His key foreign policy advisor was a law professor, John McNaughton, while economist Alain Enthoven was perhaps his closest colleague.

Washington always insisted that aggression was organized and directed by Hanoi; it rejected arguments by opponents of intervention in Vietnam that Hanoi was innocent--that the conflict was merely a civil war entirely operated from indigenous southern rebels. The doves argued since it was really only a civil war, therefore global Communist expansion was “not” happening in Vietnam; hence containment policy did not apply. Most Doves were fatalists--they felt the U.S. was trying to resist profound social forces that made a NLF victory inevitable. Note that the Tet Offensive in 1968 drastically weakened the NLF, and vigorous SVN attacks had reduced it to a hollow shell by 1970. The conflict after Tet was between Hanoi and Saigon.

Weaknesses of South Vietnam

Just as Diem's government (GVN) was factionalized and inefficient, its army, the ARVN, was a typical third world operation based on patronage, favoritism, and corruption. Commands and promotions went to political insiders, regardless of their competence or (more often) incompetence. Food, uniforms, munitions and information were sold for cash. Intrigue was the game, and the generals usually spent most of their time on politics rather than command. Few senior officers had any real military training. Draftees did not want to fight any more than their officers did. Although hardware was abundant and of good quality, training was mediocre, food and pay were unattractive, and morale was poor. Desertion rates were high (home was nearby); this hardly upset the officers because they kept the absent soldiers on the rolls and pocketed their paychecks.

Diem (and his successors) were primarily interested in using the ARVN as a device to secure power, rather than as a tool to unify the nation and defeat its enemies. Despite monumental American efforts from 1960 through 1972, the situation never decisively improved. Saigon would ultimately lose the war because its large and very well equipped army lacked spirit, motivation and patriotism. The enemy on the other hand, fine tuned its military forces into a powerful political instrument.

Viet Cong guerrillas and regular North Vietnam Army

In the Viet Cong, and in the North Vietnam regular army (PAVN), every unit down to the company level had a cadre of political officers who monitored ideological correctness on a daily basis. Insubordination was impossible. The Viet Cong had many unwilling draftees of its own; tens of thousands deserted to the government, which promised them protection. The Viet Cong executed deserters if it could, and threatened their families, all the while closely monitoring the ranks for any sign of defeatism or deviation from the party line.

U.S. involvement

Kennedy's Containment Policy

The Kennedy Administration came to power in 1961 committed to containing Communist expansion (whether Russian, Chinese, Cuban or Vietnamese), to demonstrating the will of America to be number one in the world, to upgrading the mission of the Army, to defeating Communist-led wars of liberation, and to helping South Vietnam survive. It was opposed to rollback because war with Moscow would be catastrophic. As a senator, Kennedy had empathized with the fate of his fellow Catholics in Vietnam. As President, however, he showed less empathy with the sufferings in Vietnam and more concern with containment of Moscow and Peking. Kennedy was impatient with Eisenhower's cutbacks in the defense budget, his many legalistic treaties, and his threats of massive nuclear retaliation in case Russia took the initiative in going to war. Kennedy lived in a constant swirl of activity and sought proactive foreign policy. Kennedy agreed with General Maxwell Taylor, an outspoken critic of massive retaliation, that the Army could be used as a precision instrument of foreign policy. They both believed that a "flexible response" could win guerrilla wars (sometimes called "low intensity conflict"). The challenge to containment was not so much a full-scale Soviet invasion of western Europe, but a slice-by-slice subversion of small countries. Kennedy (and other liberals) believed poverty caused people to accept Communism. The antidote was American money, technology and advice to promote economic modernization and nation-building, coupled with military protection during the vital early stages. Trumpeting the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 as a personal triumph, and armed with a new military doctrine that seemed well-tailored to the situation, Kennedy moved confidently into Southeast Asia. Dean Rusk, the Secretary of State under Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, meanwhile was reliving the Korean war (when he had been in charge of the East Asian desk); he repeatedly warned of the specter of Red China conquering the rest of Asia. Rusk considered Hanoi to be Peking's puppet, despite the long-standing animosity between the Vietnamese and the Chinese. He paid little attention to the "Cultural Revolution" which from 1966 to 1971 ripped China apart and paralyzed its military capability. Although China eventually sent 50,000 air defense soldiers to help protect Hanoi, it lacked the military capability and the unified leadership necessary to counter an American invasion of North Vietnam.

Fear of china

Rusk worried that a Communist victory in Vietnam would cause neighboring countries to fall like dominoes to pro-Chinese Communists. The threat was greatest in Indonesia, an island nation with a large population, significant oil wealth, and an active Communist movement. In 1965, however, the anti-communist army seized power and totally destroyed the Communist movement in Indonesia with wholesale arrests and executions. (The US and the CIA was not significantly involved in this.) The "falling domino" threat was greatest in Laos, where a low-intensity civil war gave the Communist Pathet Lao control of much of that remote land. Hanoi made systematic use of Laotian and Cambodian jungle trails as supply routes to the Viet Cong--the "Ho Chi Minh Trail."

