- This article or section should include material from Tran Van Tra.
The Tet Offensive was a series of battles in the Vietnam War. It was a major offensive by the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) and the National Liberation Front (NLF) beginning on the night of January 30-31, 1968, Tết Nguyên Đán (the lunar new year day). It involved military action in most of the major cities in southern Vietnam and attacks on the US firebase at Khe Sanh. The objective of the 1968 Tet Offensive was to take the Nationalist and the US armies by surprise since the North Vietnam's government proposed a ceasefire for the celebration of the Lunar New Year. This government also convinced the NLF that the offensive would stimulate an uprising. Had this been a success it would have been announced as a convincing argument that the NVA always honoured the Geneva Treaty but the people of South Vietname rose to overthrow the oppressors themselves. The Viet Cong (VC) was disappointed that no uprising ensued. Instead, they had to pay for the crime committed by the NVA in Hue.
The offensive
The US military response was uneven in the face of much conflicting intelligence. The belief that Khe Sanh was about to be a major battle was well established, MACV staff being certain that a decisive clash was imminent. The US base was reinforced and thousands of unattended ground sensors were scattered in the surrounding jungle in Operation Niagara. US intelligence identified at least 15,000 NVA troops in the vicinity.
Khe Sanh
- Main article: Battle of Khe Sanh
The fighting was most intense around Khe Sanh. There were three divisions of NVA regulars around Khe Sanh, numbering possibly 25,000 men. Action began there around ten days before Tet, with probing attacks and exchanges of artillery fire. Two hill positions were captured on January 20, cutting off the base from land resupply routes. Attention in MACV and Washington was obsessed with Khe Sanh and other indicators of trouble were overlooked or down-graded. The main assaults did not begin until February 5. Lang Vei was over-run on February 7 and the lines at Khe Sanh were very heavily attacked, the camp only being preserved by massive airstrikes and artillery barrages (over 30,000 sorties were flown in defense of the base). After this the tempo slowed, the battle became more of a siege, although there were further NVA assaults on the 17-18th and the 29th. Khe Sanh was officially relieved on April 6 and fighting ended around April 14. Possibly 8,000 NVA soldiers died around Khe Sanh.
The offensive in the south
To the south the fighting began on January 29 as a number of NLF units began their attacks prematurely in four provincial towns. The rest of the NLF/NVA attacks began on the night of 30-31st. All but eight provincial capitals were attacked, five of the six autonomous cities, and 58 other major towns. Major attacks were aimed at Ban Me Thuot, Quang Nam, Dalat, My Tho, Can Tho, Ben Tre, Nha Trang, and Kontum. It was only in Huế, the ancient capital, and Saigon that the NVA had any significant success. The hoped for popular uprising (khởi nghĩa) almost completely failed to occur, many South Vietnamese demonstrated stronger support for the ARVN.
Hue
- Main article: Battle of Hue
The city of Hue was attacked by ten battalions, it was almost completely over-run, and thousands of civilians were chosen for execution in what became known as the Massacre at Hue. The city was not recaptured by the US and ARVN forces until the end of February. The historical and cultural value of the city meant that the US did not apply the air and artillery strikes as widely as in other cities, at least at first. There was a tough street-by-street battle (all caught by the US media), heading towards the Citadel, the imperial palace, which was cleared of NVA troops after four days of struggle. The US and the ARVN had lost 482 men and the NVA around 7,500.
Saigon
There were a number of attacks in and around Saigon; around five battalions of NLF had infiltrated the city. Tân Sơn Nhất airbase, the headquarters of the ARVN and MACV, was attacked by around 700 men and there was heavy fighting but only 110 American casualties. Bien Hoa airbase was also attacked and twenty aircraft were destroyed. The Vietnamese casualties in these two assaults and other actions in Saigon were over 1,100 men but they took control of large parts of the city. Fighting lasted almost a week and some sections of the city were badly damaged by US airstrikes and artillery, the suburb of Cholon was very badly damaged as fighting there lasted into mid-February. One especially potent assault was on the US Embassy by twenty NLF commandos. While quickly contained, it was a highly symbolic incident that produced memorable images.
Aftermath
The NLF and the NVA lost around 35,000 men killed, 60,000 wounded and 6,000 POWs for no military success. The US and ARVN dead totalled around 3,900 (1,100 US). But this was not the conflict as the US public saw it. US media reports of the battles shocked both the American public and its politicians. Apparently the depth of the US reaction surprised even the North Vietnamese leadership.
The NVA suffered a heavy military defeat but it is widely seen to have been an enormous psychological and propaganda victory. Until the Tet Offensive, General William Westmoreland's now-infamous public reports of the progress of the Vietnam War were highly fictionalized and exaggerated to appear positive for the American public, often using exaggerated bodycounts and other inflated numbers. Developing reports of the Tet Offensive severely undercut the upbeat war propaganda of the Johnson administration and The Pentagon, and served to unite previously divided public opinion towards opposing the war. When the news broke that a squad of VC had gained access to the American Embassy in Saigon, the event quickly came to epitomize the disparity between the facts and official statements, despite the squad's ineffectiveness and rapid subdual. Support for the Vietnam War began to steadily erode from that point on, until the release of the Pentagon Papers largely confirmed the deliberate practice of "covering-up" various facts about the progress of the war. After the Tet Offensive, the main issue of public debate would be "how to securely withdraw" from the war without losing a "hearts and minds" Cold War battle against then-enemy Soviet Union and its system of communism.
The heavy US shelling of Ben Tre produced the famous quote, "it became necessary to destroy the town in order to save it."
Khe Sanh was abandoned by the US on June 23,1968.
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