F-35s jets and S-400 missiles

[Daryl Hunt]

A really simple reason that Russia cannot withstand a long term conflict with the US is the size of the Russian economy, and the inefficiency of Socialist warcraft manufacturing.

???!!!.....they withstood Germany and Germany's Aliies
..tiny North Vietnam withstood the MIGHTY US for a VERY long term conflict AND Vietnam withstood and defeated France....with France and the US using much:
more sophisticated/more lethal/etc weapons
Naval and air supremacy
..stone age Afghanistan withstood the MIGHTY Britain and Russia

Russia is a pale shadow of the WWII USSR. And the only reason the USSR survived the first year of the German invasion is that the Germans sucked at logistics. Most of the German army used horse drawn wagons to haul supplies. As for the PRVN standing off the USA, that only happened because we allowed the Soviets and Chinese a free hand in supplying the PRVN with everything from food to SAMs. When we finally decided to close the rail links to China and block Haiphong harbor with mines, the PRVN begged to sign the Paris Peace Accords because they were out of munitions and the North Vietnamese population was nearing starvation. The PRVN stood off the USA for the same reason the thirteen American Colonies stood off Great Britain; the war wasn’t very important to the great power, it was unpopular at home, and the Colonies (and the PRVN) were receiving monetary and military support from a major power that was free from attack by the great power involved in the war.

plain and simple --we ''lost'' in Nam--it was unwinnable
--Russia was too big with too big of a population for Germany to defeat
here is the thread on Nam

Vietnam War was unwinnable

www.usmessageboard.com

Okay, let's look at the blunders.

The US Ground Pounders ALWAYS defeated the enemy. But the enemy was allowed to resupply over and over again. Now we come to the real failure and that was in the Air Power both USAF and Navy (including Marines). They were NEVER allowed to do what they knew how to do with the exception of the two Linebackers.

We lost more F-105 Pilots than we had. WE ended up training Cargo Pilots to pilot the Nickels. Why was that? The Nickels always flew the same racetrack flight paths at the same time every day. All the enemy had to do is position their ground installations along those paths and wait. There were viable targets that were placed off limits like Dams and Power Plants. We didn't touch the railroad from China to Hanoi. The Missions were micro managed by the McNamarra and Johnson. Johnson even bragged about it. Then came Nixon and Abrams. Abrams was asked what they should do and he said, not in his exact words, do what you need to do. That means, as of 1969, the Racetracks ended and we started hitting those off limits targets. China was told that the Railroad was going to be destroyed. They complained that the Railroad Workers were all Chinese. Nixon told them they needed to get their Chinese Workers out of there if they didn't want to lose them. All of a sudden, the resupplying was cut deeply and the Air Attacks could come at any time from any direction. The NV had to cover a much larger area with their Sams and AAs. All of a sudden, they weren't effective anymore. And the Buffs started hitting hard as well. In 1971, Abrams made the brag that he could fly in a Chopper anywhere in South Vietnam safely without fear of being shot down. He was right. And the Caches just outside of South Vietnam were being destroyed as they were being built up. In late Dec 1972, Nixon allowed the USAF, Navy and Marines to do Linebacker II because the NV were refusing to go to the Paris Peace Talks. It took them 11 days to decide to reenter the peace talks. The War was won.

Now for how it was lost. In the Peace Talks, the agreement didn't have anything preventing the NV from building up supplies and forces in Laos and Cambodia. By then Laos had changed in government where it was sympathetic to the NV and not the SV. Late 1972, the USAF was asked (demanded) to leave Laos. And Cambodia didn't have much of a government to begin with to have any say in anything. So in 1973, the US does a drastic troop reduction. The US promised that we would resupply the SV and provide Air Power in the event of the NV attack.

When the NV attacked with a well trained and battle hardened army of 550,000, they came up against a 1.3 million SV army. The math falls apart on this one. The SV had only enough rifles for 400,000 troops and enough ammo for a Mag for each one. Plus, their Fuel for their trucks,tanks and recips were all but depleted. They had almost no Jet Fuel either. The promise of the resupply was withdrawn by Ford. Plus, the Air Power that was sitting in Thailand wasn't used either. I knew it was lost when a captured F-5 with a Red Star painted on it's tail attacked the SV Palace in Saigon. The NV took those 2 years and built up hard in plain friggin sight.

Ford, Congress and the American People threw the South Vietnamese under the bus.

without air and choppers, the ground pounders would've been in big trouble
..the NVA were good..greatly respected by the US forces

Battle of Ia Drang - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

And vice versa. Even today, there is NO Army that can go up against the full might of the US Army if you keep the Politicos out of it. This is why on a unit of about 300 Russians tried and got eaten alive. And then, to cover Russias ass, Russia announced they were mercenaries. No Country or anyone wishes to go against the US Army in a open field battle.

 

[Daryl Hunt]

A really simple reason that Russia cannot withstand a long term conflict with the US is the size of the Russian economy, and the inefficiency of Socialist warcraft manufacturing.

???!!!.....they withstood Germany and Germany's Aliies
..tiny North Vietnam withstood the MIGHTY US for a VERY long term conflict AND Vietnam withstood and defeated France....with France and the US using much:
more sophisticated/more lethal/etc weapons
Naval and air supremacy
..stone age Afghanistan withstood the MIGHTY Britain and Russia

Russia is a pale shadow of the WWII USSR. And the only reason the USSR survived the first year of the German invasion is that the Germans sucked at logistics. Most of the German army used horse drawn wagons to haul supplies. As for the PRVN standing off the USA, that only happened because we allowed the Soviets and Chinese a free hand in supplying the PRVN with everything from food to SAMs. When we finally decided to close the rail links to China and block Haiphong harbor with mines, the PRVN begged to sign the Paris Peace Accords because they were out of munitions and the North Vietnamese population was nearing starvation. The PRVN stood off the USA for the same reason the thirteen American Colonies stood off Great Britain; the war wasn’t very important to the great power, it was unpopular at home, and the Colonies (and the PRVN) were receiving monetary and military support from a major power that was free from attack by the great power involved in the war.

plain and simple --we ''lost'' in Nam--it was unwinnable
--Russia was too big with too big of a population for Germany to defeat
here is the thread on Nam

Vietnam War was unwinnable

www.usmessageboard.com

Okay, let's look at the blunders.

The US Ground Pounders ALWAYS defeated the enemy. But the enemy was allowed to resupply over and over again. Now we come to the real failure and that was in the Air Power both USAF and Navy (including Marines). They were NEVER allowed to do what they knew how to do with the exception of the two Linebackers.

We lost more F-105 Pilots than we had. WE ended up training Cargo Pilots to pilot the Nickels. Why was that? The Nickels always flew the same racetrack flight paths at the same time every day. All the enemy had to do is position their ground installations along those paths and wait. There were viable targets that were placed off limits like Dams and Power Plants. We didn't touch the railroad from China to Hanoi. The Missions were micro managed by the McNamarra and Johnson. Johnson even bragged about it. Then came Nixon and Abrams. Abrams was asked what they should do and he said, not in his exact words, do what you need to do. That means, as of 1969, the Racetracks ended and we started hitting those off limits targets. China was told that the Railroad was going to be destroyed. They complained that the Railroad Workers were all Chinese. Nixon told them they needed to get their Chinese Workers out of there if they didn't want to lose them. All of a sudden, the resupplying was cut deeply and the Air Attacks could come at any time from any direction. The NV had to cover a much larger area with their Sams and AAs. All of a sudden, they weren't effective anymore. And the Buffs started hitting hard as well. In 1971, Abrams made the brag that he could fly in a Chopper anywhere in South Vietnam safely without fear of being shot down. He was right. And the Caches just outside of South Vietnam were being destroyed as they were being built up. In late Dec 1972, Nixon allowed the USAF, Navy and Marines to do Linebacker II because the NV were refusing to go to the Paris Peace Talks. It took them 11 days to decide to reenter the peace talks. The War was won.

Now for how it was lost. In the Peace Talks, the agreement didn't have anything preventing the NV from building up supplies and forces in Laos and Cambodia. By then Laos had changed in government where it was sympathetic to the NV and not the SV. Late 1972, the USAF was asked (demanded) to leave Laos. And Cambodia didn't have much of a government to begin with to have any say in anything. So in 1973, the US does a drastic troop reduction. The US promised that we would resupply the SV and provide Air Power in the event of the NV attack.

When the NV attacked with a well trained and battle hardened army of 550,000, they came up against a 1.3 million SV army. The math falls apart on this one. The SV had only enough rifles for 400,000 troops and enough ammo for a Mag for each one. Plus, their Fuel for their trucks,tanks and recips were all but depleted. They had almost no Jet Fuel either. The promise of the resupply was withdrawn by Ford. Plus, the Air Power that was sitting in Thailand wasn't used either. I knew it was lost when a captured F-5 with a Red Star painted on it's tail attacked the SV Palace in Saigon. The NV took those 2 years and built up hard in plain friggin sight.

Ford, Congress and the American People threw the South Vietnamese under the bus.

.....no, the ground pounders didn't do it--the air and choppers provided a great advantage
..here, the ground pounders got pounded...then they had to use choppers/etc
2 whole platoons decimated/plus
without air and choppers, it would've been worse

Operation Buffalo (1967) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

400 Marines afforded themselves very well against a much superior force. And they not only kept the territory, they took territory.

I was involved in an Overrun. The Overrun failed. They had more than 2000 NVA, we had about 100 on the line. I was assigned to a bunker. We shot, shot and shot. It was so bad that we couldn't see what we were shooting at. But with 2000+ targets, it wasn't hard to hit them. And our M-60 went through many barrels. I went through 6 M-16s. You fired till it was empty, reloaded, fired till it was empty (wash, repeat....) until the barrel was glowing in the dark. You threw the 16 out ahead of the Bunker and grabbed another one.....Wash, Rinse, repeat..... There were M-16s, M-60s, M2s, M-203s being melted down to slag. It wasn't until the next day that my hearing came back but it took a few days for the ringing to stop.

Unlike those marines, we were dug in and expected them. Our losses? I never asked.

 

[Dayton3]

A really simple reason that Russia cannot withstand a long term conflict with the US is the size of the Russian economy, and the inefficiency of Socialist warcraft manufacturing.

???!!!.....they withstood Germany and Germany's Aliies
..tiny North Vietnam withstood the MIGHTY US for a VERY long term conflict AND Vietnam withstood and defeated France....with France and the US using much:
more sophisticated/more lethal/etc weapons
Naval and air supremacy
..stone age Afghanistan withstood the MIGHTY Britain and Russia

Russia is a pale shadow of the WWII USSR. And the only reason the USSR survived the first year of the German invasion is that the Germans sucked at logistics. Most of the German army used horse drawn wagons to haul supplies. As for the PRVN standing off the USA, that only happened because we allowed the Soviets and Chinese a free hand in supplying the PRVN with everything from food to SAMs. When we finally decided to close the rail links to China and block Haiphong harbor with mines, the PRVN begged to sign the Paris Peace Accords because they were out of munitions and the North Vietnamese population was nearing starvation. The PRVN stood off the USA for the same reason the thirteen American Colonies stood off Great Britain; the war wasn’t very important to the great power, it was unpopular at home, and the Colonies (and the PRVN) were receiving monetary and military support from a major power that was free from attack by the great power involved in the war.

plain and simple --we ''lost'' in Nam--it was unwinnable
--Russia was too big with too big of a population for Germany to defeat
here is the thread on Nam

Vietnam War was unwinnable

www.usmessageboard.com

Okay, let's look at the blunders.

The US Ground Pounders ALWAYS defeated the enemy. But the enemy was allowed to resupply over and over again. Now we come to the real failure and that was in the Air Power both USAF and Navy (including Marines). They were NEVER allowed to do what they knew how to do with the exception of the two Linebackers.

We lost more F-105 Pilots than we had. WE ended up training Cargo Pilots to pilot the Nickels. Why was that? The Nickels always flew the same racetrack flight paths at the same time every day. All the enemy had to do is position their ground installations along those paths and wait. There were viable targets that were placed off limits like Dams and Power Plants. We didn't touch the railroad from China to Hanoi. The Missions were micro managed by the McNamarra and Johnson. Johnson even bragged about it. Then came Nixon and Abrams. Abrams was asked what they should do and he said, not in his exact words, do what you need to do. That means, as of 1969, the Racetracks ended and we started hitting those off limits targets. China was told that the Railroad was going to be destroyed. They complained that the Railroad Workers were all Chinese. Nixon told them they needed to get their Chinese Workers out of there if they didn't want to lose them. All of a sudden, the resupplying was cut deeply and the Air Attacks could come at any time from any direction. The NV had to cover a much larger area with their Sams and AAs. All of a sudden, they weren't effective anymore. And the Buffs started hitting hard as well. In 1971, Abrams made the brag that he could fly in a Chopper anywhere in South Vietnam safely without fear of being shot down. He was right. And the Caches just outside of South Vietnam were being destroyed as they were being built up. In late Dec 1972, Nixon allowed the USAF, Navy and Marines to do Linebacker II because the NV were refusing to go to the Paris Peace Talks. It took them 11 days to decide to reenter the peace talks. The War was won.

Now for how it was lost. In the Peace Talks, the agreement didn't have anything preventing the NV from building up supplies and forces in Laos and Cambodia. By then Laos had changed in government where it was sympathetic to the NV and not the SV. Late 1972, the USAF was asked (demanded) to leave Laos. And Cambodia didn't have much of a government to begin with to have any say in anything. So in 1973, the US does a drastic troop reduction. The US promised that we would resupply the SV and provide Air Power in the event of the NV attack.

When the NV attacked with a well trained and battle hardened army of 550,000, they came up against a 1.3 million SV army. The math falls apart on this one. The SV had only enough rifles for 400,000 troops and enough ammo for a Mag for each one. Plus, their Fuel for their trucks,tanks and recips were all but depleted. They had almost no Jet Fuel either. The promise of the resupply was withdrawn by Ford. Plus, the Air Power that was sitting in Thailand wasn't used either. I knew it was lost when a captured F-5 with a Red Star painted on it's tail attacked the SV Palace in Saigon. The NV took those 2 years and built up hard in plain friggin sight.

