F-35s jets and S-400 missiles

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

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
and:

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.
hahhahahah--\
1. I never said we had to win = you are babbling
2. NOT A BOARD GAME--you just don't ''take out powerplants/etc'''
3. ok, so we take out their powerplants/etc--then what?? they just rebuild/wait it out/etc
4. you use the words '''Would China''' and ''probably'' --HAHAHAHH = your unsubstantiated opinion/thoughts/babble
5. how many times do I have to say it!!????????
history shows us the North is NOT going to sue for peace
6. if you knew history, you would know the Chinese sent hundreds of thosuands of soldiers into NKorea because we crossed the parallel......Johnson had good reason not to ignore the Chinese
--what does Vietam handing the Chinese a whoopass got to do with Johnson not wanting the Chinese to get involved in the Nam War???!!

plain and simple---we couldn't win or stop communists ....
 
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

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

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

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.
......you might have been there, but you don't know history/WW2 history/bombing history/etc
 
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

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

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

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.
hahahahhahahah!!?????
1. do me a favor, and re-read your post.....correct your mistake please
2. I've said it a million times--you can bomb them like we did Germany and Japan--they will NOT lose the resolve to fight
 
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

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

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

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.
..allow me to add--correct your grievous mistake......it's not a typical grammar/etc error
 
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

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

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

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.
for someone who was there---I am very ''confused'' on how you made that mistake...??
 
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

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

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

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.
what unit were you with?
 
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

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
and:

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.
hahhahahah--\
1. I never said we had to win = you are babbling
2. NOT A BOARD GAME--you just don't ''take out powerplants/etc'''
3. ok, so we take out their powerplants/etc--then what?? they just rebuild/wait it out/etc
4. you use the words '''Would China''' and ''probably'' --HAHAHAHH = your unsubstantiated opinion/thoughts/babble
5. how many times do I have to say it!!????????
history shows us the North is NOT going to sue for peace
6. if you knew history, you would know the Chinese sent hundreds of thosuands of soldiers into NKorea because we crossed the parallel......Johnson had good reason not to ignore the Chinese
--what does Vietam handing the Chinese a whoopass got to do with Johnson not wanting the Chinese to get involved in the Nam War???!!

plain and simple---we couldn't win or stop communists ....

We weren't there to win. You keep thinking of a Germany/Japan Surrender. We were there to stop the hostilities from the North to the South. They was to do that is to make it so costly, they blink. We started that in late 1969 and continued until late 1972 when the Peace Accords were signed. I wonder what 1975 would have been like had Nixon still be President as he was about the last US President to actually keep his word about anything. He promised the resupply of the South and air power which we had all over the friggin place. Neither happened and the North gambled that it wouldn't be forthcoming and they were right.
 
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

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

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

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.
..correct your mistake, please
 
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

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

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

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.
for someone who was there---I am very ''confused'' on how you made that mistake...??

You are confused, yes. But not on what you think you are confused about. Vietnam was a total Cluster F*** of the worst kind for the US and it's leaders as well as the info given to the US Citizens. Let me ask you one question. What was the #1 incident that caused the US to agree to such a lopsided Paris Accord Agreement? I'll give you a hint. It wasn't anyone military, didn't happen in Vietnam and it was one man.

Lets' see if you are as up on things as you claim you are.
 
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

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
and:

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.
hahhahahah--\
1. I never said we had to win = you are babbling
2. NOT A BOARD GAME--you just don't ''take out powerplants/etc'''
3. ok, so we take out their powerplants/etc--then what?? they just rebuild/wait it out/etc
4. you use the words '''Would China''' and ''probably'' --HAHAHAHH = your unsubstantiated opinion/thoughts/babble
5. how many times do I have to say it!!????????
history shows us the North is NOT going to sue for peace
6. if you knew history, you would know the Chinese sent hundreds of thosuands of soldiers into NKorea because we crossed the parallel......Johnson had good reason not to ignore the Chinese
--what does Vietam handing the Chinese a whoopass got to do with Johnson not wanting the Chinese to get involved in the Nam War???!!

plain and simple---we couldn't win or stop communists ....

We weren't there to win. You keep thinking of a Germany/Japan Surrender. We were there to stop the hostilities from the North to the South. They was to do that is to make it so costly, they blink. We started that in late 1969 and continued until late 1972 when the Peace Accords were signed. I wonder what 1975 would have been like had Nixon still be President as he was about the last US President to actually keep his word about anything. He promised the resupply of the South and air power which we had all over the friggin place. Neither happened and the North gambled that it wouldn't be forthcoming and they were right.
..the US could do nothing to make it too costly for the North
here:
.
 
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

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

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

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.
..correct your mistake, please

My mistake? You mean Johnson and McNamaras many mistakes that cost tens of thousands of lives, don't you. How about you point out "MY" mistake and we can discuss it. And stop trolling.
 
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

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

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

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.
..correct your mistake, please
..are you going to correct your mistake or not?
 
