: A Study Of Siegfe Warfare Essay, Research Paper
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A Study of Siege Warfare
Eric Dahlquist
The forward French Base at Dien Bien Phu was a bold venture by the French forces to infiltrate Northern Vietnam in 1954, however they underestimated their enemy and were decidedly defeated and forced out of Vietnam forever. Fourteen years later in an effort to turn the tide in the Vietnam Conflict, the US Marines were ordered to take up a position just outside the city of Khe Sanh, along the DMZ. They too were attacked fiercely, but unlike the French, the Marines held their ground, and the base withstood. These two bases were both in the forward area of their respective conflicts, both of which were fiercely attacked and laid siege to, but with two entirely different outcomes. Why did the US decide to go ahead with the base at Khe Sanh, knowing full well what happened to the French 14 years earlier, and what were the deciding factors which helped them succeed?
The primary correlation between the forces at Dien Bien Phu and Khe Sanh was the use of the siege as the method of attack. When studying these battles, it is first important to understand what a siege is. There are two perspectives in siege warfare, the attacker and the besieged. For the attacker, their goal is to displace the opposition who is usually protected in a fortified position. For the besieged, the only goal is to prevent the opposition from obtaining their fortified position.
Now according to the dictionary, the definition of siege reads as follows:
Webster?s Definition
1 obsolete: a seat of distinction: THRONE
2 a: a military blockade of a city or fortified place to compel it to surrender
b: a persistent or serious attack (as of illness)
This definition seems too basic for understanding the complexity of a siege. For this reason I have developed my own definition which I find more explanatory of the actual event.
Dahlquist?s Definition
1. To commit an enemy to fighting from a defensive position by means of cutting off all avenues of escape and forcing the enemy to hold their position under constant and direct fire in an attempt to win a war of attrition
2. For the besieged opponent to expend all its resources and surrender
The tactics used in siege warfare has been compared by some analysts to a chess game. For the besieged, they must focus on defensive measures while maintaining enough of an offense to keep the attacker from committing all of it reserves to the offensive. If the besieged can pose an offensive threat, then the attacker must maintain some troops for defense of their artillery and command post .
In the modern theater of warfare, there are many considerations that must be accounted for. Moreover, advancements in weapons and technology have made the battlefield an ever-expanding arena of destruction. Artillery can now reach targets 20 miles away and aircraft can drop bombs with precision accuracy; these advancements have made the art of siege warfare become less common. Whichever opponent can control and effectively utilize the skies over the battlefield during a siege has a greater probability of success. Aircraft can deliver massive amounts of explosives on the enemy, as well as re-supply friendly forces that are cut off from the ground. Ever better advancements in aircraft allow them to fly high above the range of anti-aircraft guns, and often times the only signal of their presence to those on the ground is their cargo that falls from the sky.
While studying a siege, geography does play a role in the battles, but is negated as a primary factor because both sides can use the surrounding terrain to their advantage, no matter what the terrain features are. Both sides in a siege meet on the same ground, and it is up to the commanders to utilize it.
The factors that must be utilized advantageously in order to either attack or defend a siege are infantry, artillery, and air power. Such factors determine who will win, and in the cases of Dien Bien Phu and Khe Sanh, special attention must be paid to their effectiveness.
General Giap
When discussing siege tactics, one name continually arises as the foremost master of the art, that is General Giap. General Vo Nguyen Giap, the Commander in Chief of the People?s Army of Vietnam, was born on September 1, 1910 in central Annam at An Xa, in the province of Quang Binh. Before taking a position in the People?s Army, Giap studied history and law at the University of Hanoi . He then became a history teacher until his country was ravaged by war with the Japanese. Giap was a patriot, much like Paul Revere or Winston Churchill; he spoke with a soothing resonance that captivated his audience, much like his efforts in teaching. He spoke of freedom and independence, and soon his influence was far reaching.
Married in 1939 to his first wife, Dang Thi Quang Thai, he wasted no time starting to raise a family, having his daughter a little less than a year later. He soon left his family to study and train under Communist leader Mao Zedong in China. In 1941, Giap?s wife was arrested and convicted of conspiracy against the French and imprisoned. Reports suggested that: ?…the French killed Giap’s daughter, two sisters, and his father. The source of Giap’s passionate hatred for the French is now clear.?
Giap?s tactics were adopted from his war college, the jungle. He was a veteran of fighting battles strongly outnumbered and lacking firepower. An expert at guerrilla tactics, Giap was a master of cover and concealment of both troops and supplies. The philosophy that guided him was never fight a battle you can?t win. Giap never brought his forces out long enough for the enemy to concentrate its firepower, and when the enemy began to close in, Giap disappeared as quickly as he attacked, leaving the enemy in a state of shock, and often times bleeding.
