Tactics in Vietnam versus World War II

Friday, September 19th, 2014

Gen. DePuy discusses tactics in Vietnam versus World War II:

From the offensive point of view, the big difference was between seeking out the enemy force and seeking out terrain. Terrain was less important in Vietnam for two reasons. First, most terrain didn’t give you visibility or observation, so it was unimportant from that standpoint. And, it was totally unimportant if it wasn’t important to the enemy. So, except for Nui Ba Den and some other big mountains used for radio relays, terrain in Vietnam made no difference. Visibility was what you were looking for, visibility around a defensive position. So, instead of going for terrain and bypassing the enemy, you were forced to fight the enemy. You were forced to do something with him on ground chosen by him. You couldn’t pry him out of his position by getting the high ground to his rear, which is what we tried to do in World War II. That led to going right after him, and going right after him led to the things that we talked about earlier. Sometimes, if there were just a few of them, a good dashing charge with a lot of shooting was probably the right thing to do; but, it was awfully hard to tell when that was the right thing to do. If he happened to be in bunkers it was almost suicidal to do that. As you know, I preferred that the leading elements not automatically charge the enemy. Attacking the enemy should be done as a result of a decision, not as a result of an automatic response.

I do not like automatic reactions to contact. And, I say that, even though I admit that if you had an airborne unit under your command, with all tigers in it, then it might be that on the average, you’d do better by an immediate charge. If you had a disaster, it would be a big disaster, but often it worked, in Vietnam, where you had to go directly after the enemy force and you couldn’t attack where the enemy was weak, it raised this other question. So, what I tried to emphasize was that when you make contact, make contact with a small force because you’re going to make contact in adverse circumstances. You’re probably going to be in his killing zone. After you’ve made contact, don’t go after him unless a competent person like the company commander or the battalion commander decides to do so. Try to find out how big he is. Now, we had some rules about that. If you only hear rifles, it’s probably a platoon; if you hear a machine gun and rifles, it’s probably a company; and if you hear rifles, a machine gun and a mortar, it’s most likely a battalion. So, act accordingly. It is not smart for a platoon to attack a battalion. You’ll just lose the platoon. We should do like the Viet Cong did at Bau Bang against Paul Gorman’s battalion — probe around and find the general configuration of the position, and determine whether it’s fortified or not, then report back to the next higher headquarters. That way you don’t get so enmeshed that you can’t shoot at it, or you can’t drop a bomb on it. The best thing to do would be to bring up more force and try to surround it, but don’t surround it too tightly; that way you can still bomb it. Now, we often tried to do that. Sometimes we made a real mess of it. Sometimes everything went wrong. By the way, the VC decided not to attack Paul Gorman. They were smart. He was loaded for bear.

So, those are the big differences.

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