Gaming In The Vietnam War – 50th Anniversary Of The Tet Offensive: Part Two
January 29, 2018 by oriskany
We’re back, Beasts of War, for another instalment in our series to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Tet Offensive in the Vietnam War. In our previous article, we took a quick look at the Vietnam War’s background, as well as the origins for this massive, game-changing communist offensive in early 1968.
Read The Gaming In Vietnam Series Here
Now it’s time for us to actually begin our “tour of duty,” so to speak. In this article, we’ll be looking at the opening moves of the Tet Offensive, and examining how some of these engagements can be brought to the tabletop. So lace up those jungle boots and lock n’ load!
Build-up & Planning
The Communist Perspective
As we discussed in the previous article, the Tet Offensive was a massive series of attacks unleashed on the “Tet” Vietnamese New Year holiday in 1968. Mounted by the communist forces of the North Vietnamese Army and the Viet Cong, the objective was to topple the pro-American South Vietnamese government in Saigon and end the war.
The Tet Offensive would be spearheaded by the Viet Cong (formally known as the National Liberation Front or NLF), made up of guerrilla units of South Vietnamese communist sympathizers. They’d be supported and supplied by the formal field army of the PAVN (People’s Army of Vietnam, also known as the North Vietnamese Army, or NVA).
From the communist perspective, the notion of an all-out attack against American forces with vastly superior firepower was hardly ideal. Since American forces had become fully embroiled in Vietnam in 1965, they’d launched a massive build-up through 1966 and been on the offensive all through 1967. Communist losses had been severe.
This general American offensive also included a withering bombing campaign through most of North Vietnam. This would soon be expanded into NVA and VC base areas in Cambodia and Laos, the infamous “Ho Chi Minh” trail by which the communist war effort in South Vietnam was supplied and maintained.
By mid-1967, communist leaders had begun to worry they’d have to negotiate some kind of peace with the Saigon government. But under leaders like the Party Secretary Le Duan and the communist leader in the south Nguyen Chi Thanh, they vowed to make one more massive effort to force a favourable decision in combat.
Commander of the North Vietnamese Army, General Vo Nguyen Giap, was not impressed. He maintained that NVA and VC forces were nowhere near ready to face withering American firepower. But after General Thanh died of heart disease in mid-1967, Giap inherited command of the offensive and resolved to make it work.
Preliminary Moves
Setting Up The Chessboard
Build-up and preliminary moves for the Tet Offensive began almost a year before the actual storm broke on January 30th, 1968. Since the primary target for the Tet Offensive would be the major cities in South Vietnam, General Giap worked through 1967 to draw as many American units as possible out into the remote Vietnamese backcountry.
As early as April 1967, Giap opened operations near the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), the border area between North and South Vietnam. Ferocious battles started in the hills between US Marine Corps bases like Khe Sanh and Con Thien, where gunfire was often called in from US Navy heavy cruisers and battleships built during World War II.
In October 1967, Giap applied pressure in the south, near the Cambodian border. He hit South Vietnamese units (ARVN, Army of the Republic of Vietnam) at Song Be, and Loch Ninh was overrun and had to be retaken. As US and ARVN units deployed to these deep jungles, the cities along South Vietnam’s coast were left increasingly open.
The worst came in November 1967 in the central highlands, near Dak To. The whole 1st NVA division backed up by two independent regiments, had to be pushed back by the US 4th Infantry and 173rd Airborne Brigade, backed up by tanks. Again, US forces were drawn away from the cities, allowing VC battalions to creep closer to their Tet targets.
The Storm Breaks
Finally, the Vietnamese New Year holiday arrived in early 1968. By now the Americans were certain something was up; such a build-up couldn’t be concealed completely. But the American commander, General Westmoreland, remained convinced that Giap was preparing for a conventional ground invasion out of North Vietnam.
Yet no plan goes perfectly, and right off the bat, the Tet Offensive tripped over a massive screw-up. The actual date for the Tet holiday depended on which version of the Vietnamese calendar different units were using, and although officially planned for January 31st, some communist units launched too early and attacked on January 30th.
