Vietnam War

Throughout the Vietnam War, the Americans used many tactics to defeat the Vietcong. The reason for the American involvement in the war was to prevent the spread of communism. This spread was known as the Domino theory. Two of the tactics used were ‘Search and destroy’ and ‘defoliation.’ Both of these tactics were used greatly throughout the War. As well as this, both tactics were implemented by General Westmoreland.
There were two kinds of Search and Destroy and they were search and destroy in the field and search and destroy in the villages. Search and destroy in the field required the use of helicopters to attack, in attempt to find the Vietcong. However the plan of finding the Vietcong by helicopter was greatly flawed. The helicopters were loud and slow, easy to spot as well as hard to land without substantial space. The volume of the helicopters delivered a signal to any traveling or out Vietcong that they should hide and often the helicopters were far enough away to give them considerable amount of time to hide. The fact the helicopters were easy to spot, slow to land and slow to take off, made them sitting ducks for the Vietcong to ambush. The Vietcong would wait until they had landed before attacking and burning the helicopter and therefore the Americans only means of escape. However if the trick of luring the Americans out of the sky didn’t work, they could use rockets to shoot them down. Largely, the success of search and destroy in the field was limited to a lesser extent.
Helicopters also did a lot of patrolling around American camps. They would shoot at any Vietcong that the saw from the sky, yet, the Vietcong creating their own tactic of hugging. Hugging involved the Vietcong staying very close to American camps so if the helicopter fired at them, they would risk hitting their own troops. This constant failure took its toll on the American soldiers, they were always scared of ambush and being attacked when the felt safest, they soon lost moral, and some gave up on the war, not trying to keep their fellow soldiers safe and even trying to abandon their own platoon, desertion.
Search and destroy in the villages took and even worse turn, with the body count ratio being one Vietcong to every six innocents. Search and destroy in the villages was based around troops going into villages and trying to find Vietcong, this form of searching was almost useless as the Vietnamese saw the Vietcong as the ‘good guys’ as they often helped to rebuild villages after the Americans burned down the villages in an attempt to discover the Vietcong. This burning of the villages was called a Zippo Raid, named after the lighter that were used to start the fire, as the Americans often couldn’t speak the language used by the Vietnamese villagers, they often got their information wrong. This resulted in further raids being based on bad or wrong information and further lives being lost. This lost the Americans hearts and minds. They lost the hearts and minds because the Vietnamese did not see why the Americans would enter their Village and kill their family and friends. Over all, the success of search and destroy in the villages was limited to a lesser extent.
Defoliation was another tactic used by the Americans in the Vietnam War. During the Vietnam War, much of the region’s dense forest and Vietnamese villages as well as Vietcong settlements were destroyed by American defoliation campaigns. Defoliants, including “Agent Orange” and “Napalm” were combinations of herbicides intended to kill trees and other plants that could be used by soldiers for cover from enemy troops. Between 1961 and 1971, the U.S. sprayed between 12 and 19 million gallons of herbicides on Vietnam, covering an estimated 6 million acres, half of which remains unrestored today. However, it did not just destroy the forest and woodland. It destroyed crops and this in turn led to no food. This lost further hearts and minds. As well as destroying crops, Napalm and Agent Orange stuck to skin and burned off flesh, even down to the bone. Survivors could go on to have children, but the children would be born with defects such as no limbs, bent or useless limbs, bodies without muscles or bones, even born without a brain. This lost further hearts and minds and images that were taken at the time that were published caused outrage back in America as well as across the globe. This caused the Americans to appear to be cruel and the cause of senseless deaths, losing them moral, again causing them to desert, commit suicide or give up on the war. This also lost the hearts and minds of the American public.
This Vietcong could not fight defoliation; however, they could fight with basic items that the forest provided. Booby traps were set up all over Vietnam, the Vietnamese villagers also made booby traps to protect themselves from the Americans as they quickly set up a reputation of being mean, irrational and senseless.
In conclusion, I think that the tactics used by the American’s during the Vietnam War were only effective to a lesser extent. This is because the use of both search and destroy tactics and defoliation tactics were only effective for a short period of time before the Vietcong learned how to combat them or the fact that the use of both types of tactics lead to the loss of hearts and minds in both Vietnam and America among a set of other countries including Britain. These factors proved to bring the loss of the Vietnam War and the Vietnam is still a communist country to this day.