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One of the biggest problems the USA faced was the amount of supplies and support the Viet Cong received from North Vietnam. The North Vietnamese used the Ho Chi Minh Trail to supply the Viet Cong. The trail was a complex series of underground tunnels, many of which had been built during the war with the French. The tunnels:

• provided a route to send weapons, troops, ammunition and other supplies from communist-led North Vietnam to its supporters in South Vietnam
• provided places to rest, hide and organise attacks
• usually contained booby-traps
• entrances and were too small for many US troops to move through

Another problem the US faced was that the Viet Cong knew the jungle well. After attacks on US soldiers, they could quickly disappear into the jungle and hide from any patrols sent to find them.

Operation Ranch Hand, 1962

In order to tackle both problems, President Lyndon B Johnson ordered the start of Operation Ranch Hand in 1962. The aim of Operation Ranch Hand was to use defoliants, dropped from the air, to destroy the jungle and any rice fields near suspected Viet Cong areas. This would also help to uncover the Ho Chi Minh Trail. It was hoped that the operation would make it difficult for the Viet Cong bases to survive.

The defoliants were nicknamed Agent Orange because of the colour of the containers used. The results of their use were that:

• 3.6 million acres of Vietnam were sprayed with Agent Orange.
• Dioxin, a poisonous and carcinogenic toxin in Agent Orange, caused birth defects and serious illness among those people who came into contact with it.
• Large areas of land dried up by the chemicals were set on fire under Operation Pink Rose.

Operation Rolling Thunder

The USA also took steps to stop North Vietnam from being able to send supplies to the Viet Cong. Rather than send troops into North Vietnam, the USA launched a heavy bombing campaign called Operation Rolling Thunder in March 1965. It aimed to destroy North Vietnam’s cities and force the government to surrender.

This operation lasted until October 1968. As time went on, the number of bombs and the range of the targets increased. By the end of the operation, the Americans had dropped around 864,000 tons of bombs on North Vietnam, killing around 52,000 North Vietnamese.

However, the operation was extremely expensive and not very effective.

• Most of the people in North Vietnam lived in farming communities, so hitting urban targets did little damage to the country’s ability to continue to supply troops.
• The North Vietnamese authorities evacuated civilians who were not required in the cities and some factories were moved into the tunnels, which limited the damage that US bombs could cause.

US troops in the South

After the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the USA increased the number of its troops in South Vietnam. The number reached a high point of around 536,000 in 1968. These troops were based in the South and their aim was to remove the Viet Cong. This was done using a strategy called search and destroy, which usually involved:

1. finding a Viet Cong base or territory, using air surveys
2. clearing out any civilians
3. launching a large attack using air raids and ground troops to destroy the area completely

The first operation to follow this strategy was Operation Cedar Falls, in which the USA targeted an area containing Viet Cong camps and supply caches. In January 1967, troops evacuated the village of Ben Suc and then launched a devastating attack on the area. The operation involved around 30,000 US and Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) troops.

Campaigns like this had mixed results. They did kill some Viet Cong, but they also turned many more civilians into refugees, who were then more likely to support the communists.