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

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

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

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.
..correct your mistake, please

My mistake? You mean Johnson and McNamaras many mistakes that cost tens of thousands of lives, don't you. How about you point out "MY" mistake and we can discuss it. And stop trolling.
..you've proven that you possibly are lying with your mistake--I've given you a chance--I won't give another
 
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

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

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

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.
....in your post here---please, re-read it for me..slowly--- and correct your grievous mistake
 
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

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
and:

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.
hahhahahah--\
1. I never said we had to win = you are babbling
2. NOT A BOARD GAME--you just don't ''take out powerplants/etc'''
3. ok, so we take out their powerplants/etc--then what?? they just rebuild/wait it out/etc
4. you use the words '''Would China''' and ''probably'' --HAHAHAHH = your unsubstantiated opinion/thoughts/babble
5. how many times do I have to say it!!????????
history shows us the North is NOT going to sue for peace
6. if you knew history, you would know the Chinese sent hundreds of thosuands of soldiers into NKorea because we crossed the parallel......Johnson had good reason not to ignore the Chinese
--what does Vietam handing the Chinese a whoopass got to do with Johnson not wanting the Chinese to get involved in the Nam War???!!

plain and simple---we couldn't win or stop communists ....

We weren't there to win. You keep thinking of a Germany/Japan Surrender. We were there to stop the hostilities from the North to the South. They was to do that is to make it so costly, they blink. We started that in late 1969 and continued until late 1972 when the Peace Accords were signed. I wonder what 1975 would have been like had Nixon still be President as he was about the last US President to actually keep his word about anything. He promised the resupply of the South and air power which we had all over the friggin place. Neither happened and the North gambled that it wouldn't be forthcoming and they were right.
..the US could do nothing to make it too costly for the North
here:
.

This is where you allow the one person that doomed the whole thing to dictate the history recording. While heaped in facts, the way the facts are laid out gives a false narrative.

Again, name that one person.
 
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

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

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

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.
..correct your mistake, please

My mistake? You mean Johnson and McNamaras many mistakes that cost tens of thousands of lives, don't you. How about you point out "MY" mistake and we can discuss it. And stop trolling.
..you've proven that you possibly are lying with your mistake--I've given you a chance--I won't give another

Since you have yet to directly point out my "Mistake" do I take your withdrawal as a strategic withdrawal because you are unable to counter my "I was There" narratives? Sorry, cupcake, there are still a few of us that are still alive that can tell the truth. You should wait at least another 15 years or so before you try this again. We won't be around to correct you.
 
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

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

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

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.
....in your post here---please, re-read it for me..slowly--- and correct your grievous mistake

Since I don't believe I made a factual mistake, how about you type slowly and point it out. It's a simple thing for you to do. Otherwise, you are just trolling.
 
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

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

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

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.
....in your post here---please, re-read it for me..slowly--- and correct your grievous mistake

Since I don't believe I made a factual mistake, how about you type slowly and point it out. It's a simple thing for you to do. Otherwise, you are just trolling.
--ok, well....it's Haiphong Harbor--not HIGH
...this is not your everyday grammar mistake......anyone with a basic knowledge of the subject, would never say HIGHphong
......????
 
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

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

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

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.
....in your post here---please, re-read it for me..slowly--- and correct your grievous mistake

Since I don't believe I made a factual mistake, how about you type slowly and point it out. It's a simple thing for you to do. Otherwise, you are just trolling.
--ok, well....it's Haiphong Harbor--not HIGH
...this is not your everyday grammar mistake......anyone with a basic knowledge of the subject, would never say HIGHphong
......????

Wow, is that all? So I got an A- instead of an A+. If all you can find to point out is spelling and grammar mistakes, I can live with that. I never claimed to be extremely highly edumicated. And I am not writing a piece for a University that depends on spelling and grammar more than content for a grade. Most of my Long Time Friends can't spell it correctly either. Some even have trouble spelling "CAT" correctly but that doesn't mean they can't communicate what went on in their lives. And their lives all have been very long and most do not agree with the way the Press and most historians write about Vietnam. We were there, you weren't.
 
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

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

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

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.
....in your post here---please, re-read it for me..slowly--- and correct your grievous mistake

Since I don't believe I made a factual mistake, how about you type slowly and point it out. It's a simple thing for you to do. Otherwise, you are just trolling.
--ok, well....it's Haiphong Harbor--not HIGH
...this is not your everyday grammar mistake......anyone with a basic knowledge of the subject, would never say HIGHphong
......????

Wow, is that all? So I got an A- instead of an A+. If all you can find to point out is spelling and grammar mistakes, I can live with that. I never claimed to be extremely highly edumicated. And I am not writing a piece for a University that depends on spelling and grammar more than content for a grade. Most of my Long Time Friends can't spell it correctly either. Some even have trouble spelling "CAT" correctly but that doesn't mean they can't communicate what went on in their lives. And their lives all have been very long and most do not agree with the way the Press and most historians write about Vietnam. We were there, you weren't.
no, no--this is not a basic grammar-spelling mistake
....so, you are not highly educated, but you think you know about history/etc? !?
...so then, you won't be able to understand or comprehend what is posted.......??!!
...so, you don't know much about Haiphong Harbor--yet you mention it in your post----you act like you know a lot about it......but you don't
???
 

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