Stunning Pictures From The Vietnam War

The Vietnam War still haunts the collective American psyche. And it's images still fascinates the rest of the world. But for different reasons. America learnt to its discomfiture that a group of highly motivated people can defeat the most technological advanced army in the world. And the world learnt that shorn of the heroic sheen of the beacon of freedom that American wore post-WW2, when it came to its self interest it used terrible weapons against innocent women and children. My Lai tarnished America irrevocably.

Saigon, June 11, 1963 Buddhist monk Quang Duc burned himself in protest against the persecution of Buddhists by the Government of South Vietnam. (AP Photo/Malcolm Browne)

 January 9, 1964 a soldier of the Army of South Vietnam stabs a farmer, assuming that he was lying on the movements of the Viet Cong - North Vietnamese soldiers. (AP Photo/Horst Faas)

March 1964. A Vietnamese man with a the body of his dead child asks for help from rather disinterested South Vietnamese soldiers

Hovering U.S. Army helicopters pour machine gun fire into a tree line to cover the advance of South Vietnamese ground troops in an attack on a Viet Cong camp 18 miles north of Tay Ninh, northwest of Saigon near the Cambodian border, in Vietnam on March 1965. (AP Photo/Horst Faas)

WHEN THE AMERICANS GOT INVOLVED

The Gulf of Tonkin Incident was the two naval skirmishes between North Vietnam’s torpedo boats and the United States Navy destroyers. It took place in the waters of the Gulf of Tonkin on August 2 and August 4, 1964. On August 2, 1964, while conducting intelligence-collecting operations in hostile waters off the coast of North Vietnam, the US destroyer USS Maddox was attacked by three North Vietnamese Navy torpedo boats of the 135th Torpedo Squadron.

As the North Vietnamese boats approached, shooting 50mm shells as they bore down on the USS Maddox, the Amercian crew fired three warning shots, but the torpedo boats continued to advance. The Maddox then opened fire on the approaching boats with torpedoes being fired by both the North Vietnamese and the US ships. As the North Vietnamese boats were heavily damaged, they returned to shore. Only one shell had hit the US destroyer.

On August 4, 1964, two US destroyers were again attacked in the middle of the Gulf of Tonkin. Radar images on the C Turner Joy indicated that they were being approached by North Vietnamese torpedo boats. Both the Maddox and the C Turner Joy fired repeatedly into the stormy night. Later that day the commander of the ships said that he was not certain of this second torpedos attack, but the next day he told Secretary of Defence Robert S McNamara that he was definitely sure that they had been attacked.

When he was notified of the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, President Lyndon B Johnson decided that he needed the support of Congress in order to act. On August 4, he had lunch with the National Security Council to discuss the situation in Vietnam. He was given approval for a proposed air strike, which was carried out the next day. The President announced the action on television as strategic North Vietnamese targets were destroyed including a petroleum storage unit in the town of Vinh.

The outcome of the Gulf of Tonkin Incident was the passage by Congress of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which granted President Johnson the authority to assist any Southeast Asian country whose government was considered to be jeopardized by communist aggression. Congress passed the resolution with the understanding that it would be consulted if the war escalated and particularly if ground troops were to be used in South Vietnam.

A BOMB BLAST: March 30, 1965. The scene immediately after a bomb attack on the American embassy in Saigon. Many Vietnamese and two Americans died.

An unknown American soldier

September 25, 1965. A raid to find Viet Cong in the jungle area Ben Cat, South Vietnam. (AP Photo/Henri Huet)

 November 27, 1965 A Vietnamese orderly  covers his nose, so as not to feel the stench, as he passes  bodies of American and Vietnamese soldiers killed in battle with the Vietcong in the Michelin rubber plantation, about 45 miles northeast of Saigon

 January 1, 1966 Women and children hide in a ditch to save themselves from the intense bombardment by the Viet Cong, at Bao Trai, about 20 miles west of Saigon. (AP Photo/Horst Faas)

  July 15, 1966 An American  CH-46 Sea Knight helicopter, downed by enemy ground forces during Operation Hastings south of the demilitarized zone between North and South Vietnam, The helicopter crashed and exploded on a hill, killing one crew member and 12 Marines. Three crew members escaped with severe burns,. (AP Photo/Horst Faas)

 A young Marine private waits on the beach during the Marine landing, Da Nang, Vietnam, August 3, 1965.

