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Viet Cong, the guerrilla force that, with the support of the North Vietnamese Army, fought against South Vietnam (late 1950s–1975) and the United States (early 1960s–1973). The name is said to have first been used by South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem to belittle the rebels.
- Guerrilla Warfare
guerrilla warfare, type of warfare fought by irregulars in...
- Ngo Dinh Diem
In 1954 Diem returned at Bao Dai’s request to serve as prime...
- Guerrilla Warfare
Main force Vietcong units were uniformed, full-time soldiers, and were used to launch large scale offensives over a wide area. Regional forces were also full-time, but operated only within...
- Guerrilla warfare. Guerrilla warfare is the art of using knowledge of the landscape to avoid open battle with the enemy and to launch raids and surprise attacks, before disappearing back into the undergrowth.
- Support from peasants. The Vietcong won the ‘hearts and minds’ of the South Vietnamese peasants. They would offer to help them in their daily work and also promised them land, more wealth and freedom under Ho Chi Minh and the communists.
- Tunnel systems and traps. The Vietcong had a hidden system of tunnels stretching over 200 miles. There were hospitals, armouries, sleeping quarters, kitchens and wells underground.
- Foreign support. The Vietcong and North Vietnam were supported by the Soviet Union (USSR) and China who supplied money and weapons.
Methods used by the Vietcong: In Southern Vietnam the Vietcong operated in small cells of 8-10 men. These units would dig tunnels in and around towns and villages from where they could launch attacks. These tunnels had booby trapped entrances and often were sufficient in size to house bomb making factories, conference rooms and large stores.
- Ground Fighting in The Vietnam War
- Weapons, Tricks and Booby Traps Used by The Viet Cong
- Viet Cong Tactics
- Mao Guerilla Tactics and Spider Holes
- Free-Fire Zones
- Search and Destroy Missions
- Taking Fire on A Search and Destroy Mission Near Khe Sanh
- Search and Destroy Mission in The Mekong Delta
- Ambushes and Village Searches in The Vietnam War
- Patrols in The Vietnam War
The kind of ground fighting the Americans did in Vietnam was unlike anything U.S. soldiers had been subjected to before. "In Vietnam," Karnow wrote, "there were no front lines to advance; the war was pervasive. An apparently benign peasant could be a guerilla, a pretty prostitute a clandestine agent, the kid who delivered the laundry a secret infor...
The Viet Cong and North Vietnamese for the most part didn't have the powerful heavy weapons, helicopters, high-altitude bombers and tanks that the Americans had. They often made do with AK-47s semiautomatic guns, ingenious and deadly booby traps, and mines, often made from unexploded bombs harvested after American bombing missions. Some weapons suc...
The Viet Cong traveled light and were very mobile. They remained hidden during the day and came at night to infiltrate villages, ambush American soldiers and run other missions. In the day, the Viet Cong donned farmer clothes. American had no idea who was a farmer, who was Viet Cong, who was a Viet Cong sympathizer, and who was farmer fighting for ...
The Viet Cong used tactics pioneered—or at least used effectively—by Mao Zedong and the Red Army in China in the 1920s, 30s and 40s. Mao was a great spokesman for guerilla tactics. “The guerilla,” he wrote, “must move among people as a fish swims in the sea.” He said guerilla tactics are what “a nation inferior in arms and military equipment may em...
Free-fire zones were places pounded with artillery or annihilated with napalm and bombs in an effort to drive out the enemy. American soldiers were authorized to shoot at anything that moved. Large swaths of the Mekong Delta, believed to be dominated by the Viet Cong, were declared free-fire zones. Some places were described as "Wild Wes-like shoot...
Much of the grunt work done by American GIs involved search and destroy missions, in which soldiers, often dropped off by helicopter, hunted for Viet Cong guerrillas or NVA regulars to protect villages and slow infiltration. Many search and destroy missions took place in the Mekong Delta, where patrol boats were used like helicopters to deliver tro...
Describing a search-and-destroy mission in Khe Sanh, platoon commander Andrew DeBona told the Washington Post, "Mike Company was used as screening patrol force. We'd usually work out from the combat base and conduct six-to-seven day patrols looking for the NVA or any sign of them...We were in our forth or fifth day...The plan was to have two platoo...
Describing the Batangan Peninsula in Quang Ngai province Time O'Brien wrote in the New York Times: "The Graveyard we called it. Littered with land mines, almost completely defoliated, this spit of land jutting eastward into the South China Sea was a place Alpha Company feared the way others might fear snakes, or the dark, or the bogey man. We lost ...
Finding the Viet Cong was difficult and if they suspected ones were found they were hard to determine from normal villagers. One fore SEAL who worked in the Mekong Delta told the Washington Post, "It was literally pin the tail on the donkey. Half the time you ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time." And this led to a number of tragedies and ...
Many soldiers operated in units that carried out patrols. Describing what they were like one patrol sergeant told Time: "I don't know, man. You chopper in. It's raining. People are shooting at you. You're running, just trying to stay alive. It doesn't matter." A patrol was usually lead by a "point man." "For me," Tim O'Brien wrote in the New York T...
VC and PAVN battle tactics comprised a flexible mix of guerrilla and conventional warfare battle tactics used by Viet Cong (VC) and the North Vietnamese People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) to defeat their U.S. and South Vietnamese (GVN/ARVN) opponents during the Vietnam War.
The search-and-destroy tactics of U.S. ground troops proved ineffective in the fluid guerrilla war waged by the Viet Cong. From Vietnam Perspective (1985), a documentary by Encyclopædia Britannica Educational Corporation.