Ford, Congress and the American People threw the South Vietnamese under the bus.

..what's your point? the US could've won??!!

The US could not win. It never could win. The only way for the US to win would be to completely take over SV like the French did. Then, all of a sudden, even the friendlies ain't so friendly anymore.

If we had flattened Hanoi in 1965 I would bet good money that the North Vietnamese would have thrown in the towel. They would've spent the next ten years rebuilding their capital and would've had no energy to wage the war in South Vietnam.

With a ten year respite, South Vietnam would probably have straightened itself out and been too strong for the communists to attempt to take over.

 

[harmonica]

A really simple reason that Russia cannot withstand a long term conflict with the US is the size of the Russian economy, and the inefficiency of Socialist warcraft manufacturing.

???!!!.....they withstood Germany and Germany's Aliies
..tiny North Vietnam withstood the MIGHTY US for a VERY long term conflict AND Vietnam withstood and defeated France....with France and the US using much:
more sophisticated/more lethal/etc weapons
Naval and air supremacy
..stone age Afghanistan withstood the MIGHTY Britain and Russia

Russia is a pale shadow of the WWII USSR. And the only reason the USSR survived the first year of the German invasion is that the Germans sucked at logistics. Most of the German army used horse drawn wagons to haul supplies. As for the PRVN standing off the USA, that only happened because we allowed the Soviets and Chinese a free hand in supplying the PRVN with everything from food to SAMs. When we finally decided to close the rail links to China and block Haiphong harbor with mines, the PRVN begged to sign the Paris Peace Accords because they were out of munitions and the North Vietnamese population was nearing starvation. The PRVN stood off the USA for the same reason the thirteen American Colonies stood off Great Britain; the war wasn’t very important to the great power, it was unpopular at home, and the Colonies (and the PRVN) were receiving monetary and military support from a major power that was free from attack by the great power involved in the war.

plain and simple --we ''lost'' in Nam--it was unwinnable
--Russia was too big with too big of a population for Germany to defeat
here is the thread on Nam

Vietnam War was unwinnable

www.usmessageboard.com

Okay, let's look at the blunders.

The US Ground Pounders ALWAYS defeated the enemy. But the enemy was allowed to resupply over and over again. Now we come to the real failure and that was in the Air Power both USAF and Navy (including Marines). They were NEVER allowed to do what they knew how to do with the exception of the two Linebackers.

We lost more F-105 Pilots than we had. WE ended up training Cargo Pilots to pilot the Nickels. Why was that? The Nickels always flew the same racetrack flight paths at the same time every day. All the enemy had to do is position their ground installations along those paths and wait. There were viable targets that were placed off limits like Dams and Power Plants. We didn't touch the railroad from China to Hanoi. The Missions were micro managed by the McNamarra and Johnson. Johnson even bragged about it. Then came Nixon and Abrams. Abrams was asked what they should do and he said, not in his exact words, do what you need to do. That means, as of 1969, the Racetracks ended and we started hitting those off limits targets. China was told that the Railroad was going to be destroyed. They complained that the Railroad Workers were all Chinese. Nixon told them they needed to get their Chinese Workers out of there if they didn't want to lose them. All of a sudden, the resupplying was cut deeply and the Air Attacks could come at any time from any direction. The NV had to cover a much larger area with their Sams and AAs. All of a sudden, they weren't effective anymore. And the Buffs started hitting hard as well. In 1971, Abrams made the brag that he could fly in a Chopper anywhere in South Vietnam safely without fear of being shot down. He was right. And the Caches just outside of South Vietnam were being destroyed as they were being built up. In late Dec 1972, Nixon allowed the USAF, Navy and Marines to do Linebacker II because the NV were refusing to go to the Paris Peace Talks. It took them 11 days to decide to reenter the peace talks. The War was won.

Now for how it was lost. In the Peace Talks, the agreement didn't have anything preventing the NV from building up supplies and forces in Laos and Cambodia. By then Laos had changed in government where it was sympathetic to the NV and not the SV. Late 1972, the USAF was asked (demanded) to leave Laos. And Cambodia didn't have much of a government to begin with to have any say in anything. So in 1973, the US does a drastic troop reduction. The US promised that we would resupply the SV and provide Air Power in the event of the NV attack.

When the NV attacked with a well trained and battle hardened army of 550,000, they came up against a 1.3 million SV army. The math falls apart on this one. The SV had only enough rifles for 400,000 troops and enough ammo for a Mag for each one. Plus, their Fuel for their trucks,tanks and recips were all but depleted. They had almost no Jet Fuel either. The promise of the resupply was withdrawn by Ford. Plus, the Air Power that was sitting in Thailand wasn't used either. I knew it was lost when a captured F-5 with a Red Star painted on it's tail attacked the SV Palace in Saigon. The NV took those 2 years and built up hard in plain friggin sight.

Ford, Congress and the American People threw the South Vietnamese under the bus.

..what's your point? the US could've won??!!

The US could not win. It never could win. The only way for the US to win would be to completely take over SV like the French did. Then, all of a sudden, even the friendlies ain't so friendly anymore.

If we had flattened Hanoi in 1965 I would bet good money that the North Vietnamese would have thrown in the towel. They would've spent the next ten years rebuilding their capital and would've had no energy to wage the war in South Vietnam.

With a ten year respite, South Vietnam would probably have straightened itself out and been too strong for the communists to attempt to take over.

--you people don't know much about wars/history/etc--you think in TV/movie/unrealistic/one dimensional terms:
..I've been over this same thing a million times
....Germany was a much more industrious country than NVietnam--and we pounded the shit out of it!!! --and they did not surrender
..we destroyed almost all of Japan's major cities--and they did not surrender
...even after the A-bombs, the vote to surrender was tied 3-3 .....
..we pounded Iraq--no surrender
...we pounded the Taliban--no surrender
NO--Hanoi would not have thrown in the towel

.

 

[harmonica]

A really simple reason that Russia cannot withstand a long term conflict with the US is the size of the Russian economy, and the inefficiency of Socialist warcraft manufacturing.

???!!!.....they withstood Germany and Germany's Aliies
..tiny North Vietnam withstood the MIGHTY US for a VERY long term conflict AND Vietnam withstood and defeated France....with France and the US using much:
more sophisticated/more lethal/etc weapons
Naval and air supremacy
..stone age Afghanistan withstood the MIGHTY Britain and Russia

Russia is a pale shadow of the WWII USSR. And the only reason the USSR survived the first year of the German invasion is that the Germans sucked at logistics. Most of the German army used horse drawn wagons to haul supplies. As for the PRVN standing off the USA, that only happened because we allowed the Soviets and Chinese a free hand in supplying the PRVN with everything from food to SAMs. When we finally decided to close the rail links to China and block Haiphong harbor with mines, the PRVN begged to sign the Paris Peace Accords because they were out of munitions and the North Vietnamese population was nearing starvation. The PRVN stood off the USA for the same reason the thirteen American Colonies stood off Great Britain; the war wasn’t very important to the great power, it was unpopular at home, and the Colonies (and the PRVN) were receiving monetary and military support from a major power that was free from attack by the great power involved in the war.

plain and simple --we ''lost'' in Nam--it was unwinnable
--Russia was too big with too big of a population for Germany to defeat
here is the thread on Nam

Vietnam War was unwinnable

www.usmessageboard.com

Okay, let's look at the blunders.

The US Ground Pounders ALWAYS defeated the enemy. But the enemy was allowed to resupply over and over again. Now we come to the real failure and that was in the Air Power both USAF and Navy (including Marines). They were NEVER allowed to do what they knew how to do with the exception of the two Linebackers.

We lost more F-105 Pilots than we had. WE ended up training Cargo Pilots to pilot the Nickels. Why was that? The Nickels always flew the same racetrack flight paths at the same time every day. All the enemy had to do is position their ground installations along those paths and wait. There were viable targets that were placed off limits like Dams and Power Plants. We didn't touch the railroad from China to Hanoi. The Missions were micro managed by the McNamarra and Johnson. Johnson even bragged about it. Then came Nixon and Abrams. Abrams was asked what they should do and he said, not in his exact words, do what you need to do. That means, as of 1969, the Racetracks ended and we started hitting those off limits targets. China was told that the Railroad was going to be destroyed. They complained that the Railroad Workers were all Chinese. Nixon told them they needed to get their Chinese Workers out of there if they didn't want to lose them. All of a sudden, the resupplying was cut deeply and the Air Attacks could come at any time from any direction. The NV had to cover a much larger area with their Sams and AAs. All of a sudden, they weren't effective anymore. And the Buffs started hitting hard as well. In 1971, Abrams made the brag that he could fly in a Chopper anywhere in South Vietnam safely without fear of being shot down. He was right. And the Caches just outside of South Vietnam were being destroyed as they were being built up. In late Dec 1972, Nixon allowed the USAF, Navy and Marines to do Linebacker II because the NV were refusing to go to the Paris Peace Talks. It took them 11 days to decide to reenter the peace talks. The War was won.

Now for how it was lost. In the Peace Talks, the agreement didn't have anything preventing the NV from building up supplies and forces in Laos and Cambodia. By then Laos had changed in government where it was sympathetic to the NV and not the SV. Late 1972, the USAF was asked (demanded) to leave Laos. And Cambodia didn't have much of a government to begin with to have any say in anything. So in 1973, the US does a drastic troop reduction. The US promised that we would resupply the SV and provide Air Power in the event of the NV attack.

When the NV attacked with a well trained and battle hardened army of 550,000, they came up against a 1.3 million SV army. The math falls apart on this one. The SV had only enough rifles for 400,000 troops and enough ammo for a Mag for each one. Plus, their Fuel for their trucks,tanks and recips were all but depleted. They had almost no Jet Fuel either. The promise of the resupply was withdrawn by Ford. Plus, the Air Power that was sitting in Thailand wasn't used either. I knew it was lost when a captured F-5 with a Red Star painted on it's tail attacked the SV Palace in Saigon. The NV took those 2 years and built up hard in plain friggin sight.

Ford, Congress and the American People threw the South Vietnamese under the bus.

..what's your point? the US could've won??!!

The US could not win. It never could win. The only way for the US to win would be to completely take over SV like the French did. Then, all of a sudden, even the friendlies ain't so friendly anymore.

If we had flattened Hanoi in 1965 I would bet good money that the North Vietnamese would have thrown in the towel. They would've spent the next ten years rebuilding their capital and would've had no energy to wage the war in South Vietnam.

With a ten year respite, South Vietnam would probably have straightened itself out and been too strong for the communists to attempt to take over.

ever hear of Dresden or Hamburg????

 

[harmonica]

A really simple reason that Russia cannot withstand a long term conflict with the US is the size of the Russian economy, and the inefficiency of Socialist warcraft manufacturing.

???!!!.....they withstood Germany and Germany's Aliies
..tiny North Vietnam withstood the MIGHTY US for a VERY long term conflict AND Vietnam withstood and defeated France....with France and the US using much:
more sophisticated/more lethal/etc weapons
Naval and air supremacy
..stone age Afghanistan withstood the MIGHTY Britain and Russia

Russia is a pale shadow of the WWII USSR. And the only reason the USSR survived the first year of the German invasion is that the Germans sucked at logistics. Most of the German army used horse drawn wagons to haul supplies. As for the PRVN standing off the USA, that only happened because we allowed the Soviets and Chinese a free hand in supplying the PRVN with everything from food to SAMs. When we finally decided to close the rail links to China and block Haiphong harbor with mines, the PRVN begged to sign the Paris Peace Accords because they were out of munitions and the North Vietnamese population was nearing starvation. The PRVN stood off the USA for the same reason the thirteen American Colonies stood off Great Britain; the war wasn’t very important to the great power, it was unpopular at home, and the Colonies (and the PRVN) were receiving monetary and military support from a major power that was free from attack by the great power involved in the war.

plain and simple --we ''lost'' in Nam--it was unwinnable
--Russia was too big with too big of a population for Germany to defeat
here is the thread on Nam

Vietnam War was unwinnable

www.usmessageboard.com

Okay, let's look at the blunders.

The US Ground Pounders ALWAYS defeated the enemy. But the enemy was allowed to resupply over and over again. Now we come to the real failure and that was in the Air Power both USAF and Navy (including Marines). They were NEVER allowed to do what they knew how to do with the exception of the two Linebackers.

We lost more F-105 Pilots than we had. WE ended up training Cargo Pilots to pilot the Nickels. Why was that? The Nickels always flew the same racetrack flight paths at the same time every day. All the enemy had to do is position their ground installations along those paths and wait. There were viable targets that were placed off limits like Dams and Power Plants. We didn't touch the railroad from China to Hanoi. The Missions were micro managed by the McNamarra and Johnson. Johnson even bragged about it. Then came Nixon and Abrams. Abrams was asked what they should do and he said, not in his exact words, do what you need to do. That means, as of 1969, the Racetracks ended and we started hitting those off limits targets. China was told that the Railroad was going to be destroyed. They complained that the Railroad Workers were all Chinese. Nixon told them they needed to get their Chinese Workers out of there if they didn't want to lose them. All of a sudden, the resupplying was cut deeply and the Air Attacks could come at any time from any direction. The NV had to cover a much larger area with their Sams and AAs. All of a sudden, they weren't effective anymore. And the Buffs started hitting hard as well. In 1971, Abrams made the brag that he could fly in a Chopper anywhere in South Vietnam safely without fear of being shot down. He was right. And the Caches just outside of South Vietnam were being destroyed as they were being built up. In late Dec 1972, Nixon allowed the USAF, Navy and Marines to do Linebacker II because the NV were refusing to go to the Paris Peace Talks. It took them 11 days to decide to reenter the peace talks. The War was won.

