2x250kg bombs and relatively minor damage. The modern anti-ship missiles seems to have couple things going for them - hitting the ship at their terminal velocity they explode once they got inside the ship, and they naturally hit more closer toward the center/bulk of the ship. The 1982 Sheffield hit as well as the recent Moskva hit - both with sub 250kg warheads - illustrate that. Moskva burning https://t.me/milinfolive/81443, https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2022/04/18/photos-appear-to-s...
I think the Moskva is also built for a naval doctrine that doesn't make sense for Russia anymore. Just about any ordance will take out a missile cruiser like that because the cruise missiles in the launch tubes will detonate and finish your work for you. Missile cruisers being the back bone of your fleet only make sense when you can trade ship for ship and win out on industrial capacity to build ships. That doesn't really apply to Russia, but the USSR could have convinced itself in the 70s that it applied to them.
on the photo it looks like the cruise missiles didn't detonate on Moskva - all 4 rows of the tubes on that left side are visible through the smoke and intact.
The Moskva doctrine was based on not being hit :) as it was supposedly the ship with a very capable air-defense. In particular it was it's role to provide "umbrella" air defense to that assault fleet group near Odessa. The air defense based on S-300 was outdated though (and they decided to not spend money on it's upgrade during the most recent Moskva modernization few years ago) and while in theory capable of dealing with those anti-ship missiles, it faced a new type of target - drone - which was harassing the fleet and taking attention away before these 2 missiles came in.
This is honestly pretty common knowledge in armchair general circles. There's practically games out there where former servicemen measure wieners about who is more correct, to the point where they get in trouble for disclosing classified information
They do not, it's all mostly incorrect. S-300F is not the system slated for cruise missiles, it's use is for aircraft, another system is supposed to engage cruise missiles flying low. The Moskva was never modernized at all, that was the two Slavas. Upgrade of the cruise-missile and drone defence system was not cancelled and is still in R&D phase as the Samant-M system, etc...
S-300F is not suited for cruise missile interception. it was simply not designed to do so. In fact, the minimum engagement distance of S-300F is only around 5 kilometers.
So the idea that S-300F is even theoretically capable of dealing with cruise missiles is not even accurste. It is not capable of doing so, and it's not even supposed to - there is another system for that.
Also, the Moskva was never modernized. The Slava class was modernized, with the exception of the Moskva, which was not modernized at all, and only repaired and maintained.
The self-defence system for the Slava class is the Osa-M system, which is severly outdated (50 years old). It was actually due for an upcoming upgrade, as the Saman system. Precisely in order to deal with drones and cruise missiles better.
Of course you don't shoot S-300 missile here. You use S-300 radar for early detection and feed that info downstream to Osa and AK-630 CIWS. Those modern missiles were probably too much for Osa (its missiles can't hit such low flying targets), yet AK-630 would have easily dealt with them if, and this is big if, it (its gun turrets as well as its fire control radar) was turned on and warmed up and preferably trained in the general direction of the incoming missiles in time to not lose precious several seconds that the missiles were in its effective range. This is why early detection from big S-300 radar is the key.
>Also, the Moskva was never modernized. The Slava class was modernized, with the exception of the Moskva, which was not modernized at all, and only repaired and maintained.
you're again very incorrect here. Official state news with official Navy yards PR department statement :
"Как сообщили РИА Новости в пресс-службе 13-го судоремонтного завода ЧФ, где ремонтировался корабль, на "Москве" была проведена масштабная работа по ремонту и модернизации."
Granted, that normally such modernization should have included upgrade of those old air-defenses, yet they didn't do it, officially - for budget reasons. (while for example its cruise missiles got upgraded from Bazalt to P-1000 thus getting land attack capability - the context of the current war clearly shows where they put their priorities, offensive capabilities over defensive, as they didn't expect Ukraine to provide any meaningful resistance, and as it happens they were very wrong :)
The operating theory was that these ships would basically fire off their load, take out a carrier, and then do whatever.
Survivability isn’t really part of the equation. On the smaller Soviet scale, the Namchucka missile corvettes are an even more in your face example. (You can tour one in Fall River, Mass at battleship cove) These things would operate inshore, and once they fire their missiles, they are detected and get blown up.
There's a problem with your reasoning though, the Moskva was built/used as a seaborne S-300 plattform. Air denial is a big part of Soviet/russian doctrine and that role fits very well within the Russian strategy (limiting NATO from what they consider "their" territory i.e the Black sea and the Baltics)
Even large Styx missile leaves only less than 10 feet wide entry hole. The Neptune's one would be like 3 feet. It exploded inside. Everyone inside that superstructure died.
also: remember that [on the photos circulating on the internet] she is already ~3 meters deeper in the water comapared to the time of the [alleged] hit. Any huge hole next to the waterline would already be underwater and thus not visible.