Yet even with this misfire, so lax was ARVN readiness in the midst of the traditional Tet holiday cease-fire that the Viet Cong retained nearly complete surprise. US and South Vietnamese response was disjointed and off-balance. The communists hit most of the forty-four provincial capitals in South Vietnam and attacked 100 cities and towns overall.
Saigon & The US Embassy
Wars Lost On Television
One of the primary targets for the Tet Offensive was the capital of South Vietnam, Saigon. Spearheaded by the elite “C-10” sapper battalion, communists hit the presidential palace, the HQs of the ARVN Joint General Staff and Navy, the city’s radio station, Tan San Nhut Airbase, and the American Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV).
Also struck was the United States Embassy, a prominent symbol of America’s presence in South Vietnam. During the opening attacks across Saigon, a force from the Viet Cong’s C-10 battalion blew a hole in the wall of the embassy compound, killed a Marine security guard and four military policemen, and stormed the embassy.
This attack sparked a six-hour firefight which was televised live around the world. The reality of the situation was almost entirely symbolic, almost all the Viet Cong’s officers had been killed in the initial skirmish and only fifteen or so remained to be rooted out of the compound.
None of that mattered. In a pattern that would be repeated throughout the Tet Offensive and the Vietnam War in general, it was the imagery on the evening news that counted. The American public, assured so many times that “the end in Vietnam was in sight,” now saw in living colour a desperate battle to retake their own embassy.
Other attacks across the city were slightly more successful. But after seizing their initial targets, VC units were surrounded by ARVN units, American military police, and reinforcements rushed in from neighbouring bases (very few American combat units were actually in Saigon itself), pinned down, and eventually destroyed.
The Viet Cong had intended for these initial sapper attacks to be rapidly reinforced by main force battalions staged around the city. But these reinforcements never arrived, cut off and pinned down in vicious street fighting. Thus the sappers were left to annihilation, though it would take weeks of hard fighting to eliminate them all.
It should be noted that most of the heaviest fighting in Saigon was done by ARVN. Despite the infamous attack on the US Embassy and a similar bloodbath at an American officer’s barracks, the VC was mostly contained by South Vietnamese troops. Giap himself would credit much of Tet’s relative failure in Saigon to ARVN, not US troops.
Long Binh & Bien Hoa
Battles Around The Suburbs
In many ways, the battles around the suburbs of Saigon were even more ferocious (and militarily speaking, more important) than the fighting in Saigon itself. There were more military installations out here, and the Viet Cong had an easier time getting main force battalions closer to these targets than in the centre of the capital.
One such battle came about fifteen miles north of Saigon at the neighbouring towns of Long Binh and Bien Hoa. An extensive US logistics and headquarters centre (US 2nd Field Force and ARVN III Corps), Long Binh was hit hard by the 275th Viet Cong Regiment of the 5th NLF Division. Just up the road, Bien Hoa was hit by the 274th Regiment.
Long Binh and Bien Hoa were the American headquarters for most of the southern part of South Vietnam, and even as Lieutenant-General Frederick Weyand (commander, 2nd Field Force) coordinated responses for units in Saigon and across the country, he also directed the immediate battle to protect his own headquarters.
This is the major battle we’ve tried to recreate on the tabletop for this part of the article series, particularly a “compressed-scaled” look at the American response to the Viet Cong’s attack at Bien Hoa. Starting off, we have initial American defences and counterattacks launched by the 199th Mechanized Brigade.
As fighting heated up between the US 199th and the Viet Cong 275th, and as American commanders steadily got a grip on the sheer scale of the nation-wide offensive, more units were coordinated into the battle. Very quickly, units of the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment were committed at Bien Hoa, getting American tanks into the fray.
With no tanks of their own, Viet Cong forces had to rely on close urban conditions and RPG ambushes to deal with the threat. They were assisted by U-1 and 238th local Viet Cong Battalions (using mines and shaped charges), now coordinating with 5th NLF Division’s attacks on Long Binh and Bien Hoa.
