Soon, America knew that conventional warfare tactics with the communist guerilla fighters would not work. New types of weapons and tactics were implemented heavily in Vietnam. Such weapons included the two deadliest; Napalm and saturation bombings. These types of bombings would be dropped from jets high in the sky, usually guided by a recon team a couple miles away. You can see where a problem would arise here.
He believed that the fluoridation of drinking water was a communist conspiracy that it needed to be destroyed to stop the communist advance in America. He was the one who sent hydrogen bombs to take out the USSR. One major theme that is satirized is the idea of nationalism. There is a sense of political nationalism and have intense disdain and distrust in the enemy. When the crew on of B-52 was flying to drop hydrogen bombs in the USSR, the crew’s leader, Major T.J. Kong’s prep talk was extremely nationalist.
P: The US targeted industrial sites in order to dent the war supplies of North Vietnam and ultimately force North Vietnam to come to the negotiating table. E: This was attempted by the US with operation rolling thunder which began on 2nd March 1965 and ended on 1 November 1968. (Bircher page 16) A: This had some success for the Americans. This was because through this they were able to damage North Vietnam’s war effort by causing considerable damage to key industrial sites, which harboured many war supplies. Moreover, the Americans were able to keep the number of troops on the ground at a minimum level whilst still being able to attack the communist groups.
At the same time they tried to create a strong non-communist South Vietnam under the leadership of Diem. By the late 1950s, the communist rebels in South Vietnam declared a revolutionary struggle against Diem, so as to reunify Vietnam under communist rule. In turn, by the 1960s the USA became more and more alarmed at this prospect, leading to further intervention in Vietnam to stop this. When Kennedy was inaugurated he inherited many crises around the globe, the most pertinent was the loss of Cuba. After the well known Bay of Pigs fiasco, he felt he was advised that he needed a foreign policy success.
Strategic Bombing WW2 During WW2, the Allied and Axis powers each used strategic bombing to try and defeat their enemy economically. Both bombed factories where military weapons where being made to slow down their enemy. Also being bombed where military forces, railways, harbors, cities, civillians, and industrial areas. They did this to try and break down their enemys will to fight, to try and lower their morale and help shorten the war. My opinion on this argument is that there should be no civillians killed by bombs unless it was accidental.
The German Luftwaffe often sent 109 fighters to bomb English cities with an aim to destroy civilian morale. They were called “blitzes”. The English retaliation to these blitzes killed more citizens in Hamburg than all the blitzes combined. The war in the skies was an important part of WWII. It’s important to study how aircraft was used during WWII because the effects were so devastating.
Later that night Kennedy got on television to tell the U.S that the Soviet Union had secret installed nuclear missiles in Cuba that were aimed at American cities. Kennedy didn’t know how to get the missiles removed without starting a nuclear was with the Soviets. If this were to happen tens of millions on both sides would be killed. Communism was a threat and it was coming to America in 1959 when Castro staged a revolution in Cuba and became allies with the Soviet Union. Khrushchev thought that by moving nuclear missiles to Cuba, he would not only help close the missile gay with the U.S but that it would also prevent another American invasion of Cuba.
This made the shock even greater. The Tet Offensive was a military campaign during the Vietnam War that began on January 31, 1968. Forces of the National Liberation Front for South Vietnam, or Viet Cong, and the People's Army of Vietnam, or North Vietnamese army, fought against the forces of the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam), the United States, and their allies. The purpose of the offensive was to strike military and civilian command and control centers throughout South Vietnam and to spark a general uprising among the population that would then topple the Saigon government, thus ending the war in a single blow. The operations are referred to as the Tet Offensive because they began during the early morning hours of 31 January 1968, Tết Nguyên Đán, the first day of the year on a traditional lunar calendar and the most important Vietnamese holiday.
Americans used methods designed to beat another army in set-piece battles. In Vietnam the terrain played a huge role for the viet cong where it allowed them to fully use their guerrilla tactics. They would attack static us and south Vietnamese targets and then melt back into the forests. The same kind of tactics would be used later during the second Iraq war were al-queida would just retreat into the hills, mountains, and dessert and in the urban setting
Before the Vietnam War, President Eisenhower and Kennedy committed the United States to the war against communism in Vietnam. Another primary source is the Tonkin Gulf attack on the United States ships in august 1964. This source gave the United States legitimacy to engage the north, given the ships were attacked while in international waters. The America policy towards South Vietnam is another source of the Vietnam War. President Lyndon B. Johnson noted that since 1954 the United States had helped build South Vietnam (Public Broadcasting Service).