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[gands]

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[gands]

Battlefield Vietnam: A Brief History

By Professor Robert K. Brigham, Vassar College

The Second Indochina War, 1954-1975, grew out of the long conflict between France and Vietnam. In July 1954, after one hundred years of colonial rule, a defeated France was forced to leave Vietnam. Nationalist forces under the direction of General Vo Nguyen Giap trounced the allied French troops at the remote mountain outpost of Dien Bien Phu in the northwest corner of Vietnam. This decisive battle convinced the French that they could no longer maintain their Indochinese colonies and Paris quickly sued for peace. As the two sides came together in Geneva, Switzerland, international events were already shaping the future of Vietnam's modern revolution.


The Geneva Peace Accords
The Geneva Peace Accords, signed by France and Vietnam in the summer of 1954, reflected the strains of the international cold war. Drawn up in the shadow of the Korean War, the Geneva Accords represented the worst of all possible futures for war-torn Vietnam. Because of outside pressures brought to bear by the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China, Vietnam's delegates to the Geneva Conference agreed to the temporary partition of their nation at the seventeenth parallel to allow France a face-saving defeat. The Communist superpowers feared that a provocative peace would anger the United States and its western European allies, and neither Moscow or Peking wanted to risk another confrontation with the West so soon after the Korean War.

According to the terms of the Geneva Accords, Vietnam would hold national elections in 1956 to reunify the country. The division at the seventeenth parallel, a temporary separation without cultural precedent, would vanish with the elections. The United States, however, had other ideas. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles did not support the Geneva Accords because he thought they granted too much power to the Communist Party of Vietnam.

Instead, Dulles and President Dwight D. Eisenhower supported the creation of a counter-revolutionary alternative south of the seventeenth parallel. The United States supported this effort at nation-building through a series of multilateral agreements that created the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO).

South Vietnam Under Ngo Dinh Diem
Using SEATO for political cover, the Eisenhower administration helped create a new nation from dust in southern Vietnam. In 1955, with the help of massive amounts of American military, political, and economic aid, the Government of the Republic of Vietnam (GVN or South Vietnam) was born. The following year, Ngo Dinh Diem, a staunchly anti-Communist figure from the South, won a dubious election that made him president of the GVN. Almost immediately, Diem claimed that his newly created government was under attack from Communists in the north. Diem argued that the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (DRV or North Vietnam) wanted to take South Vietnam by force. In late 1957, with American military aid, Diem began to counterattack. He used the help of the American Central Intelligence Agency to identify those who sought to bring his government down and arrested thousands. Diem passed a repressive series of acts known as Law 10/59 that made it legal to hold someone in jail if s/he was a suspected Communist without bringing formal charges.

The outcry against Diem's harsh and oppressive actions was immediate. Buddhist monks and nuns were joined by students, business people, intellectuals, and peasants in opposition to the corrupt rule of Ngo Dinh Diem. The more these forces attacked Diem's troops and secret police, the more Diem complained that the Communists were trying to take South Vietnam by force. This was, in Diem's words, "a hostile act of aggression by North Vietnam against peace-loving and democratic South Vietnam."

The Kennedy administration seemed split on how peaceful or democratic the Diem regime really was. Some Kennedy advisers believed Diem had not instituted enough social and economic reforms to remain a viable leader in the nation-building experiment. Others argued that Diem was the "best of a bad lot." As the White House met to decide the future of its Vietnam policy, a change in strategy took place at the highest levels of the Communist Party.

From 1956-1960, the Communist Party of Vietnam desired to reunify the country through political means alone. Accepting the Soviet Union's model of political struggle, the Communist Party tried unsuccessfully to cause Diem's collapse by exerting tremendous internal political pressure. After Diem's attacks on suspected Communists in the South, however, southern Communists convinced the Party to adopt more violent tactics to guarantee Diem's downfall. At the Fifteenth Party Plenum in January 1959, the Communist Party finally approved the use of revolutionary violence to overthrow Ngo Dinh Diem's government and liberate Vietnam south of the seventeenth parallel. In May 1959, and again in September 1960, the Party confirmed its use of revolutionary violence and the combination of the political and armed struggle movements. The result was the creation of a broad-based united front to help mobilize southerners in opposition to the GVN.