Yet again, the pattern was the same. Taking advantage of surprise and initially uncoordinated US and South Vietnamese response, Viet Cong forces took their initial objectives quickly enough but could then not hold them against concentrated American firepower.
Proof came at Bien Hoa when, in addition to the 199th Mechanized and 11th ACR, air strikes and helicopter gunships were brought in to further reduce the withering Viet Cong positions. Headquarters operations at 2nd US Field Force and ARVN III Corps were never meaningfully disrupted, and the situation steadily stabilized by the hour.
Finally, 2nd Battalion/506th Regiment of the 101st Airborne was “Huey-ed” into Bien Hoa to shift the balance decisively against the Viet Cong. If 2nd Bn/506th sounds familiar, that’s because it’s the parent unit of the famous “Easy” Company, the one from Band of Brothers fame. Here they were twenty-four years later, still winning America’s far-flung battles.
Of course, we’re just outlining a few of the battles in and around Saigon, and even if we could do them all, these Saigon battles were only a small part of what was happening all around South Vietnam. There were battles in the Mekong Delta, the central highlands, and of course very heavy action against the NVA up north near the DMZ.
So please come back next week as we look at some of these other attacks. There’s the NVA attack at the Special Forces base at Lang Vei (one of the only times the NVA was able to use tanks), the siege of Khe Sanh, and of course the brutal battle between the USMC and the NVA in Hue City (as anyone who’s seen “Full Metal Jacket” knows).
In the meantime, please post your comments, questions, and input down below. What do you think about the effect of global, real-time media in modern warfare? How can this be worked into a tabletop game’s victory conditions?
What do you think of the Tet Offensive or wargaming in Vietnam in general?
"...General Giap worked through 1967 to draw as many American units as possible out into the remote Vietnamese backcountry"
Supported by (Turn Off)
Supported by (Turn Off)
"What do you think about the effect of global, real-time media in modern warfare?"
Supported by (Turn Off)
Great work once again.
Thanks very much, @c0cky30 ! 😀
Amazing article @oriskany I didn’t know that part of the Battle was televised I’ll have to check that out online. Reporters and TV are tricky to do in game. Games Workshop’s Legends of the Old West skirmish game lets you hire a reporter who could follow your heroes around giving them more Fame so they can modify more dice rolls and interrupt the enemy more often. In a campaign a televised battle could be a really cool way to put extra emphasis on an otherwise unimportant/mundane Battle. There’s a Force on Force Scenario in one of the expansion books (Secret… Read more »
Thanks very much, @elessar2590 – yes, I have one 20mm figure with his shoulder-mounted rocket launcher modified into a camera, his body armor painted blue, with PRESS on the back. he was used as a TV guys for the Force on Force games in the Ukraine 2014 War series. Didn’t really have any game effect, really, the government just had to make sure he didn’t get hit by any splash damage, etc. The separatist player controlled him so he was used to get the in the government unit’s way, be annoying, etc. 😀 Yeah, a big piece of the Battles… Read more »
Another fantastic read @Oriskany!! Really impressed by the tables you’ve got, really helps immerse you into the ongoing action.
Great read!
What did you change in FoF to match such numbers? I might get into Vietnam through FoF, which doesn’t require as much stuff as FoW does.
Thanks @neves1789 – to be honest we didn’t have to change that much, although what we did change was pretty fundamental. Put most simply, we played “by squads” instead of by “by fireteams.” As you may know, you start off with one dice per figure in a unit, and the size of that dice depends on TQ (troop quality) – then there are bonuses for armor, heavy weapons, troop quality, etc. Anyway, with each action or reaction that unit takes, it loses one dice. Well, starting with 8- or even 13-man squads is really going to stretch those reaction cycles… Read more »
That makes sense! I was struggling our first game with having quite a large force (30 or so figures). Might give that approach a try!