 A napalm strike erupts in a fireball near U.S. troops on patrol in South Vietnam in 1966 during the Vietnam War. (AP Photo)

 June 15, 1967 American soldiers peer out of the trench to evade Viet Cong snipers during fighting in the north-east of Saigon. (AP Photo/Henri Huet)

 1966. Near the Cambodian border. A dead American soldier is lifted onto a helicopter hovering above

June 1967. Medic James Callahan tries desperately to save a badly injured soldier during a battle north of Saigon.

1966 U.S. Army helicopters supporting ground forces, at a base fifty miles north-east of Saigon. (AP Photo/Henri Huet)

 Jan. 23, 1967 A terrified VC prisoner awaiting interrogation unit of special forces A-109 Thuong Duc, 25 kilometers west from Da Nang, Vietnam. (AFP PHOTO/National Archives)

 A marine helps his wounded comrade to cover despite North Vietnamese fire during battle on May 15, 1967

BEFORE: South Vietnamese forces escort suspected Viet Cong officer Nguyen Van Lem (also known as Bay Lop) on a Saigon street Feb. 1, 1968, early in the Tet Offensive. (AP Photo/Eddie Adams

 DURING: 1 February 1968 the national police chief of South Vietnam, General Nguyen Ngoc Loan shooting  the enemy suspect in the head

 VIETNAM WAR: THE MEDIA SHAPES PUBLIC OPINION

The majority of Vietnam veterans think that overly negative television coverage helped turn the American public against the war and against the American troops deployed in Vietnam. The media is called the fourth estate for its capacity to form opinions, that is to say the power to shape patterns of thinking, feeling and reacting before certain circumstances, events and famous people.

Negative Impact of Media On The Vietnam War Outcome

Even trained military personnel sometimes have difficulties in withstanding the horrors of war. During the Vietnam War it was the first time that the horrors of an armed conflict entered the living rooms of Americans. For almost a decade in between school, work, and dinners, the American public could watch villages being destroyed, Vietnamese children burning to death, and American body bags being sent home. At the beginning the media coverage generally supported U.S involvement in the war, but television news dramatically changed its frame of the war after the Tet Offensive. Images of the U.S led massacre at My Lai dominated the television, yet the daily atrocities committed by North Vietnam and the Viet Cong rarely made the evening news. Thus, the anti-war movement at home gained increasing media attention while the U.S soldier was forgotten in Vietnam.

Coverage of the war and its resulting impact on public opinion has been debated for decades by many intelligent media scholars and journalists, yet they are not the most qualified individuals to do so: the veterans are. Journalists based in Saigon daily reported facts about battles, casualties, and the morale of the troops, yet only a soldier could grasp the true reality of war. The media distortions, due to television’s misrepresentations during the Vietnam War, led to the American defeat, not on the battlefield but on the political and social arena. 

AFTER: The victim falls dead on the ground and police chief calmly puts the gun back

June 8, 1972 bombs with a mixture of napalm and white phosphorous dropped dropped by South Vietnamese Skyraider bombers , explode in a village not far from the Cao Dai temple in the outskirts of Trang Bang.  In the foreground are Vietnamese soldiers and correspondents of several international news agencies.

Terrified burnt children run away from the scene

The South Vietnamese soldiers tend to the children

November 20, 1972 Unaware of the impending enemy attack a photographer captures an image of a South Vietnamese infantryman in the Hai Van, south of Hue. While the camera followed the explosion,  the soldier had no time to react.

 March 1975. A Vietnamese woman is evacuated from an area 235 miles north east of Saigon moments before the NVA/Viet Cong overran it

South Vietnamese marines line beaches and swim out to ships, fleeing from the northern port city of Da Nang on March 29, 1975 before its fall to the Viet Cong and north Vietnamese. This picture was taken as some marines successfully fled, abandoning scores of weapons, vehicles and even a helicopter. In the foreground, men on LSTs (Landing Ship, Tank) prepare to throw rope to marines coming up on inner tubes. Only a fraction of the city's 100,000 defenders were evacuated before its fall. (AP Photo)

 North Vietnamese troops run across the tarmac of Tan Son Nhat air base in Saigon as smoke billows behind abandoned U.S. Air Force transport planes April 30, 1975. The taking of Saigon marked the fall of the U.S.-backed south and the end to a decade of fighting. (Vietnam News Agency/REUTERS)

April 29, 1975 Vietnamese people  trying to climb over the wall of the American Embassy in Saigon, hoping to get onto a helicopter, as the last Americans leave Vietnam. (AP Photo/Neal Ulevich)

 April 29, 1975 Staff of USS Blue Ridge push a helicopter from the deck of a ship at sea, to free up space for evacuation flights from Saigon.

