In the Tet Offensive of 1968, Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces launched a massive countrywide attack on South Vietnam. Though the Communists failed to achieve their tactical and operational objectives, James Willbanks claims Hanoi won a strategic victory. The offensive proved that America's progress was grossly overstated and caused many Americans and key presidential advisors to question the wisdom of prolonging combat.

Willbanks also maintains that the Communists laid siege to a Marine combat base two weeks prior to the Tet Offensive-known as the Battle of Khe Sanh--to distract the United States. It is his belief that these two events are intimately linked, and in his concise and compelling history, he presents an engaging portrait of the conflicts and singles out key problems of interpretation.

Willbanks divides his study into six sections, beginning with a historical overview of the events leading up to the offensive, the attack itself, and the consequent battles of Saigon, Hue, and Khe Sahn. He continues with a critical assessment of the main themes and issues surrounding the offensive, and concludes with excerpts from American and Vietnamese documents, maps and chronologies, an annotated list of resources, and a short encyclopedia of key people, places, and events.

An experienced military historian and scholar of the Vietnam War, Willbanks has written a unique critical reference and guide that enlarges the debate surrounding this important turning point in America's longest war.

By 1969, following the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu, over 500,000 US troops were 'in country' in Vietnam. Before America's longest war had ended with the fall of Saigon in 1975, 450,000 Vietnamese had died, along with 36,000 Americans. The Vietnam War was the first rock 'n' roll war, the first helicopter war with its doctrine of 'airmobility', and the first television war; it made napalm and the defoliant Agent Orange infamous, and gave us the New Journalism of Michael Herr and others. It also saw the establishment of the Navy SEALs and Delta Force. At home, America fractured, with the peace movement protesting against the war; at Kent State University, Ohio National Guardsmen fired on unarmed students, killing four and injuring nine. Lewis's compelling selection of the best writing to come out of a war covered by some truly outstanding writers, both journalists and combatants, includes an eyewitness account of the first major battle between the US Army and the People's Army of Vietnam at Ia Drang; a selection of letters home; Nicholas Tomalin's famous 'The General Goes Zapping Charlie Cong'; Robert Mason's 'R&R', Studs Terkel's account of the police breaking up an anti-war protest; John Kifner on the shootings at Kent State; Ron Kovic's 'Born on the Fourth of July'; John T. Wheeler's 'Khe Sanh: Live in the V Ring'; Pulitzer Prize-winner Seymour Hersh on the massacre at My Lai; Michael Herr's 'It Made You Feel Omni'; Viet Cong Truong Nhu Tang's memoir; naval nurse Maureen Walsh's memoir, 'Burning Flesh'; John Pilger on the fall of Saigon; and Tim O'Brien's 'If I Die in a Combat Zone'.

Often described as the US Army's aerial jeep the UH-1 Iroquois ('Huey') was the general-purpose vehicle that provided mobility in a hostile jungle environment which made rapid troop movement extremely challenging by any other means. Hueys airlifted troops, evacuated casualties, rescued downed pilots, transported cargo externally and enabled rapid transit of commanders in the field. Although 'vertical aviation' had only become a practical reality during the Korean War helicopters evolved rapidly in the decade before Vietnam and by 1965 the US Army and US Marines relied on them as primary combat tools. This was principally because North Vietnam's armed forces had long experience of jungle operations, camouflage and evasion. Generally avoiding set-piece pitched battles they relied on rapid, frequent strikes and withdrew using routes that were generally inaccessible to US vehicles. They commonly relied on darkness and bad weather to make their moves, often rendering them immune to conventional air attack. Gunship helicopters, sometimes equipped with Firefly searchlights and early night vision light intensifiers, were more able to track and attack the enemy. Innovative tactics were required for this unfamiliar combat scenario and for a US Army that was more prepared for conventional operations in a European-type setting. One of the most valuable new initiatives was the UH-1C 'Huey Hog' or 'Frog' gunship, conceived in 1960 and offering more power and agility than the UH-1B that pioneered gunship use in combat. Heavily armed with guns and rockets and easily transportable by air these helicopters became available in large numbers and they became a major problem for the insurgent forces throughout the war. Covering fascinating details of the innovations in tactics and combat introduced by gunship helicopters, this book offers an analysis of their adaptability and usefulness in a variety of operations, while exploring the insurgent forces' responses to the advent of 'vertical aviation'.