Also I put on some Vietnam soundtrack to read the article since I completely subscribe to the music during a wargame rule 😉
Ah yes. Gotta have those tunes! I should add (and you’d probably agree) t hat the “rule” on music / ambience while gaming is strictly dependent on two caveats – it can’t be too loud to interfere with concentration, or table communication. Honestly, I usually don’t like gaming music with lyrics, it tends to interfere with my communication. I would agree, though that a lot of 60s music associated with the Vietnam War is the exception to this. I guess for some people, music / ambiance interferes with concentration. I can’t concentrate without it (listening to ocean waves as I… Read more »
Yeah, I’ve been know to do the volume dance; it’s too loud, turn it up for an epic song, can’t clearly hear my opponent,…
We try to do a big WW2 battle every year at my house, which needs German march songs and Russian choirs. Also, we eat bratwurst and sauerkraut 😀 Those games are obviously more throwing dice than tactical masterpieces ^^
Aha, we probably have some of the same tracks for German and Soviet WW2 era music. Of course the German ones always have “for non-political use only” disclaimer on the download cover. 😐 And the Soviet ones, especially in YouTube, always have some fun comments on them. I was listening to a bunch of “Greatest Russian Military Music” during the recent Stalingrad thread. It was a 90 minute playlist. Someone commented two years ago: “Just listened to the whole playlist. Now on the FBI watch list.” 😀 I replied: “Just listed to the whole playlist, in 2017. Now I’ve been… Read more »
Another great read @Oriskany and like the pictures… I think that Tet is one of thse thinngs that is synonymous with Vietnam, and because it was such a large scale attack its one of those things that you can pretty much set up any scenario you like to play a table top game and just say its part of Tet…lol
I would agree with that 100%, @commodorerob . Like @warzan and I were talking about in the interview, almost half the Vietnam War movies tie directly into Tet, even though it was only 5 days to 5 weeks of a 12-year war. And because the attacks were all so large, and hit such a broad variety of targets all across South Vietnam, players can set up all kinds of scenarios to fit their available armies, terrain, and preference. So far we’ve got mostly urban battles here. Later we’ll have special forces bases deep in the jungle, attacks on American fire… Read more »
Another great read @oriskany The diverse landscape in a relatively small country is a great and, I imagine, oft-forgotten aspect to a Vietnam campaign. The mobility available to US forces could also make these different terrain options viable in an ongoing campaign.
The breadth of the offensive surprised me to read. I knew it concentrated on urban areas, but to see it marked across the map, it truly encompassed the whole country and likely impacted all US/ARVN forces in-country to some extent.
Absolutely, @donimator – the NVA and espeically the NLF / VietCong hit all over the place. Now I will admit (and some strict historians may call me out a little on this) … that I include Khe Sanh in Part 03 as part of this article series. Many historians don’t consider Khe Sanh strictly “part” of the Tet Offensive, but another battle / offensive that just happened to be going on at the same time. There’s some validity to this argument, as the battles for Khe Sanh had been going on for at least 9 days when Tet hit, and… Read more »
Thank you for this episode and for some points you clarified in my reception of all this. I have a few questions and remarks. 1. The bombing attacks mentioned at the beginning were those of operation “Rolling Thunder”, right? I remember images of B-52s over North Vietnamese territory. Were the targets mainly military? 2. The third picture with GIAP on the side: Are all the red points objectives for the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese? A helluva lot, then, if they are! Everyone should be able to find his/her battle to recreate. Have there ever been so many separate battles… Read more »
@jemmy – Thanks for the comment and the great questions. I’ll try to answer below. Yes, the bombing of the north was Operation Rolling Thunder. Contrary to popular belief, it really WAS having a detrimental effect on North Vietnamese warfighting capacity and civilian morale, and more recent records indicate that it was one of the prime motivators for Party Secretary Le Duan to support the Tet Offensive to begin with. (Let’s either win now, or at least get some better leverage on the bargaining table in we have to cut a deal). Yes, there were hundreds of targets hit, that… Read more »
Thank you very much. Extremely good point on the victory conditions. US minimize casualties, VC maximize duration of holding the objective. Splendid! And for the helis, one could play Bolt Action with single-based 15mm minis or multi-bases with “unwounded” counters, and with the 15mm infantry one could use helis of the same scale, too. For your bunkers, on the pictures, are those single-based 15mm minis?
