The difference of tactics in Vietnam played an important part

The Vietcong used guerrilla warfare, a form of fighting with the aim to hinder the opposing force. This form of fighting dates back to Sun Tzu a Chinese military strategist who lived over 2000 years ago, he believed that all warfare involves the employing of ones strength to exploit the weaknesses of the enemy. Guerrilla warfare was also successfully adopted by Mao Zedong the leader of the communist's forces in China.The USA were used to conventional warfare, in the form of bouts of fighting, guerrilla warfare ment they had to be constantly alert, for which they were not adequately trained.

The strategy and tactics used by the Vietcong were based on those used by Mao Zedong, One important feature was the use of small groups of soldiers called cells. The cells worked together but knowledge of other cells was kept to a minimum, to lower the damage done to the organisation as a whole if one soldier was captured and tortured.The US troops began to use the 'search and destroy tactic' from 1965 to try and find members of theses cells and kill them. This was made extremely difficult, as the Vietcong did not wear uniforms so they were hard to distinguish from the ordinary peasants. "You never know who the enemy was and who was the friend they all looked alike.

They all dressed alike. " The US troops were often forced to use the unwritten rule 'If he's dead and Vietnamese he's VC.Many atrocities were committed during the war due to the US troops not knowing peasants from proper enemies. If the US Marines knew or suspected that the Vietcong was operational in a particular village they frequently used to torture the peasants in the villages to gain information, sometimes, as mentioned below by an US Navy officer who served in Vietnam, whole villages were destroyed. "I had to destroy villages, kill everybody in there and leave communist arms there.

I realised what we were doing; it made sense then....You don't take a persons life and not have guilty feelings about it.

Anyone who says they can and not feel guilty about it is lying. " With not knowing who exactly the enemy was, the US often proclaimed extortionate Vietcong deaths using the 'body count' tactic, this was just plain guessing but it was useful in convincing the US public that they were winning the war and that it was worth carrying on with. The use of Firebase support, naval support and airstrikes also made finding the exact number of enemy dead difficult.When ground troops heard or saw enemy soldiers ahead of them, instead of rushing in to kill or capture the enemy and run the risk of running into an ambush or a booby trap, they called for support and the area ahead was bombed. The time needed to call in the co-ordinates and to prepare the attack often gave the Vietcong troops time to run away, but the ground troops still regularly added these to the death toll The Vietcong began fighting with primitive weapons and booby traps to try and injure the American troops; there were many different types of mines and bamboo staves which they used, one of the most feared was the 'Bouncing Betty'.These traps killed inexperienced soldiers and put the rest of the troops on edge.

The Vietcong's considerable knowledge of the local environment also proved to be extremely useful in the war. They could successfully launch ambushes against small groups of American troops, which again proved to be extremely effective in putting the Americans on edge, every time they were in Vietnam. The Vietcong were told not to into combat unless it outnumbered the enemy and was certain of winning.It therefore concentrated its attacks on poorly guarded government positions theses were referred to as 'soft targets'; it often used night attacks to increase the possibility of success. The Vietcong began to collect more and more advanced weapons from the Americans, survey taken by the US army discovered that about 90% of Vietcong weapons captured once belonged to the Americans or ARVN. On the other hand, the US fought from the beginning with some of the most advanced weapons in the world.

In Vietnam they utilised helicopters to drop troops anywhere in Vietnam and for quickly taking out wounded troops so they could be give medical care, this one thing reduced the causalities in South Vietnam dramatically. Aeroplanes were used for reconnaissance purposes and for a major aspect of the war, bombing. From 1964 The USA had been bombing North Vietnam, their aim was to try and dissuade the North Vietnamese government from supporting the NLF by destroying the peoples moral.Later in 'Operation rolling thunder', the aim was to destroy the North Vietnamese economy, again forcing it to stop funding the NLF. These both failed so the USA began using blanket bombing to disrupt the functioning of North Vietnam and to kill as many Vietcong troops as possible.

To try and counter the Vietcong's good use of the dense rain forest by hiding in before and after attacks, the USA commenced operation 'ranch hand' in 1962, this involved the spraying of chemicals from the air, and these chemicals destroyed the rain forest therefor the Vietcong's hiding places.One of the most infamous of these was Napalm, this was a mixture of petrol and a chemical thickener that easily attached itself to anything it came in contact with and then ignited burning for a long period of time. Some of the worst injuries in the Vietnam War came from Napalm burning people, an account of this is given below by an American who went to Vietnam to adopt children she visited many hospitals. "The chemical reaction of this Napalm does melt the flesh, and the flesh runs right down their faces onto their chests and it sits there and grows there"This again made the Vietnamese villagers turn away from the USA and begin supporting the Vietcong. Agent Orange another well-known chemical used affected pregnant mothers, their children were often born deformed.

Other chemicals used destroyed crops with the aim of starving the Vietcong, but it was later discovered that the poor crops affected the poor peasants far more, this again made the USA unpopular. The USA believed that with all this modern technology they could not be defeated by a Raggedy ass 4th rate country" But the Vietcong had many advantages, another of these was the easy movement they had from North Vietnam to and throughout South Vietnam, this was as a result of the Ho Chi Minh trail. This was a complex web of jungle paths with base camps at regular intervals along it, it let soldiers travel from North Vietnam to Saigon in six weeks, it is estimated that the Vietcong received sixty tons of aid per day from the Ho Chi Minh trail.The USA quickly saw the superiority this gave the Vietcong and tried to stop its use. As the trail could not be seen by air it could not be successfully bombed, so the US decided to build the 'McNamara Line', a large barrier of barbed wire and minefield that crossed South Vietnam. Due to repeated attacks by enemy forces during its construction the plan was abandoned in 1967, the Vietcong was left with its advantage of quick supplies from North Vietnam.