Giap believed that nothing was impossible if you put your mind to it, and he lived this attitude time and again. The foundation of his strategy and tactics revolved around a simple principle: when you could not fight the enemy with weapons stronger than his, you had to render his weapons ineffective pending the day that you possessed the same, which would be more effective for being unexpected. Often times out-manned and outgunned, with inadequate supplies, and lacking food and water, Giap became a master of harsh conditions. Like a snake, he would lay in hiding until the perfect moment to strike, and he would do so swiftly with murderous firepower, and then quickly withdrawal, and live to fight another day.
President Ho Chi Minh described Giap to American journalist David Schoenbruim, at Fontainebleau, on September 11, 1946: ?It will be a war between a tiger and an elephant. If the tiger ever stops, the elephant will pierce him with his tusks. Only the tiger doesn?t stop. He lurks in the jungle by day and emerges only at night. He will leap onto the elephant and rip his back to shreds before disappearing again into the shadows, and the elephant will die from exhaustion and loss of blood.?
With the experience Giap forged in the jungles of Vietnam against the Japanese, he posed a threat to the French forces that lacked the experience of guerrilla warfare. Knowing this, the French tried to block the Viet Minh from Laos. It was widely rumored that Laos was a safe-haven for the Viet Minh as well as a training ground, so they would return to Vietnam as seasoned veterans. General Giap?s forces were forced to attack the French strong point at the town on Na San.
At Na San, the French airdropped three battalions and all the necessary supplies to support a fortified camp. The French troops defended the garrison from over fifty thousand Viet Minh forces. For this attack, Giap lacked the necessary supply train to attack the fortification. Consequently, he briefly laid siege to the garrison and penetrated the outer defenses of the base but couldn?t penetrate the base itself. So the French forces held, and sent the Viet Minh away with a bloody nose. The brief attack had a great impact on the conclusion of the war.
Giap realized that the human wave tactics that he used against the forces at Na San were very costly in terms of human lives as well as ineffective against a well-fortified position. He knew that he would have to form a tactic that utilized a punishing artillery barrage to weaken the defenses in coordination with overwhelming infantry assaults to crush the target.
Dien Bien Phu
In a little known valley in Northern Vietnam, there was a small village named Dien Bien Phu. It was located 8 miles from the Laotian border and only 60 miles from the Chinese border. To give perspective on where exactly it was located, it was approximately 250 miles northwest of Hanoi. The terrain surrounding this area was mountainous. In fact, there where hills completely surrounding the town, with only one road in and one road out. These mountains were plagued with thick underbrush accompanied by densely wooded areas.
On July 24th, 1953 General Henri Navarre, Commander of French Forces in Indochina, issued Directive No. 563 which laid the plans for the occupation of a valley to the northwest Dien Bien Phu . The theory behind the base at Dien Bien Phu was a bold move to draw the enemy into the open, without its heavy guns and completely destroy the Viet Minh. Although it was located in the center of a valley, surround by hills on all sides, the French felt they could use the terrain to their advantage. To most military strategists, this would not be considered a good place to have a base, but the French rested their fate on the fact that the Viet Minh would not be able to get their heavy guns over the mountains. The French were confident that if the Viet Minh forces tried to move heavy artillery, that French observation planes would spot them and patrols would be sent out to destroy the artillery before they could be brought up the mountains. This assumption would prove to be the most costly assumption in the military history. General Giap was more than prepared to out-smart the French.
Operation Castor was the code name for the French occupation of the valley at Dien Bien Phu. This was an airborne operation designed from the outset to draw the Viet Minh into the open and destroy them. At 0500 on the November 20, 1953, an American-made, C-47 transport plane circled the skies over Dien Bien Phu. The decision to go ahead with the air assault was made by Lieutenant General Pierre Bodet, French Air Force, the French Deputy Commander-in-Chief in Indochina. By 0820, the French cargo planes carrying two light infantry battalions of the elite French paratroopers were headed for Dien Bien Phu. These initial troops were supposed to land and quickly secure the landing zone. Due to the massive troop movement, the French lacked the planes to carry all the troops in one wave, so the planes would drop off the first wave and turn around to pick up the second wave of troops.
By 1020, the first wave was being dropped into the valley and was under murderous enemy fire. The Communist troops who amassed in the area were firing at the paratroopers while they were still in the air. As the troops landed, they quickly began to form into small groups, and these groups formed into platoons. As the platoons began to form, they immediately went on the offensive to clear the area of enemy for the second wave. The French swiftly gained the upper hand against the heavily outnumbered Communist troops. The town and surrounding area fell in less than six hours. The cost in human lives appeared surprisingly low to the high command who were very pleased with the operation. Airborne Battle Group 1 dropped 1827 paratroopers and of them, only 11 were killed and 52 wounded in less than six hours of fighting.
By November of that year, fortifications were already being put into place. This was an arduous process because initially, the only forces for the French were the paratroopers, who lacked the heavy equipment to build proper fortifications. Finally the equipment arrived after the airstrip was erected. Mass amounts of men and material arrived in the valley. The fortifications were in place and the French started going on patrols of the nearby hills. Initially these patrols met with little resistance, but soon came reports of major Viet Minh movements.