Very interesting that Giap lauded Vietnamese troops rather than Americans. I can follow his reasons for saying this. Good to in some way pull some South Vietnamese towards his side.
No worries at all, @jemmy – the issue with victory conditions for these kinds of games comes when you try to build them into some kind of larger operational context, i.e., a campaign or some such. Someone asked last week how you do this, how you make the outcomes of all these little battles add up to a larger result as part of a larger “outcome strategy.” I replied that I didn’t know (only half kidding), and when we figure it out, we need to go back in time and tell the Joint Chiefs and General Westmoreland. This difficulty in… Read more »
Revell have a 1:48 scale hard-plastic kit that I bought from Amazon for €9.
Revell 04476 – Bell UH-1 “Huey Hog” 1:48
Have not assembled it but am intending to use it in Zombie apocalypse 28-32mm tabletop
and board Games – as a scenario objective or as an abandoned vehicle to search for supplies.
@ Oriskany – another excellent article Series. Thank you!
Thanks very much, @aztecjaguar ! Man, those choppers are going to look great. They’re much tougher to put together than true tabletop miniatures and more fragile, but I think I actually like scale models for helicopters over “minis” – I typically don’t need that many of them, and the canopies tend to come in clear plastic, which winds up looking more accurate on the table. There are people and guys on this site who can paint resin or plastic with a real glass effect, I don’t I am one of them yet … I’m getting better, with blue-grays followed up… Read more »
Thanks, @cpauls – You ask: “How much fun is it walking through a jungle and hitting booby traps and blundering into ambushes?” – In the Steel panthers MBT game you mention – NOT AT ALL! I also don’t like sending out Huey gunships just to blunder into NVA DShK 12.7mm AA nests, or even worse, ZU-57-2s. 🙁 I’m actually hung up in a river crossing now. Dumped all my support points into off-board 105mm artillery and pounding the hell out of those hooches before I send my LVTP-5s and M48A3s across the river. (I always dump support points into artillery,… Read more »
Further to Huey’s running into AA trouble, what’s worse is if you’re counting on integral Huey’s for mobility, and the computer hands you a Mekong Delta scenario… nothing but flat swamp and low lying areas. Nowhere to hide. Sometimes you can fly along the rivers and not get hit, but even that is iffy.
Good luck on the crossing. Seems the NVA can even shrug off heavy artillery, and are almost fireproof. B-52’s, followed by Thuds with napalm, seem pretty effective to soften up objectives.
Another cracking piece @oriskany, one assumes you historical chaps know about the ‘NAM release from Battlefront in February?
Looking forward to the remaining parts, many thanks
Thanks, @bonesbs – yes … please rest assured that my man @davebpg addresses that in Part 05. 😀 Thanks for the comment and glad you liked the article! 😀
Awesome read. As always. Thumbs up Jim. A few years back we played a lot of Tour of Duty. It was great fun and we even “reenacted” a few of the larger operations. Like “Silver Bayonett 1” or “Junction City”. But never the Tet Offensive, due to our terrain restrictions. We mainly own the typical “jungle stuff”. And played on jungle/rocky tables. Most famously my Ia Drang table mentioned in the hobby plog here: http://www.beastsofwar.com/groups/historical-games/forum/topic/battle-of-ia-drang-table/ So I’m looking forward to the rest of the series. City fighting always has a much more intense feeling. Because even the best trained soldier… Read more »
Damn, I remember seeing that table. I know I saw it before because when I went to “+1” the post, it said I had already rated it. 😀 I really like the highlights you got on the peaks of that table, and the small plank bridge. Yes, the T-54/55s are a little anachronistic, but hey! Nothing says you can’t re-purpose that table for part of the 1962 or 1975 offensives – especially with all the armies @andre77 has been building. Have you seen his thread? His NVA is getting downright scary! 😀 😀
Absolutely. Just took a look at his army this weekend. And yeah the Tanks on the pictures in the threat are actually the @andre77 ‘s tanks.
