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Vietnam 1963-68 - Coggle Diagram

- - - - Deadly chemicals were used to defoliate the jungles and destroy crops, leaving guerillas and peasants without cover or food
      - US troops arrives in rural villages via helicopter on search and destroy missions to find the Vietcong, often destroying villages, livestock and crops and killing innocent civillians in the process
      - Operation Rolling Thunder involved the dropping of 864,000 tonnes of bombs on North Vietnam
    - - e.g. the US was able to suply around one million tonnes of war materials to South Vietnam every month
      - This meant that the US could fifth a war of attribution, hoping to wear down North Vietnam with their superior strengths and recources
      - The US had a stronger military background by the US's economic might
    - - US troops alienated the rural peasant population through its bad action
      - In the US there was a small but vocal minority opposed to the Vietnam war which grew after the Tet Offensive
      - The South Vietnamese Army was poory trained and badly led
      - Operation Rolling Thunder largely failed in its aims of undermining North Vietnam's economy and military forces as there were fare more valuable targets to bomb, in what was a largely agrarian country and lost recources were replaced by the USSR and China
  - - - Among the larger weapons, they had roket launchers, anti tank rifles, flamethrowers, artillery surface air to missiles and anti aircraft weapons. They also used hets, helicopters, tanks and naval craft
      - The Chinese provided 300,000 troops
      - The Vietcong were well supplied with weapons and equipment from China and Russia. The infantry carried Chinese or Soviet assult rifles and other hand combat weapons, and they had plentiful mines and hand grenades
      - The Ho Chi Minh Trail allowed the North Vietnamese to funnel resources to the South to assist the Vietcong
      - North Vietnamese troops had determination and, unlike the US forces, they knew the country and its people
      - The guerilla tactics not only harmed the US troops but created a contrast sense of rear and unease
      - The factor of the North Vietnamese forces on the whole showed more respect towaeds the peasants than US troops meant that peasants were more willing to join the Vietcong
    - - They could not match the weaponary of the US supplied South Vietnamese forces
      - There was no guarunteed support among South Vietnamese peasants - they might be sold out / sniched on
      - The North did not have the resources or economy to sustain a war without support from the USSR and China
      - After the Tet Offensive, the North Vietnamese Army never recovered to its precision strength
    - - Their primary focus was on guerrilla tactics, which included the use of complex tunnel systems, boobey traps and ambushes ("grabbing them by the belt")
      - The Ho Chi Minh Trail was used to assist the Vietcong in South Vietnam
      - North Vietamese forces (consisting of the North Vietnamese army and the Vietcong) enaged in limited conventional warfare