 April 29, 1975 A Vietnamese woman with her three children sitting on the deck of an American amphibious assault ship during the evacuation from Saigon. (AP Photo)

 VICTORY FOR THE NVA: April 30, 1975. As the Americans left a North Vietnamese tank breaks through the gate of the presidential palace in Saigon.

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Incredible, rarely seen images from the Vietnam War

The injured being rushed to the medical camp

Interrogating a Vietcong.
The helicopters are everywhere in Vietnam. It seems the helicopters has become synonymous with the Vietnam war

MYTHS AND FACTS ABOUT THE VIETNAM WAR 

Myth: Common belief is that most Vietnam veterans were drafted.
Fact: 2/3 of the men who served in Vietnam were volunteers. 2/3 of the men who served in World War II were drafted. Approximately 70% of those killed in Vietnam were volunteers.

Myth: The media have reported that suicides among Vietnam veterans range from 50,000 to 100,000 - 6 to 11 times the non-Vietnam veteran population.
Fact: Mortality studies show that 9,000 is a better estimate. "The CDC Vietnam Experience Study Mortality Assessment showed that during the first 5 years after discharge, deaths from suicide were 1.7 times more likely among Vietnam veterans than non-Vietnam veterans. After that initial post-service period, Vietnam veterans were no more likely to die from suicide than non-Vietnam veterans. In fact, after the 5-year post-service period, the rate of suicides is less in the Vietnam veterans' group.

Myth: Common belief is that a disproportionate number of blacks were killed in the Vietnam War.
Fact: 86% of the men who died in Vietnam were Caucasians, 12.5% were black, 1.2% were other races. Sociologists Charles C. Moskos and John Sibley Butler, in their recently published book "All That We Can Be," said they analyzed the claim that blacks were used like cannon fodder during Vietnam "and can report definitely that this charge is untrue. Black fatalities amounted to 12 percent of all Americans killed in Southeast Asia, a figure proportional to the number of blacks in the U.S. population at the time and slightly lower than the proportion of blacks in the Army at the close of the war."

Myth: Common belief is that the war was fought largely by the poor and uneducated.
Fact: Servicemen who went to Vietnam from well-to-do areas had a slightly elevated risk of dying because they were more likely to be pilots or infantry officers. Vietnam Veterans were the best educated forces our nation had ever sent into combat. 79% had a high school education or better.

Myth: The common belief is the average age of an infantryman fighting in Vietnam was 19.
Fact: Assuming KIAs accurately represented age groups serving in Vietnam, the average age of an infantryman (MOS 11B) serving in Vietnam to be 19 years old is a myth, it is actually 22. None of the enlisted grades have an average age of less than 20. The average man who fought in World War II was 26 years of age.

Myth: The common belief is that the domino theory was proved false.
Fact: The domino theory was accurate. The ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) countries, Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand stayed free of Communism because of the U.S. commitment to Vietnam. The Indonesians threw the Soviets out in 1966 because of America's commitment in Vietnam. Without that commitment, Communism would have swept all the way to the Malacca Straits that is south of Singapore and of great strategic importance to the free world. If you ask people who live in these countries that won the war in Vietnam, they have a different opinion from the American news media. The Vietnam War was the turning point for Communism.

Myth: The common belief is that the fighting in Vietnam was not as intense as in World War II.
Fact: The average infantryman in the South Pacific during World War II saw about 40 days of combat in four years. The average infantryman in Vietnam saw about 240 days of combat in one year thanks to the mobility of the helicopter. One out of every 10 Americans who served in Vietnam was a casualty. 58,148 were killed and 304,000 wounded out of 2.7 million who served. Although the percent that died is similar to other wars, amputations or crippling wounds were 300 percent higher than in World War II. 75,000 Vietnam veterans are severely disabled. MEDEVAC helicopters flew nearly 500,000 missions. Over 900,000 patients were airlifted (nearly half were American). The average time lapse between wounding to hospitalization was less than one hour. As a result, less than one percent of all Americans wounded, who survived the first 24 hours, died. The helicopter provided unprecedented mobility. Without the helicopter it would have taken three times as many troops to secure the 800 mile border with Cambodia and Laos (the politicians thought the Geneva Conventions of 1954 and the Geneva Accords or 1962 would secure the border).