Indeed it’s impressive, @bothi . Admittedly it’s not quite “Tet Offensive” (we get to North Vietnamese tanks at Tet in Part 03) – but the amount of armor that the NVA threw into the 1972 Spring Offensive and especially the 1975 “Ho Chi Minh” offensive is actually pretty staggering. Something like 600 tanks (T-34/85s, T-54s, T-55s, PT-76s) in the last drive on Saigon? So an army like @andre77 ‘s would definitely work for that.
I just had a look at your table. Terrific! I can also see battles in the Pacific theatre of WW II, New Guinea and Burma. island hopping (ok., not on the shore). You can possibly post a picture of your table with some Vietnam minis on it with a battle in full swing. I hope you still have both the table and your gaming friend 🙂
I think Andre has some on his thread. 😀
http://www.beastsofwar.com/groups/painting/forum/topic/vietnam-plog-by-andre77/
Yeah i still have those friends. And the table. We just haven’t got around playing Vietnam lately. But with a new edition I’m sure we will get back into it. We already talking about it and starting up our armies again ( @andre77 ‘s army plog for example). For pics check this link: http://www.hamburger-tactica.de/?p=10875&lang=en We did a presentation at the “Hamburger Tactica” miniatures convention in 2016. We tried to built up the enitre battle at Ia Drang (mainly the part seen in “We were soldiers”) in about a 6:1 ratio. So one mini would have been 6 soldier in reality.… Read more »
That sounds like an awesome game, @bothi . 😀 With 140 Americans at a x6 “command tactical” ratio, yeah, you’ve got a full reinforced battalion on the deck. And geez, the NVA, you’re looking at a full regiment … at least! The photos in that link look amazing! Man, I am so jealous of your sandbags. That’s the one thing in these articles / photos I’m not 100% pleased with. I sure wasn’t buying them (in the quantities I’d need) and I didn’t want to make them “sandbag by sandbag.” 😀 I also love the A1 Skyraider! Man, what a… Read more »
Thanks for the compliments.
And yeah of course I mean NLF. Or VC. Not NVA. Just a typo 😀
No worries, @bothi . And I knew you knew that, I just didn’t want others reading these posts to get mixed up. With all the FoW gaming you’ve done in Vietnam, you definitely know more about FoW in Vietnam than I do. 😀 I think we were actually talking about it briefly during the Flames of War 4th Ed Desert boot camp.
Respect, great article once again!!
You just cost me 150 quid on a load of 28mm Vietnam figures, you naughty Yank ; )
Thanks very much, @raglan , Very glad you liked the article.
But oh no! You dropped all that money on a whole army of 28mm Vietnam figures?!?!
Bwahaha! I have no regrets! 😀
Excellent as ever @oriskany. Brings back memories, as a 15 year old watching the news, the first televised war I can remember.
Man, @gremlin – then your probably saw some of the very same images I had to skip past when I was compositing graphics for this article series. Wargaming is one thing, but some of the graphic imagery that’s out there for the US Embassy attack I thought was a little out of the “BoW norm.” 😐 Then of course there’s the “Photo That Lost the War,” the South Vietnamese Saigon police chief Nguyen Ngoc Loam Loan executing that captured Viet Cong (Nguyen Van Lem) in the street – taken as the Tet Offensive was being put down in the streets… Read more »
Here is a link to an interesting article from the BBC yesterday about the circumstances related to the “Photo that lost the war” and what became of the photographer and the Saigon police chief in the years afterwards.
“Eddie Adams’ iconic Vietnam War photo: What happened next”
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42864421
That’s actually a really great article, @aztecjaguar . Nothing like context and background, the kind you can’t get from movies or usually from TV documentaries. Particularly interesting were the points: “the South Vietnamese military caught a suspected Viet Cong squad leader, Nguyen Van Lem, at the site of a mass grave of more than 30 civilians … Lem was believed to have murdered the wife and six children of one of Loan’s colleagues. The general fired his pistol …” And of course at the end: “Two people died in that photograph,” Adams wrote following Loan’s death from cancer in 1998.… Read more »
Wonderful write up of a subject I know so little about (and much of that is skewed through cinema / TV). Thanks @oriskany and all involved.