Escalation by Viet Cong

In the early 1960s the Viet Cong escalated its attacks; the Diem regime lost ground every month. In 1961 the Viet Cong had 25,000 regular soldiers and 17,000 underground operatives. The NLF controlled villages containing about a fifth of the rural population of ten million (six million people lived in SVN's cities and towns, where the NLF remained weak.) American observers reported that the Saigon regime lacked legitimacy in the villages. The GVN never generated spontaneous support or a sense of patriotism because it was too much like the French system: too autocratic, too urban, Catholic, aloof, corrupt, arrogant, inefficient, self-indulgent and predatory. The challenge was not to restore legitimacy but get it in the first place.

By contrast, peasants at first found the NLF appeared to be honest, caring and basically like themselves. It had considerable support--it especially appealed to idealistic youth, and in any case was always feared by the villagers who knew the assassination squads would eliminate any dissent. From 1957 through 1972, the Viet Cong Security Service carried out 37,000 assassinations of government officials, religious and civic leaders, teachers, informers, landowners, and moneylenders. The only effective government response was to hunt the guerrillas down, or target their leaders, but that was too dangerous for the dispirited ARVN. Instead Diem's defensive strategy was the "strategic hamlet" program. Millions of villagers were relocated into new hamlets that the ARVN and local militia forces could defend. The villagers resented the dislocation and the central government's replacement of local leaders.

In January 1963, an apparently overwhelming ARVN force, with armored vehicles, artillery and air support, and U.S. advisors including John Paul Vann went confidently against an inferior force at the Battle of Ap Bac, and were routed. . This has been considered the triggered for an increasingly skeptical, although small, American press corps in Vietnam.

By October, 1963, Kennedy had sent 16,000 advisors who were working feverishly to shape up the ARVN; 100 had already been killed. The U.S. Air Force began training pilots; the Army sent in helicopter transports. The choppers terrorized the Viet Cong, until they figured out how to ambush them when they landed. After 9,000 combat sorties, 21 airplanes and 13 helicopters had been shot down. Viet Cong influence had been pushed back, but the NLF still controlled a tenth of the rural villages.

Weak Diem regime

The biggest problem was the Diem regime itself-- militarily ineffective and politically unpopular. It tried to suppress the non-Communist opposition by large-scale arrests. Its downfall came when it bungled the demands of organized Buddhist monks for a larger voice in political affairs. The multiple interest groups and centers of power in the nation had become alienated from Diem, and gave him no support as he raided the pagodas and arrested demonstrators. Furthermore, he increasingly rejected American demands for political and economic reforms. Washington sadly concluded that Diem had outlived his usefulness, so it stood silent during a military coup on November 1, 1963, that assassinated Diem and installed the first of a long series of unstable governments. Kennedy himself was assassinated three weeks later, and Lyndon Johnson took charge. Diem's death led to chaos; the strategic hamlet program collapsed, and the Viet Cong recouped their losses and pressed forward across the countryside. ARVN battalions one after another crumbled under intense local attacks. The CIA gave GVN only an "even chance" of surviving.

Lyndon Johnson's War, 1963-65

Johnson would have to do something unless he wanted to be known as the Democrat who "lost Vietnam." As a believer in the "domino theory," he worried that other countries in Southeast would fall to Communism if the line was not held. The only alternative to containment, he believed, was rollback as advocated by Barry Goldwater. "Why Not Victory?" Goldwater asked; because it means nuclear war, Johnson retorted, as he used the rollback issue to overwhelm Goldwater in the 1964 election. (Whereupon the Air Force revised its manual of air doctrine, to state that "total victory in some situations would be an unreasonable goal."

Domestic politics

Equally important to Johnson than what happened in Asia was what was happening at home, especially in the minds of the voters. Vietnam was a "political war" because the President always put domestic politics first. Having been a Democratic Senate leader in the early 1950s who had to defend against Republican charges that the Democrats had "lost" China and failed in Korea, Johnson was determined that a similar political disaster had to be avoided at all costs. "I am not going to be the president who saw Southeast Asia go the way China went," he vowed. He tried several different strategies, but running through them all was a policy of controlling popular perceptions. In plain words, deception. The American people were never to become alarmed at the magnitude of the problem; White House policy was to keep reassuring the nation that everything was going fine in Vietnam, and that LBJ could be trusted to handle the situation in his own way. This was the only war in American history in which Washington did not try to rouse patriotic fervor behind the cause; indeed, Johnson tried to subdue any spontaneous outpourings of patriotism. The reason was that a surge of patriotism would lead to demands for victory and rollback--Goldwaterism--and risk nuclear destruction from Russian missiles. Even if the nation escaped nuclear war, a frenzy of pro-war patriotism would doom funding for Johnson's domestic programs, known as "The Great Society".

On the other hand, allowing the Communists to take over a U.S. client was unacceptable to Johnson; as shown in the McNaughton Memo, the key Johnson Administration was avoiding political humiliation. "The central lesson of our time," Johnson told a John Hopkins audience in April 1965, "is that the appetite of aggression is never satisfied. To withdraw from one battlefield means only to prepare for the next." He continued, We must say in southeast Asia--as we did in Europe--in the words of the Bible: 'Hitherto shalt thou come, but no further.'" Privately he felt that if he lost Vietnam to the communists, everything he wanted to work for at home--civil rights, the War on Poverty, and his Great Society--would also be lost. "I'd be giving a big fat reward to aggression," he explained years later, and "there would follow in this country an endless national debate--a mean and destructive debate--that would shatter my Presidency, kill my administration, and damage our democracy."

