Military History Stuff

[Picaro]

Haven't downloaded it, so don't know what is in it yet. Don't worry, Democrats and Millennial, it also has pictures so even you illiterate deviants will have at least a few pages to look at.

Farrow's Military Encyclopedia: A Dictionary of Military Knowledge - Edward Samuel Farrow - Google Books

Farrow's Military Encyclopedia

Check out the 'Related Books' thing at the link, too.

 

[JGalt]

Might come in handy next time I want to bombard Fort Sumter.

 

[Picaro]

Might come in handy next time I want to bombard Fort Sumter.

As a matter of fact, there is a book on artillery practices dated 1860 in the 'Related Books' window there. lol

 

[waltky]

Granny says, "Dat's right - we coulda won dat war if it hadn't been fer alla hippies an' peaceniks...

Military Victory But Political Defeat: The Tet Offensive 50 Years Late
January 29, 2018 - Looking back a half century, to when they were young officers, their memories of the battle of Hue are still fresh. "What I saw was probably the most intense ground fighting on a sustained basis over several days of any other period during the war," says Howard Prince, an Army captain who worked with South Vietnamese forces. "We were under fire, under heavy fire," says Jim Coolican, a Marine captain.

Mike Downs, another Marine captain recalls, "We didn't know where the enemy was, in which direction even." The enemy forces were everywhere. Inside houses and tunnels and in the sewer system, and they captured the citadel, a massive castle-like expanse in this city that was once the imperial capital, just north of Saigon. It was the bloodiest battle of the Tet Offensive and also the entire war — and it all took American officials completely by surprise, says author Mark Bowden. "You had the incredible rose-colored reports coming from Gen. William Westmoreland, who was the American commander in Vietnam," says Bowden, who wrote the recent book Hue 1968. "[He was] assuring the American people that the end was near, that the enemy was really only capable of small kinds of ambushes in the far reaches of the country."

Two U.S. military policemen aid a wounded fellow MP during fighting in the U.S. Embassy compound in Saigon, at the beginning of the Tet Offensive. A Viet Cong suicide squad seized control of part of the compound and held it for about six hours before they were killed or captured.​

But then came Tet. North Vietnamese troops and their Viet Cong allies swept throughout cities and towns, into military bases, even breaching the walls of the U.S. Embassy grounds in Saigon. Back in Washington, President Lyndon Johnson called his defense secretary, Robert McNamara, and asked for an explanation. McNamara told him that the American people would realize that the enemy forces were stronger than they had been told, that the Pentagon was searching for targets but the Vietnamese enemies were still a "substantial force." A substantial force. But just six weeks earlier, a top White House official told New York Times reporter Gene Roberts the war was already over. Roberts was heading off to Vietnam, so National Security Adviser Walt Rostow gave him a story idea. He told Roberts about a new U.S. agricultural program, Roberts recalls, "which would double the rice yields in Vietnam and would win the peace now that Americans had won the war."

The battle for Hue

Far from winning, the Americans were barely holding on in Hue. Roberts saw terrified refugees, wounded marines and heavy gunfire. His first story said the Marines controlled just two blocks of the city. Reinforcements were needed. Not just troops but artillery. That was slow in coming. Jim Coolican, a Marine captain during the battle, said his own military superiors didn't understand how desperate the Marines were. The Americans were badly outnumbered. "The reaction we got and I'm paraphrasing now, but the reaction we got was that we were overreacting. It isn't that bad," remembers Coolican. More reporters showed up at Hue, including some from NBC. The pictures showed a desperate scene, talking to a Marine under fire who said he just wanted to go home.

Keeping his head low against North Vietnamese snipers, a medical corpsman scurries to help a U.S. Marine in Hue street fighting during the Tet Offensive.​

Still, Westmoreland downplayed the situation, telling reporters the real enemy objective was a large and remote Marine base at Khe Sanh. "In my opinion," Westmoreland told reporters, "this is diversionary to his main effort, which he had planned to take place in Quang Tri Province, from Laos toward Khe Sanh and across the demilitarized zone." But Howard Prince, a young Army officer fighting at Hue, said Westmoreland had it backwards. Khe Sanh was the diversion. "Westmoreland and his staff, the people who were advising him, became fixated on Khe Sanh," says Prince, "to the point where they simply were not capable of entertaining other information."

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