US Tactics

• Bombing

  President Johnson ordered the bombing of strategic military targets in North Vietnam, including air raids on the capital city, Hanoi, and bases and supply routes for the Vietcong. This was code-named Operation Rolling Thunder. The USA would ultimately drop three million tonnes of bombs in Vietnam - more than all the bombs dropped in Europe during World War Two. However, bombing was highly inaccurate due to the jungle landscape and the lack of industrial targets in North Vietnam.
• Escalation

  President Johnson slowly increased the number of American troops on the ground in Vietnam. In 1965, two battalions of US Marines were deployed to protect military bases at Da Nang. This represented a shift away from ‘military advisors’ to combat troops. In July 1965, Johnson sent another 100,000 troops, and a further 100,000 in 1966.
• Air and Artillery

  American troops were sent on patrols, to be supported by air and artillery if attacked by the Vietcong. This demoralised soldiers, who realised they were being used as bait to draw out the enemy.
• Search and Destroy

  From 1965, the American military began a policy of sending soldiers into the jungle and villages of Vietnam to ‘take the war to the enemy’. This often meant soldiers were easy targets for Vietcong guerrilla attacks as the Vietcong were far more at home in the jungle than the American soldiers. This tactic also led to a high number of civilian casualties, destruction of villages and atrocities like the My Lai Massacre all of which damaged the USA’s reputation.
• Technology

  The USA relied on high altitude bombers to drop heavy bombs in North Vietnam. They used jets to dump napalm, a chemical that burnt skin down to the bone, on suspected Vietcong strongholds, and Agent Orange, an ultra-strong defoliant, was used to destroy the jungle cover. Helicopters were used to deploy (search for) and destroy guerrilla combatants. Television propaganda was used in the USA to report the ‘body count’ of estimated Vietcong casualties.