Johnson's plan to settle war

Johnson did have a plan for settling the conflict, one that conformed to containment policy, and to New Deal liberalism. Johnson believed that all disputes arose out of mutual misunderstandings, and could be resolved through negotiation. His strategy was to offer Hanoi billions of dollars in foreign aid if they would play along, or else bomb them into negotiations, from which a permanent peace would result that allowed South Vietnam to continue as an independent nation. Johnson did not reject the possibility that the Communists could become part of some sort of coalition government. He did not, however, verify that such a possibility was of interest to the other side.

The military, which saw its mission in terms of winning wars, not facilitators for negotiations, never agreed with Johnson, or, perhaps more to the point, with McNamara. Throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s the generals repeatedly warned that Vietnam was probably a losing cause and they advised against intervention. The President responded by picking new generals who would play along, and by closely monitored them to make sure that he would never encounter another Douglas MacArthur.

The result was yes-men who deferred to the White House and to the all-powerful Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara; no matter how wrong the brass thought Johnson was, they would never resign in protest. Perhaps the most telling document of the lack of strategic vision of McNamara and his staff was a 1965 memorandum from McNaughton, attempting to define goals. McNaughton defined the U.S. aims as:

• "70%--To avoid a humiliating US defeat (to our reputation as a guarantor).
• 20%--To keep SVN (and then adjacent) territory from Chinese hands.
• 10%--To permit the people of SVN to enjoy a better, freer way of life. Also-To emerge from crisis without unacceptable taint from methods used. Not--To "help a friend," although it would be hard to stay if asked out."

Note that generic anticommunism was not an objective, and the welfare of South Vietnam was low on the list. McNaughton's emphasis on Chinese domination ignored a history of Vietnamese enmity to the Chinese, going back to the revolt of the Two Trung Sisters in the first century A.D. North Vietnam was Stalinist, not Maoist, and far more a Soviet than Chinese client.

Congress

With the Pentagon under control, Johnson next froze Congress out of the policy making process. He ignored antiwar "doves" like Senator William Fulbright, the chair of the impotent Foreign Relations Committee. More of a political threat were "hawks" like GOP Senator Barry Goldwater, articulate spokesman for the nascent conservative movement, and Democratic Senator John Stennis, the chair of the powerful Armed Services Committee. Johnson feared that if Congress had a voice it would push for a more aggressive, expensive war that would sabotage his high- spending low-tax "Great Society" domestic program. War taxes would be politically disastrous in the next election. Even worse, Congress might reject his forced-negotiations strategy and insist upon a roll-back strategy aiming at the defeat and conquest of North Vietnam.* The surest lesson Johnson and the liberals had learned in Korea was that MacArthur's roll-back strategy had led to Chinese intervention and humiliation. Under no circumstances would they accept a roll-back policy.

Containment had to work. Johnson therefore refused to pull out. The South Vietnamese clearly were unable to save themselves with just American advice; Johnson made the fateful decision to rescue them with US combat troops. He planned to first rescue GVN (Government of South Vietnam) from imminent collapse by guerrilla attacks, then negotiate a settlement with Hanoi that would allow it to survive. He vetoed two other options: US command and control of the ARVN (unwise because GVN would never learn to defend itself) and invasion of North Vietnam to strike the threat at its source. In mid-1964, LBJ assembled a new team. Looking for a yes-man, he passed over 43 more senior generals to promote Harold Johnson to Chief of Staff of the Army. Maxwell Taylor left the chairmanship of the JCS to became ambassador, with authority over all diplomatic, CIA and military operations in Vietnam. General Earle Wheeler replaced Taylor at JCS; his mission was to keep the senior commanders loyal to the White House.

General William Westmoreland became head of MACV (Military Assistance Command, Vietnam), with authority over US Army and Marine ground operations, and some naval and tactical air operations. He was one of the few senior officers since 1940 not to have attended the military's internal school system, especially the command and general staff college and the various war colleges. However he had studied at Harvard Business School, and his freedom from standard doctrine and his interest in quantification attracted him to McNamara.

Admiral Ulysses Sharp at Pearl Harbor, became head of all US forces in the Pacific. He had charge of the naval blockade that kept Hanoi from running supplies by sea, and most importantly, of strategic bombing operations over North Vietnam (which were launched from Sharp's four aircraft carriers or from Air Force B-52 bases in Thailand and Guam). Nominally Westmoreland reported to Taylor, Sharp, Harold Johnson and Wheeler; in practice he dealt directly with McNamara or LBJ. Westmoreland could always be counted upon for a public statement exuding optimism; he reassured LBJ that the war would be won in time for the 1968 elections. The intricate division of responsibility was set up so that there would be no powerful theater commander like MacArthur; it also guaranteed a steady flow of disputes that could only be resolved by McNamara or the President. The military thus never had control of the war it was called upon to fight, or of the tactics to use.