Having learned their trade on the subsonic MiG-17, pilots of the Vietnamese People's Air Force (VPAF) received their first examples of the legendary MiG-21 supersonic fighter in 1966. Soon thrown into combat over North Vietnam, the guided-missile equipped MiG-21 proved a deadly opponent for the US Air Force, US Navy and US Marine Corps crews striking at targets deep in communist territory. Although the communist pilots initially struggled to come to terms with the fighter's air-search radar and weapons systems, the ceaseless cycle of combat operations quickly honed their skills. Indeed, by the time the last US aircraft (a B-52) was claimed by the VPAF on 28 December 1972, no fewer than 13 pilots had become aces flying the MiG-21. Fully illustrated with wartime photographs and detailed colour artwork plates, and including enthralling combat reports, this book examines the many variants of the MiG-21 that fought in the conflict, the schemes they wore and the pilots that flew them.

At the beginning of the Vietnam War, the Vietnam People's Air Force (VPAF) were equipped with slow, old Korean War generation fighters - a combination of MiG-17s and MiG-19s - types that should have offered little opposition to the cutting-edge fighter-bombers such as the F-4 Phantom II, F-105 Thunderchief and the F-8 Crusader. Yet when the USAF and US Navy unleashed their aircraft on North Vietnam in 1965 the inexperienced pilots of the VPAF were able to shatter the illusion of US air superiority. Taking advantage of their jet's unequalled low-speed maneuverability, small size and powerful cannon armament they were able to take the fight to their missile-guided opponents, with a number of Vietnamese pilots racking up ace scores. Packed with information previously unavailable in the west and only recently released from archives in Vietnam, this is the first major analysis of the exploits of Vietnamese pilots in the David and Goliath contest with the US over the skies of Vietnam.

On April 6, 1970, Vietnam War photojournalists Sean Flynn (son of Errol Flynn) and Dana Stone set off on two rented motorcycles to cover one last story and were captured by Communist forces, never to be seen or heard from again. Their friend and fellow journalist, Perry Deane Young, tells their story here in a remarkable memoir first published in 1975. This new Press 53 Classics edition features photos by Flynn, Stone, their friends Tim Page, Nik Wheeler, and others, including a new chapter with updates on the lives of those involved and the ongoing search for two of the missing.

The F-105D Thunderchief was originally designed as a low-altitude nuclear strike aircraft, but the outbreak of the Vietnam War led to it being used instead as the USAF's primary conventional striker against the exceptionally well-defended targets in North Vietnam and Laos. F-105 crews conducted long-distance missions from bases in Thailand, refuelling in flight several times and carrying heavy external bombloads.

The MiG-17 was the lightweight, highly manoeuvrable defending fighter it encountered most often in 1965-68 during Operation Rolling Thunder. A development of the MiG-15, which shocked UN forces during the Korean War, its emphasis was on simplicity and ease of maintenance in potentially primitive conditions.

Fully illustrated with stunning artwork, this book shows how these two aircraft, totally different in design and purpose, fought in a series of duels that cost both sides dearly.

While the F 105 Thunderchief was the USAF's principal strike weapon during the Rolling Thunder campaign, the US Navy relied on the Douglas A-4 Skyhawk for the majority of its strikes on North Vietnam. The Skyhawk entered service in 1956 and remained in continuous production for 26 years. Throughout Operation Rolling Thunder it was the US Navy's principal day time light strike bomber, remaining in use after its replacement, the more sophisticated A-7 Corsair II, began to appear in December 1967. During the 1965-68 Rolling Thunder period, up to five attack carriers regularly launched A-4 strike formations against North Vietnam. These formations faced an ever-expanding and increasingly coordinated Soviet-style network of anti-aircraft artillery missiles and fighters. Skyhawk pilots were often given the hazardous task of attacking anti-aircraft defences and to improve accuracy, they initially dropped ordnance below 3000 ft in a 30-degree dive in order to bomb visually below the persistent low cloud over North Vietnam, putting the aircraft within range of small-arms fire. The defenders had the advantage of covering a relatively small target area, and the sheer weight of light, medium and heavy gunfire directed at an attacking force brought inevitable casualties, and a single rifle bullet could have the same effect as a larger shell. This illustrated title examines both the A-4 Skyhawk and the Vietnamese AAA defences in context, exploring their history and analysing their tactics and effectiveness during the conflict.

The latest entry in Stackpole's Battle Briefings Series covers the Vietnam War, from its roots in the French war through the evacuation of the embassy. In between is the American Vietnam experience: the draft, the combat, the politics, and everything else. Here, in 176 pages, is the Vietnam War.