Myth: Kim Phuc, the little nine year old Vietnamese girl running naked from the napalm strike near Trang Bang on 8 June 1972 (shown a million times on American television) was burned by Americans bombing Trang Bang.
Fact: No American had involvement in this incident near Trang Bang that burned Phan Thi Kim Phuc. The planes doing the bombing near the village were VNAF (Vietnam Air Force) and were being flown by Vietnamese pilots in support of South Vietnamese troops on the ground. The Vietnamese pilot who dropped the napalm in error is currently living in the United States. Even the AP photographer, Nick Ut, who took the picture, was Vietnamese. The incident in the photo took place on the second day of a three day battle between the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) who occupied the village of Trang Bang and the ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) who were trying to force the NVA out of the village. Recent reports in the news media that an American commander ordered the air strike that burned Kim Phuc are incorrect. There were no Americans involved in any capacity. "We (Americans) had nothing to do with controlling VNAF," according to Lieutenant General (Ret) James F. Hollingsworth, the Commanding General of TRAC at that time. Also, it has been incorrectly reported that two of Kim Phuc's brothers were killed in this incident. They were Kim's cousins not her brothers.

A flame thrower
Not a scene from a film. The guy is guiding the helicopter rescue medical team to land. These guys are from the elite 101st Airborne Division.




Civilians lie dead and a South Vietnamese soldier still sits in his jeep after being shot in the head by a team of hit-and-run Vietcong in 1968. Vietnamese children are running past and looking at the charred and dismembered bodies.
Helicopters land to take away the injured.

A Vietcong POW

An American soldier is alert. At his feet is a dead Vietcong.

The soldier has mixed feelings. On the one hand he is sympathetic and wants to help the woman. On the other hand he knows that she is Vietcong and could cause trouble. That is how an average American soldier felt about the war.

Memorial to the dead.

Passers-by stop to watch as flames envelope a young Buddhist monk, Saigon, October 5th, 1963.

The man sits impassively in the central market square, he has set himself on fire performing a ritual suicide in protest against governmental anti-Buddhist policies. Crowds gathered to protest in Hue after the South Vietnamese government prohibited Buddhists from carrying flags on Buddha's birthday. Government troops opened fire to disperse the dissidents, killing nine people, Diems government blamed the incident on the Vietcong and never admitted responsibility. The Buddhist leadership quickly organized demonstrations that eventually led to seven monks burning themselves to death.

The guy is lighting his cigarette. What indifference!

Luscious, mini-skirted screen-queen Raquel Welch gets help from four enthusiastic GIs as she performs on the Bob Hope Show at Da Nang military base December 18th, 1967। Beautiful Raquel was one of the performers accompanying the popular comedian on his annual overseas Christmas tour that year.

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Amazing Vietnam war pictures

Viet Cong dead after an attack on the perimeter of Tan Son Nhut Air Base.

QUOTES.....

Ho Chi Minh to the French, late 1940s

You can kill ten of my men for every one I kill of yours, but even at those odds, you will lose and I will win.

Richard M. Nixon, speech, April 16, 1954.

If in order to avoid further Communist expansion in Asia and particularly in Indo-China, if in order to avoid it we must take the risk by putting American boys in, I believe that the executive branch of the government has to take the politically unpopular position of facing up to it and doing it, and I personally would support such a decision.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1954

You have a row of dominoes set up; you knock over the first one, and what will happen to the last one is that it will go over very quickly.

John F. Kennedy, speech, New York Times, October 13, 1960.

Should I become President...I will not risk American lives...by permitting any other nation to drag us into the wrong war at the wrong place at the wrong time through an unwise commitment that is unwise militarily, unnecessary to our security and unsupported by our allies.

John McCain rescued. 26 OCTOBER 1967 - HANOI, VIETNAM: John McCain is purportedly rescued from Truc Bach Lake by the Vietnamese after his plane was shot down 

John F. Kennedy, 1961

Now we have a problem in making our power credible, and Vietnam is the place.

Barry M. Goldwater, Why Not Victory?, 1962.

Once upon a time our traditional goal in war and can anyone doubt that we are at war? - was victory. Once upon a time we were proud of our strength, our military power. Now we seem ashamed of it. Once upon a time the rest of the world looked to us for leadership. Now they look to us for a quick handout and a fence-straddling international posture.

Gen. Curtis LeMay, May 1964

Tell the Vietnamese they've got to draw in their horns or we're going to bomb them back into the Stone Age.

Lyndon B. Johnson, statement after Gulf of Tonkin incident, August 4, 1964.

We still seek no wider war.

Lyndon Johnson, Oct. 1964

We are not about to send American boys nine or ten thousand miles away from home to do what Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves.