Special Forces.

Photo courtesy of the soc.history.war. vietnam Home Page, from the Byrd Archives
The National Liberation Front
The united front had long and historic roots in Vietnam. Used earlier in the century to mobilize anti-French forces, the united front brought together Communists and non-Communists in an umbrella organization that had limited, but important goals. On December 20, 1960, the Party' s new united front, the National Liberation Front (NLF), was born. Anyone could join this front as long as they opposed Ngo Dinh Diem and wanted to unify Vietnam.

The character of the NLF and its relationship to the Communists in Hanoi has caused considerable debate among scholars, anti-war activists, and policymakers. From the birth of the NLF, government officials in Washington claimed that Hanoi directed the NLF's violent attacks against the Saigon regime. In a series of government "White Papers," Washington insiders denounced the NLF, claiming that it was merely a puppet of Hanoi and that its non-Communist elements were Communist dupes. The NLF, on the other hand, argued that it was autonomous and independent of the Communists in Hanoi and that it was made up mostly of non-Communists. Many anti-war activists supported the NLF's claims. Washington continued to discredit the NLF, however, calling it the "Viet Cong," a derogatory and slang term meaning Vietnamese Communist.

December 1961 White Paper
In 1961, President Kennedy sent a team to Vietnam to report on conditions in the South and to assess future American aid requirements. The report, now known as the "December 1961 White Paper," argued for an increase in military, technical, and economic aid, and the introduction of large-scale American "advisers" to help stabilize the Diem regime and crush the NLF. As Kennedy weighed the merits of these recommendations, some of his other advisers urged the president to withdraw from Vietnam altogether, claiming that it was a "dead-end alley."

In typical Kennedy fashion, the president chose a middle route. Instead of a large-scale military buildup as the White Paper had called for or a negotiated settlement that some of his advisers had long advocated, Kennedy sought a limited accord with Diem. The United States would increase the level of its military involvement in South Vietnam through more machinery and advisers, but would not intervene whole-scale with troops. This arrangement was doomed from the start, and soon reports from Vietnam came in to Washington attesting to further NLF victories. To counteract the NLF's success in the countryside, Washington and Saigon launched an ambitious and deadly military effort in the rural areas. Called the Strategic Hamlet Program, the new counterinsurgency plan rounded up villagers and placed them in "safe hamlets" constructed by the GVN. The idea was to isolate the NLF from villagers, its base of support. This culturally-insensitive plan produced limited results and further alienated the peasants from the Saigon regime. Through much of Diem's reign, rural Vietnamese had viewed the GVN as a distant annoyance, but the Strategic Hamlet Program brought the GVN to the countryside. The Saigon regime's reactive policies ironically produced more cadres for the NLF.


Marines holding up a captured National Liberation Front flag.

Photo courtesy of the soc.history.war. vietnam Home Page
Military Coup
By the summer of 1963, because of NLF successes and its own failures, it was clear that the GVN was on the verge of political collapse. Diem's brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu, had raided the Buddhist pagodas of South Vietnam, claiming that they had harbored the Communists that were creating the political instability. The result was massive protests on the streets of Saigon that led Buddhist monks to self-immolation. The pictures of the monks engulfed in flames made world headlines and caused considerable consternation in Washington. By late September, the Buddhist protest had created such dislocation in the south that the Kennedy administration supported a coup. In 1963, some of Diem's own generals in the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) approached the American Embassy in Saigon with plans to overthrow Diem. With Washington's tacit approval, on November 1, 1963, Diem and his brother were captured and later killed. Three weeks later, President Kennedy was assassinated on the streets of Dallas.

At the time of the Kennedy and Diem assassinations, there were 16,000 military advisers in Vietnam. The Kennedy administration had managed to run the war from Washington without the large-scale introduction of American combat troops. The continuing political problems in Saigon, however, convinced the new president, Lyndon Baines Johnson, that more aggressive action was needed. Perhaps Johnson was more prone to military intervention or maybe events in Vietnam had forced the president's hand to more direct action. In any event, after a dubious DRV raid on two U.S. ships in the Gulf of Tonkin, the Johnson administration argued for expansive war powers for the president.