Thanks very much, @georgesealy – and thanks to @davebpg for some of the photos he helped me out with, and of course the BoW team for the great Weekender coverage and publishing support!
Good Morning Beasts of War
A good read @oriskany your article on the old Capital of Vietnam will be interesting with the strength of fighting in and around their.
Yep, that’s Hue City in Part 04. It features the same “Hotel Company, 2nd Battalion / 5th Marines” (part of Task Force X-Ray) that was featured in the movie Full Metal Jacket. 😀
Yes I watched a history program about the fighting their I think the only thing they never used was nuke’s to get the northern troops out in the end a very bloody situation.
Well, it depends on when in the war you’re talking about. Conventional weapons, absolutely, every kind of weapon was used. Electronic surveillance, PsyOps, you name it. Biological warfare? Not in the Tet Offensive. And not really unless you count communist using urine and feces on punji traps and the like. Chemical warfare? Well, technically no. Weapons like Agent Orange were targeted at foliage to deny communist insurgents cover, but obviously it can’t be denied that it had horrific effects on the people, crops, and even American veterans. So I would say that yes, chemical weapons were used, but not really… Read more »
Yes hue City they started trying to minimize the damage but ended with bomber’s and battleship’s flattening big chunks of the capital.
Another great article! I like how the table photos came out and especially the billboard commercials. 🙂 And Dave’s helicopters have some amazing artwork on the sides!
Thanks very much, @gladesrunner . @Davebpg indeed has an incredible air fleet. I only have four Hueys, actually only two when these photos were taken (and an F-4 Phantom).
So who’s the girl playing pool? 😀
I have no idea, but I like how the one guy in the picture is staring up at the billboard. The rest of the fireteam is all business, eyes down, muzzles in tactical arcs, but he’s gawking up at that billboard: “Wow, who is she?” 😀
Great read again
Thanks very much, @rasmus ! 😀
Another great article. I like the focus on communist strategy and objectives.
Know your enemy, as they say.
Thanks. I always feel that the better historical sources / books / documentaries or even movies have at least some kind of perspective from both sides … a quality I try to emulate.
I also love that your articles show things from both sides, but what I really like about them is I always learn a little something new. I am ashamed to admit, I always used to think the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese were just different names for the same group. I know you write them to entertain and inform about gaming, but I enjoy learning a little history while I read them.
Please don’t be “ashamed” – way too many people think this, and that includes the President, the Joint Chiefs, and the generals at MACV (Military Assistance Command – Vietnam) at the time. The persistent perception was that we were fighting to defend South Vietnam from North Vietnam, when in fact most of the people we were actually fighting (the NLF – Viet Cong) were South Vietnamese, kept in business by the corrupt Saigon government. The entire motivation for the US being there was thus essentially inverted. The people that our troops were supposed to be defending in many cases were… Read more »
Worrisome indeed, @oriskany, given that many of the mistakes from that war are being repeated today.
My impression has always been that Americans don’t want to learn those lessons as that would mean coming to terms with the idea that they lost the war. It’s as if national pride prevents them from looking objectively at the past.