TIL one of the two pilots in this incident is named Nguyen Van Bay, yet is not the same Nguyen Van Bay who is a famous jet fighter ace for the Vietnam People's Air Force.
Nguyen Van Bay is just a kind of nickname that means "he's the seventh son". Especially back in those days of large families it isn't massively surprising that there'd be another seventh son in the airforce.
Vietnamese Wikipedia says he actually went by the nickname Bay A (literally 7-A) in the air force, presumably because of the other guy also nicknamed Bay.
The Nguyen family name is obviously super common. Van is a fairly common middle name.
Especially in the south of Vietnam it was somewhat common, especially back then to just call people by their birth order. "Aunt Eight", "Uncle Two", "Sister Three", etc.
One thing was trying to shore up France’s SE Asia colonies because Charles de Gaulle had directly threatened that France would have to fall into the USSRs orbit if it lost them.
I do not think your combative tone is necessary. Pretty much everyone slightly on the liberal spectrum and plenty of conservative people would agree that what America did in Vietnam was immoral or a blunder or an embarrassment or a betrayal of the ideals of freedom and democracy.
Wow ! Not even a hundred years has passed and we already have those far fetched self-serving delusions posing as historical analysis ? How about... cynically bleed out communists willingness to fight in one place, to deter any other place in south east asia to even think about charting an independant course ? It's as good as any other explanation IMHO.
France had no ability to reclaim its former colonies after WW2. They want Indochina back as a colony (money and prestige) and the US wanted to stop communist expansion there and create an alliance to stop communism in Western Europe.
France let it be known without support in Indochina it may not be very helpful in Western Europe. The US did not support Europe taking back their pre-WW2 colonies, but like most political decisions, decided that containing communism was of greater importance.
As a result, the US was bankrolling most of France's attempt to get their Indochina colony back in the 1950's. By the time France left in '54, the US was already deeply involved and committed.
"We attacked them because they are the filthy communists!"
So what?! They are the communists, not you. If it works for them, does it need to work for you? If capitalism works for the US, does it have to work for Vietnam or any other country?
I believe that the true reason for war was refusal of the US to hand over the gold to France and other countries which foolishly kept some of their gold in the US. Of course, the gold was either spent or confiscated by US.
So, the US needed to fabricate a huge spending operation to justify the fiat expansion of the USD, leading ultimately to the creation of the petrodollar system which replaced the old gold system. And what better spending operation than a war? Even better, a war thousands of miles away from home, against far weaker enemy forces.
Nevertheless, those forces prevailed in the end. But the true winner still, was the US. It had unshackled itself from the world's gold-backed financial system and ushered in a new era of dominance.
Being raised USA centric and mostly hearing the dogma, I always appreciate hearing stories from the other side. The difference of opinion, even when I don't agree, is refreshing.
Visited Hanoi with our (just) adult kids a few years ago, we chose to mostly avoid American War (that's what they call it) era stuff - but one day we split up and went to an excellent art museum, the kids ended up at a museum to the evils of the French administration where people had been tortured and executed .... turned out it was what my generation knew as the "Hanoi Hilton" (we had been deliberately avoiding it), apparently it had little if any mention of the US prisoners there (the kids didn't notice anything) you sort of can't decry that place without also remembering that its previous incarnation was what Ho Chi Min was fighting against (and he was very much a freedom fighter before he became a communist)
The Hanoi Hilton has been "sanitized" significantly over the years, as have the war museums.
The War Remnants Museum in HCMC is a must see for people interested in the history. But it went through several versions as Vietnam sought to restore relations with the US. It was originally called "Exhibition House for US and Puppet Crimes" in 1975, then changed to "Exhibition House for Crimes of War and Aggression" in 1990, then prior to US/Vietnam relationships normalization it was renamed as it is today.
Plenty of the exhibits have had their language modified as well.
These small, risky, and ineffective raids (in the large scheme of things) have huge a psychological impact on the winners and losers if they are publicized.
The Belgorod Raid (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/4/1/russia-alleges-ukrai...) was a huge PR victory for Ukraine, showing its helicopters are capable of striking behind enemy lines. I'm not sure ordinary Russians were as awed, or even if they were made aware of what happened.
Operation Black Buck is also probably an example of this - Vulcan bombers flying a sixth of the way around the Earth, using a pyramid of tankers for refuelling, dropping some bombs ineffectively on an Argentinian-held airport, then flying back:
The UK were so lucky with the Falklands war.. had the Argentines waited a year 3/4 of the UK military hardware used to retake the islands ( aircraft carriers, bombers, etc.) would have been decommissioned due cost cutting measures.
