"Our purpose is, through a
progression of all-out attacks, to cause many U.S. casualties and so
erode the U.S. will that the antiwar influences will gain decisive
political strength," said Pham Van Dong, former prime minister of
North Vietnam. Moreover, Ho Chi Minh famously predicted, "For
everyone
of yours we kill, you will kill 10 of ours. But in the end, it is you
who will grow tired."

See www.vietnam.war.info/casualties and you will learn that Ho Chi
Minh figures of 10 Vietnamese casualties would be needed to effect a
single US casualty was grossly conservative in accordance with figues
estimated by the North Vietnamese themselves after the conflict.
Since the US tragically experienced 58000 combat casualties, their
Vietnamese combatants experienced in excess of 1,000,000 combat
casualties in the process to inflict those US Army combat casualties.
In other words it took more than 17 Vietnamese combatant casualties
to
effect a single US casualty in accordance with the link estimating
combat casualties for both sides of the conflict.

Anyone construing those figures to spin that America got its "arsed
kicked in Vietnam" is either living in a mythological fantasy world
or
is desperately in need of a course in remedial arithmetic.





On Mar 28, 10:11*am, chatnoir wrote:
On Mar 28, 7:58*am, Planet Visitor II wrote:

On Thu, 28 Mar 2013 05:40:50 -0700 (PDT), chatnoir wrote:
On Mar 27, 10:14*pm, Planet Visitor II wrote:
On Wed, 27 Mar 2013 11:39:39 -0700 (PDT), chatnoir wrote:
On Mar 27, 11:21*am, Planet Visitor II wrote:
On Wed, 27 Mar 2013 08:02:48 -0700 (PDT), David Walters wrote:
The person posting this doesn't even know what a "military victory"
means. It is, in the final analysis, the ability of one side to
*completely overwhelm* the opponent OR to force the opponent to make
the *political* choice that the loses are to great to continue do to
resources (both military and human), capital destruction, national
dismemberment, etc etc.

Basically the argument that the US did "not lose" is the same one
Hitler used to explain Germany's defeat at the end of WWI. It's a non-
argument.

Umm... The non-argument is that Hitler was even alive to "explain"
Germany's defeat at the end of WW II.

30 April 1945 -- Hitler commits suicide in Berlin bunker.
7 May 1945 -- 02:41 Germany signs instrument of surrender in Reims, France.
8 May 1945 -- 23:01 All forces under German control cease active operations.

It is true that had the US continued the bombing the Vietnamese would
of been forced to the table once again. General Giap notes this in his
interviews on the Christmas Bombings (while Nixon was in Beijing, as
it happens) But wars are not fought as "what ifs". That is they are
fought "as is". The US *was militarily defeated* by Vietnam.''

Pardon me, but General Giap would hardly be the one to admit that
the U.S. did not lose militarily. *It's like asking a Muslim if he believes
in Allah.

The US was *militarily defeated* because it's loses of B-52,

Could we have that in English? *Obviously your views must be seen
as slanted since you're not an American.

(12 in one day!) was too great to bear and *appeared* to have no
effect.

From 1942 onward the U.S. lost an AVERAGE of 170 planes a day. *Did
we lose WW II because of those losses?

Thye question to really ask is how many B-52s managed to complete
their mission and destroy North Vietnam? *In fact, on 29 September,
1972, after all U.S. ground combat forces had already left South Vietnam,
a heavy U.S. *air strike destroyed 10% of all of North Vietnam's Air
Force in one single day.

The stupid Air Force generals, meeting such little resistance coming out
of Thai air bases, were *stupid* to keep flying the same patterns
toward Hanoi. So the Vietnamese simply "lined up their remaining" SAMs
and shot them down like using a .22 at a county fair.

No proof offered. *Your claim fails.

Proof:

http://www.historynet.com/the-11-day-war.htm

That's hardly any proof that the U.S. military "lost the war in Vietnam." *As I
pointed out, the U.S. lost an AVERAGE of 170 aircraft each and every day of
WW II, and I don't recall anyone claiming the U.S. lost that war.

In the Schweinfurt-Regensburg bombing mission in WW II, the U.S. lost
SIXTY B-17s in one single mission, only to fly a second mission losing
ANOTHER SIXTY B-17s, with another 17 being too damaged to return
to flying, and were scrapped, with yet another 161 having various
degrees of battle damage. *See --http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Raid_on_Schweinfurt

Then we have the ill-fated raid on the Ploiesti oil fields of Romania, which
took place on 1 August, 1943, in which five Medals of Honor (3 posthumously),
and numerous DSCs were awarded to pilots on a single day. *178 B-24
aircraft flew into a fiery hell that would be called "Black Sunday." *53
aircraft were lost of those 178. *See --http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/ploesti.htm

Then we have the battle of Midway in which virtually all U.S. aircraft were
destroyed in the first few waves they were used to attack. *But the
Japanese were caught flat-footed during aircraft carrier refueling operations
and Midway turned into an ugly defeat of Yamamoto's naval fleet in
subsequent attacks.

Guess who won that war? *It cannot be said about Vietnam that "victory"
consisted of _winning one particular battle_, even when there was certainly
no "victory" by North Vietnam in Linebacker II.

excerpt:

There was worse news—the attack tactics themselves. All bombers were
to depart from the same initial point (IP), make the same bomb run in
single-file formation, fly exactly the same airspeeds, operate in
exactly the same altitude blocks and maintain exactly the same spacing
between each of the three-ship cells (one minute) and between each
aircraft within the cells (15 seconds).