Operations around Dien Bien Phu soon became the center of operations in northwest Vietnam, and the most important front in the war for both sides. Viet Minh activity rapidly increased, but Dien Bien Phu was not bothered. Navarre believed that these many-sided attacks were due to Vietminh hesitancy to directly attack Dien Bien Phu because of supply difficulties. In reality, these attacks served to scatter the French forces in many directions while pinning down the forces at Dien Bien Phu.
The Viet Minh saw Dien Bien Phu as a good opportunity to destroy the French. Their commanding general, General Vo Nguyen Giap, organized what would prove to be one of most influential military campaigns in history. Giap, after realizing that Dien Bien Phu was going to be the French main base in the North, went to Ho Chi Minh and asked for permission to attack the French. Ho?s response was ?don?t attack until victory is certain.? With those directives, Giap?s first mission was supplies. Since the Korean War just ended, the Chinese and Soviets had a surplus of supplies as well as captured American weapons to give the Viet Minh. These supplies crossed the Vietnamese-Chinese border some 600 miles from Dien Bien Phu. The next problem was that there were no roads leading there, so Giap conscripted an army of workers who, in less than three months, had an operational road system for the entire 600 miles constructed.
With supplies en route, Giap then focused on massing his troops. Before long, Giap marched to Dien Bien Phu with more than 70,000 motivated troops ready to fight. These troops mostly traveled on foot, and carried their supplies on French-made bicycles, which were purchased before the war. As stated earlier, Giap was a master of cover and concealment of troops and supplies; the French had no idea what was headed their way. Artillery pieces that were donated by China quickly made their way to the mountains just outside the valley. Giap has his men haul 200 Chinese and Russian siege guns up the hills surrounding the base.
What the French assumed could not be accomplished would soon become their downfall. At 5pm on Saturday, March 12, 1954, the Viet Minh opened up with a completely unexpected and punishing artillery barrage.
French planes began flying into the valley with supplies for the beleaguered troops. These planes were met with heavy anti-aircraft fire, as well as pinpoint shelling of the airstrip. Many of the planes were destroyed on the ground or during their slow approach to the airstrip, so the French turned to air dropping the supplies. The French dropped about 120 tons of supplies to the besieged defenders of Dien Bien Phu between March 13 and May 7, of which the army recovered about 100 tons. This included American supplied delayed-fuse rounds that the Communists captured. These rounds were designed to penetrate whatever they struck before exploding, causing much greater damage. The Viet Minh could use these rounds because the guns they had been supplied by China were American guns captured in Korea. The delayed fuse rounds tore the base to shreds.
Giap repeatedly ordered suicide attacks, which yielded mixed results. The French used up ammunition, Giap’s army was thinned considerably, and the garrison held. The suicide attacks decimated the French, but ultimately Giap gave them up for traditional trench warfare. The Viet Minh surrounded Dien Bien Phu and moved them closer and closer to French lines, until they were able to move almost directly from the protection of the trenches to the French entrenchments.
Finally, at 1030 Paris time on the morning of 7 May, the Battle of Dien Bien Phu ended in French defeat. The French had lost the ability and the will to fight. The French?s defeat marked the end of the French reign in Vietnam. This defeat also had another significance. It was the first battle in the history of warfare that a siege ended a war.
Khe Sanh
The Khe Sanh Combat Base, established by the Green Berets in August 1962, was located in the province of Quang Tri. The base sat atop a plateau in the shadow of the Dong Tri Mountain and overlooked a tributary of the Quang Tri River.
By November 1967, US intelligence began receiving reports of several North Vietnamese Army (NVA) divisions moving south. General William Westmoreland, commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam, felt maintaining a presence at Khe Sanh was critically important. It served as a patrol base for interdiction of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, as the western terminus for the defensive line along the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), and as a barrier to Communist efforts to carry the fighting into the populated coastal regions of South Vietnam.
In late December, in became clear to General Westmoreland that two of these divisions were moving toward Khe Sanh. With American skepticism resting on the result at Dien Bien Phu, Westmoreland, though nervous, saw an opportunity to bring optimum firepower to bear against the NVA in an isolated area. Westmoreland believed that the location lacked any populated civilian sectors to defend, so all military efforts in the area could be concentrated at Khe Sanh.
The base was garrisoned by 6,000 Marines, mostly comprised of the 1st Division, 26 Regiment. The garrison had a vast array of weaponry including Armored Self-Propelled Guns, which resembled tanks and can provide massive firepower. The garrison also housed the 3rd Reconnaissance Battalion, which offered ground intelligence for the bombing campaigns. The Khe Sanh Combat Base was prepared for the worst and air support and re-supply was ready to go on a moments? notice.