Posted on 07/11/2012 7:25:41 AM PDT by moonshot925
Would it have been worth it to use low-yield tactical nuclear weapons during Vietnam War?
That is the point. We want to destroy their civilian population, transportation, infrastructure and industrial capacity. In WW2 we firebombed 65 Japanese cities and killed hundreds of thousands. It decimated their will and ability to wage war.
Using nukes would have turned our allies even further from us - and we had very few standing with us to begin with in Vietnam.
We used nuclear weapons on Japan in WW2 which killed 220,000 people. But none of our allies turned against us because of that.
No. It would have been worthwhile to actually fight a war instead of conducting a research session on various combat techniques that, ultimately, failed.
Vietnam would have been over and done with in 18 months if we had fought the war the same way we fought WWII - to win. Instead, Washington and its armchair generals played politics with American lives and we fought to lose.
Nukes wouldn’t have changed anything other tan make Vietnam more toxc than it already is with all the chemicals we sprayed over there.
Long story short, Vietnam is in the past. It is a bad piece of history for America and, so far, Washington has failed to learn a single lesson from the debacle. Let’s leave Vietnam in the past and stop trying to find ways to win a war that Washington didn’t want to win. It is what it is and we lost because the armchair generals in Washington had no will to win.
Let it go.
Unless you are willing to kill your enemy and all that stand with him, surrender for he has already defeated you.
War is nasty business. If you go to war not only is the military a valid target but ALL the infrastructure is a legitimate target. This will also include civilians that maintain the infrastructure and agriculture.
Destruction of the Soviet Union and China, but not of the United States.
In the 1960's Soviet ICBMs were liquid fueled and kept in shelters or pits with empty tanks. They required 1-2 hours to bring them in readiness for launch.
By the time Soviet ICBMs were ready to launch, they would have already been destroyed.
More than 70% of the Soviet bomber force would be destroyed on the ground.
The bombers that did get off the ground would be detected by our DEW line radars, intercepted and destroyed.
Only on Johnson and McNamara who tried to micro-manage the war from D.C.
Also, JASON report (secret scientific study) pretty much dissuaded LBJ from using nuclear weapons. Oddly enough, several scientists banded together to study such use after hearing LBJ saying "...we should toss in a few nukes once and awhile." Or words to that effect.
Indeed indeed, all these conflicts were portrayed with their kamikazes as wars of national identity when it was all crappy ideological hypocrisy and unhealthy marriage between their people and their criminal leaders.
Using nukes would have meant we would have had also the right language in wiping away these fools, but we failed and we still fail, to PC, Compassionate Conservatism, and other ludicrous philantopies to islamic terrorist groups and civilizations.
I recall reading a science fiction short story back in the day that suggested salting the Ho Chi Minh trail with highly radioactive material (plutonium?) embedded in multi-ton contrete blocks.
IIRC, they would be helolifted into place with the crews being protected by lead shielding in the aircraft and by remotely controlled, drop-away lead shutters on the blocks. After being deposited, the shutters would be activated, fall away, and the entire area would soon be flooded with lethal doses of radiation. Placed densely at critical choke points, the blocks would present a human-fatal barrier that would stop travel on the trail.
Of course, the fatal flaws in the theory are: 1) that even fatal overexposure to radiation is not INSTANTLY fatal and 2) that, when called up to accomplish a higher purpose, human beings will deliberately volunteer to work in such environments - to expose themselves even though death is considered certain.
The firefighters at Chernobyl proved that. (The jury is still out on Fukushima.)
(Glad it wasn’t tried - got enough problems in Vietnam and elsewhere from Agent Orange)
Our side was capable of using nukes, in fact targets were designated very early on...as early as when the French were still there.
We tried to cut the trails virtually daily...didn't work using guns, bombs, and booby traps.
One serious contender was to close of the passes (Mu Gia gap) through which supplies had to move...nukes would have worked nicely.
We did try collapsing tunnels using monster conventional war heads left over after the B36 was retired. Lashed them to pallets with fuze on about a two foot probe and kicked 'em out of 130's. Story was that this was intended to clear an LZ...but the targets didn't look so promising for that purpose.
(Using 10 - 20 thousand pounders from pre-Korea wasn't all that strange, we burned up a lot of ancient powder, toe poppers and even rations during that exercise.)
In the end, Korea still dominated too many minds to press DRV (or China) too hard, nukes would have set bad precedent, many of our 'leaders' had more empathy with the North than the South, Kennedy had sold the war as counter insurgency (small & cheap), we were planning our pull out at least as early as '68, and were already being protested into political mush...escalation would have sent the "students" (#) over the edge.