Realistically, it was impossible for us (Argentines) to hold by military force to the islands. I'm sure all sort of things could have gone worse for the UK, but we were a military insignificant[0] country (ruled by an incompetent dictatorship) against a military power allied to the US.
[0] no disrespect meant to our soldiers, who did what they could in a senseless war.
Not sure why this comment is being downvoted, given that its claims are well-documented. The UN Security Council had already demanded the immediate withdrawal of Argentine forces from the Falklands, essentially green-lighting the UK to respond to the invasion with military force.
Argentina refused US peace overtures, and the US subsequently announced its support for the UK. Here is the relevant text from Wikipedia regarding American carriers (which were capable of operating Sea Harriers) [1]:
>> President Ronald Reagan approved the Royal Navy's request to borrow a Sea Harrier-capable Iwo Jima-class amphibious assault ship (the US Navy had earmarked USS Guam (LPH-9) for this[184]) if the British lost an aircraft carrier. The United States Navy developed a plan to help the British man the ship with American military contractors, likely retired sailors with knowledge of the ship's systems.
We can’t know, but I suspect Galtieri (Argentine president, some responsibility for death squads) would have lost power had he waited. Malvinas were useful to him as a diversionary external crisis given all the problems at home and international pressure creating opportunity for his opposition or successor(s).
If you wanted to use example from the current war, then sinking of Moskva would suit much better. It's literally a flagship of a fleet, with casualties probably up to 400, named after the country's capital, that had cost more than a couple of billion dollars over lifetime, sinked with a drone and a couple of missiles.
When one studies the Vietnam War -- leaving for a moment the very controversial motivations for the war -- it's interesting to see how far it differs from pop culture narratives (i.e. movies and videogames).
One surprising thing, for example, is how much the VC and later PAVN controlled the initiative. With a few exceptions (which Hollywood tends to highlight) the initiative, when to engage and how, was Vietnamese, not American. No surprise they won.
Another remarkable thing is how well the Vietnamese air force did against the Americans. They even had fighter aces and scored a lot of air-to-air kills!
I’m not an expert but have read a half dozen or so books about the war. The NV army was far more disciplined than the US or SV army, for one thing. For another, they had a brilliant strategist for a general (Giáp), while US strategy was being devised by, frankly, an incompetent general and Secretary of Defense. Also, the CIA supplied terrible intelligence.
Giap had been pushed aside by the time the US had any substantial number of US troops on the ground (~1965). He was briefly pulled back in in the early 1970's, but otherwise the strategy was driven by Le Duan at that point.
But suffice to say, the US lost because it took a "limited war" approach, while the North Vietnam were committed to "total war".
I agree with this comment. The Americans would try to win over the populace by giving away rice and other supplies, but the NV would simply destroy collaborators’ villages and murder their families. Bribes are nice, but extortion is much more effective.
A bit simplistic. North Vietnamese we’re after all.. Vietnamese. It was natural for many in the south to support fellow countrymen against foreign invasion. It was first the Chinese, then the French and now the Americans. They were just done having foreign power take over their country.
And don’t tell me the Americans didn’t do a lot of those things you just named. Wasn’t just “rice”.
If anyone is interested, I'd highly recommend the book "Hanoi's War" by Lien-Hang Nguyen. She covers the war from the North Vietnamese side and got access to a lot of internal documents and interviewed the people involved.
Maybe not surprisingly, the war was just as messy on the other side. Lots of internal dissent and power struggles over how it should be run. Giap and Ho Chi Minh (prior to his death) were much more on the "slow and steady" approach, open to negotiation, while Le Duan pushed the "go for broke" approach. Le Duan eventually won that argument.
Giap did not believe the Tet Offensive was the right approach. In the run up to Tet '68, Giap was conveniently in Eastern Europe for "medical care" while his staff was jailed. Ho Chi Minh had already been relegated to a figure head at that point and didn't have much political power (he was also quite ill by then).
This makes it doubly baffling about how the US approached the conflict. Instead of siding with a then amenable Ho Chi Minh, which would have made Vietnam if not an ally of the West, at least not totally hostile, they sided with the colonial power (the French) and against the national liberation movement. They even supported a dictator in the South that was so bad and unlikable, they later had to green light his assassination. And the ones that followed were inept and corrupt.
There was just no way the US, siding with colonialism and conducting a war whose major success metric was body count (i.e. kill them all and pray they are all commies) would have been able to win that war. Short of totally wasting the whole of Vietnam, North and South, in which case they would have lost in the court of world opinion.
The US was an apartheid ethnostate so it's probably not that surprising that it sided with French colonists to restore their property rights as a matter of principle rather than pragmatic, geo-strategic consideration.