Now for how it was lost. In the Peace Talks, the agreement didn't have anything preventing the NV from building up supplies and forces in Laos and Cambodia. By then Laos had changed in government where it was sympathetic to the NV and not the SV. Late 1972, the USAF was asked (demanded) to leave Laos. And Cambodia didn't have much of a government to begin with to have any say in anything. So in 1973, the US does a drastic troop reduction. The US promised that we would resupply the SV and provide Air Power in the event of the NV attack.

When the NV attacked with a well trained and battle hardened army of 550,000, they came up against a 1.3 million SV army. The math falls apart on this one. The SV had only enough rifles for 400,000 troops and enough ammo for a Mag for each one. Plus, their Fuel for their trucks,tanks and recips were all but depleted. They had almost no Jet Fuel either. The promise of the resupply was withdrawn by Ford. Plus, the Air Power that was sitting in Thailand wasn't used either. I knew it was lost when a captured F-5 with a Red Star painted on it's tail attacked the SV Palace in Saigon. The NV took those 2 years and built up hard in plain friggin sight.

Ford, Congress and the American People threw the South Vietnamese under the bus.

.....no, the ground pounders didn't do it--the air and choppers provided a great advantage
..here, the ground pounders got pounded...then they had to use choppers/etc
2 whole platoons decimated/plus
without air and choppers, it would've been worse

Operation Buffalo (1967) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

400 Marines afforded themselves very well against a much superior force. And they not only kept the territory, they took territory.

I was involved in an Overrun. The Overrun failed. They had more than 2000 NVA, we had about 100 on the line. I was assigned to a bunker. We shot, shot and shot. It was so bad that we couldn't see what we were shooting at. But with 2000+ targets, it wasn't hard to hit them. And our M-60 went through many barrels. I went through 6 M-16s. You fired till it was empty, reloaded, fired till it was empty (wash, repeat....) until the barrel was glowing in the dark. You threw the 16 out ahead of the Bunker and grabbed another one.....Wash, Rinse, repeat..... There were M-16s, M-60s, M2s, M-203s being melted down to slag. It wasn't until the next day that my hearing came back but it took a few days for the ringing to stop.

Unlike those marines, we were dug in and expected them. Our losses? I never asked.

Marines should be capitalised
...the Marines got beat in the ambush at Buffalo
...without air and choppers, the US ground pounders would've lost a lot more

 

[harmonica]

A really simple reason that Russia cannot withstand a long term conflict with the US is the size of the Russian economy, and the inefficiency of Socialist warcraft manufacturing.

???!!!.....they withstood Germany and Germany's Aliies
..tiny North Vietnam withstood the MIGHTY US for a VERY long term conflict AND Vietnam withstood and defeated France....with France and the US using much:
more sophisticated/more lethal/etc weapons
Naval and air supremacy
..stone age Afghanistan withstood the MIGHTY Britain and Russia

Russia is a pale shadow of the WWII USSR. And the only reason the USSR survived the first year of the German invasion is that the Germans sucked at logistics. Most of the German army used horse drawn wagons to haul supplies. As for the PRVN standing off the USA, that only happened because we allowed the Soviets and Chinese a free hand in supplying the PRVN with everything from food to SAMs. When we finally decided to close the rail links to China and block Haiphong harbor with mines, the PRVN begged to sign the Paris Peace Accords because they were out of munitions and the North Vietnamese population was nearing starvation. The PRVN stood off the USA for the same reason the thirteen American Colonies stood off Great Britain; the war wasn’t very important to the great power, it was unpopular at home, and the Colonies (and the PRVN) were receiving monetary and military support from a major power that was free from attack by the great power involved in the war.

plain and simple --we ''lost'' in Nam--it was unwinnable
--Russia was too big with too big of a population for Germany to defeat
here is the thread on Nam

Vietnam War was unwinnable

www.usmessageboard.com

Okay, let's look at the blunders.

The US Ground Pounders ALWAYS defeated the enemy. But the enemy was allowed to resupply over and over again. Now we come to the real failure and that was in the Air Power both USAF and Navy (including Marines). They were NEVER allowed to do what they knew how to do with the exception of the two Linebackers.

We lost more F-105 Pilots than we had. WE ended up training Cargo Pilots to pilot the Nickels. Why was that? The Nickels always flew the same racetrack flight paths at the same time every day. All the enemy had to do is position their ground installations along those paths and wait. There were viable targets that were placed off limits like Dams and Power Plants. We didn't touch the railroad from China to Hanoi. The Missions were micro managed by the McNamarra and Johnson. Johnson even bragged about it. Then came Nixon and Abrams. Abrams was asked what they should do and he said, not in his exact words, do what you need to do. That means, as of 1969, the Racetracks ended and we started hitting those off limits targets. China was told that the Railroad was going to be destroyed. They complained that the Railroad Workers were all Chinese. Nixon told them they needed to get their Chinese Workers out of there if they didn't want to lose them. All of a sudden, the resupplying was cut deeply and the Air Attacks could come at any time from any direction. The NV had to cover a much larger area with their Sams and AAs. All of a sudden, they weren't effective anymore. And the Buffs started hitting hard as well. In 1971, Abrams made the brag that he could fly in a Chopper anywhere in South Vietnam safely without fear of being shot down. He was right. And the Caches just outside of South Vietnam were being destroyed as they were being built up. In late Dec 1972, Nixon allowed the USAF, Navy and Marines to do Linebacker II because the NV were refusing to go to the Paris Peace Talks. It took them 11 days to decide to reenter the peace talks. The War was won.

Now for how it was lost. In the Peace Talks, the agreement didn't have anything preventing the NV from building up supplies and forces in Laos and Cambodia. By then Laos had changed in government where it was sympathetic to the NV and not the SV. Late 1972, the USAF was asked (demanded) to leave Laos. And Cambodia didn't have much of a government to begin with to have any say in anything. So in 1973, the US does a drastic troop reduction. The US promised that we would resupply the SV and provide Air Power in the event of the NV attack.

When the NV attacked with a well trained and battle hardened army of 550,000, they came up against a 1.3 million SV army. The math falls apart on this one. The SV had only enough rifles for 400,000 troops and enough ammo for a Mag for each one. Plus, their Fuel for their trucks,tanks and recips were all but depleted. They had almost no Jet Fuel either. The promise of the resupply was withdrawn by Ford. Plus, the Air Power that was sitting in Thailand wasn't used either. I knew it was lost when a captured F-5 with a Red Star painted on it's tail attacked the SV Palace in Saigon. The NV took those 2 years and built up hard in plain friggin sight.

Ford, Congress and the American People threw the South Vietnamese under the bus.

without air and choppers, the ground pounders would've been in big trouble
..the NVA were good..greatly respected by the US forces

Battle of Ia Drang - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

And vice versa. Even today, there is NO Army that can go up against the full might of the US Army if you keep the Politicos out of it. This is why on a unit of about 300 Russians tried and got eaten alive. And then, to cover Russias ass, Russia announced they were mercenaries. No Country or anyone wishes to go against the US Army in a open field battle.

omg
..you see, like I just said in another post--you people think in TV/movie/unrealistic/one dimensional/etc terms:
1. the military should NEVER be in charge of POLITICS/POLITICAL decisions!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
you are wrong--the politicos NEED to be involved
2. the military is subordinate to the politicians -for good reasons
3. most wars are CONTAINED/RESTRICTED--for GOOD--POLITICAL reasons
---most wars are NOT like WW2--where US military power could be used to it's greatest advantage
IE = the Brits were restricted in the Falklands
...you can't just '''flatten'' Hanoi---hahahah---there was a very good argument that the US was on the wrong side in Nam
...you can't just ''flatten'' Baghdad/Tehran/etc --POLITICS are GREATLY involved in these conflicts
4. if you have ever read about history/wars/conflicts, it is much more complicated than just ''flattening'' this city or that city....
--much more to it than MILITARY power
5. [ etc etc ] the US military totally destroyed Iraq's military in PG1-----but look at the problems today!!!!!!!!!!!!! hahahahhahaahah
-this is a perfect analogy [ proof!! ] of what I am saying : you could've destroyed the NVA and marched into Hanoi----but there would still be no win!!!!!!!! just like in Iraq today
====there are very few examples of a country invading another and taking it over---changing it's POLITICS/etc = just like we see in Iraq AND Afghanistan
....US military power was supreme in Afghanistan -- but the problem still exists - just like it would in North Vietnam
etc etc etc

 

[Dayton3]

A really simple reason that Russia cannot withstand a long term conflict with the US is the size of the Russian economy, and the inefficiency of Socialist warcraft manufacturing.

???!!!.....they withstood Germany and Germany's Aliies
..tiny North Vietnam withstood the MIGHTY US for a VERY long term conflict AND Vietnam withstood and defeated France....with France and the US using much:
more sophisticated/more lethal/etc weapons
Naval and air supremacy
..stone age Afghanistan withstood the MIGHTY Britain and Russia

Russia is a pale shadow of the WWII USSR. And the only reason the USSR survived the first year of the German invasion is that the Germans sucked at logistics. Most of the German army used horse drawn wagons to haul supplies. As for the PRVN standing off the USA, that only happened because we allowed the Soviets and Chinese a free hand in supplying the PRVN with everything from food to SAMs. When we finally decided to close the rail links to China and block Haiphong harbor with mines, the PRVN begged to sign the Paris Peace Accords because they were out of munitions and the North Vietnamese population was nearing starvation. The PRVN stood off the USA for the same reason the thirteen American Colonies stood off Great Britain; the war wasn’t very important to the great power, it was unpopular at home, and the Colonies (and the PRVN) were receiving monetary and military support from a major power that was free from attack by the great power involved in the war.

plain and simple --we ''lost'' in Nam--it was unwinnable
--Russia was too big with too big of a population for Germany to defeat
here is the thread on Nam

Vietnam War was unwinnable

www.usmessageboard.com

Okay, let's look at the blunders.

The US Ground Pounders ALWAYS defeated the enemy. But the enemy was allowed to resupply over and over again. Now we come to the real failure and that was in the Air Power both USAF and Navy (including Marines). They were NEVER allowed to do what they knew how to do with the exception of the two Linebackers.

We lost more F-105 Pilots than we had. WE ended up training Cargo Pilots to pilot the Nickels. Why was that? The Nickels always flew the same racetrack flight paths at the same time every day. All the enemy had to do is position their ground installations along those paths and wait. There were viable targets that were placed off limits like Dams and Power Plants. We didn't touch the railroad from China to Hanoi. The Missions were micro managed by the McNamarra and Johnson. Johnson even bragged about it. Then came Nixon and Abrams. Abrams was asked what they should do and he said, not in his exact words, do what you need to do. That means, as of 1969, the Racetracks ended and we started hitting those off limits targets. China was told that the Railroad was going to be destroyed. They complained that the Railroad Workers were all Chinese. Nixon told them they needed to get their Chinese Workers out of there if they didn't want to lose them. All of a sudden, the resupplying was cut deeply and the Air Attacks could come at any time from any direction. The NV had to cover a much larger area with their Sams and AAs. All of a sudden, they weren't effective anymore. And the Buffs started hitting hard as well. In 1971, Abrams made the brag that he could fly in a Chopper anywhere in South Vietnam safely without fear of being shot down. He was right. And the Caches just outside of South Vietnam were being destroyed as they were being built up. In late Dec 1972, Nixon allowed the USAF, Navy and Marines to do Linebacker II because the NV were refusing to go to the Paris Peace Talks. It took them 11 days to decide to reenter the peace talks. The War was won.

Now for how it was lost. In the Peace Talks, the agreement didn't have anything preventing the NV from building up supplies and forces in Laos and Cambodia. By then Laos had changed in government where it was sympathetic to the NV and not the SV. Late 1972, the USAF was asked (demanded) to leave Laos. And Cambodia didn't have much of a government to begin with to have any say in anything. So in 1973, the US does a drastic troop reduction. The US promised that we would resupply the SV and provide Air Power in the event of the NV attack.

When the NV attacked with a well trained and battle hardened army of 550,000, they came up against a 1.3 million SV army. The math falls apart on this one. The SV had only enough rifles for 400,000 troops and enough ammo for a Mag for each one. Plus, their Fuel for their trucks,tanks and recips were all but depleted. They had almost no Jet Fuel either. The promise of the resupply was withdrawn by Ford. Plus, the Air Power that was sitting in Thailand wasn't used either. I knew it was lost when a captured F-5 with a Red Star painted on it's tail attacked the SV Palace in Saigon. The NV took those 2 years and built up hard in plain friggin sight.

Ford, Congress and the American People threw the South Vietnamese under the bus.

..what's your point? the US could've won??!!

The US could not win. It never could win. The only way for the US to win would be to completely take over SV like the French did. Then, all of a sudden, even the friendlies ain't so friendly anymore.

If we had flattened Hanoi in 1965 I would bet good money that the North Vietnamese would have thrown in the towel. They would've spent the next ten years rebuilding their capital and would've had no energy to wage the war in South Vietnam.

With a ten year respite, South Vietnam would probably have straightened itself out and been too strong for the communists to attempt to take over.

--you people don't know much about wars/history/etc-

I've taught virtually every history class offered for a dozen years. And I don't get how you can say that Germany and Japan did not surrender. They most certainly did.

 

[harmonica]

A really simple reason that Russia cannot withstand a long term conflict with the US is the size of the Russian economy, and the inefficiency of Socialist warcraft manufacturing.

???!!!.....they withstood Germany and Germany's Aliies
..tiny North Vietnam withstood the MIGHTY US for a VERY long term conflict AND Vietnam withstood and defeated France....with France and the US using much:
more sophisticated/more lethal/etc weapons
Naval and air supremacy
..stone age Afghanistan withstood the MIGHTY Britain and Russia

Russia is a pale shadow of the WWII USSR. And the only reason the USSR survived the first year of the German invasion is that the Germans sucked at logistics. Most of the German army used horse drawn wagons to haul supplies. As for the PRVN standing off the USA, that only happened because we allowed the Soviets and Chinese a free hand in supplying the PRVN with everything from food to SAMs. When we finally decided to close the rail links to China and block Haiphong harbor with mines, the PRVN begged to sign the Paris Peace Accords because they were out of munitions and the North Vietnamese population was nearing starvation. The PRVN stood off the USA for the same reason the thirteen American Colonies stood off Great Britain; the war wasn’t very important to the great power, it was unpopular at home, and the Colonies (and the PRVN) were receiving monetary and military support from a major power that was free from attack by the great power involved in the war.

plain and simple --we ''lost'' in Nam--it was unwinnable
--Russia was too big with too big of a population for Germany to defeat
here is the thread on Nam

Vietnam War was unwinnable

www.usmessageboard.com

Okay, let's look at the blunders.

