US strategies and tactics

The Americans used a variety of methods to fight the Vietcong in the jungles of Vietnam. The strategic hamlets (safe villages) policy was introduced under president Kennedy from 1962. Its purpose was to isolate the Vietcong from the villages of South Vietnam and deprive them of the supplies and soldiers they needed. This was done by moving the villagers away from the Vietcong and placing them in new villages surrounded by barbed wire and guns. By September 1962, about a quater of the South Vietnamese population was said to have been moved into safe villages. The policy failed. The peasants hated being moved from the villages that they and their ancestors had lived in for years. They hated having to leave their land and resented having to work building trenches to protect the villages. The policy became so unpopular that many peasants actually joined the Vietcong. The 'Hearts and Minds' campaign tried to win the Vietnamese peasants over by attempting to pursuade them that the Americans were on their side. This policy also failed.

In 1965, General Westmoreland began a more direct 'search and destroy' approach. Its purpose was simple - to find the Vietcong in the jungle and the villages and destroy them. US soldiers patrolled through the jungle and into the villages to find guerrillas. It was often impossible for the Americans to tell the difference between the guerrillas and the peasants. They often killed innocent civilians by mistake and sometimes deliberately. The war was now taking on a very racist quality. US soldiers called their opponents 'gooks' and had a tendency to shoot any they saw, and this increased the 'body count'. Some collected enemy ears as souvenirs. The Vietcong responded by torturing US prisoners.

Around villages controlled by the Vietnam there were networks of tunnels in which the gurrillas could hide from the Americans. They were built large enough for the guerrillas to hide in but too small for the Americans. Sometimes, in frustration, the Americans tortured Vietnamese villagers to find out where they were hiding the Vietcong. This angered the villagers, increasing their support for the communists and making sure that 'search and destroy' failed.

Bombing North Vietnam

The Americans began the bombing of North Vietnam in March 1965, under 'Operation Rolling Thunder'. Its aim was to destroy the economy of the North, and stop the support for the guerrillas in the South. It was only intended that the bombing would last 8 weeks. In fact, it lasted 8 years, during which time, 8,000,000 million bombs were dropped. This was over three times the number of bombs dropped in the whole of World War Two. The Americans may have taken care to ensure that only military targets were bombed but accidents were bound to occur, and civilians were killed. The bombing of military and industrial targets in North Vietnam failed. North Vietnam was mainly a farming country, which did not have many military or industrial targets. Most important of all, the Chinese and Russians were able to replace all the military supplies and troops which American bombing destroyed.