A B-52 copilot who flew Linebacker II sorties from Andersen, then-
Captain Don Craig, wrote me that "We knew there were big planning
flaws, starting with the long lines of bombers coming in the same
route…and it was straight down Thud Ridge, for God's sake….It looked
very much like ducks in a shooting gallery." B-52 radar navigator
Captain Wilton Strickland, operating from the other B-52 base, at U-
Tapao airfield in Thailand, concurred: "[The spacing] gave enemy air
de*fenses plenty of time to track and fire on each aircraft as it came
within range….Long before we entered the target area, they knew our
precise altitude, spacing and approach route…."

Another concern was the bomb run no-evasion order issued by an
Andersen wing commander (apparently on his own authority, on penalty
of court-martial), despite previous evidence that if the B-52 was
brought back straight and level prior to release, accuracy was not
degraded. After aircrews repeatedly ignored the order on Days One and
Two, without affecting bombing results, it was quietly rescinded.

Most egregious, SAC planners mandated a "combat break" to the right
after bomb release (post-target turn, or PTT), a nuclear-release
procedure carried over into Arc Light (where it had been just as
pointless; the PTT was designed solely for better survivability
against a nuclear blast). During Arc Light, the PTT had rendered no
harm. Over heavily defended Hanoi, however, it turned lethal. Not only
were criti*cal electronic countermeasures degraded, the 120-knot-plus
jet stream tailwind that B-52s enjoyed on the bomb run became a 120-
knot-plus headwind after the turn, resulting in a combined groundspeed
reduction of nearly 250 knots.

Later, during the Day Two pre-mission briefing, a disgusted Captain
Strickland, who was destined to fly six of the 11 Linebacker missions,
could no longer keep silent: "Who is planning such stupid tactics," he
asked the briefers, "and why?" Their response: "The planning is being
done at Omaha's SAC HQ, and the common routes, altitudes and trail
formations are used for ease of planning."

"Well," Strickland shot back, "the enemy is using your plan, along
with the after-release turn and our slow withdrawal, for ease of
tracking and shootdown!"

U-Tapao's 17th Air Division commander, Brig. Gen. Glenn Sulli*van, who
was present during Strickland's comments, was thinking along similar
lines. Sullivan and his wing commanders had been carefully listening
to aircrew feedback, though their requests for tactics changes had so
far fallen on deaf ears. Sullivan was most upset about the PTT; after
the battle he wrote a friend, "The post-target turn was the murder
point."

Nevertheless, good tactics or bad, the 300 BUFF in-theater aircrews
still had to fly the missions in the 206 Stratofortresses available
(Andersen had 53 B-52Ds and 99 B-52Gs on station; U-Tapao had 54
B-52Ds). On Day One, 129 B-52s launched from Andersen and U-Tapao in
three massive waves spaced at four-hour intervals. Shortly after dark,
the first wave (33 B-52Ds and 15 B-52Gs) arrived at their Laotian IP
and wheeled southeast toward seven Hanoi targets—setting the stage for
the biggest air battle since World War II. Although the BUFFs were the
attack's centerpiece, more than 100 additional U.S. Air Force, Navy
and Marine recon, radar jammer and fighter-bomber aircraft flew in
support of the heavies or delivered their own assigned blows. ....

People have ****ed and moaned about how a battle was conducted,
or how they feel they were shafted into taken part in an action they
learned to later hate since Achilles slew Hector. *What's new about
that??

None of that disputes the fact that U.S. Air Power continued well after
all U.S. combat forces had been removed from Vietnam. *Thus it is hardly
possible that the loss of a number of B-52s means the U.S. military
"lost the war in Vietnam." *Since there were no U.S. military boots on
the ground to lose that war. *And it is a fact that North Vietnam violated
the terms they had agreed to in the peace accords. *It is also a fact that
Linebacker II brought North Vietnam hastily back to the peace table that they
had so confidently decided to leave. *Further it was the political arm of
the U.S. rather than the military that gave the military only 72 hours to
launch Linebacker II, hardly sufficient time to adequately prepare for
a major air assault on what was known to be a well-defended target.

And these losses only happened during the third wave giving the NVA
the ability to anticipate the strike patterns and deploy 34 SAMs into
the target area. *In the first wave 129 bombers were sent, and 3 were
shot down. *In the second wave 93 bombers were used, and although
20 SAMs were launched, not one B-52 was shot down. *In that fatal
third wave, 99 bombers were launched and seven more B-52s were
shot down. *Hardly a "defeat," in terms of targets destroyed, when
compared to the loss of aircraft the U.S. sustained in various bombing
runs during WW II.

Planet Visitor II- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

Who was talking about defeat, which I view as irrelevant, *the line of
talk was about B-52s lining up to come into bombing Hanoi so that they
could easily be shot down!

And my "No proof offer. *Your claim fails," was in response to the comment
from the original poster that "The US was *militarily defeated* because it's
loses of B-52." *The loss of those B-52s in Linebacker II did not signal a
"military defeat" for the U.S. military in Vietnam. *I was certainly not questioning
or attempting to deny that loss; but insisting that the loss itself did not
represent the *military defeat" of the U.S. in Vietnam. *No war is fought
without some tactical or strategic mistake being made. *Certainly the Viet
Cong and the NVA made their share of tactical and strategic mistakes,
as shown by the much greater number who died than the 58,000 plus
U.S. military deaths.

Planet Visitor II

They did not have massive numbers of Jets, ships and bombers. * They
did not have the mobilbity and fire power of the US = of course they
suffered higher number of dead!