(#) How many here remember Al Capp's Students Wildly Irate over Nearly Everything...SWINE?
In the 1960's Soviet ICBMs were liquid fueled and kept in shelters or pits with empty tanks. They required 1-2 hours to bring them in readiness for launch.
By the time Soviet ICBMs were ready to launch, they would have already been destroyed.
More than 70% of the Soviet bomber force would be destroyed on the ground.
The bombers that did get off the ground would be detected by our DEW line radars, intercepted and destroyed.
"No battle plan survives contact with the enemy"
Well you certainly seem to have everything all thought out. Except for what happens if you're not 100% successful in your first strike.
Keep in mind that the nukes in those days were not low yield tactical weapons capable of pinpoint accuracy. They were big and dirty. They had a huge blast radius and created massive fallout. Even if a handful got through, the destruction would have been enormous. You're also just targeting the weapons we knew about. Considering the multiple failures of our Intelligence community over the past 60 years, are you really ready to go all in on the premise that the other side wouldn't have any surprises in store for us?
You were fighting a war which a certain activist part (around 20-30%) wanted to lose. That same quisling part of the population now has the power and talks, among themselves, about extermination camps.
A little more than a thousand was defined as the overkill treshhold once. Israel, at this time, probably has between 600-800.
Round-the-clock Buff Carpet bombing from Okinawa and Guam would have been - were on their way to achieving- defeat of Hanoi and the Viet Cong.
Thank Walter Kronkite, David Brinkley and that other liberal, lying bastard Rather for its termination. Three of the worst traitors to freedom seen in the last century.
At the end of 1965 we had 800 Minuteman I and 54 Titan ICBMs deployed.
The Soviets had 281 ICBMs deployed.
That means we could target 3 of our missiles on each of their missile silos.
The Soviets did not have a ballisitc missile early warning system in 1965, so they would have almost no warning of this first strike.
The Minuteman missile could be launched in less than a minute (which is why it was called the Minuteman).
Soviet ICBMs on the other hand would take over an hour to fuel and get ready for launch.
We also had 384 Polaris SLBMs deployed on 24 SSBNs.
They could be used to take out the Soviet bomber bases.
I am not really saying that we should have attacked the Soviet Union.
I am saying that the Soviet Union would not have attacked us because they would know the consequences of such actions.
It would be the destruction of their industry, agriculture, infrastructure and ten(or hundreds) of millions of their people.
I’m sorry, big guy - but we weren’t targeting civilians in Vietnam nor were we in a desperate total war for our own survival as we were against the Japanese. Entirely different situation. We also had the Soviets and the Chinese openly supporting the NVA - and there in large numbers. How much would it have taken for a nuclear response if we killed a bunch of Sovs in a tactical nuclear attack? I served in Vietnam for 18 months in combat and I am very proud of the men I served with and they way we conducted ourselves. We protected the civilians, we didn’t victimize them.
We were not in a desperate war for our own survival. We were going to win and it didn't matter what happened. The Japanese were always going to lose. They had only 12% of our steel production and less than 1% of our petroleum production.
We protected the civilians, we didn’t victimize them.
What about the 347 civilians murdered by the US Army at My Lai in March 1968?
Words cannot express the level of contempt I have for you; you just smeared all the rest of us who served honorably and well in that war with one lousy unit's war crime. You just imitated John F'ing Kerry's treasonous testimony and you are now on that same level. You owe me and every other man who served in Vietnam an apology, if you have any remaining honor at all.
You are also wrong about the situation with Japan. Without using the nuclear weapons, we would have been forced to invade Japan's home islands and it was estimated that 250,000 allied casualties would result and well over a million Japanese casualties. We were already moving the veterans of the European war to the Pacific to take part in Operations Olympic and Coronet and the effects of that invasion would have eclipsed the disasters at Iwo Jima and Okinawa by far.
If you have so little grasp of history - and no knowledge of Vietnam or nuclear weapons and no honor to speak of, you should stay away from your keyboard - but your type never does.
You have been on this site a little over 2 months, and decide to denigrate the Vietnam veterans on this forum. Not a wise move sparky.
5.56mm
You said “We protected the civilians, we didn’t victimize them”.
I am just pointing out that this is not true. A massacre as bad as My Lai is enough to stain the reputation of all US forces who were in Vietnam at the time. It is enough to stain the reputation of the entire nation.
People in Vietnam are still suffering from the herbicides and defoliants we used.
Why should I apologize? For pointing out a historical fact?
I think you should apologize for calling it “one lousy unit’s war crime”.
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