How effective was the tactics of the United States in the Vietnam war?
The Vietnam War started as the US believed that communism was going to spread to their country and keep on spreading to the bordering countries. The war begins in 1960. Overall, the US tactics weren’t effective as most of them either didn’t work as the jungle was too big or turned the citizens against them.
One of the tactics the US used was Search and Destroy which was a cheaper alternative to bombs. Search and Destroy was when soldiers went into villages and looked for the Viet Cong and their weapons. It was used 1965 to 1967. The goal for Search and Destroy Was to kill and find as many as soldiers as possible. Another goal was to make the war cheaper which they did succeed as it was much cheaper to pay soldiers then pay for bombs. The soldiers were transported to Vietnam by helicopters and left to search the jungle. It wasn’t successful as the Viet Cong didn’t have uniform so they couldn’t tell the difference between the people of the village or the Viet Cong; this meant that a lot of innocent people were killed. As a result zippo raids took place and villages were burnt down, also it sent some of the South Vietnamese against them, making them think they shouldn’t trust them. Another reason why they weren’t successful could be that the American soldiers weren’t trained properly.
Defoliants were chemicals that were dropped from planes on suspected parts of the Ho Chi Minh trail to destroy thick shrubbery and jungle areas. The main defoliant was Agent Orange, it was estimated that 177 million litres of it was sprayed, and even using this much the US still weren’t successful as the target wasn’t hit and borders of Laos and Cambodia were badly hit. Also, the Vietnamese people weren’t happy about the mission as around 400,000 people were killed or harmed and 500,000 babies born with deformities. Obviously the plan wasn’t to harm innocent people it was to change the Viet Cong tactics as if the jungle wasn’t there they would have to fight instead of ambushing the Americans. This meant that it would be both more expensive for Viet Cong and they were most likely to lose as their weapons weren’t as good as the Americans. A secondary goal was to end the war quicker.
There were many different types of Air mobility such as: napalm, cluster bombs and operation rolling thunder. Cluster bombs were one the tactics that the US was actually successful with as it covered a large area. Cluster bombs were dropped from an aircraft as one big