The tactics and technologies of modern air assault - vertical deployment of troops by helicopter or similar means - emerged properly during the 1950s in Korea and Algeria. Yet it was during the Vietnam War that helicopter air assault truly came of age and by 1965 the United States had established fully airmobile battalions, brigades, and divisions, including the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile).This division brought to Vietnam a revolutionary new speed and dexterity in battlefield tactics, using massed helicopters to liberate its soldiers from traditional overland methods of combat manoeuvre. However, the communist troops adjusted their own thinking to handle airmobile assaults. Specializing in ambush, harassment, infiltration attacks, and small-scale attrition, the North Vietnamese operated with light logistics and a deep familiarity with the terrain. They optimized their defensive tactics to make landing zones as hostile as possible for assaulting US troops, and from 1966 worked to draw them into 'Hill Traps', extensive kill zones specially prepared for defence -in -depth. By the time the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) withdrew from Vietnam in 1972, it had suffered more casualties than any other US Army division. Featuring specially commissioned artwork, archive photographs, and full-colour battle maps, this study charts the evolution of US airmobile tactics pitted against North Vietnamese countermeasures. The two sides are analysed in detail, including training, logistics, weaponry, and organization.

By the end of World War II, the dreaded Tiger tank had achieved mythical, almost mystical status. In this much-sought-after volume on the Wehrmacht's numbered Tiger units, Wolfgang Schneider tells--in pictures--the story of these renowned tanks. Hundreds of photos depict Tigers in all situations and terrain, and a section of painstakingly detailed drawings brings the tanks to life in the metallic grays, snow whites, desert tans, and forest greens and browns that colored them. Modelers and buffs alike will delight in this impressive collection.

A groundbreaking new history of how the Vietnam War thwarted U.S. liberal ambitions in the developing world and at home in the 1960s At the start of the 1960s, John F. Kennedy and other American liberals expressed boundless optimism about the ability of the United States to promote democracy and development in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America. With U.S. power, resources, and expertise, almost anything seemed possible in the countries of the Cold War's "Third World"-developing, postcolonial nations unaligned with the United States or Soviet Union. Yet by the end of the decade, this vision lay in ruins. What happened? In The End of Ambition, Mark Atwood Lawrence offers a groundbreaking new history of America's most consequential decade. He reveals how the Vietnam War, combined with dizzying social and political changes in the United States, led to a collapse of American liberal ambition in the Third World-and how this transformation was connected to shrinking aspirations back home in America. By the middle and late 1960s, democracy had given way to dictatorship in many Third World countries, while poverty and inequality remained pervasive. As America's costly war in Vietnam dragged on and as the Kennedy years gave way to the administrations of Lyndon B. Johnson and Richard M. Nixon, America became increasingly risk averse and embraced a new policy of promoting mere stability in the Third World. Paying special attention to the U.S. relationships with Brazil, India, Iran, Indonesia, and southern Africa, The End of Ambition tells the story of this momentous change and of how international and U.S. events intertwined. The result is an original new perspective on a war that continues to haunt U.S. foreign policy today.

Inside the Pentagon Papers addresses legal and moral issues that resonate today as debates continue over government secrecy and democracy's requisite demand for truthfully informed citizens. In the process, it also shows how a closer study of this signal event can illuminate questions of government responsibility in any era. When Daniel Ellsberg leaked a secret government study about the Vietnam War to the press in 1971, he set off a chain of events that culminated in one of the most important First Amendment decisions in American legal history. That affair is now part of history, but the story behind the case has much to tell us about government secrecy and the public's right to know. Commissioned by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, ""the Pentagon Papers"" were assembled by a team of analysts who investigated every aspect of the war. Ellsberg, a member of the team, was horrified by the government's public lies about the war - discrepancies with reality that were revealed by the report's secret findings. His leak of the report to the New York Times and Washington Post triggered the Nixon administration's heavy-handed attempt to halt publication of their stories, which in turn led to the Supreme Court's ruling that Nixon's actions violated the Constitution's free speech guarantees. Inside the Pentagon Papers reexamines what happened, why it mattered, and why it still has relevance today. Focusing on the ""back story"" of the Pentagon Papers and the resulting court cases, it draws upon a wealth of oral history and previously classified documents to show the consequences of leak and litigation both for the Vietnam War and for American history. Included here for the first time are transcripts of previously secret White House telephone tapes revealing the Nixon administration's repressive strategies, as well as the government's formal charges against the newspapers presented by Solicitor General Erwin Griswold to the Supreme Court. Coeditor John Prados's point-by-point analysis of these charges demonstrates just how weak the government's case was - and how they reflected Nixon's paranoia more than legitimate national security issues.