The US Ground Pounders ALWAYS defeated the enemy. But the enemy was allowed to resupply over and over again. Now we come to the real failure and that was in the Air Power both USAF and Navy (including Marines). They were NEVER allowed to do what they knew how to do with the exception of the two Linebackers.

We lost more F-105 Pilots than we had. WE ended up training Cargo Pilots to pilot the Nickels. Why was that? The Nickels always flew the same racetrack flight paths at the same time every day. All the enemy had to do is position their ground installations along those paths and wait. There were viable targets that were placed off limits like Dams and Power Plants. We didn't touch the railroad from China to Hanoi. The Missions were micro managed by the McNamarra and Johnson. Johnson even bragged about it. Then came Nixon and Abrams. Abrams was asked what they should do and he said, not in his exact words, do what you need to do. That means, as of 1969, the Racetracks ended and we started hitting those off limits targets. China was told that the Railroad was going to be destroyed. They complained that the Railroad Workers were all Chinese. Nixon told them they needed to get their Chinese Workers out of there if they didn't want to lose them. All of a sudden, the resupplying was cut deeply and the Air Attacks could come at any time from any direction. The NV had to cover a much larger area with their Sams and AAs. All of a sudden, they weren't effective anymore. And the Buffs started hitting hard as well. In 1971, Abrams made the brag that he could fly in a Chopper anywhere in South Vietnam safely without fear of being shot down. He was right. And the Caches just outside of South Vietnam were being destroyed as they were being built up. In late Dec 1972, Nixon allowed the USAF, Navy and Marines to do Linebacker II because the NV were refusing to go to the Paris Peace Talks. It took them 11 days to decide to reenter the peace talks. The War was won.

Now for how it was lost. In the Peace Talks, the agreement didn't have anything preventing the NV from building up supplies and forces in Laos and Cambodia. By then Laos had changed in government where it was sympathetic to the NV and not the SV. Late 1972, the USAF was asked (demanded) to leave Laos. And Cambodia didn't have much of a government to begin with to have any say in anything. So in 1973, the US does a drastic troop reduction. The US promised that we would resupply the SV and provide Air Power in the event of the NV attack.

When the NV attacked with a well trained and battle hardened army of 550,000, they came up against a 1.3 million SV army. The math falls apart on this one. The SV had only enough rifles for 400,000 troops and enough ammo for a Mag for each one. Plus, their Fuel for their trucks,tanks and recips were all but depleted. They had almost no Jet Fuel either. The promise of the resupply was withdrawn by Ford. Plus, the Air Power that was sitting in Thailand wasn't used either. I knew it was lost when a captured F-5 with a Red Star painted on it's tail attacked the SV Palace in Saigon. The NV took those 2 years and built up hard in plain friggin sight.

Ford, Congress and the American People threw the South Vietnamese under the bus.

..what's your point? the US could've won??!!

The US could not win. It never could win. The only way for the US to win would be to completely take over SV like the French did. Then, all of a sudden, even the friendlies ain't so friendly anymore.

If we had flattened Hanoi in 1965 I would bet good money that the North Vietnamese would have thrown in the towel. They would've spent the next ten years rebuilding their capital and would've had no energy to wage the war in South Vietnam.

With a ten year respite, South Vietnam would probably have straightened itself out and been too strong for the communists to attempt to take over.

--you people don't know much about wars/history/etc-

I've taught virtually every history class offered for a dozen years. And I don't get how you can say that Germany and Japan did not surrender. They most certainly did.

hhahah stop the bullshit---either you know what I mean, or you are not smart, or you are bullshitting:
you said if we '''flattened Hanoi'' they would surrender---NO Germany and Japan did not surrender after we ''flattened'' their cities

 

[harmonica]

A really simple reason that Russia cannot withstand a long term conflict with the US is the size of the Russian economy, and the inefficiency of Socialist warcraft manufacturing.

???!!!.....they withstood Germany and Germany's Aliies
..tiny North Vietnam withstood the MIGHTY US for a VERY long term conflict AND Vietnam withstood and defeated France....with France and the US using much:
more sophisticated/more lethal/etc weapons
Naval and air supremacy
..stone age Afghanistan withstood the MIGHTY Britain and Russia

Russia is a pale shadow of the WWII USSR. And the only reason the USSR survived the first year of the German invasion is that the Germans sucked at logistics. Most of the German army used horse drawn wagons to haul supplies. As for the PRVN standing off the USA, that only happened because we allowed the Soviets and Chinese a free hand in supplying the PRVN with everything from food to SAMs. When we finally decided to close the rail links to China and block Haiphong harbor with mines, the PRVN begged to sign the Paris Peace Accords because they were out of munitions and the North Vietnamese population was nearing starvation. The PRVN stood off the USA for the same reason the thirteen American Colonies stood off Great Britain; the war wasn’t very important to the great power, it was unpopular at home, and the Colonies (and the PRVN) were receiving monetary and military support from a major power that was free from attack by the great power involved in the war.

plain and simple --we ''lost'' in Nam--it was unwinnable
--Russia was too big with too big of a population for Germany to defeat
here is the thread on Nam

Vietnam War was unwinnable

www.usmessageboard.com

Okay, let's look at the blunders.

The US Ground Pounders ALWAYS defeated the enemy. But the enemy was allowed to resupply over and over again. Now we come to the real failure and that was in the Air Power both USAF and Navy (including Marines). They were NEVER allowed to do what they knew how to do with the exception of the two Linebackers.

We lost more F-105 Pilots than we had. WE ended up training Cargo Pilots to pilot the Nickels. Why was that? The Nickels always flew the same racetrack flight paths at the same time every day. All the enemy had to do is position their ground installations along those paths and wait. There were viable targets that were placed off limits like Dams and Power Plants. We didn't touch the railroad from China to Hanoi. The Missions were micro managed by the McNamarra and Johnson. Johnson even bragged about it. Then came Nixon and Abrams. Abrams was asked what they should do and he said, not in his exact words, do what you need to do. That means, as of 1969, the Racetracks ended and we started hitting those off limits targets. China was told that the Railroad was going to be destroyed. They complained that the Railroad Workers were all Chinese. Nixon told them they needed to get their Chinese Workers out of there if they didn't want to lose them. All of a sudden, the resupplying was cut deeply and the Air Attacks could come at any time from any direction. The NV had to cover a much larger area with their Sams and AAs. All of a sudden, they weren't effective anymore. And the Buffs started hitting hard as well. In 1971, Abrams made the brag that he could fly in a Chopper anywhere in South Vietnam safely without fear of being shot down. He was right. And the Caches just outside of South Vietnam were being destroyed as they were being built up. In late Dec 1972, Nixon allowed the USAF, Navy and Marines to do Linebacker II because the NV were refusing to go to the Paris Peace Talks. It took them 11 days to decide to reenter the peace talks. The War was won.

Now for how it was lost. In the Peace Talks, the agreement didn't have anything preventing the NV from building up supplies and forces in Laos and Cambodia. By then Laos had changed in government where it was sympathetic to the NV and not the SV. Late 1972, the USAF was asked (demanded) to leave Laos. And Cambodia didn't have much of a government to begin with to have any say in anything. So in 1973, the US does a drastic troop reduction. The US promised that we would resupply the SV and provide Air Power in the event of the NV attack.

When the NV attacked with a well trained and battle hardened army of 550,000, they came up against a 1.3 million SV army. The math falls apart on this one. The SV had only enough rifles for 400,000 troops and enough ammo for a Mag for each one. Plus, their Fuel for their trucks,tanks and recips were all but depleted. They had almost no Jet Fuel either. The promise of the resupply was withdrawn by Ford. Plus, the Air Power that was sitting in Thailand wasn't used either. I knew it was lost when a captured F-5 with a Red Star painted on it's tail attacked the SV Palace in Saigon. The NV took those 2 years and built up hard in plain friggin sight.

Ford, Congress and the American People threw the South Vietnamese under the bus.

..what's your point? the US could've won??!!

The US could not win. It never could win. The only way for the US to win would be to completely take over SV like the French did. Then, all of a sudden, even the friendlies ain't so friendly anymore.

If we had flattened Hanoi in 1965 I would bet good money that the North Vietnamese would have thrown in the towel. They would've spent the next ten years rebuilding their capital and would've had no energy to wage the war in South Vietnam.

With a ten year respite, South Vietnam would probably have straightened itself out and been too strong for the communists to attempt to take over.

--you people don't know much about wars/history/etc-

I've taught virtually every history class offered for a dozen years. And I don't get how you can say that Germany and Japan did not surrender. They most certainly did.

..and thank you----history classes are nowhere near anything like researching/etc wars/etc---they don't go into all the details

 

[harmonica]

A really simple reason that Russia cannot withstand a long term conflict with the US is the size of the Russian economy, and the inefficiency of Socialist warcraft manufacturing.

???!!!.....they withstood Germany and Germany's Aliies
..tiny North Vietnam withstood the MIGHTY US for a VERY long term conflict AND Vietnam withstood and defeated France....with France and the US using much:
more sophisticated/more lethal/etc weapons
Naval and air supremacy
..stone age Afghanistan withstood the MIGHTY Britain and Russia

Russia is a pale shadow of the WWII USSR. And the only reason the USSR survived the first year of the German invasion is that the Germans sucked at logistics. Most of the German army used horse drawn wagons to haul supplies. As for the PRVN standing off the USA, that only happened because we allowed the Soviets and Chinese a free hand in supplying the PRVN with everything from food to SAMs. When we finally decided to close the rail links to China and block Haiphong harbor with mines, the PRVN begged to sign the Paris Peace Accords because they were out of munitions and the North Vietnamese population was nearing starvation. The PRVN stood off the USA for the same reason the thirteen American Colonies stood off Great Britain; the war wasn’t very important to the great power, it was unpopular at home, and the Colonies (and the PRVN) were receiving monetary and military support from a major power that was free from attack by the great power involved in the war.

plain and simple --we ''lost'' in Nam--it was unwinnable
--Russia was too big with too big of a population for Germany to defeat
here is the thread on Nam

Vietnam War was unwinnable

www.usmessageboard.com

Okay, let's look at the blunders.

The US Ground Pounders ALWAYS defeated the enemy. But the enemy was allowed to resupply over and over again. Now we come to the real failure and that was in the Air Power both USAF and Navy (including Marines). They were NEVER allowed to do what they knew how to do with the exception of the two Linebackers.

We lost more F-105 Pilots than we had. WE ended up training Cargo Pilots to pilot the Nickels. Why was that? The Nickels always flew the same racetrack flight paths at the same time every day. All the enemy had to do is position their ground installations along those paths and wait. There were viable targets that were placed off limits like Dams and Power Plants. We didn't touch the railroad from China to Hanoi. The Missions were micro managed by the McNamarra and Johnson. Johnson even bragged about it. Then came Nixon and Abrams. Abrams was asked what they should do and he said, not in his exact words, do what you need to do. That means, as of 1969, the Racetracks ended and we started hitting those off limits targets. China was told that the Railroad was going to be destroyed. They complained that the Railroad Workers were all Chinese. Nixon told them they needed to get their Chinese Workers out of there if they didn't want to lose them. All of a sudden, the resupplying was cut deeply and the Air Attacks could come at any time from any direction. The NV had to cover a much larger area with their Sams and AAs. All of a sudden, they weren't effective anymore. And the Buffs started hitting hard as well. In 1971, Abrams made the brag that he could fly in a Chopper anywhere in South Vietnam safely without fear of being shot down. He was right. And the Caches just outside of South Vietnam were being destroyed as they were being built up. In late Dec 1972, Nixon allowed the USAF, Navy and Marines to do Linebacker II because the NV were refusing to go to the Paris Peace Talks. It took them 11 days to decide to reenter the peace talks. The War was won.

Now for how it was lost. In the Peace Talks, the agreement didn't have anything preventing the NV from building up supplies and forces in Laos and Cambodia. By then Laos had changed in government where it was sympathetic to the NV and not the SV. Late 1972, the USAF was asked (demanded) to leave Laos. And Cambodia didn't have much of a government to begin with to have any say in anything. So in 1973, the US does a drastic troop reduction. The US promised that we would resupply the SV and provide Air Power in the event of the NV attack.

When the NV attacked with a well trained and battle hardened army of 550,000, they came up against a 1.3 million SV army. The math falls apart on this one. The SV had only enough rifles for 400,000 troops and enough ammo for a Mag for each one. Plus, their Fuel for their trucks,tanks and recips were all but depleted. They had almost no Jet Fuel either. The promise of the resupply was withdrawn by Ford. Plus, the Air Power that was sitting in Thailand wasn't used either. I knew it was lost when a captured F-5 with a Red Star painted on it's tail attacked the SV Palace in Saigon. The NV took those 2 years and built up hard in plain friggin sight.

Ford, Congress and the American People threw the South Vietnamese under the bus.

..what's your point? the US could've won??!!

The US could not win. It never could win. The only way for the US to win would be to completely take over SV like the French did. Then, all of a sudden, even the friendlies ain't so friendly anymore.

If we had flattened Hanoi in 1965 I would bet good money that the North Vietnamese would have thrown in the towel. They would've spent the next ten years rebuilding their capital and would've had no energy to wage the war in South Vietnam.

With a ten year respite, South Vietnam would probably have straightened itself out and been too strong for the communists to attempt to take over.

--you people don't know much about wars/history/etc-

I've taught virtually every history class offered for a dozen years. And I don't get how you can say that Germany and Japan did not surrender. They most certainly did.