Buddhist monks, 1969.

Photo courtesy of E. Kenneth Hoffman
Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
In August 1964, in response to American and GVN espionage along its coast, the DRV launched a local and controlled attack against the C. Turner Joy and the U.S.S. Maddox, two American ships on call in the Gulf of Tonkin. The first of these attacks occurred on August 2, 1964. A second attack was supposed to have taken place on August 4, although Vo Nguyen Giap, the DRV's leading military figure at the time, and Johnson's Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara have recently concluded that no second attack ever took place. In any event, the Johnson administration used the August 4 attack as political cover for a Congressional resolution that gave the president broad war powers. The resolution, now known as the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, passed both the House and Senate with only two dissenting votes (Senators Morse of Oregon and Gruening of Alaska). The Resolution was followed by limited reprisal air attacks against the DRV.

Throughout the fall and into the winter of 1964, the Johnson administration debated the correct strategy in Vietnam. The Joint Chiefs of Staff wanted to expand the air war over the DRV quickly to help stabilize the new Saigon regime. The civilians in the Pentagon wanted to apply gradual pressure to the Communist Party with limited and selective bombings. Only Undersecretary of State George Ball dissented, claiming that Johnson's Vietnam policy was too provocative for its limited expected results. In early 1965, the NLF attacked two U.S. army installations in South Vietnam, and as a result, Johnson ordered the sustained bombing missions over the DRV that the Joint Chiefs of Staff had long advocated.

The bombing missions, known as OPERATION ROLLING THUNDER, caused the Communist Party to reassess its own war strategy. From 1960 through late 1964, the Party believed it could win a military victory in the south "in a relatively short period of time." With the new American military commitment, confirmed in March 1965 when Johnson sent the first combat troops to Vietnam, the Party moved to a protracted war strategy. The idea was to get the United States bogged down in a war that it could not win militarily and create unfavorable conditions for political victory. The Communist Party believed that it would prevail in a protracted war because the United States had no clearly defined objectives, and therefore, the country would eventually tire of the war and demand a negotiated settlement. While some naive and simple-minded critics have claimed that the Communist Party, and Vietnamese in general, did not have the same regard for life and therefore were willing to sustain more losses in a protracted war, the Party understood that it had an ideological commitment to victory from large segments of the Vietnamese population.


Battleship firing its main guns.

Photo courtesy of the soc.history.war. vietnam Home Page
The War in America
One of the greatest ironies in a war rich in ironies was that Washington had also moved toward a limited war in Vietnam. The Johnson administration wanted to fight this war in "cold blood." This meant that America would go to war in Vietnam with the precision of a surgeon with little noticeable impact on domestic culture. A limited war called for limited mobilization of resources, material and human, and caused little disruption in everyday life in America. Of course, these goals were never met. The Vietnam War did have a major impact on everyday life in America, and the Johnson administration was forced to consider domestic consequences of its decisions every day. Eventually, there simply were not enough volunteers to continue to fight a protracted war and the government instituted a draft. As the deaths mounted and Americans continued to leave for Southeast Asia, the Johnson administration was met with the full weight of American anti-war sentiments. Protests erupted on college campuses and in major cities at first, but by 1968 every corner of the country seemed to have felt the war's impact. Perhaps one of the most famous incidents in the anti-war movement was the police riot in Chicago during the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Hundreds of thousands ofcpeople came to Chicago in August 1968 to protest American intervention in Vietnam and the leaders of the Democratic Party who continued to prosecute the war.