Hailed as a "pithy and compelling account of an intensely relevant topic" (Kirkus Reviews), this wide-ranging volume offers a superb account of a key moment in modern U.S. and world history. Drawing upon the latest research in archives in China, Russia, and Vietnam, Mark Lawrence creates an extraordinary, panoramic view of all sides of the war. His narrative begins well before American forces set foot in Vietnam, delving into French colonialism's contribution to the 1945 Vietnamese revolution, and revealing how the Cold War concerns of the 1950s led the United States to back the French. The heart of the book covers the "American war," ranging from the overthrow of Ngo Dinh Diem and the impact of the Tet Offensive to Nixon's expansion of the war into Cambodia and Laos, and the final peace agreement of 1973. Finally, Lawrence examines the aftermath of the war, from the momentous liberalization-"Doi Moi"-in Vietnam to the enduring legacy of this infamous war in American books, films, and political debate.

This book assesses the emergence and transformation of global protest movements during the Vietnam War era. It explores the relationship between protest focused on the war and other emancipatory and revolutionary struggles, moving beyond existing scholarship to examine the myriad interlinked protest issues and mobilisations around the globe during the Indochina Wars. Bringing together scholars working from a range of geographical, historiographical and methodological perspectives, the volume offers a new framework for understanding the history of wartime protest. The chapters are organised around the social movements from the three main geopolitical regions of the world during the 1960s and early 1970s: the core capitalist countries of the so-called first world, the socialist bloc and the Global South. The final section of the book then focuses on international organisations that explicitly sought to bridge and unite solidarity and protest around the world. In an era of persistent military conflict, the book provides timely contributions to the question of what war does to protest movements and what protest movements do to war.

"Fulbright was erudite and eloquent in all the books he wrote, but this one is his masterpiece. Within its pages lie his now historic remonstrations against a great nation's overreach, his powerful argument for dissent, and his thoughtful propositions for a new way forward . . . lessons and cautions that resonate just as strongly today." - From the foreword by Bill Clinton J. William Fulbright (1905-1995), a Rhodes scholar and lawyer, began his long career in public service when he was elected to serve Arkansas's Third District in Congress in 1942. He quickly became a prominent member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, where he introduced the Fulbright Resolution calling for participation in an organization that became the United Nations. Elected to the Senate in 1944, he promoted the passage of legislation establishing the Fulbright exchange program, and he served as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 1959 to 1974, longer than any senator in American history. Fulbright drew on his extensive experience in international relations to write The Arrogance of Power, a sweeping critique of American foreign policy, in particular the justification for the Vietnam War, Congress's failure to set limits on it, and the impulses that gave rise to it. The book-with its solid underpinning the idea that "the most valuable public servant, like the true patriot, is one who gives a higher loyalty to his country's ideals than to its current policy"-was published in 1966 and sold 400,000 copies. The New York Times called it "an invaluable antidote to the official rhetoric of government." Enhanced by a new forward by President Bill Clinton, this eloquent treatise will resonate with today's readers pondering, as Francis O. Wilcox wrote in the original preface, the peril of nations whose leaders lack ""the wisdom and the good judgment to use their power wisely and well.

In this epic biography of Edward Lansdale (1908- 1987), the man said to be the fictional model for Graham Greene's The Quiet American, best-selling historian Max Boot demonstrates how Lansdale pioneered a "hearts and mind" diplomacy, first in the Philippines, then in Vietnam. It was a visionary policy that, as Boot reveals, was ultimately crushed by America's giant military bureaucracy, steered by elitist generals and blueblood diplomats who favored troop build-ups and napalm bombs over winning the trust of the people. Through dozens of interviews and access to neverbefore-seen documents-including long-hidden love letters-Boot recasts this cautionary American story, tracing the bold rise and the crashing fall of the roguish "T. E. Lawrence of Asia" from the battle of Dien Bien Phu to the humiliating American evacuation in 1975. Bringing a tragic complexity to this so-called "ugly American," this "engrossing biography" (Karl Marlantes) rescues Lansdale from historical ignominy and suggests that Vietnam could have been different had we only listened. With reverberations that continue to play out in Iraq and Afghanistan, The Road Not Taken is a biography of profound historical consequence.

The War Within: America's Battle over Vietnam is a painfully engrossing and popularly written account of how the battle on the home front ended America's least popular war. This absorbing narrative, hailed by critics of every persuasion, is the fruit of over a decade's worth of research: the author sifted through mountains of government documents, press coverage, and transcripts of interviews he conducted with virtually all of the key players, both inside the U.S. government and among the dissenters who eventually brought the war to an end. In these pages the antiwar era comes to life through the words of scores of participants, both the famous and the forgotten, who speak with candor and passion about this tumultuous period. A remarkable story of a powerful grassroots movement and its influence on officials in Washington.