A US Special Forces soldier grimaces fiercely as he pulls a dead North Vietnamese soldier from a hole outside the Special Forces Outpost at Ben Het, June 21, 1969. The Americans broke out of the camp in an attempt to penetrate the surrounding enemy troops, killing eleven.

Ronald Reagan, 1964

We are at war with the most dangerous enemy that has ever faced mankind in his long climb from the swamp to the stars, and it has been said if we lose that war, and in so doing lose this way of freedom of ours, history will record with the greatest astonishment that those who had the most to lose did the least to prevent its happening.

Lyndon B. Johnson, 1964

This is not a jungle war, but a struggle for freedom on every front of human activity.

Ronald Reagan, interview, Fresno Bee, October 10, 1965.

It's silly talking about how many years we will have to spend in the jungles of Vietnam when we could pave the whole country and put parking stripes on it and still be home for Christmas.

Ronald Reagan, 1965

We should declare war on North Vietnam. . . .We could pave the whole country and put parking strips on it, and still be home by Christmas.

George McGovern, speech to U.S. Senate, April 25, 1967.

We seem bent upon saving the Vietnamese from Ho Chi Minh, even if we have to kill them and demolish their country to do it....I do not intend to remain silent in the face of what I regard as a policy of madness which, sooner or later, will envelop my son and American youth by the millions for years to come.

Walt W. Rostow, National Security Adviser, Dec. 1967

I see light at the end of the tunnel.

Unidentified U.S. Army major, on decision to bomb Bentre, Vietnam, February 7, 1968.

It became necessary to destroy the town to save it.

Lyndon B. Johnson, address to nation, March 31, 1968.

Our objective in South Vietnam has never been the annihilation of the enemy. It has been to bring about a recognition in Hanoi that its objective - taking over the South by force - could not be achieved.

Stephen Vizinczey, 1968

The war against Vietnam is only the ghastliest manifestation of what I'd call imperial provincialism, which afflicts America's whole culture - aware only of its own history, insensible to everything which isn't part of the local atmosphere.

April 4, 1967. An Army medic aids UPI Photographer Nguyen Thanh Tai after he was wounded by the explosion of a Viet Cong booby trap, 15 miles south of Saigon. Tai was one of six men injured by the blast, which was triggered by a trip-wire

Richard M. Nixon, 1969

Let us understand: North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that.

Richard Nixon, Oct. 1969

I'm not going to be the first American president to lose a war.

Sen. Frank Church, May 1970

This war has already stretched the generation gap so wide that it threatens to pull the country apart.

Dalton Trumbo, Introduction, Johnny Got His Gun, 1970.

Numbers have dehumanized us. Over breakfast coffee we read of 40,000 American dead in Vietnam. Instead of vomiting, we reach for the toast. Our morning rush through crowded streets is not to cry murder but to hit that trough before somebody else gobbles our share.

Henry Kissinger, Oct. 1972

We believe that peace is at hand.

March 18, 1970. Ben Het, South Vietnam: A South Vietnamese member of the Special Forces Mercenary Unit stationed at Ben Het pauses for a touching moment with one of Ben het's children. Ben Het underwent a 50 some day siege.

Frances Fitzgerald, 1972

By intervening in the Vietnamese struggle the United States was attempting to fit its global strategies into a world of hillocks and hamlets, to reduce its majestic concerns for the containment of communism and the security of the Free World to a dimension where governments rose and fell as a result of arguments between two colonels' wives.

Richard Nixon in a letter to President Thieu, Jan. 1973

You have my assurance that we will respond with full force should the settlement be violated by North Vietnam.

Nguyen Van Thieu, April 1975

If the Americans do not want to support us anymore, let them go, get out! Let them forget their humanitarian promises!

Gerald Ford, April 1975

Today, America can regain the sense of pride that existed before Vietnam. These events, tragic as they are, portend neither the end of the world nor of America's leadership in the world.

A wounded marine shrieks in pain. November 12, 1966

Tay Ninh, South Vietnam: a G.I. from the 25th Infantry Division helps a captured Viet Cong through the barbed wire near Tay Ninh Air base. The prisoner was one of some 40 Viet Cong, who attempted to get into the air base to blow up helicopters early March 31st, 1970.

1969. US soldiers reportedly threw out a non cooperative war prisoner from a US Army copter in Vietnam. He supposedly refused to talk during the interrogation and then was simply thrown out.

May 25, 2009. Memorial Day at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington. A man places his hand against the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on Memorial Day in Washington

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