The Tet Offensive
By 1968, things had gone from bad to worse for the Johnson administration. In late January, the DRV and the NLF launched coordinated attacks against the major southern cities. These attacks, known in the West as the Tet Offensive, were designed to force the Johnson administration to the bargaining table. The Communist Party correctly believed that the American people were growing war-weary and that its continued successes in the countryside had tipped the balance of forces in its favor. Although many historians have since claimed that the Tet Offensive was a military defeat, but a psychological victory for the Communists, it had produced the desired results. In late March 1968, a disgraced Lyndon Johnson announced that he would not seek the Democratic Party's re-nomination for president and hinted that he would go to the bargaining table with the Communists to end the war.


Protest march in Washington D.C., early 1970s.

Photo courtesy of E. Kenneth Hoffman
The Nixon Years
The secret negotiations began in the spring of 1968 in Paris and soon it was made public that Americans and Vietnamese were meeting to discuss an end to the long and costly war. Despite the progress in Paris, the Democratic Party could not rescue the presidency from Republican challenger Richard Nixon who claimed he had a secret plan to end the war.

Nixon's secret plan, it turned out, was borrowing from a strategic move from Lyndon Johnson's last year in office. The new president continued a process called "Vietnamization", an awful term that implied that Vietnamese were not fighting and dying in the jungles of Southeast Asia. This strategy brought American troops home while increasing the air war over the DRV and relying more on the ARVN for ground attacks. The Nixon years also saw the expansion of the war into neighboring Laos and Cambodia, violating the international rights of these countries in secret campaigns, as the White House tried desperately to rout out Communist sanctuaries and supply routes. The intense bombing campaigns and intervention in Cambodia in late April 1970 sparked intense campus protests all across America. At Kent State in Ohio, four students were killed by National Guardsmen who were called out to preserve order on campus after days of anti-Nixon protest. Shock waves crossed the nation as students at Jackson State in Mississippi were also shot and killed for political reasons, prompting one mother to cry, "They are killing our babies in Vietnam and in our own backyard."

The expanded air war did not deter the Communist Party, however, and it continued to make hard demands in Paris. Nixon's Vietnamization plan temporarily quieted domestic critics, but his continued reliance on an expanded air war to provide cover for an American retreat angered U.S. citizens. By the early fall 1972, U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and DRV representatives Xuan Thuy and Le Duc Tho had hammered out a preliminary peace draft. Washington and Hanoi assumed that its southern allies would naturally accept any agreement drawn up in Paris, but this was not to pass. The leaders in Saigon, especially President Nguyen van Thieu and Vice President Nguyen Cao Ky, rejected the Kissinger-Tho peace draft, demanding that no concessions be made. The conflict intensified in December 1972, when the Nixon administration unleashed a series of deadly bombing raids against targets in the DRV's largest cities, Hanoi and Haiphong. These attacks, now known as the Christmas bombings, brought immediate condemnation from the international community and forced the Nixon administration to reconsider its tactics and negotiation strategy.

The Paris Peace Agreement
In early January 1973, the Nixon White House convinced the Thieu-Ky regime in Saigon that they would not abandon the GVN if they signed onto the peace accord. On January 23, therefore, the final draft was initialed, ending open hostilities between the United States and the DRV. The Paris Peace Agreement did not end the conflict in Vietnam, however, as the Thieu-Ky regime continued to battle Communist forces. From March 1973 until the fall of Saigon on April 30, 1975, ARVN forces tried desperately to save the South from political and military collapse. The end finally came, however, as DRV tanks rolled south along National Highway One. On the morning of April 30, Communist forces captured the presidential palace in Saigon, ending the Second Indochina War.

Robert K. Brigham was born in Buffalo, New York, in 1960. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Kentucky where he worked with Professor George C. Herring, an expert on the Vietnam War. While pursuing his Ph.D., Brigham took Vietnamese language courses at Cornell University and traveled to Vietnam for research. Since coming to Vassar College in 1994, Brigham has led student and alumnae/i trips to Vietnam and participated in a critical oral history conference on the war in Hanoi. Brigham is the author of numerous books and essays on the Vietnam War, including Guerrilla Diplomacy: The NLF's Foreign Relations and the Vietnam War (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998) and ARVN: A History of America's Ally in Vietnam (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1999).

