Quick questions on Conduct of the war and US strategy 1965-1968: HSC Modern History Indochina

General William Westmoreland, MACV commander from June 1964, adopted attrition. The goal was to inflict casualties on PAVN (the People's Army of Vietnam, also known as NVA) and PLAF until the "crossover point" at which losses exceeded replacements. The body count was the metric; battles were rated by kill ratios. The strategy assumed a conventional, Korean-style war.

Rolling Thunder ran from 2 March 1965 to 1 November 1968. The campaign delivered around 864,000 tonnes of bombs on the north (more than US bomb tonnage on Germany in the Second World War). Targets were graduated, controlled from Washington Tuesday lunch meetings; major targets in Hanoi and Haiphong, the dyke system, and the Sino-Vietnamese border buffer were off-limits for much of the war.

The Bell UH-1 Iroquois ("Huey") provided air mobility on a scale never before seen. The 1st Cavalry Division (airmobile) deployed in 1965; the Ia Drang campaign of October to November 1965 was the first major air-mobile battle. Around 12,000 US helicopters operated in country; around 5,000 were lost.

Australia entered the war on 29 April 1965 under the Menzies government, citing the SEATO treaty. The Royal Australian Regiment served in Bien Hoa from 1965; from June 1966 the 1st Australian Task Force (1ATF) operated from Nui Dat in Phuoc Tuy Province. Peak strength was around 8,500 personnel.

US ground troops were 25 per cent draftees overall but 88 per cent of infantry by 1969. The one-year tour rotation produced units with constantly changing personnel; the 13-month tour of officers was shorter still. Around 2.7 million Americans served. 58,220 died; around 304,000 were wounded.

Around two million Vietnamese civilians died across the war. The My Lai massacre, 16 March 1968, saw Charlie Company, 1st Battalion 20th Infantry, kill around 504 unarmed villagers in Son My village in Quang Ngai. The cover-up unravelled in 1969 (Seymour Hersh's reporting). Only Lt William Calley was convicted (29 March 1971, life imprisonment, paroled 1974).

Andrew Krepinevich (The Army and Vietnam, 1986) argues the conventional Army misapplied a big-unit doctrine to a counter-insurgency war.

Hanoi sustained the losses; the political defeat came from the bombing failing to break the will.

Long Tan, Phuoc Tuy, conscription, and the Moratoriums are part of the NESA Australian engagement.

16 March 1968, the day after Hue was cleared in Tet's late phase.