Also, if you consider the Chinese response to these wars where the US was restoring the colonial system in a recently liberated Asia after the fall of Japan, it had desirable outcomes. China stifled it's economic growth by moving it's economic/industrial base deep into it's interior[0], since it felt that the cities on the coast were vulnerable to naval attacks, and areas near the borders of korea and vietnam would be vulnerable to US ground attack. This probably set back the Chinese economy severely, for decades.
Edit: And, of course, you could argue that "kill them all" would be a successful dissuasion to prevent other states from declaring independence. eg. Indonesia and Philipines. Though I guess the effect on them was probably mixed(?) You have to consider that Korea is still partitioned, and South Korea is still a vassal state and military outpost of the US. Although the US was unable to achieve that outcome in Vietnam, it was not an unreasonable goal at the outset.
Only if you believe that the domestic population are a foreign entity who commit an "internal aggression" when they fight against a foreign armed and supported military dictatorship simply by dint of being "communist" (even when they are not).
Another interpretation is that that is a tired old canard which maintains a life-beyond-death as a necessary illusion which assists the beholder in doing their patriotic duty: maintaining a positive view of the foreign policy of their own nation.
Edit: but yes, my original response was sloppily worded. I didn't mean "declare independence", but rather, "actually achieve independence", my bad.
The U.S. would airdrop soldiers and artillery into an area. If the VC wanted to engage, they attacked. If they didn't want to engage, they ran away and came back when U.S. soldiers were eventually air-lifted out. The VC knew that U.S. forces were highly unlikely to move out of range of their support artillery, so they only had to retreat that far. It was argued that this was how things had to be done because the jungle was too difficult to move around in on the ground, but this tactic made it extremely hard for U.S. forces to gain initiative.
> Another remarkable thing is how well the Vietnamese air force did against the Americans. They even had fighter aces and scored a lot of air-to-air kills!
It wasn't until the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990's that American aircraft became irrefutably better than Soviet aircraft, and a lot of that was better systems rather than better the aircraft themselves.
During the Korean war, the Mig15 dominated until the US sent their new F-86 Sabre fighter. The US Airforce claimed a 10:1 kill ratio of F-86 vs Mig15, but in reality it was more like 2:1:
> More recent research by Dorr, Lake and Thompson however has claimed the actual F-86 v MiG-15 kill ratio is closer to 2 to 1.[365] A recent RAND report[366] made reference to "recent scholarship" of F-86 v MiG-15 combat over Korea and concluded that the actual kill:loss ratio for the F-86 was 1.8 to 1 overall, and likely closer to 1.3 to 1 against MiGs flown by Soviet pilots[1]
During the Vietnam war the Mig17 was much better than the F105 fighter bomber. The Mig21 was probably the equal of the F4 Phantom, but the North Vietnamese got ambushed by F4s when they were expecting F105s and lost a lot of their airforce.
Outside Vietnam, most US vs Soviet aircraft fighting was in the various Israeli/Arab wars. But the Israelis were just much better trained pilots as their kill ratio in anything from Mirages to F16s shows.
The Vietnamese benefited from three things in air combat:
1. Russian advisors and pilots.
2. The US generally required visual ID, which limited the benefits of their air to air missiles.
3. Lack of guns on many US fighters. The US faith in missile technology (which was premature), led to many instances of MIGs surviving where just a few years later they would be shot down.
Both the USN and the USAF were woefully underprepared for air to air combat in Vietnam, but once they got solved some of the equipment issues, and refined their tactics (especially the USN with TOPGUN), they began to dominate these engagements.
I know that's the story, and there's truth in it, but I also find it's an attempt to diminish the skill of the genuine fighter pilots they had.
If I had to risk an opinion, I think it's because it's a memory of a painful defeat for the US -- a militaristic nation with pride in its war history -- and so explanations are devised to diminish the skill of the Vietnamese and to explain away the defeat due to external reasons ("the politicians abandoned us", "the public didn't support us", "the Vietnamese were treacherous and didn't fight fair", "our leaders didn't let us use every weapon at our disposal", "the Vietnamese had help from China and the USSR").
That the Vietnamese fought genuinely better than the US isn't an acceptable explanation, which is why it's remarkable that upon study of the war, this is the fact that emerges.
It's usually not a good idea to ascribe motives online...
The fact is that the US military outfought both the Viet Cong and the NVA in most battles. The famed Tet Offensive wiped out the VC, and it wasn't until the US had basically cut off all military support in 1975 that the NVA was able to successfully invade the South.
This is what you would expect when you compare the size and scope of each countries military. It doesn't denigrate anything the Vietnamese people accomplished in their fight for a unified, independent country.
The Vietnamese were a hardy, tough opponent, that demonstrated incredible creativity and ingenuity in fighting a much wealthier foe. In small unit battles, they were as good as any US troops.
US troops also fought well, contrary to the stereotype of drug addled draftees who fragged their officers while committing war crimes.