'''''''' Almost 16 square miles in and around the Japanese capital were incinerated, and between 80,000 and 130,000 Japanese civilians were killed in the worst single firestorm in recorded history.'''''

no surrender

Firebombing of Tokyo

On the night of March 9, 1945, U.S. warplanes launch a new bombing offensive against Japan, dropping 2,000 tons of incendiary bombs on Tokyo over the course of

www.history.com

.

 

[Dayton3]

A really simple reason that Russia cannot withstand a long term conflict with the US is the size of the Russian economy, and the inefficiency of Socialist warcraft manufacturing.

???!!!.....they withstood Germany and Germany's Aliies
..tiny North Vietnam withstood the MIGHTY US for a VERY long term conflict AND Vietnam withstood and defeated France....with France and the US using much:
more sophisticated/more lethal/etc weapons
Naval and air supremacy
..stone age Afghanistan withstood the MIGHTY Britain and Russia

Russia is a pale shadow of the WWII USSR. And the only reason the USSR survived the first year of the German invasion is that the Germans sucked at logistics. Most of the German army used horse drawn wagons to haul supplies. As for the PRVN standing off the USA, that only happened because we allowed the Soviets and Chinese a free hand in supplying the PRVN with everything from food to SAMs. When we finally decided to close the rail links to China and block Haiphong harbor with mines, the PRVN begged to sign the Paris Peace Accords because they were out of munitions and the North Vietnamese population was nearing starvation. The PRVN stood off the USA for the same reason the thirteen American Colonies stood off Great Britain; the war wasn’t very important to the great power, it was unpopular at home, and the Colonies (and the PRVN) were receiving monetary and military support from a major power that was free from attack by the great power involved in the war.

plain and simple --we ''lost'' in Nam--it was unwinnable
--Russia was too big with too big of a population for Germany to defeat
here is the thread on Nam

Vietnam War was unwinnable

www.usmessageboard.com

Okay, let's look at the blunders.

The US Ground Pounders ALWAYS defeated the enemy. But the enemy was allowed to resupply over and over again. Now we come to the real failure and that was in the Air Power both USAF and Navy (including Marines). They were NEVER allowed to do what they knew how to do with the exception of the two Linebackers.

We lost more F-105 Pilots than we had. WE ended up training Cargo Pilots to pilot the Nickels. Why was that? The Nickels always flew the same racetrack flight paths at the same time every day. All the enemy had to do is position their ground installations along those paths and wait. There were viable targets that were placed off limits like Dams and Power Plants. We didn't touch the railroad from China to Hanoi. The Missions were micro managed by the McNamarra and Johnson. Johnson even bragged about it. Then came Nixon and Abrams. Abrams was asked what they should do and he said, not in his exact words, do what you need to do. That means, as of 1969, the Racetracks ended and we started hitting those off limits targets. China was told that the Railroad was going to be destroyed. They complained that the Railroad Workers were all Chinese. Nixon told them they needed to get their Chinese Workers out of there if they didn't want to lose them. All of a sudden, the resupplying was cut deeply and the Air Attacks could come at any time from any direction. The NV had to cover a much larger area with their Sams and AAs. All of a sudden, they weren't effective anymore. And the Buffs started hitting hard as well. In 1971, Abrams made the brag that he could fly in a Chopper anywhere in South Vietnam safely without fear of being shot down. He was right. And the Caches just outside of South Vietnam were being destroyed as they were being built up. In late Dec 1972, Nixon allowed the USAF, Navy and Marines to do Linebacker II because the NV were refusing to go to the Paris Peace Talks. It took them 11 days to decide to reenter the peace talks. The War was won.

Now for how it was lost. In the Peace Talks, the agreement didn't have anything preventing the NV from building up supplies and forces in Laos and Cambodia. By then Laos had changed in government where it was sympathetic to the NV and not the SV. Late 1972, the USAF was asked (demanded) to leave Laos. And Cambodia didn't have much of a government to begin with to have any say in anything. So in 1973, the US does a drastic troop reduction. The US promised that we would resupply the SV and provide Air Power in the event of the NV attack.

When the NV attacked with a well trained and battle hardened army of 550,000, they came up against a 1.3 million SV army. The math falls apart on this one. The SV had only enough rifles for 400,000 troops and enough ammo for a Mag for each one. Plus, their Fuel for their trucks,tanks and recips were all but depleted. They had almost no Jet Fuel either. The promise of the resupply was withdrawn by Ford. Plus, the Air Power that was sitting in Thailand wasn't used either. I knew it was lost when a captured F-5 with a Red Star painted on it's tail attacked the SV Palace in Saigon. The NV took those 2 years and built up hard in plain friggin sight.

Ford, Congress and the American People threw the South Vietnamese under the bus.

..what's your point? the US could've won??!!

The US could not win. It never could win. The only way for the US to win would be to completely take over SV like the French did. Then, all of a sudden, even the friendlies ain't so friendly anymore.

If we had flattened Hanoi in 1965 I would bet good money that the North Vietnamese would have thrown in the towel. They would've spent the next ten years rebuilding their capital and would've had no energy to wage the war in South Vietnam.

With a ten year respite, South Vietnam would probably have straightened itself out and been too strong for the communists to attempt to take over.

--you people don't know much about wars/history/etc-

I've taught virtually every history class offered for a dozen years. And I don't get how you can say that Germany and Japan did not surrender. They most certainly did.

hhahah stop the bullshit---either you know what I mean, or you are not smart, or you are bullshitting:
you said if we '''flattened Hanoi'' they would surrender---NO Germany and Japan did not surrender after we ''flattened'' their cities

Except I DID NOT SAY that the North Vietnamese would have "surrendered". I said they would've "thrown in the towel". By that I meant with their capital effectively destroyed (by effectively destroyed I mean 25-40% destroyed by the way) they would no longer have had the resources to provide much support to the enemies of the South Vietnamese government and the South could've held on.

Sorry I confused you.

 

[Daryl Hunt]

A really simple reason that Russia cannot withstand a long term conflict with the US is the size of the Russian economy, and the inefficiency of Socialist warcraft manufacturing.

???!!!.....they withstood Germany and Germany's Aliies
..tiny North Vietnam withstood the MIGHTY US for a VERY long term conflict AND Vietnam withstood and defeated France....with France and the US using much:
more sophisticated/more lethal/etc weapons
Naval and air supremacy
..stone age Afghanistan withstood the MIGHTY Britain and Russia

Russia is a pale shadow of the WWII USSR. And the only reason the USSR survived the first year of the German invasion is that the Germans sucked at logistics. Most of the German army used horse drawn wagons to haul supplies. As for the PRVN standing off the USA, that only happened because we allowed the Soviets and Chinese a free hand in supplying the PRVN with everything from food to SAMs. When we finally decided to close the rail links to China and block Haiphong harbor with mines, the PRVN begged to sign the Paris Peace Accords because they were out of munitions and the North Vietnamese population was nearing starvation. The PRVN stood off the USA for the same reason the thirteen American Colonies stood off Great Britain; the war wasn’t very important to the great power, it was unpopular at home, and the Colonies (and the PRVN) were receiving monetary and military support from a major power that was free from attack by the great power involved in the war.

plain and simple --we ''lost'' in Nam--it was unwinnable
--Russia was too big with too big of a population for Germany to defeat
here is the thread on Nam

Vietnam War was unwinnable

www.usmessageboard.com

Okay, let's look at the blunders.

The US Ground Pounders ALWAYS defeated the enemy. But the enemy was allowed to resupply over and over again. Now we come to the real failure and that was in the Air Power both USAF and Navy (including Marines). They were NEVER allowed to do what they knew how to do with the exception of the two Linebackers.

We lost more F-105 Pilots than we had. WE ended up training Cargo Pilots to pilot the Nickels. Why was that? The Nickels always flew the same racetrack flight paths at the same time every day. All the enemy had to do is position their ground installations along those paths and wait. There were viable targets that were placed off limits like Dams and Power Plants. We didn't touch the railroad from China to Hanoi. The Missions were micro managed by the McNamarra and Johnson. Johnson even bragged about it. Then came Nixon and Abrams. Abrams was asked what they should do and he said, not in his exact words, do what you need to do. That means, as of 1969, the Racetracks ended and we started hitting those off limits targets. China was told that the Railroad was going to be destroyed. They complained that the Railroad Workers were all Chinese. Nixon told them they needed to get their Chinese Workers out of there if they didn't want to lose them. All of a sudden, the resupplying was cut deeply and the Air Attacks could come at any time from any direction. The NV had to cover a much larger area with their Sams and AAs. All of a sudden, they weren't effective anymore. And the Buffs started hitting hard as well. In 1971, Abrams made the brag that he could fly in a Chopper anywhere in South Vietnam safely without fear of being shot down. He was right. And the Caches just outside of South Vietnam were being destroyed as they were being built up. In late Dec 1972, Nixon allowed the USAF, Navy and Marines to do Linebacker II because the NV were refusing to go to the Paris Peace Talks. It took them 11 days to decide to reenter the peace talks. The War was won.

Now for how it was lost. In the Peace Talks, the agreement didn't have anything preventing the NV from building up supplies and forces in Laos and Cambodia. By then Laos had changed in government where it was sympathetic to the NV and not the SV. Late 1972, the USAF was asked (demanded) to leave Laos. And Cambodia didn't have much of a government to begin with to have any say in anything. So in 1973, the US does a drastic troop reduction. The US promised that we would resupply the SV and provide Air Power in the event of the NV attack.

When the NV attacked with a well trained and battle hardened army of 550,000, they came up against a 1.3 million SV army. The math falls apart on this one. The SV had only enough rifles for 400,000 troops and enough ammo for a Mag for each one. Plus, their Fuel for their trucks,tanks and recips were all but depleted. They had almost no Jet Fuel either. The promise of the resupply was withdrawn by Ford. Plus, the Air Power that was sitting in Thailand wasn't used either. I knew it was lost when a captured F-5 with a Red Star painted on it's tail attacked the SV Palace in Saigon. The NV took those 2 years and built up hard in plain friggin sight.

Ford, Congress and the American People threw the South Vietnamese under the bus.

..what's your point? the US could've won??!!

The US could not win. It never could win. The only way for the US to win would be to completely take over SV like the French did. Then, all of a sudden, even the friendlies ain't so friendly anymore.

If we had flattened Hanoi in 1965 I would bet good money that the North Vietnamese would have thrown in the towel. They would've spent the next ten years rebuilding their capital and would've had no energy to wage the war in South Vietnam.

With a ten year respite, South Vietnam would probably have straightened itself out and been too strong for the communists to attempt to take over.

Johnson was too fearful that we could have another Korea on our hands. He didn't do anything that might jepordize a single Chinese Citizens life. And the Chinese Techs were well embedded into the NV area. Johnson was in error as Nixon proved.

 

[harmonica]

A really simple reason that Russia cannot withstand a long term conflict with the US is the size of the Russian economy, and the inefficiency of Socialist warcraft manufacturing.

???!!!.....they withstood Germany and Germany's Aliies
..tiny North Vietnam withstood the MIGHTY US for a VERY long term conflict AND Vietnam withstood and defeated France....with France and the US using much:
more sophisticated/more lethal/etc weapons
Naval and air supremacy
..stone age Afghanistan withstood the MIGHTY Britain and Russia

Russia is a pale shadow of the WWII USSR. And the only reason the USSR survived the first year of the German invasion is that the Germans sucked at logistics. Most of the German army used horse drawn wagons to haul supplies. As for the PRVN standing off the USA, that only happened because we allowed the Soviets and Chinese a free hand in supplying the PRVN with everything from food to SAMs. When we finally decided to close the rail links to China and block Haiphong harbor with mines, the PRVN begged to sign the Paris Peace Accords because they were out of munitions and the North Vietnamese population was nearing starvation. The PRVN stood off the USA for the same reason the thirteen American Colonies stood off Great Britain; the war wasn’t very important to the great power, it was unpopular at home, and the Colonies (and the PRVN) were receiving monetary and military support from a major power that was free from attack by the great power involved in the war.

plain and simple --we ''lost'' in Nam--it was unwinnable
--Russia was too big with too big of a population for Germany to defeat
here is the thread on Nam

Vietnam War was unwinnable

www.usmessageboard.com

Okay, let's look at the blunders.

The US Ground Pounders ALWAYS defeated the enemy. But the enemy was allowed to resupply over and over again. Now we come to the real failure and that was in the Air Power both USAF and Navy (including Marines). They were NEVER allowed to do what they knew how to do with the exception of the two Linebackers.

We lost more F-105 Pilots than we had. WE ended up training Cargo Pilots to pilot the Nickels. Why was that? The Nickels always flew the same racetrack flight paths at the same time every day. All the enemy had to do is position their ground installations along those paths and wait. There were viable targets that were placed off limits like Dams and Power Plants. We didn't touch the railroad from China to Hanoi. The Missions were micro managed by the McNamarra and Johnson. Johnson even bragged about it. Then came Nixon and Abrams. Abrams was asked what they should do and he said, not in his exact words, do what you need to do. That means, as of 1969, the Racetracks ended and we started hitting those off limits targets. China was told that the Railroad was going to be destroyed. They complained that the Railroad Workers were all Chinese. Nixon told them they needed to get their Chinese Workers out of there if they didn't want to lose them. All of a sudden, the resupplying was cut deeply and the Air Attacks could come at any time from any direction. The NV had to cover a much larger area with their Sams and AAs. All of a sudden, they weren't effective anymore. And the Buffs started hitting hard as well. In 1971, Abrams made the brag that he could fly in a Chopper anywhere in South Vietnam safely without fear of being shot down. He was right. And the Caches just outside of South Vietnam were being destroyed as they were being built up. In late Dec 1972, Nixon allowed the USAF, Navy and Marines to do Linebacker II because the NV were refusing to go to the Paris Peace Talks. It took them 11 days to decide to reenter the peace talks. The War was won.

