harmonica
Diamond Member
- Sep 1, 2017
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..I was in the USMC for 8 years...Had a relative die in Operation Buffalo Vietnam--ok, well....it's Haiphong Harbor--not HIGH....in your post here---please, re-read it for me..slowly--- and correct your grievous mistakeDayton said:omgwithout air and choppers, the ground pounders would've been in big troubleplain and simple --we ''lost'' in Nam--it was unwinnableRussia 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.???!!!.....they withstood Germany and Germany's AliiesA 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.
..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 was too big with too big of a population for Germany to defeat
here is the thread on Nam
Vietnam War was unwinnable
www.usmessageboard.com
Okay, let's look at the blunders.
The US Ground Pounders ALWAYS defeated the enemy. But the enemy was allowed to resupply over and over again. Now we come to the real failure and that was in the Air Power both USAF and Navy (including Marines). They were NEVER allowed to do what they knew how to do with the exception of the two Linebackers.
We lost more F-105 Pilots than we had. WE ended up training Cargo Pilots to pilot the Nickels. Why was that? The Nickels always flew the same racetrack flight paths at the same time every day. All the enemy had to do is position their ground installations along those paths and wait. There were viable targets that were placed off limits like Dams and Power Plants. We didn't touch the railroad from China to Hanoi. The Missions were micro managed by the McNamarra and Johnson. Johnson even bragged about it. Then came Nixon and Abrams. Abrams was asked what they should do and he said, not in his exact words, do what you need to do. That means, as of 1969, the Racetracks ended and we started hitting those off limits targets. China was told that the Railroad was going to be destroyed. They complained that the Railroad Workers were all Chinese. Nixon told them they needed to get their Chinese Workers out of there if they didn't want to lose them. All of a sudden, the resupplying was cut deeply and the Air Attacks could come at any time from any direction. The NV had to cover a much larger area with their Sams and AAs. All of a sudden, they weren't effective anymore. And the Buffs started hitting hard as well. In 1971, Abrams made the brag that he could fly in a Chopper anywhere in South Vietnam safely without fear of being shot down. He was right. And the Caches just outside of South Vietnam were being destroyed as they were being built up. In late Dec 1972, Nixon allowed the USAF, Navy and Marines to do Linebacker II because the NV were refusing to go to the Paris Peace Talks. It took them 11 days to decide to reenter the peace talks. The War was won.
Now for how it was lost. In the Peace Talks, the agreement didn't have anything preventing the NV from building up supplies and forces in Laos and Cambodia. By then Laos had changed in government where it was sympathetic to the NV and not the SV. Late 1972, the USAF was asked (demanded) to leave Laos. And Cambodia didn't have much of a government to begin with to have any say in anything. So in 1973, the US does a drastic troop reduction. The US promised that we would resupply the SV and provide Air Power in the event of the NV attack.
When the NV attacked with a well trained and battle hardened army of 550,000, they came up against a 1.3 million SV army. The math falls apart on this one. The SV had only enough rifles for 400,000 troops and enough ammo for a Mag for each one. Plus, their Fuel for their trucks,tanks and recips were all but depleted. They had almost no Jet Fuel either. The promise of the resupply was withdrawn by Ford. Plus, the Air Power that was sitting in Thailand wasn't used either. I knew it was lost when a captured F-5 with a Red Star painted on it's tail attacked the SV Palace in Saigon. The NV took those 2 years and built up hard in plain friggin sight.
Ford, Congress and the American People threw the South Vietnamese under the bus.
..the NVA were good..greatly respected by the US forces
Battle of Ia Drang - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
And vice versa. Even today, there is NO Army that can go up against the full might of the US Army if you keep the Politicos out of it. This is why on a unit of about 300 Russians tried and got eaten alive. And then, to cover Russias ass, Russia announced they were mercenaries. No Country or anyone wishes to go against the US Army in a open field battle.
..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.
'''''If we had flattened Hanoi in 1965''''
....I just said it and YOU don't get it---we tried that with Germany and Japan--they did not surrender--they adapted
...they tried that!! = to bomb the Ho Chi Minh Trail!!!!!! didn't work
you are playing a board game like a kid does
.....you don't have ANY idea how wars/bombing/etc work
..they have more than 1 power grid --they will just rebuild whatever we destroyed
..why can't they run their cars and trucks? they can rebuild their railroads
. ''''''In 1965 during the Vietnam War, it was the objective of many attacks by US Air Force and US Navy aircraft which would fail to destroy the bridge until 1972, even after hundreds of attacks''''
pay attention to the big, bold words
Thanh Hóa Bridge - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
Pay attention to someone that was there. Pay attention to someone that shelled the Trail. We stopped 1 out of 200 supply vehicles (a supply vehicle can be anything from trucks, barges, Elephants, mules, bicycles). The VC never got a chance to regroup and pretty well died out in 1969. And the North was stopped from amassing in Laos and Cambodia by either the US Military or the Laotian Hill People trained and equipped by the US Air Force. The only thing not being done is mining the Highphong Harbor and taking out the power supplies, manucturing capabilities and transportation systems in North Vietnam. Winning a war isn't about killing the other side. It's the ability to remove their resolve to fight. And until 1970, we didn't start doing those actions. We started doing some of that in lat 1969 when we froze the Supplies from the North to the South but we didn't go far enough until Linebacker I and II. It took a change in Leadership in the US to make those changes and a promise by Nixon to end the war.
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.
...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.