Acknowledging the things that benefitted each side isn't trying to diminish the skills they exhibited. It's simply acknowledging the battlefield they fought on, and all of its constraints. The VPAF had both constraints and advantages as they fought a much better equipped foe.
>One surprising thing, for example, is how much the VC and later PAVN controlled the initiative.
That's how a lot of defensive wars go. The US was not strategically attempting to be on the offensive.
>With a few exceptions (which Hollywood tends to highlight) the initiative, when to engage and how, was Vietnamese, not American.
Even this is somewhat revisionist. At the end of the war the US was overwhelmingly leading in engagements and pushed the VC out of huge swaths. The VC were so decisively beaten back that they ceased to be an effective fighting force, almost disbanding entirely.
>No surprise they won.
Except they lost essentially all the battles.
The Vietnam War is a war where the US won almost every single tactical engagement, but lost the over all strategic war. Very few wars in history end that way.
>Another remarkable thing is how well the Vietnamese air force did against the Americans.
Initially. At the end, the US airspace was essentially unobstructed.
Seems a bit denialist. The VC effectively ended after Tet (which was a military blunder, but a propaganda triumph), but the PAVN took up the fight in their stead.
If you never have the initiative, defensive or offensive, it's hard for the war to go your way. You're essentially letting the enemy dictate the terms of most engagements.
The Vietnamese didn't "lose all the battles". Aside for effectively winning the most important battle, i.e. the battle for Vietnam, they also didn't lose many of the battles they picked. The US wanted pitched battles where its army fared better, but with few exceptions they were denied them. Was it unfair? I don't think so: there's no fairness in war, and it's stupid to meet the enemy where he is strongest, and wise to meet him where he's at his worst. Which is what the Vietnamese did.
Body count? Sure, Vietnam lost there. No surprise, the US was essentially out to kill as many Vietnamese as they could -- the only metric they could muster -- and there's no denying they were good at killing them. Unfortunately, short of killing them all and leaving not one single soul in Vietnam, that wasn't the way to win.
I don't think it was possible for the US to win; they were just one grain of sand in Vietnam's long struggle against foreign invaders.
The "won all the battles but lost the war" narrative is a mistaken claim by the US, which can mostly be explained by the lost face and the painful and almost unprecedented defeat they suffered.
> Initially. At the end, the US airspace was essentially unobstructed.
No such thing as "US airspace" in Vietnam, but I get what you tried to say. It doesn't matter if after years of war the USAF gained dominance over Vietnam's skies: the popular narrative ignores how well the Vietnamese did in the air war against the US, that they had fighter aces and scored many kills. A remarkable feat against the world's largest military power.
Back at the end of the Cold War, as a strapping lad on an Aegis cruiser, we used to moor across the pier from USS Long Beach[1].
She was rumored to have the longest-range kill on record, off the coast of Vietnam[2] using Talos[3]. The reference states ~65 nautical miles (minutes of latitude) or ~75 miles. I heard >100, which may or may not be true (since we obfuscate performance parameters pretty much everywhere).
That's a pretty neat looking missile with the four nose antennas.
It was also interesting, given how modern it looked to me, to read that
> Talos was the end product of Operation Bumblebee, the Navy's 16-year surface-to-air missile development program for protection against guided anti-ship missiles like Henschel Hs 293 glide bombs, Fritz X, and kamikaze aircraft.[1]
So it was designed based on WWII concerns...I hadn't read about the HS 293 in quite a long time, and didn't expect to see a ramjet missile developed in response...
The entire war was a war crime. Over 4 million innocent vietnamese died in the war for vietnamese indepedence. Or rather, over 4 million innocent vietnamese died because we didn't want them to have their freedom. We should really tear down the vietnam war memorial and replace it with a memorial for the innocent vietnamese who were murdered. But that's too much to ask for such an immoral and evil nation. But then again, it's not the first country we tried to stop from gaining their independence. We murdered a bunch of filipinos to prevent the philippines from gaining their independence.
South Vietnam was never an independent nation. After vietnam won their independence from france, we stepped in and took over the southern part of vietnam fromfrance. South Vietnam was created by the US and won its independence when the south vietnamese viet cong and the north vietnamese army liberated south vietnam from the US.
85 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 173 ms ] threadThe Moskva doctrine was based on not being hit :) as it was supposedly the ship with a very capable air-defense. In particular it was it's role to provide "umbrella" air defense to that assault fleet group near Odessa. The air defense based on S-300 was outdated though (and they decided to not spend money on it's upgrade during the most recent Moskva modernization few years ago) and while in theory capable of dealing with those anti-ship missiles, it faced a new type of target - drone - which was harassing the fleet and taking attention away before these 2 missiles came in.