Now for how it was lost. In the Peace Talks, the agreement didn't have anything preventing the NV from building up supplies and forces in Laos and Cambodia. By then Laos had changed in government where it was sympathetic to the NV and not the SV. Late 1972, the USAF was asked (demanded) to leave Laos. And Cambodia didn't have much of a government to begin with to have any say in anything. So in 1973, the US does a drastic troop reduction. The US promised that we would resupply the SV and provide Air Power in the event of the NV attack.

When the NV attacked with a well trained and battle hardened army of 550,000, they came up against a 1.3 million SV army. The math falls apart on this one. The SV had only enough rifles for 400,000 troops and enough ammo for a Mag for each one. Plus, their Fuel for their trucks,tanks and recips were all but depleted. They had almost no Jet Fuel either. The promise of the resupply was withdrawn by Ford. Plus, the Air Power that was sitting in Thailand wasn't used either. I knew it was lost when a captured F-5 with a Red Star painted on it's tail attacked the SV Palace in Saigon. The NV took those 2 years and built up hard in plain friggin sight.

Ford, Congress and the American People threw the South Vietnamese under the bus.

..what's your point? the US could've won??!!

The US could not win. It never could win. The only way for the US to win would be to completely take over SV like the French did. Then, all of a sudden, even the friendlies ain't so friendly anymore.

If we had flattened Hanoi in 1965 I would bet good money that the North Vietnamese would have thrown in the towel. They would've spent the next ten years rebuilding their capital and would've had no energy to wage the war in South Vietnam.

With a ten year respite, South Vietnam would probably have straightened itself out and been too strong for the communists to attempt to take over.

--you people don't know much about wars/history/etc-

I've taught virtually every history class offered for a dozen years. And I don't get how you can say that Germany and Japan did not surrender. They most certainly did.

hhahah stop the bullshit---either you know what I mean, or you are not smart, or you are bullshitting:
you said if we '''flattened Hanoi'' they would surrender---NO Germany and Japan did not surrender after we ''flattened'' their cities

Except I DID NOT SAY that the North Vietnamese would have "surrendered". I said they would've "thrown in the towel". By that I meant with their capital effectively destroyed (by effectively destroyed I mean 25-40% destroyed by the way) they would no longer have had the resources to provide much support to the enemies of the South Vietnamese government and the South could've held on.

Sorry I confused you.

hahhahahahahahhha
OMG
1. we bombed the shit out of German resources and they still continued fighting...ever hear of the Battle of the Bulge where they equipped THREE armies -in late 1944????!!!!!!
2. they were getting a lot of their resources from Russian and China!!!
WOOOOHOOOOOOO
3. we bombed the shit out of Berlin---no surrender
''''''''''And yet Allied assaults [ bombing ] had no significant effect on German production until the last year of the war. German industry unexpectedly counterbalanced the destruction of a number of their plants by a further increase in productivity'''''
parentheses mine

......I just said it--Germany was a much more industrious country than NVietnam---and you failed to comprehend the meaning of that
...if it didn't significantly affect an industrious country--it surely won't affect NVietnam

The Bombing of Germany 1940-1945 - Centre for the Study of War, State and Society - University of Exeter

humanities.exeter.ac.uk

 

[harmonica]

A really simple reason that Russia cannot withstand a long term conflict with the US is the size of the Russian economy, and the inefficiency of Socialist warcraft manufacturing.

???!!!.....they withstood Germany and Germany's Aliies
..tiny North Vietnam withstood the MIGHTY US for a VERY long term conflict AND Vietnam withstood and defeated France....with France and the US using much:
more sophisticated/more lethal/etc weapons
Naval and air supremacy
..stone age Afghanistan withstood the MIGHTY Britain and Russia

Russia is a pale shadow of the WWII USSR. And the only reason the USSR survived the first year of the German invasion is that the Germans sucked at logistics. Most of the German army used horse drawn wagons to haul supplies. As for the PRVN standing off the USA, that only happened because we allowed the Soviets and Chinese a free hand in supplying the PRVN with everything from food to SAMs. When we finally decided to close the rail links to China and block Haiphong harbor with mines, the PRVN begged to sign the Paris Peace Accords because they were out of munitions and the North Vietnamese population was nearing starvation. The PRVN stood off the USA for the same reason the thirteen American Colonies stood off Great Britain; the war wasn’t very important to the great power, it was unpopular at home, and the Colonies (and the PRVN) were receiving monetary and military support from a major power that was free from attack by the great power involved in the war.

plain and simple --we ''lost'' in Nam--it was unwinnable
--Russia was too big with too big of a population for Germany to defeat
here is the thread on Nam

Vietnam War was unwinnable

www.usmessageboard.com

Okay, let's look at the blunders.

The US Ground Pounders ALWAYS defeated the enemy. But the enemy was allowed to resupply over and over again. Now we come to the real failure and that was in the Air Power both USAF and Navy (including Marines). They were NEVER allowed to do what they knew how to do with the exception of the two Linebackers.

We lost more F-105 Pilots than we had. WE ended up training Cargo Pilots to pilot the Nickels. Why was that? The Nickels always flew the same racetrack flight paths at the same time every day. All the enemy had to do is position their ground installations along those paths and wait. There were viable targets that were placed off limits like Dams and Power Plants. We didn't touch the railroad from China to Hanoi. The Missions were micro managed by the McNamarra and Johnson. Johnson even bragged about it. Then came Nixon and Abrams. Abrams was asked what they should do and he said, not in his exact words, do what you need to do. That means, as of 1969, the Racetracks ended and we started hitting those off limits targets. China was told that the Railroad was going to be destroyed. They complained that the Railroad Workers were all Chinese. Nixon told them they needed to get their Chinese Workers out of there if they didn't want to lose them. All of a sudden, the resupplying was cut deeply and the Air Attacks could come at any time from any direction. The NV had to cover a much larger area with their Sams and AAs. All of a sudden, they weren't effective anymore. And the Buffs started hitting hard as well. In 1971, Abrams made the brag that he could fly in a Chopper anywhere in South Vietnam safely without fear of being shot down. He was right. And the Caches just outside of South Vietnam were being destroyed as they were being built up. In late Dec 1972, Nixon allowed the USAF, Navy and Marines to do Linebacker II because the NV were refusing to go to the Paris Peace Talks. It took them 11 days to decide to reenter the peace talks. The War was won.

Now for how it was lost. In the Peace Talks, the agreement didn't have anything preventing the NV from building up supplies and forces in Laos and Cambodia. By then Laos had changed in government where it was sympathetic to the NV and not the SV. Late 1972, the USAF was asked (demanded) to leave Laos. And Cambodia didn't have much of a government to begin with to have any say in anything. So in 1973, the US does a drastic troop reduction. The US promised that we would resupply the SV and provide Air Power in the event of the NV attack.

When the NV attacked with a well trained and battle hardened army of 550,000, they came up against a 1.3 million SV army. The math falls apart on this one. The SV had only enough rifles for 400,000 troops and enough ammo for a Mag for each one. Plus, their Fuel for their trucks,tanks and recips were all but depleted. They had almost no Jet Fuel either. The promise of the resupply was withdrawn by Ford. Plus, the Air Power that was sitting in Thailand wasn't used either. I knew it was lost when a captured F-5 with a Red Star painted on it's tail attacked the SV Palace in Saigon. The NV took those 2 years and built up hard in plain friggin sight.

Ford, Congress and the American People threw the South Vietnamese under the bus.

..what's your point? the US could've won??!!

The US could not win. It never could win. The only way for the US to win would be to completely take over SV like the French did. Then, all of a sudden, even the friendlies ain't so friendly anymore.

If we had flattened Hanoi in 1965 I would bet good money that the North Vietnamese would have thrown in the towel. They would've spent the next ten years rebuilding their capital and would've had no energy to wage the war in South Vietnam.

With a ten year respite, South Vietnam would probably have straightened itself out and been too strong for the communists to attempt to take over.

--you people don't know much about wars/history/etc-

I've taught virtually every history class offered for a dozen years. And I don't get how you can say that Germany and Japan did not surrender. They most certainly did.

hhahah stop the bullshit---either you know what I mean, or you are not smart, or you are bullshitting:
you said if we '''flattened Hanoi'' they would surrender---NO Germany and Japan did not surrender after we ''flattened'' their cities

Except I DID NOT SAY that the North Vietnamese would have "surrendered". I said they would've "thrown in the towel". By that I meant with their capital effectively destroyed (by effectively destroyed I mean 25-40% destroyed by the way) they would no longer have had the resources to provide much support to the enemies of the South Vietnamese government and the South could've held on.

Sorry I confused you.

---the South was shit-----they were never going to be able to defend themselves
read this

A Bright Shining Lie - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

and:

Battle of Ap Bac - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[harmonica]

A really simple reason that Russia cannot withstand a long term conflict with the US is the size of the Russian economy, and the inefficiency of Socialist warcraft manufacturing.

???!!!.....they withstood Germany and Germany's Aliies
..tiny North Vietnam withstood the MIGHTY US for a VERY long term conflict AND Vietnam withstood and defeated France....with France and the US using much:
more sophisticated/more lethal/etc weapons
Naval and air supremacy
..stone age Afghanistan withstood the MIGHTY Britain and Russia

Russia is a pale shadow of the WWII USSR. And the only reason the USSR survived the first year of the German invasion is that the Germans sucked at logistics. Most of the German army used horse drawn wagons to haul supplies. As for the PRVN standing off the USA, that only happened because we allowed the Soviets and Chinese a free hand in supplying the PRVN with everything from food to SAMs. When we finally decided to close the rail links to China and block Haiphong harbor with mines, the PRVN begged to sign the Paris Peace Accords because they were out of munitions and the North Vietnamese population was nearing starvation. The PRVN stood off the USA for the same reason the thirteen American Colonies stood off Great Britain; the war wasn’t very important to the great power, it was unpopular at home, and the Colonies (and the PRVN) were receiving monetary and military support from a major power that was free from attack by the great power involved in the war.

plain and simple --we ''lost'' in Nam--it was unwinnable
--Russia was too big with too big of a population for Germany to defeat
here is the thread on Nam

Vietnam War was unwinnable

www.usmessageboard.com

Okay, let's look at the blunders.

The US Ground Pounders ALWAYS defeated the enemy. But the enemy was allowed to resupply over and over again. Now we come to the real failure and that was in the Air Power both USAF and Navy (including Marines). They were NEVER allowed to do what they knew how to do with the exception of the two Linebackers.

We lost more F-105 Pilots than we had. WE ended up training Cargo Pilots to pilot the Nickels. Why was that? The Nickels always flew the same racetrack flight paths at the same time every day. All the enemy had to do is position their ground installations along those paths and wait. There were viable targets that were placed off limits like Dams and Power Plants. We didn't touch the railroad from China to Hanoi. The Missions were micro managed by the McNamarra and Johnson. Johnson even bragged about it. Then came Nixon and Abrams. Abrams was asked what they should do and he said, not in his exact words, do what you need to do. That means, as of 1969, the Racetracks ended and we started hitting those off limits targets. China was told that the Railroad was going to be destroyed. They complained that the Railroad Workers were all Chinese. Nixon told them they needed to get their Chinese Workers out of there if they didn't want to lose them. All of a sudden, the resupplying was cut deeply and the Air Attacks could come at any time from any direction. The NV had to cover a much larger area with their Sams and AAs. All of a sudden, they weren't effective anymore. And the Buffs started hitting hard as well. In 1971, Abrams made the brag that he could fly in a Chopper anywhere in South Vietnam safely without fear of being shot down. He was right. And the Caches just outside of South Vietnam were being destroyed as they were being built up. In late Dec 1972, Nixon allowed the USAF, Navy and Marines to do Linebacker II because the NV were refusing to go to the Paris Peace Talks. It took them 11 days to decide to reenter the peace talks. The War was won.

Now for how it was lost. In the Peace Talks, the agreement didn't have anything preventing the NV from building up supplies and forces in Laos and Cambodia. By then Laos had changed in government where it was sympathetic to the NV and not the SV. Late 1972, the USAF was asked (demanded) to leave Laos. And Cambodia didn't have much of a government to begin with to have any say in anything. So in 1973, the US does a drastic troop reduction. The US promised that we would resupply the SV and provide Air Power in the event of the NV attack.

When the NV attacked with a well trained and battle hardened army of 550,000, they came up against a 1.3 million SV army. The math falls apart on this one. The SV had only enough rifles for 400,000 troops and enough ammo for a Mag for each one. Plus, their Fuel for their trucks,tanks and recips were all but depleted. They had almost no Jet Fuel either. The promise of the resupply was withdrawn by Ford. Plus, the Air Power that was sitting in Thailand wasn't used either. I knew it was lost when a captured F-5 with a Red Star painted on it's tail attacked the SV Palace in Saigon. The NV took those 2 years and built up hard in plain friggin sight.

Ford, Congress and the American People threw the South Vietnamese under the bus.

..what's your point? the US could've won??!!

The US could not win. It never could win. The only way for the US to win would be to completely take over SV like the French did. Then, all of a sudden, even the friendlies ain't so friendly anymore.

If we had flattened Hanoi in 1965 I would bet good money that the North Vietnamese would have thrown in the towel. They would've spent the next ten years rebuilding their capital and would've had no energy to wage the war in South Vietnam.

With a ten year respite, South Vietnam would probably have straightened itself out and been too strong for the communists to attempt to take over.

--you people don't know much about wars/history/etc-

I've taught virtually every history class offered for a dozen years. And I don't get how you can say that Germany and Japan did not surrender. They most certainly did.

hhahah stop the bullshit---either you know what I mean, or you are not smart, or you are bullshitting:
you said if we '''flattened Hanoi'' they would surrender---NO Germany and Japan did not surrender after we ''flattened'' their cities

Except I DID NOT SAY that the North Vietnamese would have "surrendered". I said they would've "thrown in the towel". By that I meant with their capital effectively destroyed (by effectively destroyed I mean 25-40% destroyed by the way) they would no longer have had the resources to provide much support to the enemies of the South Vietnamese government and the South could've held on.

