The Vietnam War was a tragic experience for many soldiers. Chemical warfare, deadly weapons, and hot conditions in the southeast country made life a living hell. During the Vietnam War, new weapons of warfare were introduced to the battlefield. Gunships patrolled the skies while fire from AK-47 made close combat deadly. The United States Army made use of chemical weapons such as Agent Orange as an anti-plant chemical. These chemicals had horrible side effects for soldiers coming into contact with the chemical, causing rashes and even death. Not only did this affect the Vietnamese troops but the US troops as well. These weapons of war marked the beginning of a bloody conflict that ended with the death of thousands of soldiers.
Agent orange was introduced into the Vietnam War in attempts to find Vietnamese guerillas, in these attempts the US Air Force sprayed gallons of the chemical onto the Vietnamese jungle which concealed the Vietnamese soldiers. It was also used to ruin crops. Agent Orange is made up of two chlorophenoxy herbicides: 2, 4, 5- trichlorophenoxyacetic acid and 2, 4 dichlorophenoxyzcetic acid. Dioxin ( 2,3,7,8 -tetrachlorobidenzo-p-dioxin, or TCDD, one of the most toxic chemicals in the dioxin family) was often created during the manufacture of Agent Orange. Initially used during the 1940's to destroy unwanted plants in the United States, it was banned during the 70's because of the health problems it caused, including chloracne ( a skin disease), and possibly some kinds of cancer.
Initially, the United States did not use very much armor in the Vietnam Conflict. It seems that the first time armor was brought into the war was because it came as the standard support to a force of Marines that was deployed to help protect a damaged airbase. This annoyed the US commander of military operations in Vietnam, who thought them "not appropriate for counter-insurgency operations. In fact, the next armor units that arrived in Vietnam only stayed because the US Army Chief of Staff (General Johnston) wanted to test how well they could work in Vietnam. They were not widely used by the Army untill six months of arguing convinced General Westmoreland (commander of MACV's) that tanks should be used in jungles. However, it took the forceful Major-General Weyland of the 25th Infantry Division to begin the use of tanks and other vehicles in a combined arms role.
Of all the countries involved in Vietnam, the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) was the most willing to use armor from the start. Unfortunately, they relied so much on the anti-armor US for armor, that they barely had any until the beginning of the Tet offensive. In addition, the armor units in AVRN's possesion were often misused by politicians and military leaders to the point that the Vietnamese called them "voting machines". Once, some US advisers were delivering tanks in the wee hours of the morning to Saigon in order to avoid traffic. This created such a panic that the Vietnamese General Kahn fled to another city, Vung Tau, over 50 kilometers away.
The North Vietnamese regular army (NVA) used little armor, dur to the difficulties in supplying them and getting them over difficult terrain. Once, in order to transport them to attack a Special Forces camp, armor units were floated down rivers on rafts and carried without any dissasembling over difficult terrain.
One of the reasons that armor was so effective in the Vietnam conflict was that in general the weapons used against the tanks by the communist commanders were highly ineffective. One of these, an RPG, when used against a M113 tank, only penetrated once for approximatley seven hits. Because of the RPG's inaccuracy, only 1 in eight to ten shots fired even hit.
The AC-130E "Pave Spectre" Gunship was used during the Vietnam War to patrol the Ho Chi Ming Trail and to provide support for friendly bases. However, its main job was to patrol the Ho Chi Min Trail and to destroy any Vietnamese supply convoys. To carry out it's task, it mounted 2 40mm gatling guns, 1 40mm bofors anti-aircraft gun, 4 7.62mm miniguns, and a M105-A1 light howitzer. Rarely would all the guns be fired at the same time due to the lack of ammunition, however, most of the guns were used during the mission during one time or another. The crew consisted of a pilot, a co-pilot, a flight engineer, a navigator/radar, a fire control officer, a right scanner, 3 or 4 gunners, and an illuminator operator. The illuminator operator was not responsible for the searchlight mounted on the back of the cargo area, but was responsible for shooting flares when called upon, watching for any enemy anti-aircraft artillery, and to drop smoke markers so that a F-4D Phantom fighter could drop cluster bombs on designated targets as marked by the smoke markers.
105mm light howitzer
The AK-47 is a Soviet sub-machine gun that was widely distributed in Asia. It uses 7.62x39mm cartridges. Used in the Vietnam War, it has several advantages and disadvantages. One of it's advantages is that it is very reliable and easy to clean. It was originally made with a chrome bore because most Asian governments used corrosive bullets to help clean the barrel. However, one of the defects of the AK-47 is that it has a rear sight that is in an awkward position, reducing the range that it can be fired with accuracy. It also makes a loud, distinctive "clack" when the safety is moved, which proved deadly for would-be ambushers in the Vietnam Conflict.
Sage Nagai Anthony Xu
The music on this page was taken from http://www3.tropical.com.br/wb/fmgcwww/midi/ and is the T2 theme song.