E. Kenneth Hoffman went to Viet Nam in June, 1969, as a first lieutenant in the 221st Signal Company in charge of a photo detachment. Initially stationed at a sprawling military base in Long Binh and later in Pleiku and Saigon, Hoffman took over 1500 photographs in addition to the pictures he took for the government. He traveled freely and extensively throughout the country and was able to record much of civilian culture--markets, farms, homes, shrines, and people. The bulk of his work--especially photos documenting the conflict--is archived in the Library of Congress. A more extensive selection of Hoffman's photos are on view at his Vietnam Interactive Portfolio.


Source:
www.pbs.org/battlefieldvietnam/history/index.html

[gands]

A little of Navy Seals History in Vietnam

In 1962, President Kennedy established SEAL Teams ONE and TWO from the existing UDT Teams to develop a Navy Unconventional Warfare capability. The Navy SEAL Teams were designed as the maritime counterpart to the Army Special Forces “Green Berets.” They deployed immediately to Vietnam to operate in the deltas and thousands of rivers and canals in Vietnam, and effectively disrupted the enemy’s maritime lines of communication.

The SEAL Teams’ mission was to conduct counter guerilla warfare and clandestine maritime operations. Initially, SEALs advised and trained Vietnamese forces, such as the LDNN (Vietnamese SEALs). Later in the war, SEALs conducted nighttime Direct Action missions such as ambushes and raids to capture prisoners of high intelligence value.

The SEALs were so effective that the enemy named them, “the men with the green faces.” At the war’s height, eight SEAL platoons were in Vietnam on a continuing rotational basis. The last SEAL platoon departed Vietnam in 1971, and the last SEAL advisor in 1973.

Early colonial period

The French colonized Vietnam in 1857. They made it a part of French Indochina until World War II, when it fell under Japanese rule for a short time. Vietnamese citizens rebelled during the period of Japanese rule, supported by the Communists and American OSS (Office of Strategic Services which was the pre-cursor to the CIA). A new sense of nationalism emerged amongst the Vietnamese. World War II became the catalyst for the nationalist movement, which was led by a man calling himself Ho Chi Mihn.

After the war, France returned and sought to resume control of Vietnam and other Japanese-controlled territories. As early as 1941, Indochina's Communist Party called for liberation from France. The Viet Mihn, the nationalist movement's political and military organization, under the leadership of Ho Chi Mihn, were gaining strength in the north. In 1945 Ho Chi Mihn proclaimed the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam and right for the Vietnamese to rule themselves. Their Declaration of Independence was written to be similar to the United States Declaration of Independence of 1776, hoping to gain support and sympathy from their one-time ally, America.

Elections that followed were strongly in favor of the Viet Mihn position. Ho Chi Mihn was proclaimed President of the new Republic and he demanded the immediate withdrawal of the French and complete independence for Vietnam. Ho Chi Mihn made these demands, relying on the support and aid he was receiving from two important sources: the Communist Chinese, and the American OSS Teams. The Communist Chinese trained the Viet Mihn and fought with them against the Japanese. The American OSS was advising Ho Chi Mihn in their common struggle against the Japanese. The United States government realized that the Viet Mihn was an effective fighting force and Ho Chi Mihn's organization was the only stable leadership in Vietnam.

With the Chinese and OSS supporting Ho Chi Mihn, France found it difficult to oppose his new Republic. By late 1945, the OSS Teams were finally withdrawn and the French agreed to recognize the Democratic Republic of Viet Nam as long as it remained part of France. The French also agreed that if some time in the future the country wanted to unite under Ho Chi Mihn, France would submit to the decision of the people.

However, negotiations failed when neither side was willing to make any real compromise. Armed confrontations began between French Troops and the Viet Mihn, now called the National Front. The country of Vietnam divided: Ho Chi Mihn consolidated to the north in Hanoi, while the French set up government and command in the south at Saigon.

The French, with their Vietnamese allies, fought against the Viet Mihn from 1946 to 1953. This war consisted mostly of guerrilla actions, leaving neither side with a clear advantage. France's military policy was not effective against guerrilla tactics, and the best the French could do was to hold the primary populated areas and main lines of communication, hoping to draw the Viet Mihn into a major action. The French were suffering heavy losses and casualties and needed a major win. They believed that if they were to get the Viet Mihn onto a conventional field of battle, France would have the upper hand.