Gulf of Tonkin incident: 1964

In early August 1964 Johnson seized on an ambiguous incident in which North Vietnamese PT boats reportedly fired on a US destroyer; this became known as the Gulf of Tonkin incident. The public message was that the destroyer was on general patrol.

Less well known, however, were that simultaneous covert attacks on the North Vietnamese coast, coordinated by MACV-SOG operating under CINCPAC (Commander in Chief Pacific) Operations Plan (OPPLAN) 34A, and the North Vietnamese were on high alert. The destroyer was actually collecting signals intelligence under a program called the DESOTO patrol, and tecently declassified National Security Agency signals intelligence reports indicate that the U.S. commanders knew that the North Vietnamese were uncertain if the destroyers were part of the same attacks as 34A. There has never been clear-cut sonar or SIGINT information that the North Vietnamese initiated an attack on the destroyer patrol, although one of the destroyers may have fired warning shots.

Although there was no immediate and continuing threat to U.S. forces, Johnson ordered retaliatory airstrikes on the North. His television address to the U.S. public, explaining he had ordered it under his authority as commander-in-chief, was delivered while the strikes were still inbound and the North Vietnamese air defenses not yet alerted. According to McMaster, Johnson insisted on an early announcement so that he would be sure to make the late evening news, as well as the deadline for morning newspapers.

However, the North Vietnamese had indeed sunk an American ship in May, and had begun to kill American advisors; they were clearly testing Washington. He immediately rammed the "Gulf of Tonkin Resolution" through Congress, saying it would deter Hanoi. The Resolution was itself vague, endorsing the Commander-in-Chief's right to "take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack...and to prevent further aggression." Not only did the Resolution give Johnson a boost during his heated 1964 reelection campaign, it also provided just enough legality for him to avoid going back to Congress. In the election Johnson battled Republican Senator Barry Goldwater, warning vehemently that Goldwater's "Why Not Victory" rollback strategy would produce a nuclear war with the Soviets. Surprisingly little discussion of Vietnam took place. Virtually all the information and advice that reached Johnson and McNamara in 1963-65 was deeply pessimistic: the consensus was that the South Vietnam government was too corrupt, and its army was too inefficient, to withstand the Communists. The only chance for containment--a slim one--was to have American soldiers take command of the war and defeat the Viet Cong forces on the ground, while hurting North Vietnam just enough to convince them to negotiate.

Escalation 1965

Immediately after his triumphant landslide, Johnson made his move. The NLF was on the verge of announcing a provisional government in the northernmost six provinces; three elite regiments from the North Vietnamese Main Force moved into South Vietnam. Hanoi thought it could win quickly and that America was a paper tiger. It was a tragic miscalculation that would bring endless misery to the Vietnamese. Johnson sent in the first American combat troops in March, 1965, to protect the air bases. Rejecting the Air Force's strategy of strategic bombing against 94 critical targets in the North, Johnson and McNamara instead launched an alternative air power strategy called "Rolling Thunder." It entailed retailiation bombing anytime Communists struck at American forces, together with a gradual buildup of 22 bombing attacks against small military targets in the North. There was to be no bombing of cities or villages, and no attacks on the ships brining Russian and Chinese arms to the port of Haiphong. To reverse the downhill slide in the villages, Westmoreland called for 24 more maneuver battalions (of 5400 men each) added to the 20 he had, plus more artillery, aviation (helicopters), and support units; McNamara rounded the total to 175,000 troops, with 27 more maneuver battalions to come in 1966. Westmoreland's strategy was to hunt down and attack enemy infantry formations. He rejected the Marine Corps alternative program of building up a close rapport with the peasant and defending their villages. McNamara realized that Westmoreland's search and destroy plan would be costly, with perhaps 500 Americans killed every month. Washington having explicitly rejected rollback and victory had a goal of containment that would allow South Vietnam to continue to exist as a non-Communist state.

Antiwar movement

While Washington tried to keep the war quiet, radical college students in the US launched a noisy antiwar protest movement with teach-ins and rallies.* Their efforts were counterproductive, because they forced millions of Americans who might have had doubts about the war to support the Administration for patriotic reasons.

The antiwar credo focused on the illegality and immorality of American action, and praised the heroic peasants fighting western imperialism. Much was made of napalm and forced resettlement, to create a sense of American guilt rather than reflect empathy with the Vietnamese. After the war, protesters maintained the guilt theme, but forgot about the Vietnamese. Senator Fulbright, the most prominent dove, lacked empathy with the Vietnamese. As a believer in white supremacy, he believed white Americans should not die to save an inferior colored race. The most promenint military "dove" was retired Marine Corps Commandant David Shoup. He argued in 1967 that Americans should ignore the issue of freedom in Asia because, "I don't think the whoile of Southeast Asia, as related to the present and future safety and freedom of the people of this country, is worth the life and limb of a single American." The Vietnamese, he added, "have no idea of our meaning of freedom." Until Tet in early 1968, the clear majority of Americans (including students) took a "hawkish" stance on the war.

