Thank you for your service!
“Certainly, if the Congress had lived up to our promises, the South Vietnamese could have held out longer, but they almost certainly couldn’t have won.”
Obviously you know way more about this than what I have only read. So the South didn’t have much in the way of artillery? I imagine that they had some form of an air-force, but probably on the order of a few dozen planes.
We gave them considerable artillery, helicopters, and airplanes when we left, but we didn’t leave them sufficient ammunition and spare parts and after 1972 we refused to give them any kind of combat reinforcement to counter an attack. In 1975, The North Vietnamese Army attacked with 20 divisions.
South Vietnam needed ammunition, gasoline, and spare parts.
The 1975 Watergate Congress left them hanging.
We had trained them to fight like we do, with mechanized heavy firepower. They weren’t trained to use unconventional warfare to defeat a vast armored invasion and it probably wasn’t possible.
There was one highway headed south and it was jammed with North Vietnamese armor and trucks. It was one giant traffic jam. The American Navy was begging to be let off the leash, one carrier could have turned it into the Mother of All Highways of Death and it would have bought RSVN several more years of existence.