So the idea that S-300F is even theoretically capable of dealing with cruise missiles is not even accurste. It is not capable of doing so, and it's not even supposed to - there is another system for that.
Also, the Moskva was never modernized. The Slava class was modernized, with the exception of the Moskva, which was not modernized at all, and only repaired and maintained.
The self-defence system for the Slava class is the Osa-M system, which is severly outdated (50 years old). It was actually due for an upcoming upgrade, as the Saman system. Precisely in order to deal with drones and cruise missiles better.
>Also, the Moskva was never modernized. The Slava class was modernized, with the exception of the Moskva, which was not modernized at all, and only repaired and maintained.
you're again very incorrect here. Official state news with official Navy yards PR department statement :
https://ria.ru/20200703/1573824385.html
"Как сообщили РИА Новости в пресс-службе 13-го судоремонтного завода ЧФ, где ремонтировался корабль, на "Москве" была проведена масштабная работа по ремонту и модернизации."
Granted, that normally such modernization should have included upgrade of those old air-defenses, yet they didn't do it, officially - for budget reasons. (while for example its cruise missiles got upgraded from Bazalt to P-1000 thus getting land attack capability - the context of the current war clearly shows where they put their priorities, offensive capabilities over defensive, as they didn't expect Ukraine to provide any meaningful resistance, and as it happens they were very wrong :)
Survivability isn’t really part of the equation. On the smaller Soviet scale, the Namchucka missile corvettes are an even more in your face example. (You can tour one in Fall River, Mass at battleship cove) These things would operate inshore, and once they fire their missiles, they are detected and get blown up.
Vietnamese Wikipedia says he actually went by the nickname Bay A (literally 7-A) in the air force, presumably because of the other guy also nicknamed Bay.
The Nguyen family name is obviously super common. Van is a fairly common middle name.
Especially in the south of Vietnam it was somewhat common, especially back then to just call people by their birth order. "Aunt Eight", "Uncle Two", "Sister Three", etc.
His actual name was Nguyen Van Hoa.
France had no ability to reclaim its former colonies after WW2. They want Indochina back as a colony (money and prestige) and the US wanted to stop communist expansion there and create an alliance to stop communism in Western Europe.
France let it be known without support in Indochina it may not be very helpful in Western Europe. The US did not support Europe taking back their pre-WW2 colonies, but like most political decisions, decided that containing communism was of greater importance.
As a result, the US was bankrolling most of France's attempt to get their Indochina colony back in the 1950's. By the time France left in '54, the US was already deeply involved and committed.
Nothing new here.
"We attacked them because they are the filthy communists!"
So what?! They are the communists, not you. If it works for them, does it need to work for you? If capitalism works for the US, does it have to work for Vietnam or any other country?
I believe that the true reason for war was refusal of the US to hand over the gold to France and other countries which foolishly kept some of their gold in the US. Of course, the gold was either spent or confiscated by US.
So, the US needed to fabricate a huge spending operation to justify the fiat expansion of the USD, leading ultimately to the creation of the petrodollar system which replaced the old gold system. And what better spending operation than a war? Even better, a war thousands of miles away from home, against far weaker enemy forces.
Nevertheless, those forces prevailed in the end. But the true winner still, was the US. It had unshackled itself from the world's gold-backed financial system and ushered in a new era of dominance.
The War Remnants Museum in HCMC is a must see for people interested in the history. But it went through several versions as Vietnam sought to restore relations with the US. It was originally called "Exhibition House for US and Puppet Crimes" in 1975, then changed to "Exhibition House for Crimes of War and Aggression" in 1990, then prior to US/Vietnam relationships normalization it was renamed as it is today.
Plenty of the exhibits have had their language modified as well.
The Doolittle Raid (https://www.history.navy.mil/browse-by-topic/wars-conflicts-...) was one such raid. The U.S. played it to the hilt. Japan couldn't ignore it or cover it up because it took place right over Tokyo.
The Belgorod Raid (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/4/1/russia-alleges-ukrai...) was a huge PR victory for Ukraine, showing its helicopters are capable of striking behind enemy lines. I'm not sure ordinary Russians were as awed, or even if they were made aware of what happened.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Black_Buck
[0] no disrespect meant to our soldiers, who did what they could in a senseless war.
Argentina refused US peace overtures, and the US subsequently announced its support for the UK. Here is the relevant text from Wikipedia regarding American carriers (which were capable of operating Sea Harriers) [1]:
>> President Ronald Reagan approved the Royal Navy's request to borrow a Sea Harrier-capable Iwo Jima-class amphibious assault ship (the US Navy had earmarked USS Guam (LPH-9) for this[184]) if the British lost an aircraft carrier. The United States Navy developed a plan to help the British man the ship with American military contractors, likely retired sailors with knowledge of the ship's systems.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falklands_War#United_States
My brother in law lives 1,5km from the place that was hit.