By the end of 1965 there were 184,000 Americans inside Vietnam, plus 22,400 Allies (from Korean, Australian and New Zealand). A top Pentagon strategist figured that the relative importance of American objectives in Vietnam:

• 70% to avoid humiliating defeat
• 20% to keep SVN and neighbors from Chinese hands
• 10% to permit the people of SVN to "enjoy a better, freer way of life"

Having quietly become so deeply involved, national honor and prestige meant the US could no longer easily back out; the war had become a quagmire. The fear of humiliation was strongly tied to Johnson's domestic political goals, , and the geostrategic goals became increasingly vague.

Rolling Thunder: The Failure of Strategic Bombing

Johnson had to prove that containment was a viable project, and that American power could deter an invasion and protect a friend without the necessity of widening the war and invading the enemy. The operation had to be an object lesson to Moscow and Peking to not try anything like this anywhere else in the world ever again. The Joint Chiefs who wanted to win quickly and get out were echoing a roll-back strategy that Johnson was committed to refute. Roll-back meant Douglas MacArthur, Barry Goldwater, John Stennis, and defeat for LBJ and his Great Society--and it could well mean nuclear missiles raining down on American cities. At all costs Johnson felt compelled to make his policy work.

Johnson and McNamara adopted a three-tier strategy to save SVN. First they sent in Army and Marine infantry to protect US bases and repel enemy ground attacks. Second, they used air power to blast away at the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos. Third they began Rolling Thunder over North Vietnam. The latter had a triple purpose: to boost Saigon's morale, weaken Hanoi's war- making capabilities, and force them to the bargaining table. Bombing seemed a cheap solution: the Air Force and Navy had plenty of air power to spare, and the raids would cause few American casualties. The targets were primarily transportation lines, bridges, railway yards, storage dumps, and oil tanks; civilian areas were to be avoided. The raids were closely controlled by the White House, which saw them as "signals" in a negotiating process with Hanoi. Raids were calibrated so that each month they became more punitive. The theory was that sooner or later Hanoi's pain threshold would be crossed and they would agree to negotiate a plan that would allow SVN to survive. In line with an ingenious hypothesis proposed by Harvard strategist Thomas Schelling, LBJ refused to allow the most valuable installations, those around Hanoi and Haiphong, to be attacked. The idea was that damage future was more harrowing than damage present. In practice, the slow escalation gave Hanoi time to camouflage and decentralize its installations, and thus minimize the damage. Historians (on all sides) are quite unanimous that Rolling Thunder was a total failure. North Vietnam was a very poor agricultural country with few likely targets in the first place. Unlike Germany and Japan in World War Two, it did not manufacture its own munitions, but imported them from China and Russia. LBJ vetoed plans to mine Haiphong harbor and cut the railroad lines at the Chinese border. Johnson, who had been a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee in 1950, vividly remembered the Chinese intervention in Korea that year, and refused to permit any military action that might somehow trigger another intervention. In striking contrast to the attacks on Berlin, Tokyo and a hundred other World War Two targets, the vast majority of bombs landed on empty jungle. (Some antiwar activists yelled about a deleterious effect on the flora and fauna of the region, especially the defoliation efforts using the chemical Agent Orange.

As in the schoolboy joke about making your head feel good by stopping the hammer blows, Johnson from time to time experimented with bombing pauses that would make Hanoi eager to come to terms. They never did. It cost the US a billion dollars a year to destroy $100 million in PAVN supplies--but Washington had the tens of billions and Hanoi did not have the tens of millions. It did have friends, however, and Moscow and Peking doubled their shipments of munitions. Moscow sent in sophisticated air defense systems; 922 planes went down. Rolling Thunder dropped 640,000 tons of bombs, but pilots protested angrily that political restrictions radically reduced their effectiveness. As one Navy flier growled in his diary:

We fly a limited aircraft, drop limited ordnance, on rare targets in a severely limited amount of time. Worst of all we do this in a limited and highly unpopular war....What I've got is personal pride pushing against a tangled web of frustration.

Rolling Thunder did reduce the southward flow of arms somewhat, and definitely forced Hanoi to divert more and more of its resources to logistics, air defense and rebuilding. More than half of the North's electric power, oil storage, bridges and railroad yards had to be rebuilt. Supplies were hidden in small caches or buried underground, which further attenuated Hanoi's logistics capability. The raids made it quite impossible for PAVN to send large units or tanks into the south. The suffering of its people held a lower priority for the Politburo than its quest for victory, so it simply ignored the "signals" that Rolling Thunder was supposed to be sending. An unexpected denouement for McNamara and other civilians who had placed blind trust in the invincibility of air power was a growing sense of frustration and defeatism. McNamara himself concluded the bombing was a failure, and that therefore the whole war was doomed. The President, however, more empathy with the South Vietnamese than his advisors (perhaps because he was highly sensitive to the plight of nonwhites.) He pushed on.