Sorry I confused you.

hahahhahahahahah
the Germans and Japanese didn't throw in the towel either

 

[Daryl Hunt]

A really simple reason that Russia cannot withstand a long term conflict with the US is the size of the Russian economy, and the inefficiency of Socialist warcraft manufacturing.

???!!!.....they withstood Germany and Germany's Aliies
..tiny North Vietnam withstood the MIGHTY US for a VERY long term conflict AND Vietnam withstood and defeated France....with France and the US using much:
more sophisticated/more lethal/etc weapons
Naval and air supremacy
..stone age Afghanistan withstood the MIGHTY Britain and Russia

Russia is a pale shadow of the WWII USSR. And the only reason the USSR survived the first year of the German invasion is that the Germans sucked at logistics. Most of the German army used horse drawn wagons to haul supplies. As for the PRVN standing off the USA, that only happened because we allowed the Soviets and Chinese a free hand in supplying the PRVN with everything from food to SAMs. When we finally decided to close the rail links to China and block Haiphong harbor with mines, the PRVN begged to sign the Paris Peace Accords because they were out of munitions and the North Vietnamese population was nearing starvation. The PRVN stood off the USA for the same reason the thirteen American Colonies stood off Great Britain; the war wasn’t very important to the great power, it was unpopular at home, and the Colonies (and the PRVN) were receiving monetary and military support from a major power that was free from attack by the great power involved in the war.

plain and simple --we ''lost'' in Nam--it was unwinnable
--Russia was too big with too big of a population for Germany to defeat
here is the thread on Nam

Vietnam War was unwinnable

www.usmessageboard.com

Okay, let's look at the blunders.

The US Ground Pounders ALWAYS defeated the enemy. But the enemy was allowed to resupply over and over again. Now we come to the real failure and that was in the Air Power both USAF and Navy (including Marines). They were NEVER allowed to do what they knew how to do with the exception of the two Linebackers.

We lost more F-105 Pilots than we had. WE ended up training Cargo Pilots to pilot the Nickels. Why was that? The Nickels always flew the same racetrack flight paths at the same time every day. All the enemy had to do is position their ground installations along those paths and wait. There were viable targets that were placed off limits like Dams and Power Plants. We didn't touch the railroad from China to Hanoi. The Missions were micro managed by the McNamarra and Johnson. Johnson even bragged about it. Then came Nixon and Abrams. Abrams was asked what they should do and he said, not in his exact words, do what you need to do. That means, as of 1969, the Racetracks ended and we started hitting those off limits targets. China was told that the Railroad was going to be destroyed. They complained that the Railroad Workers were all Chinese. Nixon told them they needed to get their Chinese Workers out of there if they didn't want to lose them. All of a sudden, the resupplying was cut deeply and the Air Attacks could come at any time from any direction. The NV had to cover a much larger area with their Sams and AAs. All of a sudden, they weren't effective anymore. And the Buffs started hitting hard as well. In 1971, Abrams made the brag that he could fly in a Chopper anywhere in South Vietnam safely without fear of being shot down. He was right. And the Caches just outside of South Vietnam were being destroyed as they were being built up. In late Dec 1972, Nixon allowed the USAF, Navy and Marines to do Linebacker II because the NV were refusing to go to the Paris Peace Talks. It took them 11 days to decide to reenter the peace talks. The War was won.

Now for how it was lost. In the Peace Talks, the agreement didn't have anything preventing the NV from building up supplies and forces in Laos and Cambodia. By then Laos had changed in government where it was sympathetic to the NV and not the SV. Late 1972, the USAF was asked (demanded) to leave Laos. And Cambodia didn't have much of a government to begin with to have any say in anything. So in 1973, the US does a drastic troop reduction. The US promised that we would resupply the SV and provide Air Power in the event of the NV attack.

When the NV attacked with a well trained and battle hardened army of 550,000, they came up against a 1.3 million SV army. The math falls apart on this one. The SV had only enough rifles for 400,000 troops and enough ammo for a Mag for each one. Plus, their Fuel for their trucks,tanks and recips were all but depleted. They had almost no Jet Fuel either. The promise of the resupply was withdrawn by Ford. Plus, the Air Power that was sitting in Thailand wasn't used either. I knew it was lost when a captured F-5 with a Red Star painted on it's tail attacked the SV Palace in Saigon. The NV took those 2 years and built up hard in plain friggin sight.

Ford, Congress and the American People threw the South Vietnamese under the bus.

without air and choppers, the ground pounders would've been in big trouble
..the NVA were good..greatly respected by the US forces

Battle of Ia Drang - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

And vice versa. Even today, there is NO Army that can go up against the full might of the US Army if you keep the Politicos out of it. This is why on a unit of about 300 Russians tried and got eaten alive. And then, to cover Russias ass, Russia announced they were mercenaries. No Country or anyone wishes to go against the US Army in a open field battle.

omg
..you see, like I just said in another post--you people think in TV/movie/unrealistic/one dimensional/etc terms:
1. the military should NEVER be in charge of POLITICS/POLITICAL decisions!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
you are wrong--the politicos NEED to be involved
2. the military is subordinate to the politicians -for good reasons
3. most wars are CONTAINED/RESTRICTED--for GOOD--POLITICAL reasons
---most wars are NOT like WW2--where US military power could be used to it's greatest advantage
IE = the Brits were restricted in the Falklands
...you can't just '''flatten'' Hanoi---hahahah---there was a very good argument that the US was on the wrong side in Nam
...you can't just ''flatten'' Baghdad/Tehran/etc --POLITICS are GREATLY involved in these conflicts
4. if you have ever read about history/wars/conflicts, it is much more complicated than just ''flattening'' this city or that city....
--much more to it than MILITARY power
5. [ etc etc ] the US military totally destroyed Iraq's military in PG1-----but look at the problems today!!!!!!!!!!!!! hahahahhahaahah
-this is a perfect analogy [ proof!! ] of what I am saying : you could've destroyed the NVA and marched into Hanoi----but there would still be no win!!!!!!!! just like in Iraq today
====there are very few examples of a country invading another and taking it over---changing it's POLITICS/etc = just like we see in Iraq AND Afghanistan
....US military power was supreme in Afghanistan -- but the problem still exists - just like it would in North Vietnam
etc etc etc

You still don't get it. We didn't have to flatten Hanoi. Just remove it's war making capability and electric power. It gets tough to follow and build war supplies when you can't run your cars, trucks, trains or even see at night. Military Boycotts are a wonderful thing.

 

[harmonica]

A really simple reason that Russia cannot withstand a long term conflict with the US is the size of the Russian economy, and the inefficiency of Socialist warcraft manufacturing.

???!!!.....they withstood Germany and Germany's Aliies
..tiny North Vietnam withstood the MIGHTY US for a VERY long term conflict AND Vietnam withstood and defeated France....with France and the US using much:
more sophisticated/more lethal/etc weapons
Naval and air supremacy
..stone age Afghanistan withstood the MIGHTY Britain and Russia

Russia is a pale shadow of the WWII USSR. And the only reason the USSR survived the first year of the German invasion is that the Germans sucked at logistics. Most of the German army used horse drawn wagons to haul supplies. As for the PRVN standing off the USA, that only happened because we allowed the Soviets and Chinese a free hand in supplying the PRVN with everything from food to SAMs. When we finally decided to close the rail links to China and block Haiphong harbor with mines, the PRVN begged to sign the Paris Peace Accords because they were out of munitions and the North Vietnamese population was nearing starvation. The PRVN stood off the USA for the same reason the thirteen American Colonies stood off Great Britain; the war wasn’t very important to the great power, it was unpopular at home, and the Colonies (and the PRVN) were receiving monetary and military support from a major power that was free from attack by the great power involved in the war.

plain and simple --we ''lost'' in Nam--it was unwinnable
--Russia was too big with too big of a population for Germany to defeat
here is the thread on Nam

Vietnam War was unwinnable

www.usmessageboard.com

Okay, let's look at the blunders.

The US Ground Pounders ALWAYS defeated the enemy. But the enemy was allowed to resupply over and over again. Now we come to the real failure and that was in the Air Power both USAF and Navy (including Marines). They were NEVER allowed to do what they knew how to do with the exception of the two Linebackers.

We lost more F-105 Pilots than we had. WE ended up training Cargo Pilots to pilot the Nickels. Why was that? The Nickels always flew the same racetrack flight paths at the same time every day. All the enemy had to do is position their ground installations along those paths and wait. There were viable targets that were placed off limits like Dams and Power Plants. We didn't touch the railroad from China to Hanoi. The Missions were micro managed by the McNamarra and Johnson. Johnson even bragged about it. Then came Nixon and Abrams. Abrams was asked what they should do and he said, not in his exact words, do what you need to do. That means, as of 1969, the Racetracks ended and we started hitting those off limits targets. China was told that the Railroad was going to be destroyed. They complained that the Railroad Workers were all Chinese. Nixon told them they needed to get their Chinese Workers out of there if they didn't want to lose them. All of a sudden, the resupplying was cut deeply and the Air Attacks could come at any time from any direction. The NV had to cover a much larger area with their Sams and AAs. All of a sudden, they weren't effective anymore. And the Buffs started hitting hard as well. In 1971, Abrams made the brag that he could fly in a Chopper anywhere in South Vietnam safely without fear of being shot down. He was right. And the Caches just outside of South Vietnam were being destroyed as they were being built up. In late Dec 1972, Nixon allowed the USAF, Navy and Marines to do Linebacker II because the NV were refusing to go to the Paris Peace Talks. It took them 11 days to decide to reenter the peace talks. The War was won.

Now for how it was lost. In the Peace Talks, the agreement didn't have anything preventing the NV from building up supplies and forces in Laos and Cambodia. By then Laos had changed in government where it was sympathetic to the NV and not the SV. Late 1972, the USAF was asked (demanded) to leave Laos. And Cambodia didn't have much of a government to begin with to have any say in anything. So in 1973, the US does a drastic troop reduction. The US promised that we would resupply the SV and provide Air Power in the event of the NV attack.

When the NV attacked with a well trained and battle hardened army of 550,000, they came up against a 1.3 million SV army. The math falls apart on this one. The SV had only enough rifles for 400,000 troops and enough ammo for a Mag for each one. Plus, their Fuel for their trucks,tanks and recips were all but depleted. They had almost no Jet Fuel either. The promise of the resupply was withdrawn by Ford. Plus, the Air Power that was sitting in Thailand wasn't used either. I knew it was lost when a captured F-5 with a Red Star painted on it's tail attacked the SV Palace in Saigon. The NV took those 2 years and built up hard in plain friggin sight.

Ford, Congress and the American People threw the South Vietnamese under the bus.

without air and choppers, the ground pounders would've been in big trouble
..the NVA were good..greatly respected by the US forces

Battle of Ia Drang - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

And vice versa. Even today, there is NO Army that can go up against the full might of the US Army if you keep the Politicos out of it. This is why on a unit of about 300 Russians tried and got eaten alive. And then, to cover Russias ass, Russia announced they were mercenaries. No Country or anyone wishes to go against the US Army in a open field battle.

omg
..you see, like I just said in another post--you people think in TV/movie/unrealistic/one dimensional/etc terms:
1. the military should NEVER be in charge of POLITICS/POLITICAL decisions!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
you are wrong--the politicos NEED to be involved
2. the military is subordinate to the politicians -for good reasons
3. most wars are CONTAINED/RESTRICTED--for GOOD--POLITICAL reasons
---most wars are NOT like WW2--where US military power could be used to it's greatest advantage
IE = the Brits were restricted in the Falklands
...you can't just '''flatten'' Hanoi---hahahah---there was a very good argument that the US was on the wrong side in Nam
...you can't just ''flatten'' Baghdad/Tehran/etc --POLITICS are GREATLY involved in these conflicts
4. if you have ever read about history/wars/conflicts, it is much more complicated than just ''flattening'' this city or that city....
--much more to it than MILITARY power
5. [ etc etc ] the US military totally destroyed Iraq's military in PG1-----but look at the problems today!!!!!!!!!!!!! hahahahhahaahah
-this is a perfect analogy [ proof!! ] of what I am saying : you could've destroyed the NVA and marched into Hanoi----but there would still be no win!!!!!!!! just like in Iraq today
====there are very few examples of a country invading another and taking it over---changing it's POLITICS/etc = just like we see in Iraq AND Afghanistan
....US military power was supreme in Afghanistan -- but the problem still exists - just like it would in North Vietnam
etc etc etc

You still don't get it. We didn't have to flatten Hanoi. Just remove it's war making capability and electric power. It gets tough to follow and build war supplies when you can't run your cars, trucks, trains or even see at night. Military Boycotts are a wonderful thing.

Dayton said:
'''''If we had flattened Hanoi in 1965''''
....I just said it and YOU don't get it---we tried that with Germany and Japan--they did not surrender--they adapted
...they tried that!! = to bomb the Ho Chi Minh Trail!!!!!! didn't work
you are playing a board game like a kid does
.....you don't have ANY idea how wars/bombing/etc work
..they have more than 1 power grid --they will just rebuild whatever we destroyed
..why can't they run their cars and trucks? they can rebuild their railroads

. ''''''In 1965 during the Vietnam War, it was the objective of many attacks by US Air Force and US Navy aircraft which would fail to destroy the bridge until 1972, even after hundreds of attacks''''

pay attention to the big, bold words

Thanh Hóa Bridge - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Daryl Hunt]

A really simple reason that Russia cannot withstand a long term conflict with the US is the size of the Russian economy, and the inefficiency of Socialist warcraft manufacturing.

