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Post by Deleted on Feb 24, 2013 18:46:08 GMT -5
Were the Americans surprised ? , I was there in the Saigon Bein Hoa and Iron Triangle area when tet kicked off , we were mildly surprised at the scope and ferocity of the attack , but we had everything in place and re-groped quick enough , many America units were temporally isolated due to the fact many S.Vietnamese Army units simply melted away leaving the Americans holding the bag . It took a hard six weeks to restore order at the cost of some 9000 American lives the enemy losses were in excess of some 110,000 dead , taking prisoners was not an option extended by either side at the time .
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Post by Swampy on Feb 24, 2013 18:59:57 GMT -5
And the VC were destroyed - except the liberal media didn't focus on that.
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Post by jerryfmcompushaft on Feb 24, 2013 19:11:28 GMT -5
Yeah - We can thank Uncle Walt for telling the folks at home that the war was lost.....
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Post by Sir John on Feb 24, 2013 19:56:46 GMT -5
One question,
was it non stop, or were there breaks in between? From what I read at the time it seemed to go on forever.
SJ
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Post by Deleted on Feb 24, 2013 21:52:46 GMT -5
Constant , days and nights were the same , if there were a momentarily quite in one area the troops in that area were quickly shifted by helicopter to an area that was threaten , the fact that the S.Vietnamese Army could not be counted on in the early on made it more difficult for the Americans , though I will say there were some Vietnamese units that held their own , Rangers , Paras , just wasn't enough of them is all . But it was pretty much none stop , in my unit if you got four hours of un-broken sleep in 24 hours you were living well .
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Post by Sir John on Feb 25, 2013 2:55:59 GMT -5
A classic example of winning a war in the living rooms of America.
It is still being done!
SJ
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Post by Deleted on Feb 28, 2013 20:23:54 GMT -5
Aye , the adrenaline was flowing we pushed 'em back into the caves and went in after them , this was the first time I saw NVA prisonors , usually you had to kill them as they would not surrender .
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Post by dontom on Mar 3, 2013 3:54:30 GMT -5
Yeah - We can thank Uncle Walt for telling the folks at home that the war was lost.....
And both sides lose in every war. How much are you willing to lose? 58, 134 wasn't enough? They lost much more, but they would still be fighting to the last man.
"You will kill ten of our men and we will kill one of yours, and in the end it will be you who tire of it."
- Ho Chi Minh
-Don Quoteman- SSF, CA |
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Post by Swampy on Mar 3, 2013 10:30:13 GMT -5
Don, if we had been allowed to fight the war properly, we would have won by 1970.
Furthermore, the VC was destroyed by the Tet Offensive. The Lineback bombing campaign in 1972 destroyed the military infrastructure of the NVA, unlike the Rolling Thunder ones, which were half-way measures (thanks to LBJ and McNamara). So they could have been beaten.
If the Americans had beaten the Japanese, why can't they beat the North Vietnamese?
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Post by boxcar on Mar 3, 2013 13:27:49 GMT -5
The B-52s should have been allowed to carpet bomb Hanoi early on, and yes, keep LBJ and McNamara out of it.
One history guru put it that Westmoreland was playing a chess game, when he should have been thinking GO (the oriental board game). That is he went after set pieces rather than occupy land. I think that view has merit.
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Post by jerryfmcompushaft on Mar 3, 2013 13:59:48 GMT -5
The B-52s should have been allowed to carpet bomb Hanoi early on, and yes, keep LBJ and McNamara out of it. One history guru put it that Westmoreland was playing a chess game, when he should have been thinking GO (the oriental board game). That is he went after set pieces rather than occupy land. I think that view has merit. That view has a lot of merit when you look at the number of times we had to retake the same hill. If you can control the terrain it doesn't much matter how many combatants are on it..... Body count doesn't mean much when ther are more and more bodies available. In RVN bodies were infinate while land was finate... |
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Post by Sir John on Mar 3, 2013 14:10:49 GMT -5
General Giap and Ho Chi Minh knew that very well.
something like, "you can have the cities, and I will control the fields", and "You will kill 1000 of us and I will kill 10 of you, but I will win in the end".
And they did.
It always amazed me that a top general would lose 200 Americans taking a position and then leave , thus handing it back to the Viet Cong.
America's greatest handicap is her compassion, she lost the war the day the flagged draped coffins were shown on the TV news.
The 'body count' never balanced.
JMO.
SJ
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Post by Deleted on Mar 3, 2013 20:26:50 GMT -5
After tet it became a body count war , the Div, Brg, battalion that had the bigger body count numbers got perks , how do you get the bodies you vacate the the hill let the enemy re-occupie , after tet the U.S. no longer was interested in winning because there was no win , troop moral hit bottom the were a number of mini-mutinys that were covered up .
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Post by Swampy on Mar 3, 2013 21:29:00 GMT -5
The Whiz Kids should have known that, if you fight, you fight to win. Unfortunately, they didn't remember the basics of life.
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Post by dontom on Mar 3, 2013 23:17:04 GMT -5
Don, if we had been allowed to fight the war properly, we would have won by 1970.
"To win in Vietnam, we will have to exterminate a nation."
- Dr. Benjamin Spock
-Don Quoteman |
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