The trap was set in a small valley in northwestern Vietnam, which was believed to be a guerrilla power base, about 150 miles west of Hanoi and 25 miles from the Laotian border. Under the control of General Henri Navarre, the French troops planned to lure the Viet Mihn into battle with a large airborne assault force, which would secure the valley and establish a fortification around the deserted airfield there. When the Viet Mihn attacked, the French would destroy them.

Dien Bien Phu became one of the greatest post-WWII battles. The French were defeated at Dien Bien Phu because they greatly underestimated the determination and abilities of the Vietnamese guerrilla forces. The French fortifications were insufficient; they were out manned, outgunned, and outmaneuvered. Neither the bravery of the French troops, nor the legendary heroics of the French Foreign Legion paratroopers, were enough to save the situation. This defeat shocked the French people and their government, eliminating their will to continue the war.

In July 1954, talks between France and the new Republic, held in Geneva, finally produced an agreement. The Geneva Agreement ended colonial rule in Vietnam with a working plan for the smooth transition of power from the French to the Vietnamese. The agreement divided Indochina into four parts: Laos, Cambodia, and North and South Vietnam. The ardently Communist Viet Mihn, lead by Ho Chi Mihn, ruled the North, while the French assisted in the establishment of an anti-communist Vietnamese government in the South, headed by Emperor Bao Dai.

With the northern region being the industrial center, and the southern regions being agricultural, the division of Vietnam posed economic problems. This division also caused a major shift in population. The large Catholic population in the North, fearing retaliation from the new Communist regime for their support of the French began an exodus to the South. An estimated 100,000 of the Viet Mihn stationed throughout the South, by order of the Hanoi government, began their own exodus to the North. However, at least 5,000 of their ranks remained behind, joining the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam to form the Viet Cong (VC). They lived in the South Vietnamese villages and fought against the American-funded ARVN (Army of the Republic of Viet Nam) and American troops.

Ho Chi Mihn was confident that he would win the elections, and turned his attention toward the economic and social troubles facing his government. He realized that the U.S. might aid the South in its establishment, but he did not foresee that South Vietnam would find grounds to cancel the elections. The Americans supported the Premier of South Vietnam, Ngo Dihn Diem, who replaced the self-exiled Bao Dai. Ngo Dihn Diem gradually increased his sphere of power, while the United States began to assume the role of supporter left vacant by the French.

America gets involved

Cambodia was the only state involved which refused to sign the Geneva Agreement; it was self-declared neutral and led by Prince Norodom Sihanouk.

Although Cambodia tried to play all sides against one another, the war didn't lead into Cambodia until later years Laos, whose leader was Prince Souvanna Phouma, tried to develop a neutralist coalition government of both pro-Western and pro- Communist supporters. Prince Phouma's half-brother Prince Souphanouvoing headed the Communist faction, called the Pathet Lao. Prince Boun Oum had the support of the 25,000-man Royal Laotian Army (RLA); the RLA led the pro-Western faction, and the United States Government supported it in order to counter a growing Communist presence in Asia.

Each faction actively tried to gain an advantage in the government. The 1958 elections gave the Pathet Lao more votes and the U.S. put pressure on Souvanna Phouma to resign in favor of the American-backed, Phoui Sananikone, who would continue the neutralist policy. This support from the United States was offensive to many. A young captain, Kong Le, who commanded the paratroop battalion of the RLA, seized the Laos capital, Vientiane, demanding a return to the neutralist policies.

The Soviet Union began sending arms, vehicles, and antiaircraft to Kong Le's forces, while the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) sent cadres to train the troops of the Pathet Lao.

Due to the landlocked position of Loas, to gain any advantage American troops would have to be committed and the supply problems were too great. The United States abandoned Laos and turned its support of arms and military aid, including aircraft and Special Forces Advisors, to South Vietnam.

