Station 2: Search and Destroy Strategy

Flaws

Despite the advantages of superior fire-power and technology, Search and Destroy (S&D) strategy had many flaws.

...U.S patrols were required to search South Vietnamese homes for the Viet Cong – Charlie, which exposed themselves to ambush. That, as a consequence, led to many atrocities such as zippo raids to burn villages or unprovoked massacres such as the infamous My Lai in 1968. Those made the jobs of wining hearts & minds of local people become harder and harder if not impossible.

As a result, Viet Cong was able to gain more control in many Southern areas as well as receive more unconditional support from South Vietnamese peasants who could provide them personnel, food and hiding places.

Now American got stuck in a vicious circle where the more aggressive they became, the more Vietnamese people turned against them and the less effective their missions were. The Viet Cong might be pushed out of certain territories initially, but as soon as American patrols left the areas, they would return with even more reinforcements and weapons.

Last but not least, U.S Generals & war planners had made an erroneous assumption of North Vietnamese people’s determination at the first place. General Westmoreland believed that attrition warfare would conquer the Viet Cong & North Vietnamese army. However, Hanoi once again taught Americans the lesson they had taught the French more than a decade ago that North Vietnamese would fight to the final victory even if they had to suffer more than ten times the enemy’s loss as in Ho Chi Minh’s words. Immense numbers of Viet Cong and NVA troops would be killed or captured, but they were soon replaced and even grown faster. 

Ineffectiveness

The effectiveness of the Search and Destroy missions were also dubious. “Body count” was used as a measuring tool to determine the success of each search & destroy mission as well as the whole strategy in general. 1,106 North Vietnamese soldiers were reported killed in the very first search and destroy operation – Operation Attleboro while Operation Cedar Fall – a major assault on the Iron Triangle, resulted in 720-enemy killed and 213 captured.

However, those figures were usually obtained and gathered through indirect means such as sightings of secondary explosions, sensor readings, extrapolation, inference or reports of POWs. Hence they usually flattered to deceive. In fact, it created a general over-optimism among U.S commanders and policy makers & often times used as a propaganda to convince their people of their success in Vietnam who eventually turned against them after the surprising Tet Offensive.

Besides, even in its largest airborne operation in the war – Operation Junction City, American forces also failed to destroy Vietcong’s head-quarter nor capture any high-ranking NFL officers although they did inflict heavy casualties on the enemy. It therefore had little impact on Hanoi’s insurgency plan in South Vietnam.

Defense Department officials believed that these body count figures need to be deflated by 30 percent as roughly one-third of the reported enemy killed might have been civilians.

Conclusion

“Search and Destroy” strategy could be seen as ineffective as it made a low impact on undercutting the guerrilla tactics successfully utilized by the Viet Cong.