Pham Xuan An was one of the twentieth century's greatest spies. While working as a correspondent for Time during the Vietnam War, he sent intelligence reports - written in invisible ink or hidden inside spring rolls in film canisters - to Ho Chi Minh and his generals in North Vietnam. Only after Saigon fell in 1975 did An's colleagues learn that the affable raconteur in their midst, acclaimed as ""dean of the Vietnamese press corps,"" was actually a general in the North Vietnamese Army. In recognition of his tradecraft and his ability to spin military losses - such as the Tet Offensive of 1968 - into psychological gains, An was awarded sixteen military medals. After the book's original publication, WikiLeaks revealed that Thomas A. Bass's account of An's career was distributed to CIA agents as a primer in espionage. Now available in paper with a new preface, An's story remains one of the most gripping to emerge from the era.

From Andrew Wiest, the bestselling author of The Boys of '67: Charlie Company's War in Vietnam and one of the leading scholars in the study of the Vietnam War, comes a frank exploration of the human experience during the conflict. Vietnam allows the reader a grunt's-eye-view of the conflict - from the steaming rice paddies and swamps of the Mekong Delta, to the triple-canopy rainforest of the Central Highlands and the forlorn Marine bases that dotted the DMZ. It is the definitive oral history of the Vietnam War told in the uncompromising, no-holds barred language of the soldiers themselves.

In the Cambodian proverb, "when broken glass floats" is the time when evil triumphs over good. That time began in 1975, when the Khmer Rouge took power in Cambodia and the Him family began their trek through the hell of the "killing fields." In a mesmerizing story, Him vividly recounts a Cambodia where rudimentary labor camps are the norm and technology, such as cars and electricity, no longer exists. Death becomes a companion at the camps, along with illness. Yet through the terror, Chanrithy's family remains loyal to one another despite the Khmer Rouge's demand of loyalty only to itself. Moments of inexpressible sacrifice and love lead them to bring what little food they have to the others, even at the risk of their own lives. In 1979, "broken glass" finally sinks. From a family of twelve, only five of the Him children survive. Sponsored by an uncle in Oregon, they begin their new lives in a land that promises welcome to those starved for freedom.

"'I never got a chance to be a girl, ' Kate O'Hare Palmer lamented, thirty-four years after her tour as an army nurse in Vietnam. Although proud of having served, she felt that the war she never understood had robbed her of her innocence and forced her to grow up too quickly. As depicted in a photograph taken late in her tour, long hours in the operating room exhausted her both physically and mentally. Her tired eyes and gaunt face reflected th e weariness she felt after treating countless patients, some dying, some maimed, all, like her, forever changed. Still, she learned to work harder and faster than she thought she could, to trust her nursing skills, and to live independently. She developed a way to balance the dangers and benefits of being a woman in the army and in the war. Only fourteen months long, her tour in Vietnam profoundly affected her life and her beliefs."

Such vivid personal accounts abound in historian Kara Dixon Vuic's compelling look at the experiences of army nurses in the Vietnam War. Drawing on more than 100 interviews, Vuic allows the nurses to tell their own captivating stories, from their reasons for joining the military to the physical and emotional demands of a horrific war and postwar debates about how to commemorate their service.

Vuic also explores the gender issues that arose when a male-dominated army actively recruited and employed the services of 5,000 nurses in the midst of a growing feminist movement and a changing nursing profession. Women drawn to the army's patriotic promise faced disturbing realities in the virtually all-male hospitals of South Vietnam. Men who joined the nurse corps ran headlong into the army's belief that women should nurse and men should fight.

"Officer, Nurse, Woman" brings to light the nearly forgotten contributions of brave nurses who risked their lives to bring medical care to soldiers during a terrible--and divisive--war.

At the height of the Vietnam conflict, a complex system of secret underground tunnels sprawled from Cu Chi Province to the edge of Saigon. In these burrows, the Viet Cong cached their weapons, tended their wounded, and prepared to strike. They had only one enemy: U.S. soldiers small and wiry enough to maneuver through the guerrillas' narrow domain.
The brave souls who descended into these hellholes were known as "tunnel rats." Armed with only pistols and K-bar knives, these men inched their way through the steamy darkness where any number of horrors could be awaiting them-bullets, booby traps, a tossed grenade. Using firsthand accounts from men and women on both sides who fought and killed in these underground battles, authors Tom Mangold and John Penycate provide a gripping inside look at this fearsome combat. The Tunnels of Cu Chi" "is a war classic of unbearable tension and unforgettable heroes.