He was not impressed.
And yes - ordinary russians are aware of this, mostly causing questions about a) if it was Ukraine or staged b) where the hell was AA.
One surprising thing, for example, is how much the VC and later PAVN controlled the initiative. With a few exceptions (which Hollywood tends to highlight) the initiative, when to engage and how, was Vietnamese, not American. No surprise they won.
Another remarkable thing is how well the Vietnamese air force did against the Americans. They even had fighter aces and scored a lot of air-to-air kills!
But suffice to say, the US lost because it took a "limited war" approach, while the North Vietnam were committed to "total war".
And don’t tell me the Americans didn’t do a lot of those things you just named. Wasn’t just “rice”.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%E1%BB%B9_Lai_massacre
Maybe not surprisingly, the war was just as messy on the other side. Lots of internal dissent and power struggles over how it should be run. Giap and Ho Chi Minh (prior to his death) were much more on the "slow and steady" approach, open to negotiation, while Le Duan pushed the "go for broke" approach. Le Duan eventually won that argument.
Giap did not believe the Tet Offensive was the right approach. In the run up to Tet '68, Giap was conveniently in Eastern Europe for "medical care" while his staff was jailed. Ho Chi Minh had already been relegated to a figure head at that point and didn't have much political power (he was also quite ill by then).
This makes it doubly baffling about how the US approached the conflict. Instead of siding with a then amenable Ho Chi Minh, which would have made Vietnam if not an ally of the West, at least not totally hostile, they sided with the colonial power (the French) and against the national liberation movement. They even supported a dictator in the South that was so bad and unlikable, they later had to green light his assassination. And the ones that followed were inept and corrupt.
There was just no way the US, siding with colonialism and conducting a war whose major success metric was body count (i.e. kill them all and pray they are all commies) would have been able to win that war. Short of totally wasting the whole of Vietnam, North and South, in which case they would have lost in the court of world opinion.
Also, if you consider the Chinese response to these wars where the US was restoring the colonial system in a recently liberated Asia after the fall of Japan, it had desirable outcomes. China stifled it's economic growth by moving it's economic/industrial base deep into it's interior[0], since it felt that the cities on the coast were vulnerable to naval attacks, and areas near the borders of korea and vietnam would be vulnerable to US ground attack. This probably set back the Chinese economy severely, for decades.
Edit: And, of course, you could argue that "kill them all" would be a successful dissuasion to prevent other states from declaring independence. eg. Indonesia and Philipines. Though I guess the effect on them was probably mixed(?) You have to consider that Korea is still partitioned, and South Korea is still a vassal state and military outpost of the US. Although the US was unable to achieve that outcome in Vietnam, it was not an unreasonable goal at the outset.
[0]. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Front_(China)
The "domino theory" was definitely in play, but that was about fear of Communist takeover in already-independent countries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suharto
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_Marcos
Another interpretation is that that is a tired old canard which maintains a life-beyond-death as a necessary illusion which assists the beholder in doing their patriotic duty: maintaining a positive view of the foreign policy of their own nation.
Edit: but yes, my original response was sloppily worded. I didn't mean "declare independence", but rather, "actually achieve independence", my bad.
It wasn't until the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990's that American aircraft became irrefutably better than Soviet aircraft, and a lot of that was better systems rather than better the aircraft themselves.
During the Korean war, the Mig15 dominated until the US sent their new F-86 Sabre fighter. The US Airforce claimed a 10:1 kill ratio of F-86 vs Mig15, but in reality it was more like 2:1:
> More recent research by Dorr, Lake and Thompson however has claimed the actual F-86 v MiG-15 kill ratio is closer to 2 to 1.[365] A recent RAND report[366] made reference to "recent scholarship" of F-86 v MiG-15 combat over Korea and concluded that the actual kill:loss ratio for the F-86 was 1.8 to 1 overall, and likely closer to 1.3 to 1 against MiGs flown by Soviet pilots[1]
During the Vietnam war the Mig17 was much better than the F105 fighter bomber. The Mig21 was probably the equal of the F4 Phantom, but the North Vietnamese got ambushed by F4s when they were expecting F105s and lost a lot of their airforce.
Outside Vietnam, most US vs Soviet aircraft fighting was in the various Israeli/Arab wars. But the Israelis were just much better trained pilots as their kill ratio in anything from Mirages to F16s shows.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War#Aerial_warfare
1. Russian advisors and pilots. 2. The US generally required visual ID, which limited the benefits of their air to air missiles. 3. Lack of guns on many US fighters. The US faith in missile technology (which was premature), led to many instances of MIGs surviving where just a few years later they would be shot down.