At the end of the 1950s, there were few Special Operations Forces. The Army had the Green Berets, and the Navy had their Underwater Demolition Teams (UDT). These elite units were trained to fight and operate behind the lines of a conventional war, specifically in the event of a Russian drive through Europe.

The Navy entered the Vietnam conflict in 1960, when the UDTs delivered small watercraft far up the Mekong River into Laos. In 1961, Naval Advisers started training the Vietnamese UDT. These men were called the Lien Doc Nguoi Nhia (LDNN), roughly translated as the "soldiers that fight under the sea."

President Kennedy, aware of the situations in Southeast Asia, recognized the need for unconventional warfare and utilized Special Operations as a measure against guerrilla activity. In a speech to Congress in May 1961, Kennedy shared his deep respect of the Green Berets. He announced the government's plan to put a man on the moon, and, in the same speech, allocated over one hundred million dollars toward the strengthening of the Special Forces in order to expand the strength of the American conventional forces.
Realizing the administration's favor of the Army's Green Berets, the Navy needed to determine its role within the Special Forces arena. In March of 1961, the Chief of Naval Operations recommended the establishment of guerrilla and counter-guerrilla units. These units would be able to operate from sea, air or land. This was the beginning the official Navy SEALs. Many SEAL members came from the Navy's UDT units, who had already gained experience in commando warfare in Korea; however, the UDTs were still necessary to the Navy's amphibious force.

The first two teams were on opposite coasts: Team Two in Little Creek, Virginia and Team ONE in Coronado, California. The men of the newly formed SEAL Teams were educated in such unconventional areas as hand-to-hand combat, high altitude parachuting, safecracking, demolitions and languages. Among the varied tools and weapons required by the Teams was the AR-15 assault rifle, a new design that evolved into today's M-16. The SEAL's attended UDT Replacement training and they spent some time cutting their teeth at a UDT Team. Upon making it to a SEAL Team, they would undergo a three-month SEAL Basic Indoctrination (SBI) training class at Camp Kerry in the Cuyamaca Mountains. After SBI training class, they would enter a platoon and train in platoon tactics (especially for the conflict in Vietnam).

The Pacific Command recognized Vietnam as a potential hot spot for conventional forces. In the beginning of 1962, the UDT started hydrographic surveys and Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV) was formed. In March of 1962, SEALs were deployed to Vietnam for the purpose of training South Vietnamese commandos in the same methods they were trained themselves.

In February 1963, operating from USS Weiss, a Naval Hydrographic recon unit from UDT 12 started surveying just south of Da Nang. From the beginning they encountered sniper fire and on 25 March were attacked. The unit managed to escape without any injuries, the survey was considered complete and the Weiss returned to Subic Bay.

By 1963, the Vietnamese LDNN was starting to meet success within their missions. Operating American-provided, Norwegian-built "Nasty" class fast patrol boats out of Da Nang, the LDNN were able to make several raids against North Vietnamese targets. On 31 July, the Nastys were used on a mission to destroy a radio transmitter on the island of Hon Nieu. Using 88mm mortar on the night of 3 August, they shelled the radar site at Cape Vinh Son.

Due to the immense firepower of the 88mm recoilless, the North Vietnamese believed the large guns of an U.S. Naval ship were bombarding them. Under this assumption, NVA gunboats made a daylight attack on the USS Maddox, which was cruising off the North Vietnamese coastline, intercepting radio transmissions. This and a second attack later the same day on the USS Turner Joy came to be known as The Gulf of Tonkin Incident.

The Gulf of Tonkin Incident gave the Unites States the legal and political power to justify a stronger involvement in the Vietnam conflict. A bombing of an U.S. Air Base on 30 October 1964 killed five servicemen. Another attack on Christmas Eve hit a U.S. billet in Saigon, killing 2 servicemen. President Lyndon Johnson ordered "tit-for-tat" reprisal: for every attack from the North Vietnamese, American troops would respond in the same manner. The initiation of Operation "Flaming Dart," which included the American bombing of targets in North Vietnam, placed America in the middle of an all out war.

