[Rq-rules] OT: Vietnam

[Paul Cardwell]

Just Russian equipment?

They had quite a bit of captured French and US
equipment as well.  Let's remember that Ho Chi Mien
was a US Army captain in WW-II and so there was quite
a bit of US equipment available to them without the
cost of capturing it.

I am not sure they got even tactics from the Chinese -
their traditional enemy.  One could argue just as well
that it came from Maquis, Apache, or Spanish against
Napoleon (the original "guerilla" "little war").  It
is the only way a people can fight an occupier without
being exterminated by massive firepower and no concern
for the rights of others.  A "stand-up" battle is
essentially the coup de grace after the war is
basically over (Dien Bien Phu, Tet Offensive, etc.).

Paul Cardwell


--- Thomas Zunder <tom at zunder.org.uk> wrote:

> OT: Stating that the highly civilised Vietnamese
> society is/was 
> primitive is  sadly  all too  much the norm.
> Technologically outfaced by 
> the USA the Vietnamese  maybe, primitive, no. In
> many ways the Viet Minh 
> were not that outmatched by the French, since the
> VietMinh had access to 
> modern Russian equipment, and they beat them in a
> stand up fight kind of 
> war. They resorted more to guerilla tactics as the
> logical way, learnt 
> from the Chinese Communists, to fight an unpopular
> occupier with 
> overwhelming air power. In some straight fights with
> the US Army and the 
> Marines the NVA aquitted itself pretty well, albeit
> at huge casualty 
> rates. At a technical disadvantage, yes, primitive,
> no. END of OT.



       
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