???!!!.....they withstood Germany and Germany's Aliies
..tiny North Vietnam withstood the MIGHTY US for a VERY long term conflict AND Vietnam withstood and defeated France....with France and the US using much:
more sophisticated/more lethal/etc weapons
Naval and air supremacy
..stone age Afghanistan withstood the MIGHTY Britain and Russia

Russia is a pale shadow of the WWII USSR. And the only reason the USSR survived the first year of the German invasion is that the Germans sucked at logistics. Most of the German army used horse drawn wagons to haul supplies. As for the PRVN standing off the USA, that only happened because we allowed the Soviets and Chinese a free hand in supplying the PRVN with everything from food to SAMs. When we finally decided to close the rail links to China and block Haiphong harbor with mines, the PRVN begged to sign the Paris Peace Accords because they were out of munitions and the North Vietnamese population was nearing starvation. The PRVN stood off the USA for the same reason the thirteen American Colonies stood off Great Britain; the war wasn’t very important to the great power, it was unpopular at home, and the Colonies (and the PRVN) were receiving monetary and military support from a major power that was free from attack by the great power involved in the war.

plain and simple --we ''lost'' in Nam--it was unwinnable
--Russia was too big with too big of a population for Germany to defeat
here is the thread on Nam

Vietnam War was unwinnable

www.usmessageboard.com

Okay, let's look at the blunders.

The US Ground Pounders ALWAYS defeated the enemy. But the enemy was allowed to resupply over and over again. Now we come to the real failure and that was in the Air Power both USAF and Navy (including Marines). They were NEVER allowed to do what they knew how to do with the exception of the two Linebackers.

We lost more F-105 Pilots than we had. WE ended up training Cargo Pilots to pilot the Nickels. Why was that? The Nickels always flew the same racetrack flight paths at the same time every day. All the enemy had to do is position their ground installations along those paths and wait. There were viable targets that were placed off limits like Dams and Power Plants. We didn't touch the railroad from China to Hanoi. The Missions were micro managed by the McNamarra and Johnson. Johnson even bragged about it. Then came Nixon and Abrams. Abrams was asked what they should do and he said, not in his exact words, do what you need to do. That means, as of 1969, the Racetracks ended and we started hitting those off limits targets. China was told that the Railroad was going to be destroyed. They complained that the Railroad Workers were all Chinese. Nixon told them they needed to get their Chinese Workers out of there if they didn't want to lose them. All of a sudden, the resupplying was cut deeply and the Air Attacks could come at any time from any direction. The NV had to cover a much larger area with their Sams and AAs. All of a sudden, they weren't effective anymore. And the Buffs started hitting hard as well. In 1971, Abrams made the brag that he could fly in a Chopper anywhere in South Vietnam safely without fear of being shot down. He was right. And the Caches just outside of South Vietnam were being destroyed as they were being built up. In late Dec 1972, Nixon allowed the USAF, Navy and Marines to do Linebacker II because the NV were refusing to go to the Paris Peace Talks. It took them 11 days to decide to reenter the peace talks. The War was won.

Now for how it was lost. In the Peace Talks, the agreement didn't have anything preventing the NV from building up supplies and forces in Laos and Cambodia. By then Laos had changed in government where it was sympathetic to the NV and not the SV. Late 1972, the USAF was asked (demanded) to leave Laos. And Cambodia didn't have much of a government to begin with to have any say in anything. So in 1973, the US does a drastic troop reduction. The US promised that we would resupply the SV and provide Air Power in the event of the NV attack.

When the NV attacked with a well trained and battle hardened army of 550,000, they came up against a 1.3 million SV army. The math falls apart on this one. The SV had only enough rifles for 400,000 troops and enough ammo for a Mag for each one. Plus, their Fuel for their trucks,tanks and recips were all but depleted. They had almost no Jet Fuel either. The promise of the resupply was withdrawn by Ford. Plus, the Air Power that was sitting in Thailand wasn't used either. I knew it was lost when a captured F-5 with a Red Star painted on it's tail attacked the SV Palace in Saigon. The NV took those 2 years and built up hard in plain friggin sight.

Ford, Congress and the American People threw the South Vietnamese under the bus.

..what's your point? the US could've won??!!

The US could not win. It never could win. The only way for the US to win would be to completely take over SV like the French did. Then, all of a sudden, even the friendlies ain't so friendly anymore.

If we had flattened Hanoi in 1965 I would bet good money that the North Vietnamese would have thrown in the towel. They would've spent the next ten years rebuilding their capital and would've had no energy to wage the war in South Vietnam.

With a ten year respite, South Vietnam would probably have straightened itself out and been too strong for the communists to attempt to take over.

--you people don't know much about wars/history/etc-

I've taught virtually every history class offered for a dozen years. And I don't get how you can say that Germany and Japan did not surrender. They most certainly did.

hhahah stop the bullshit---either you know what I mean, or you are not smart, or you are bullshitting:
you said if we '''flattened Hanoi'' they would surrender---NO Germany and Japan did not surrender after we ''flattened'' their cities

Except I DID NOT SAY that the North Vietnamese would have "surrendered". I said they would've "thrown in the towel". By that I meant with their capital effectively destroyed (by effectively destroyed I mean 25-40% destroyed by the way) they would no longer have had the resources to provide much support to the enemies of the South Vietnamese government and the South could've held on.

Sorry I confused you.

---the South was shit-----they were never going to be able to defend themselves
read this

A Bright Shining Lie - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

and:

Battle of Ap Bac - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

That's just one battle and the SV won it at a high cost. You need to learn from your mistakes. When Tet happened, the blood was sucked right out of the NVA. They were never a viable force again after that. The VC were NEVER SV, they were NVA sent down to terrorize the South and force young family members to fight for them at the fear of their families lives. At some point, it got to be very suicidal for the NVA to send those "Representatives" down south as the villages would kill them. This was the time to take it home to the North with taking out their dams, powerplants, manufacturing and transportations. But Johnson wouldn't do it. And many lives were lost in the process. Yes, the Rolling Thunder should have been done in 1968 and continued until the North sued for peace. Not surrendered, but sued for peace on the terms that gave SV a chance to establish itself as a viable nation.

You keep saying that we had to win. We weren't there to win. We were there to stop Communism from flourishing, as dumb as that sounds. And Johnson's fear of China was a very large driving factor which turned out to be false when Vietnam handily handed China it's ass in the 70s. The point here is, Johnson was an idiot and wouldn't listen to his Military. He listened to McNamara who has his own brand of insanity. Our heavy influx of ground forces were NEVER needed as the South always had the numeric superiority. What they lacked was Air Power and we had that in spades. But due to the two Washington Idjits, that air power was severely mismanaged. What would have happened if, in 1965, had we started a Rolling Thunder Campaign and kept it up? Would China have become as invested? Probably not and the outcome would have been much different for not only Vietnam (both sides) and over 50,000 Americans.

 

[Daryl Hunt]

A really simple reason that Russia cannot withstand a long term conflict with the US is the size of the Russian economy, and the inefficiency of Socialist warcraft manufacturing.

???!!!.....they withstood Germany and Germany's Aliies
..tiny North Vietnam withstood the MIGHTY US for a VERY long term conflict AND Vietnam withstood and defeated France....with France and the US using much:
more sophisticated/more lethal/etc weapons
Naval and air supremacy
..stone age Afghanistan withstood the MIGHTY Britain and Russia

Russia is a pale shadow of the WWII USSR. And the only reason the USSR survived the first year of the German invasion is that the Germans sucked at logistics. Most of the German army used horse drawn wagons to haul supplies. As for the PRVN standing off the USA, that only happened because we allowed the Soviets and Chinese a free hand in supplying the PRVN with everything from food to SAMs. When we finally decided to close the rail links to China and block Haiphong harbor with mines, the PRVN begged to sign the Paris Peace Accords because they were out of munitions and the North Vietnamese population was nearing starvation. The PRVN stood off the USA for the same reason the thirteen American Colonies stood off Great Britain; the war wasn’t very important to the great power, it was unpopular at home, and the Colonies (and the PRVN) were receiving monetary and military support from a major power that was free from attack by the great power involved in the war.

plain and simple --we ''lost'' in Nam--it was unwinnable
--Russia was too big with too big of a population for Germany to defeat
here is the thread on Nam

Vietnam War was unwinnable

www.usmessageboard.com

Okay, let's look at the blunders.

The US Ground Pounders ALWAYS defeated the enemy. But the enemy was allowed to resupply over and over again. Now we come to the real failure and that was in the Air Power both USAF and Navy (including Marines). They were NEVER allowed to do what they knew how to do with the exception of the two Linebackers.

We lost more F-105 Pilots than we had. WE ended up training Cargo Pilots to pilot the Nickels. Why was that? The Nickels always flew the same racetrack flight paths at the same time every day. All the enemy had to do is position their ground installations along those paths and wait. There were viable targets that were placed off limits like Dams and Power Plants. We didn't touch the railroad from China to Hanoi. The Missions were micro managed by the McNamarra and Johnson. Johnson even bragged about it. Then came Nixon and Abrams. Abrams was asked what they should do and he said, not in his exact words, do what you need to do. That means, as of 1969, the Racetracks ended and we started hitting those off limits targets. China was told that the Railroad was going to be destroyed. They complained that the Railroad Workers were all Chinese. Nixon told them they needed to get their Chinese Workers out of there if they didn't want to lose them. All of a sudden, the resupplying was cut deeply and the Air Attacks could come at any time from any direction. The NV had to cover a much larger area with their Sams and AAs. All of a sudden, they weren't effective anymore. And the Buffs started hitting hard as well. In 1971, Abrams made the brag that he could fly in a Chopper anywhere in South Vietnam safely without fear of being shot down. He was right. And the Caches just outside of South Vietnam were being destroyed as they were being built up. In late Dec 1972, Nixon allowed the USAF, Navy and Marines to do Linebacker II because the NV were refusing to go to the Paris Peace Talks. It took them 11 days to decide to reenter the peace talks. The War was won.

Now for how it was lost. In the Peace Talks, the agreement didn't have anything preventing the NV from building up supplies and forces in Laos and Cambodia. By then Laos had changed in government where it was sympathetic to the NV and not the SV. Late 1972, the USAF was asked (demanded) to leave Laos. And Cambodia didn't have much of a government to begin with to have any say in anything. So in 1973, the US does a drastic troop reduction. The US promised that we would resupply the SV and provide Air Power in the event of the NV attack.

When the NV attacked with a well trained and battle hardened army of 550,000, they came up against a 1.3 million SV army. The math falls apart on this one. The SV had only enough rifles for 400,000 troops and enough ammo for a Mag for each one. Plus, their Fuel for their trucks,tanks and recips were all but depleted. They had almost no Jet Fuel either. The promise of the resupply was withdrawn by Ford. Plus, the Air Power that was sitting in Thailand wasn't used either. I knew it was lost when a captured F-5 with a Red Star painted on it's tail attacked the SV Palace in Saigon. The NV took those 2 years and built up hard in plain friggin sight.

Ford, Congress and the American People threw the South Vietnamese under the bus.

without air and choppers, the ground pounders would've been in big trouble
..the NVA were good..greatly respected by the US forces

Battle of Ia Drang - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

And vice versa. Even today, there is NO Army that can go up against the full might of the US Army if you keep the Politicos out of it. This is why on a unit of about 300 Russians tried and got eaten alive. And then, to cover Russias ass, Russia announced they were mercenaries. No Country or anyone wishes to go against the US Army in a open field battle.

omg
..you see, like I just said in another post--you people think in TV/movie/unrealistic/one dimensional/etc terms:
1. the military should NEVER be in charge of POLITICS/POLITICAL decisions!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
you are wrong--the politicos NEED to be involved
2. the military is subordinate to the politicians -for good reasons
3. most wars are CONTAINED/RESTRICTED--for GOOD--POLITICAL reasons
---most wars are NOT like WW2--where US military power could be used to it's greatest advantage
IE = the Brits were restricted in the Falklands
...you can't just '''flatten'' Hanoi---hahahah---there was a very good argument that the US was on the wrong side in Nam
...you can't just ''flatten'' Baghdad/Tehran/etc --POLITICS are GREATLY involved in these conflicts
4. if you have ever read about history/wars/conflicts, it is much more complicated than just ''flattening'' this city or that city....
--much more to it than MILITARY power
5. [ etc etc ] the US military totally destroyed Iraq's military in PG1-----but look at the problems today!!!!!!!!!!!!! hahahahhahaahah
-this is a perfect analogy [ proof!! ] of what I am saying : you could've destroyed the NVA and marched into Hanoi----but there would still be no win!!!!!!!! just like in Iraq today
====there are very few examples of a country invading another and taking it over---changing it's POLITICS/etc = just like we see in Iraq AND Afghanistan
....US military power was supreme in Afghanistan -- but the problem still exists - just like it would in North Vietnam
etc etc etc

You still don't get it. We didn't have to flatten Hanoi. Just remove it's war making capability and electric power. It gets tough to follow and build war supplies when you can't run your cars, trucks, trains or even see at night. Military Boycotts are a wonderful thing.

Dayton said:
'''''If we had flattened Hanoi in 1965''''
....I just said it and YOU don't get it---we tried that with Germany and Japan--they did not surrender--they adapted
...they tried that!! = to bomb the Ho Chi Minh Trail!!!!!! didn't work
you are playing a board game like a kid does
.....you don't have ANY idea how wars/bombing/etc work
..they have more than 1 power grid --they will just rebuild whatever we destroyed
..why can't they run their cars and trucks? they can rebuild their railroads

. ''''''In 1965 during the Vietnam War, it was the objective of many attacks by US Air Force and US Navy aircraft which would fail to destroy the bridge until 1972, even after hundreds of attacks''''

pay attention to the big, bold words

Thanh Hóa Bridge - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Pay attention to someone that was there. Pay attention to someone that shelled the Trail. We stopped 1 out of 200 supply vehicles (a supply vehicle can be anything from trucks, barges, Elephants, mules, bicycles). The VC never got a chance to regroup and pretty well died out in 1969. And the North was stopped from amassing in Laos and Cambodia by either the US Military or the Laotian Hill People trained and equipped by the US Air Force. The only thing not being done is mining the Highphong Harbor and taking out the power supplies, manucturing capabilities and transportation systems in North Vietnam. Winning a war isn't about killing the other side. It's the ability to remove their resolve to fight. And until 1970, we didn't start doing those actions. We started doing some of that in lat 1969 when we froze the Supplies from the North to the South but we didn't go far enough until Linebacker I and II. It took a change in Leadership in the US to make those changes and a promise by Nixon to end the war.