Don’t forget, the VC would NEVER have defeated South Vietnam alone. After their horrendous losses after the 1968 Tet Offensive, they were NEVER AGAIN a significant force in the fighting. North Viet troops infiltrating from North Vietnam replenished the ranks of dead and maimed Viet Cong. The VC WEREdefeated. I got to Vietnam after Tet, and the corpses that we searched for Intel after firefights were always NVA with paybooks and other NVA documents. The only problem we had with VC was the minsweeping that we had to do every day between the Fire Support Bases and the villes. The local VC would do that and not much else, and they didn’t do much of that.
South Vietnam lost due to a blitzkrieg from a lavishly equipped (by the Soviets and Chinese) conventional North Vietnamese Army that did not fear the US reintervening despite the pledge to do so at the Paris Accords due to the DemocRAT Congress cutting off the ARVN’s funding after Nixon’s downfall after Watergate. The Anti-war DemocRATS, led by Ted Kennedy and others seized the opportunity to pull the rug out from under the South Viets.
The US made many errors in the counterinsugency phase of the war. Despite that, it DID deal a staggering military defeat to the Communist forces, and gained time for the Viets to militarily stabilize themselves so as to resist any future aggression. It was the pusillinamity of the US Congress and the subversion of the anti-war left that forced the outcome in 1975.
I would only add this little bit of information to that not as a correction but rather as perhaps a footnote:
From at least early 1964 on the stated military objective of U.S. forces in Viet Nam was to draw the Viet Cong out into a set piece battle where they could be destroyed. This is EXACTLY what happened in battles of TET 68 and the media at home turned the greatest victory of the war into a defeat in the minds of most Americans.
Totally correct.
1st tour, we were doing S and D and RoadRunners against VC only, with occasional PAVN advisors.
2d tour, it was all PAVN with Sov and PLA advisors. They even brought PT-76 and later T54/55 south.