Both the USN and the USAF were woefully underprepared for air to air combat in Vietnam, but once they got solved some of the equipment issues, and refined their tactics (especially the USN with TOPGUN), they began to dominate these engagements.
If I had to risk an opinion, I think it's because it's a memory of a painful defeat for the US -- a militaristic nation with pride in its war history -- and so explanations are devised to diminish the skill of the Vietnamese and to explain away the defeat due to external reasons ("the politicians abandoned us", "the public didn't support us", "the Vietnamese were treacherous and didn't fight fair", "our leaders didn't let us use every weapon at our disposal", "the Vietnamese had help from China and the USSR").
That the Vietnamese fought genuinely better than the US isn't an acceptable explanation, which is why it's remarkable that upon study of the war, this is the fact that emerges.
The fact is that the US military outfought both the Viet Cong and the NVA in most battles. The famed Tet Offensive wiped out the VC, and it wasn't until the US had basically cut off all military support in 1975 that the NVA was able to successfully invade the South.
This is what you would expect when you compare the size and scope of each countries military. It doesn't denigrate anything the Vietnamese people accomplished in their fight for a unified, independent country.
The Vietnamese were a hardy, tough opponent, that demonstrated incredible creativity and ingenuity in fighting a much wealthier foe. In small unit battles, they were as good as any US troops.
US troops also fought well, contrary to the stereotype of drug addled draftees who fragged their officers while committing war crimes.
Acknowledging the things that benefitted each side isn't trying to diminish the skills they exhibited. It's simply acknowledging the battlefield they fought on, and all of its constraints. The VPAF had both constraints and advantages as they fought a much better equipped foe.
http://acepilots.com/vietnam/viet_aces.html
That's how a lot of defensive wars go. The US was not strategically attempting to be on the offensive.
>With a few exceptions (which Hollywood tends to highlight) the initiative, when to engage and how, was Vietnamese, not American.
Even this is somewhat revisionist. At the end of the war the US was overwhelmingly leading in engagements and pushed the VC out of huge swaths. The VC were so decisively beaten back that they ceased to be an effective fighting force, almost disbanding entirely.
>No surprise they won.
Except they lost essentially all the battles.
The Vietnam War is a war where the US won almost every single tactical engagement, but lost the over all strategic war. Very few wars in history end that way.
>Another remarkable thing is how well the Vietnamese air force did against the Americans.
Initially. At the end, the US airspace was essentially unobstructed.
If you never have the initiative, defensive or offensive, it's hard for the war to go your way. You're essentially letting the enemy dictate the terms of most engagements.
The Vietnamese didn't "lose all the battles". Aside for effectively winning the most important battle, i.e. the battle for Vietnam, they also didn't lose many of the battles they picked. The US wanted pitched battles where its army fared better, but with few exceptions they were denied them. Was it unfair? I don't think so: there's no fairness in war, and it's stupid to meet the enemy where he is strongest, and wise to meet him where he's at his worst. Which is what the Vietnamese did.
Body count? Sure, Vietnam lost there. No surprise, the US was essentially out to kill as many Vietnamese as they could -- the only metric they could muster -- and there's no denying they were good at killing them. Unfortunately, short of killing them all and leaving not one single soul in Vietnam, that wasn't the way to win.
I don't think it was possible for the US to win; they were just one grain of sand in Vietnam's long struggle against foreign invaders.
The "won all the battles but lost the war" narrative is a mistaken claim by the US, which can mostly be explained by the lost face and the painful and almost unprecedented defeat they suffered.
> Initially. At the end, the US airspace was essentially unobstructed.
No such thing as "US airspace" in Vietnam, but I get what you tried to say. It doesn't matter if after years of war the USAF gained dominance over Vietnam's skies: the popular narrative ignores how well the Vietnamese did in the air war against the US, that they had fighter aces and scored many kills. A remarkable feat against the world's largest military power.
She was rumored to have the longest-range kill on record, off the coast of Vietnam[2] using Talos[3]. The reference states ~65 nautical miles (minutes of latitude) or ~75 miles. I heard >100, which may or may not be true (since we obfuscate performance parameters pretty much everywhere).
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Long_Beach_(CGN-9)
[2] https://www.navysite.de/cg/cgn9.htm
[3] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIM-8_Talos
It was also interesting, given how modern it looked to me, to read that
> Talos was the end product of Operation Bumblebee, the Navy's 16-year surface-to-air missile development program for protection against guided anti-ship missiles like Henschel Hs 293 glide bombs, Fritz X, and kamikaze aircraft.[1]
So it was designed based on WWII concerns...I hadn't read about the HS 293 in quite a long time, and didn't expect to see a ramjet missile developed in response...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mỹ_Lai_massacre
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massacre_at_Hu%E1%BA%BF