The CIA began SEAL covert operations in early 1963. At the outset of the war, operations consisted of ambushing supply movements and locating and capturing North Vietnamese officers. Due to poor intelligence information, these operations were not very successful. When the SEALs were given the resources to develop their own intelligence, the information became much more timely and reliable. The SEALs and Special Operations in general started showing an immense success rate, earning their members a great number of citations.

Between 1965 and 1972, there were 46 SEALs killed in Vietnam. On 28 October 1965, Comdr. Robert J. Fay was the first SEAL killed in Vietnam by a mortar round. The first SEAL killed engaged in active combat was Radarman second-class Billy Machen who was killed in a firefight on 16 August 1966. Machen's body was retrieved with the help of fire support from two helicopters, after the team was ambushed during a daylight patrol. Machen's death was a hard reality for the SEAL teams.

The SEALs were initially deployed in and around Da Nang, training the South in combat diving, demolitions and guerrilla/anti-guerrilla tactics. As the war continued, the SEALs found themselves positioned in the Rung Sat Special Zone where they were to disrupt the enemy supply and troop movements, and into the Mecong Delta to fulfill riverine (fighting on the inland waterways) operations.
The brown water of the Delta provided the foundation for the development of SEAL riverine operations. The SEALs adapted quickly and with deadly results. The braces, inlets and estuaries intermingled and left a broad area for both the North and South to operate. The SEALs and Brown Water Navy Boat Crews made it their job to win this part of the war, impeding as much as possible the movement of troops and supplies coming from the North.
The SEAL teams experienced this war like no others. Combat with the VC was very close and personal. Unlike the conventional warfare methods of firing artillery into a coordinate location, or dropping bombs from thirty thousand feet, the SEALs operated within inches of their targets. SEALs had to kill at short range and respond without hesitation or be killed. Into the late sixties, the SEALs made great headway with this new style of warfare. Theirs were the most effective anti-guerrilla and guerrilla actions in the war.

However, back at home the politics of war were working against the administration. The anti-war protest became much louder by the end of the sixties. The American public began to question this war that was claiming so many of their young men. The anxiety and anger caused by the war began to take its toll and violence erupted at home. National Guard units were sent to college campuses to disperse protesters. The now infamous incident at Kent State that resulted in four fatalities was one of many clashes between protesters and the government.

SEALs continued to make forays into North Vietnam and Loas, and unofficially into Cambodia, controlled by the Studies and Observations Group. The SEALs from Team 2 started a unique deployment of SEAL team members working alone with South Vietnamese Commandos. In 1967, a SEAL unit named Detachment Bravo (Det Bravo) was formed to operate these mixed US/ARVN units, which were called South Vietnamese Provincial Reconnaissance Units (PRU).

In the beginning of 1968, the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong orchestrated a major offensive against South Vietnam. Virtually every major city felt the effects of the "Tet Offensive." The North hoped it would prove to be America's Dien Bien Phu. They wanted to break the American public's desire to continue the war. As propaganda the Tet Offensive was successful: America was weary of a war that could not be won, for principles no one was sure of. However, North Vietnam suffered tremendous casualties, and from a purely military standpoint the Tet Offensive was a major disaster to the Communists.

By 1970, the US decided to remove itself from the conflict. Nixon initiated a Plan of Vietnamization, which would return the responsibility of defense back to the South Vietnamese. Conventional forces were being withdrawn, however, operations of the SEALs continued. The SEALS had developed a new base at the tip of the Ca Mau Peninsula and created a floating firebase, now known as Seafloat, by welding together fourteen barges. Accessible from sea, it also provided a landing area for helos.

On 6 June 1972, Lt. Melvin S. Dry was killed when entering the water after jumping from a helicopter at least 35-feet above the surface. Part of an aborted SDV operation to retrieve Prisoners of War, Lt. Dry was the last Navy SEAL killed in the Vietnam conflict. The last SEAL platoon departed Vietnam on 7 December 1971. The last SEAL advisor left Vietnam in March 1973.

source: www.navyseals.com/navy-seal-history?page=0%2C1