American methods of fighting in Vietnam
The US military believed that their funding and technology would help them to win the war against the communistSupporters of the communist movement or party. in Vietnam.
Operation Rolling Thunder
To supply their guerrillasSoldiers who do not fight in the open but stay hidden and attack using ambushes and booby traps. fighting in South Vietnam, the Viet CongCommunist guerrilla fighters from North Vietnam. had built up a network of sympathetic villages that they could use as secret bases. The route through the jungle that connected these bases together was known as the Ho Chi Minh trail A military route used by the North Vietnamese to supply the Vietcong during the Vietnam War. It ran beyond Vietnamese borders, down through Cambodia and Laos.
To break up this network and disrupt Viet Cong supplies, the USA began a bombing campaign along the Ho Chi Minh Trail that was called Operation Rolling ThunderA US air campaign involving the heavy bombing of North Vietnam and places suspected of harbouring the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War. This operation lasted from 1965 to 1968 and involved the heavy carpet-bombingDropping bombs across a wide area rather than just on a specific target. of large areas of North Vietnam.
Operation Rolling Thunder caused widespread disruption but failed to break the Viet Cong supply lines. The indiscriminateDone at random or without careful consideration. killing of large numbers of Vietnamese civilians increased opposition to US involvement in Vietnam back in the USA and around the world.
Chemical warfare
The Viet Cong used the dense jungle to cover their movements. As a result, the American forces in Vietnam decided to use chemical weapons to destroy the trees and buildings the Viet Cong were using to hide. These chemical weaponsWeapons that use strong chemicals to injure or kill people, or damage the environment. included:
- Agent OrangeA toxic defoliant used to strip the leaves from trees in Vietnam. is a defoliantChemicals used to kill leaves on trees and plants. that was used on plants and trees so that the American forces could more easily identify the Viet Cong and their supply lines. Around 82 million litres of Agent Orange were sprayed over thousands of square kilometres of jungle. Chemicals like this are toxic to humans, affecting the food they eat and the water they drink. Agent Orange contains a poisonous and carcinogenicA substance that can damage animal cells and cause cancer. toxin called dioxin. In Vietnam, this caused birth defects and serious illness among the people who came into contact with it.
- napalmA petroleum jelly used in flamethrowers or fire bombs that burns a victim at high temperatures. The fires it causes are very difficult to put out. is a chemical. Once it is burning, it sticks to whatever it touches. It burns at very high temperatures and cannot be put out using water. In Vietnam, if it landed on someone, it would burn through their clothes and their skin, causing terrible injuries or death.
As with Operation Rolling Thunder, most of the people affected by these weapons were actually Vietnamese civilians rather than the Viet Cong.
Search and destroy
The American army had built heavily defended bases in South Vietnam to protect themselves from Viet Cong attacks. They would go on search and destroyUS missions in Vietnam that involved sending troops to find Viet Cong suspects and destroy villages where they might be hiding. missions, flying out from these bases in helicopters to villages that were suspected of being used to hide the Viet Cong. They would land, search the village for members of the Viet Cong or their weapons, and then burn the village to the ground so that it could not be used as a Viet Cong base in the future.
However, this tactic did not get rid of the Viet Cong threat in South Vietnam. It increased support for the Viet Cong as these indiscriminate attacks often resulted in innocent civilians being killed. One example was the My LaiThe place where US soldiers massacred hundreds of unarmed Vietnamese civilians, mostly women and children, on 16 March 1968, during the Vietnam War. It has become a symbol of US war crimes in Vietnam. massacre of 1968. US troops targeted My Lai, a village of around 700 people in South Vietnam aiming to find members of the Viet Cong. In the massacre that followed over 300 civilians died.