Westmoreland's Attrition Strategy

Westmoreland in 1965 got 175,000 of the best soldiers in the world. MACV was delighted that the skills and esprit of the American troops were outstanding. The most ambitious young officers and the most experienced NCOs volunteered at once. Despite some shortages, the US Army had never been in nearly as good shape at the start of a war. The basic infantry unit was the rifle platoon of 41 men commanded by a lieutenant. It was subdivided into three rifle squads (commanded by sergeants), and a weapons squad carrying two excellent M60 light machine guns. The company, commanded by captain, had three rifle platoons and a mortar platoon that provided on-the-spot light artillery. The infantry maneuver battalion, about 1,000 men strong and commanded by a lieutenant colonel, had five companies. At peak Westmoreland had 100 infantry battalions, the main maneuver and fighting unit of the war. Routinely it received 500 hours a month of helicopter support from corps' command. Above the battalion were brigades and divisions; in this war they handled paperwork, letting the battalions do the fighting. Overall, 20% of the soldiers were in "teeth" (combat) roles; the rest were "tail," assigned to advisory missions, logistics, maintenance, construction, medicine and administration.

Westmoreland's first challenge was figuring out a strategy to defeat the Viet Cong. In Phase I he planned to stabilize the situation (by the end of 1965), Phase II (scheduled for 1966-67) would push the enemy back in key areas, followed by total victory in Phase III (1968).

The Marines, with responsibility for "I Corps," the northern third of the country, had a plan for Phase I. It reflected their historic experience in pacification programs in Haiti and Nicaragua early in the century. Noting that 80% of the population lived in 10% of the land, they proposed to separate the Viet Cong from the populace. It was a major challenge, since the NLF controlled the great majority of villages in I Corps. Working outward from Da Nang and two other enclaves, 25,000 Marines of the III Marine Amphibious Force systematically eliminated Viet Cong soldiers and guerrilla forces, and sought to weed out NLF cadres from the villages. The main device was the Combined Action Platoon, with a 15-man rifle squad and 34 local militia. It would "capture and hold" hamlets and villages. The Marines put heavy stress on honesty in local government, land reform (giving more to the peasants) and MEDCAP patrols that offered immediate medical assistance to villagers. The official slogan about "winning hearts and minds" gave way to the more informal "Get the people by the balls, and their hearts and minds will follow." Ambassador Taylor welcomed the Marine strategy as the best solution for a basically political problem; it would also minimize American casualties. Westmoreland distrusted the policy as too defensive for Phase II--only offense can win a war, he insisted.

Anyway, the regular Army hated to do police work or pacification; let the ARVN control their own villages. Some villages, however, were supported by United States Army Special Forces, sometimes working with the Central Intelligence Agency.

Taylor's strategy was to use superior American mobility and firepower to locate, attack and destroy the Viet Cong main forces. Once they were destroyed, he reasoned, the villages would be easy to pacify. Westmoreland proposed instead a "search and destroy" strategy that would win the war by attrition. The idea was to track down and fight the larger Viet Cong units, hoping to grind them down faster than they could be replaced. The measure of success in a war of attrition was not battles won or territory held or villages pacified, it was the body count of dead enemy soldiers. (The body counts were wild guesses, since the enemy made a special effort to remove bodies, but MACV's analysts and McNamara's computers gobbled them up regardless.) A number of field commanders and CIA analysts found that a much better predictor was the number of weapons recovered from a battlefield.

Westmoreland promised his three phase strategy could get the job done--whereas the defensive enclaves would prolong the conflict indefinitely into the future. Johnson could not wait forever, so he bought Westmoreland's plan and removed Taylor. Johnson had quietly committed the United States to a major venture. Containment was the original goal, but with the commitment itself came another goal--the nation's honor and credibility now had to be preserved. Hanoi was stunned by Westmoreland's highly effective strategy. Once so close to easy victory, now it had to fall back and rethink strategy and tactics. General Vo Nguyen Giap, head of the PAVN since 1946, rushed fresh 500-man battalions down the Ho Chi Minh Trail before the full force of the US mobilization could take effect. The flow rose from 3,000 a month in 1965 to 8,000 a month throughout 1966 and 1967, and then 10,000 in 1968. By November 1965 the enemy had 110 battalions in the field, with 64,000 combat troops, 17,000 in combat support, and 54,000 part- time militia. It was too little too late.

First Divisional-strength Battle: Ia Drang, 1965

At Ia Drang (river Drang) in late 1965 the first major confrontation shaped up between Giap and Westmoreland. Giap wanted to continue his successful guerrilla war, but was overruled by the Politburo; they demanded victory in a hurry. The new plan was for Giap to use his conventional divisions to slice across the neck of SVN, cutting the country in two. Armed with only light weapons (especially the superb Chinese-made Kalashnikov AK-47 assault rifles, mortars, hand grenades, and mines), and travelling on foot, the regular PAVN units had no hope of matching the Americans in firepower or mobility. Instead they substituted stealth. The Americans arrived in big noisy helicopters that could be spotted (and counted) miles away. Giap's well-camouflaged soldiers snuck in silently, carrying their meager supplies, hiding from reconnaissance aircraft during the day. They contested the helicopter landing zones, but never tried to hold ground; pitched battles were avoided.

As is classic for guerilla warfare, the PAVN, because whenever the Americans were hit they regrouped and called in heavy firepower; they did not pursue.

