1. How and why did America change its tactics to fight the Viet Cong?
Saturday, 16 June 2018
New US Tactics
How and why did America change its tactics to fight the Viet Cong?

2. Today's Key words Search and Destroy Chemical Warfare Defoliate Napalm
Saturday, 16 June 2018
Today's Key words
Search and Destroy
Chemical Warfare
Defoliate
Napalm
Agent Orange
Indiscriminate

3. How did America try to fight from a safe distance?
Saturday, 16 June 2018
How did America try to fight from a safe distance?
Agent Orange
Search and destroy
Napalm

4. Task One: America’s new tactics
Saturday, 16 June 2018
Task One: America’s new tactics
Draw up a table to take notes as we investigate...
How did the USA change tactics to try to defeat the Viet Cong?
New Tactic
How did this work?
Any problems?
Unintended outcomes?
‘Search and Destroy’
Napalm
Agent Orange

5. DVD Clip
Apocalypse Now
Search and Destroy
Redux
32 – 42 mins

6. Search and Destroy Missions
Saturday, 16 June 2018
Search and Destroy Missions
America decided to build safe, well protected military bases.
They would then wait for reliable intelligence to identify Vietcong strongholds.
They would then search for these strongholds using helicopters and destroy them with a surprise attack from the air.
Violence was often used to interrogate suspected Vietcong soldiers.
Soldiers had to send back reports of body counts.
They would also often burn down the village at the end of the raid.
This led to the raids being nicknamed ‘Zippo Raids’.

7. Search and Destroy Missions
However the raids were often based on poor intelligence reports.
The soldiers were often inexperienced and walked into traps.
Sometimes innocent villages would be attacked.
Civilian casualties were very high.
For every VC weapon captured, six people died, mainly civilians.
This all made the peasants hate the US and ARVN even more.
It made them more likely to support the VC!

8. Saturday, 16 June 2018
Chemical Warfare
America also tried to destroy the Vietcong hiding places and their sources of food.
This meant destroying the jungle.
The word for destroying leaves or foliage is to ‘defoliate’.
This was attempted with two types of chemical weapons.
Napalm – a liquid explosive to burn the jungle.
Agent Orange – a weed killer.

9. Napalm A mixture of high explosive and petrol jelly.
Saturday, 16 June 2018
Napalm
A mixture of high explosive and petrol jelly.
It exploded and combined with oxygen in the atmosphere to burn anything in its path.
It would stick to a victim’s skin and cause terrible burns.
Around 20,000 tons of napalm were dropped between 1965 and 1973.
It’s indiscriminate – large numbers of civilians would be killed or injured.

10. Saturday, 16 June 2018
Agent Orange
A chemical defoliant (weed killer) sprayed on to the jungle.
82 million litres were dropped in the 1960s.
4 million acres of forest was wiped out.
Soil, air and rivers were heavily polluted.
1.3 million people were affected by the chemicals.
An estimated 500,000 children have since been born with birth defects linked to Agent Orange.

11. Saturday, 16 June 2018
Why did these American tactics fail? What were the problems with these tactics?
They were indiscriminate in nature – they could not distinguish between Viet Cong and innocent civilians.
Many innocent people died.
The Viet Cong were rarely successfully targeted.
Opposition in the USA increased as the human horrors became apparent from chemical warfare.

12. Main task Complete your table with as much detail as possible.
Read page 166 of your text book to find extra detail.
Page 166

13. A summary... Saturday, 16 June 2018
How did the USA change tactics to try to defeat the Viet Cong?
New Tactic
How did this work?
Any problems?
Unintended outcomes?
‘Search and Destroy’
The US built a safe base from which to launch sudden helicopter attacks. They would wait for intelligence and quickly attack VC strongholds, before returning to base.
They relied upon good intelligence to identify the correct targets.
Some times US soldiers would lose self-control and seek revenge e.g. My Lai.
Napalm
An explosive gel dropped in canisters from the air. They were intended to burn the jungle and destroy VC hiding places and food supplies.
An indiscriminate weapon which often caught the wrong victims causing terrible injuries e.g. ‘Girl in the Picture’.
Agent Orange
An orange powdered defoliant (weed killer) sprayed by plane to destroy the jungle.
Poisoned soil, food and water supplies.
500,000 children later born with birth defects.

14. Innocent civilians had died in many wars before Vietnam.
Saturday, 16 June 2018
Why did American tactics fail? What were the problems with these tactics?
Innocent civilians had died in many wars before Vietnam.
But in these wars the horror had been kept from the public.
Censorship and slow media communications meant that the reality of war rarely reached the public back home.
But Vietnam was to be different.