okay. 😀
For those interested in reading more about the Vietnam War there must be whole sections in public libraries with accounts from almost every perspective. As a student in the late-1980s, I spent the summer holidays in my parents’ garden, binge-reading books on the Vietnam War, (and, once a day, pairs of RAF Jaguars, Phantoms, perhaps even Tornados, would fly overhead on their way to and from training sorties in the Derbyshire Peak District). Anyway, here is my Vietnam War bookshelf: • Chickenhawk by Robert Mason (a personal account of a Huey “Dust-off” pilot during the Battle of Ia-Drang Valley in… Read more »
I am definitely going to look up The Sorrow of War by Bao Linh. This is one of those wars that really has so little material available to it from the other side. When it comes to movies, I often “conditionally recommend” The Iron Triangle. It’s part of the late 1980s “everyone make Vietnam movies in the wake of Platoon and Full Metal Jacket” craze. It’s a little low-budget, a little cheesy, but at least it makes a real attempt to include characters, plotlines, and perspectives fromboth sides. The majority of the main characters are actually from the Viet Cong.… Read more »
@Oriskany Thanks for the link to The Iron Triangle – will definitely watch it later. “Novel without a Name” by Duong Thu Huong is another fascinating novel I read, about a North Vietnamese soldier in the PAVN, giving an insight into the day-to-day grueling conditions endured by the regular soldiers on the Ho Chi Minh Trail. And talking of the French in Indochina, I remember in his book “Chickenhawk”, Robert Mason refers to “Hell In A Very Small Place: The Siege Of Dien Bien Phu” and “Street Without Joy: The French Debacle in Indochina” both by Bernard Fall and published… Read more »
Thanks again, @aztecjaguar – Now before 1967, my “Vietnam knowledge” starts to get a little thin. And yes, that includes “watersheds” like Ia Drang, Operation Starlight, Tonkin Gulf, etc. To say nothing of the First Indochina War (46-54), or even further back, the OSS-Viet Minh connection fighting the Japanese during World War II. I have done some reading on Dien Bien Phu, no books, but some great magazine articles in Strategy& Tactics and Modern War magazines. In fact, that’s where I got the base image for for the Dien Bien Phu map I put together in Part 01 (I could… Read more »
Great overview article @oriskany, an overview with bite! I don’t think it was noticed at the time but warfare was changed and taken to a new dimension. At face value the communists were fighting using a Hybrid Warfare model. Which basically trades space for time while working on reducing the the opponent’s will to fight. By the 1960’s this is tried and tested method of warfare that is especially useful in Asymmetric warfare. However here we see an amazing shift on the centre of gravity. Using the enemy’s own news media against them to reduce their will to fight by… Read more »
Thanks very much, @jamesevans140 ! 😀 Just when I thought this thread had finally “gone to bed” – the new article goes up on Monday! I would agree with the “Hybrid Warfare” characterization, perhaps adding a “Phased” to it. You start with a guerrilla type warfare, cause enough damage and attract enough attention to get foreign aid (probably from an enemy of your enemy), and finally transition over to a more conventional warfare model for your end game. It’s a long process, usually taking a decade or so. The model goes back God knows how long, but would include the… Read more »
Anyone wishing to know more on Dien Bien Phi can watch Battleplan episode on Siege warfare. It covers this battle well and looks just as well on Khe Sanh.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UWHrqXw7Rus
For more basic background the Battleplan episode on guerrilla warfare is worth a look.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FxdX9vDxYEE
Finally the Battleplan episode on Urban warfare covers the Battle of Hue.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jv3JvJGlKWU
All three episodes are worth a watch.
Finally to get a much deeper understanding of Giap’s method and tactics reading Mao Tse-Tung’s On Guerrilla Warfare is well worth a read as this appears to be one of his main play books.
One thing I always liked about this series was how they’d compare two battles per episode, usually one successful and one unsuccessful (e.g., Dien Bien Phu and Khe Sanh). In the comparisons and contrasts they’d try to present (admittedly in a somewhat simplistic, populist. “History Channel” sort of way) the reasons for success and failure, and the critical factors that often lead to certain outcomes.
Great reply as usual @oriskany. By its very nature Hybrid Warfare is most definitely Phased and also it is cyclic. These are its primary strengths. I will have to go through my kindle library for you as there is an excellent book on what and what Hybrid Warfare is not. Also Mao only uses it as a framework so it is a different method in the same space. Like blitzkrieg and shock and awe are different yet look outwardly the same as they share the operational warfare space. Also form and function is far more rigidly defined in his method.… Read more »
Thanks, @jamesevans140 . 😀 A lot of great ideas in that post.