"The enemy advances, we retreat; the enemy camps, we harass; the enemy tires, we attack; the enemy retreats, we pursue." — Mao Zedong

Like the Plains Indians of a century before, the PAVN preferred hit-and- run ambushes, or what they called "catch and grab." When their retreat was blocked, their next tactic was called "hugging the belt" the Americans would not dare calling in artillery and gunships because of the risk of friendly fire casualties. The surprise attack would give a short window of opportunity before superior American mobility could be brought to bear. The disadvantages Giap faced should not be underestimated. His tactics risked very high casualties, and necessitated intense political indoctrination and control of troops, and very light supply needs.

Hanoi had to accept far more casualties than Washington. North Vietnam was a very poor country that got poorer during the 1960s; all it could produce was manpower. Its weapons had to be captured or imported from Russia and China. Its transportation system was so bad that a large fraction of its military effort had to be devoted to getting a few rounds of ammunition or a few small caliber weapons to the front.

Westmoreland had a surprise for Giap: he rushed the new 1st Cavalry Division into battle, where it showed off its new airmobile tactics under fire. American intelligence was good this time: the 1st Cavalry quickly discovered two elite PAVN regiments. PAVN launched a series of violent attacks against the Americans, who clustered around their landing zones. In a war without fixed lines the choppers multiplied the strength of American infantry and provided a new magnitude of mobility that frustrated Giap's tactics. Only four choppers were shot down. Heavy doses of tactical air power, including area. then radar-controlled saturation bombing from B-52s, overwhelmed the PAVN. The invasion was stopped; the survivors fled back into their Cambodian sanctuaries. "By God, they sent us over here to kill Communists and that's what we're doing!" exulted one battalion commander. Giap excused his failure by saying he only wanted to discover the American's tactics; he convinced the Politburo that it was necessary to return to low-level guerrilla tactics (force the Yankees to "eat rice with chopsticks") because he could not beat the Americans in battle. Other Army and Marine divisions copied the airborne concept. The tide had turned, and Westmoreland called for more troops and helicopters to enlarge the search and destroy operation across the country. McNamara and LBJ agreed, doubling the number of infantry maneuver battalions from 35 in October 1965 (22 Army, 13 Marines) to 70 a year later (50 and 20). The number of artillery battalions also doubled to 79. By the end of 1966 the US Army had 244,000 personnel in Vietnam, the Marines 69,000, Air Force 57,000 and Navy 25,000, a total of 395,000. They faced 100,000 enemy riflemen in 152 combat battalions and two hundred separate companies. The doubling of combat forces, Washington realized, would entail a doubling of US losses from 400 deaths a month to 800.

Most of the fighting in Vietnam was done by companies that deliberately went in harms way for a couple days at a time-- into the jungles of the Central Highlands, or the rice paddies of the heavily populated lowlands. As Marine Lt. Philip Caputo observed, "There was no pattern to these patrols and operations. Without a front, flanks or rear, we fought a formless war against a formless enemy who evaporated like the morning jungle mists, only to materialize in some unexpected place." Of two million small unit operations, 99% never encountered the enemy. (They did encounter booby traps and land mines, which together caused a third of the American deaths.) The war was fought out in the other one percent, and most of the time combat was initiated by "Charlie" (the Viet Cong). The "hot landing zone" (enemy attacking choppers as they landed) accounted for 13% of the fights. American platoons on patrol were hit by ambush in 23% of the engagements, and their camps were hit by rocket or grenade attacks in 30%. In 27% of the battles the Americans took the initiative, including 9% ambushes, 5% planned attacks on known positions, and 13% attacks on unsuspected enemy positions. In 7% of the engagements both sides were surprised as they stumbled upon each other in the jungle. The casualties mounted. By the end of the war, 30,600 soldiers and 12,900 Marines had been killed in combat (together with 1,400 sailors and Navy pilots, and 1,000 Air Force fliers.) Nine times out of ten the enemy took heavier casualties and retreated, especially when gunships showed up. They could not win, they could scarcely replace their losses, yet the kept trudging down the Ho Chi Minh Trail day after day.

The enemy, however, was willing to accept those casualties. McNamara was insistent that the enemy would comply with his concepts of cost-effectiveness, of which Ho and Giap were unaware. They were, however, quite familiar with attritional strategies. While they were not politically Maoist, they were also well versed in Mao's concepts of protracted war (see insurgency).

Helicopters and Air Mobility

See also: Air Assault

The airmobile division was an entirely new concept in warfare invented by General Howze. Its 16,000 soldiers relied largely on helicopters--450 of them, compared to the usual 90. They could ferry 10,000 troops to a battle zone within hours, leapfrogging rivers, mountains and jungles. The basic airmobile tactic was establishing interlocking artillery fire-support bases in strategic locations that would trap or block enemy infantry and at the same time defend each other and cover infantry patrols. "Loaches" (Light Observation and Reconnaissance Helicopter" like the McDonnell Douglas OH-6 "Cayuse") identified likely landing zones (LZ), five or ten miles from the battalion HQ.

Depending on the tactical situation, a LZ might be prepared by artillery, air strikes, or escorting armed helicopters. Since the suppressive fire did not always drive off defenders, there was a balance of stealth vs. fire; small insertions sometimes had the helicopters make several decoy landings, silently landing a team at one quick stop. the first infantry companies landed in "slicks." These were unarmed Bell UH-1D "Hueys" that could carry 12 men and their gear.

Fire bases were set up with medium Boeing CH-47 "Chinook" helicopters, which could transport the 2-ton 105mm light howitzers, light vehicles, and ammunition; the larger CH-54 Tarhe ("the hook") lifted the larger 8-ton 155mm medium howitzers that gave the firebase enormous killing power. The 155 hurled 44 pound high explosive shells to a range of 18 miles twice a minute, and was highly accurate when forward artillery observers, communicating by field radio, spotted the shots.

Command and control could be very good or very bad. Company-sized forces would often land with their commanding captains, and, as with Moore at X-Ray, sometimes with more senior officers. When the levels of command did not micromanage, a battalion commander (lieutenant colonel) or higher commander could keep an overview of the engagement, and bring in reinforcements, as well as air and artillery strikes, as appropriate.

There were times, however, where the captain might stay airborne, the lieutenant colonel a bit higher, the colonel commanding the brigade at the next altitude, and possibly the major general division commander and lieutenant general corps commander in their own command and control helicopters. When this turned into micromanagement, it was said, ruefully, "never, in the course of human events, have so many, been so supervised, by so few."

Meanwhile the whole operation was covered by helicopter gunships--"Hueys" equipped with rockets, grenade launchers and door-mounted machine guns. Although its maximum speed was only 127 mph, the Huey could dart and dive and swerve with enough agility to evade most ground fire. If needed to repel a heavy attack, the firebase called in "Puff, the Magic Dragon," an Air Force AC-47 transport fitted with three miniguns firing 100 bullets per second. Making a wide circle it fired repeated three-second bursts that cleared the target area quickly. Gunships did not carry bombs or napalm--for that it was necessary to request jet fighter-bombers.

The new M-16 rifle was a shorter, lighter and more versatile assault weapon than the old M-1 or its replacement the M-14. It fired a light bullet at high muzzle velocity, which gave great killing power at ranges under 400 yards. Its rapid fire made it ideal in ambushes, although variations from the designed ammunition, as well as training problems and some mechanical problems, made early versions less reliable than the Communist AK-47. Both the AK-47 and M-16 had advantages and disadvantages; neither was the ideal infantry rifle.

New M79 grenade launchers that could send explosives farther than they could be thrown, M60 machine guns, and M18 Claymore electrically controlled fragmentation weapons, gave the "grunts" much better equipment than Charlie. When the firebase had served its mission, another covey of choppers would move in and ferry all the men and equipment back to battalion base.

In 1965, the 11th Air Assault Division (Test), the experimental force in AIR ASSAULT II, was reflagged as the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) and sent to Vietnam. Their first assignment was to crush Giap's buildup around the Ia Drang river; there are indications that Giap intended to meet the 1st Cav and learn techniques to fight the airmobile forces. LTG (ret) Hal Moore, then commanding 1/7 Cavalry (the Custer squadron) at a place called Landing Zone XRay, took and gave heavy casualties, and considers the engagement a draw.

Well handled airmobile forces could dominate at the tactical and operational levels, but neither they nor the United States Air Force could hold ground. While U.S. forces could deliver massive casualties, Giap was quite prepared to fight an attritional strategy, aimed at U.S. opinion. COL (ret.) Harry Summers, a U.S. Army historian and strategist, is said to have said to a North Vietnamese counterpart during talks, "We never lost a battle." The DRV colonel said "true, but irrelevant."

By 1968 infantry divisions routinely used 200 choppers, and could call on Corps headquarters for more as needed. The Air Force watched nervously as the Army experimented with its new doctrine and deployed 3,600 choppers to Vietnam. The Air Force ridiculed helicopters as low performance, high-risk machines that were excessively vulnerable to ground fire, and hopelessly inferior to its own fixed-wing jet fighters. Most of all it hated having the Army building up its own air power, which it had fought at the 1948 Key West Agreement (see Air Assault). Helicopters flew over 20 million combat and 30 million non-combat sorties, and proved the single most useful weapons system of the war.

Military aircraft are inherently dangerous, especially at low altitude where helicopters often operated. Most jet aircraft have the gliding performance of a brick when they lose power. A helicopter that loses power, but maintains the integrity of its rotors, is at a few thousand feet of altitude, and has a competent pilot, can "autorotate" to a landing, the airflow of the fall spinning the rotors and generating lift. At low altitude, there is no time to generate that lift. Jet fighters do have ejection seats to blast pilots clear of an impending crash, where helicopter crews have neither ejection seats nor parachutes.

8,000 went down during the war, killing 3,000 in combat operations and another 2,200 in accidents. (Most of the casualties were passengers; 700 pilots were killed.) "Dust Off" medical evacuation UH-1 Huey helicopters. promptly removed the wounded from the battlefield, and to an advanced trauma hospital system. Medevac runs had the highest priority, and were unusually dangerous. Two medevac pilots won the Congressional Medal of Honor for their heroism. It took on average 100 minutes to rush a casualty to the nearest field hospital. 390,000 American and ARVN casualties were medevaced. Thanks to quick hospitalization and aggressive prevention of traumatic shock and the acute respiratory distress syndrome, 82% of the seriously wounded who arrived at hospitals survived, a sharp improvement over previous wars due to helicopters, as well as significant advances in trauma management.