The Tet Offensive Vietnam, January 30, 1968
In January 1968 the United States launched what became a controversial aerial bombing campaign against North Vietnamese forces in the region of Khe Sanh, where US forces maintained the Khe Sanh Combat Base (KSCB). The US Air Force would eventually drop over 100,000 tons of bombs on enemy positions in support of the KSCB, and the base would remain under continuing attack through March. Daily news reports on the evening news during those days of just three major television networks showed the severity of the fighting and the mounting casualties. American leadership, both military and political, repeatedly informed the public that the US was winning. The American public was informed that the North Vietnamese’s ability to fight the war was being systematically degraded, and victory was within sight.
In the night hours of January 30 North Vietnamese regulars and Viet Cong guerrillas launched a series of coordinated attacks in cities and towns across the length of South Vietnam, against US forces, Republic of Vietnam Forces (ARVN) and allied troops. More than 100 South Vietnamese towns, villages, and cities were attacked, many if not most of them successfully due to the level of surprise achieved. The attacks were the beginning of an offensive which was the largest military operation of the war to that point. The preceding month General William Westmoreland, American Commander in Vietnam, had emphatically denied the ability of the Communists to launch a major assault, telling TIME magazine that he hoped that they would try, because, “…we are looking for a fight.”
Despite the initial success of the North Vietnamese regulars and Viet Cong, the Tet Offensive (named for the Vietnamese New Year on which it was launched) became in many areas a protracted and bloody campaign. The city of Hue was mostly overrun by communist troops, to be slowly retaken by US Marines and ARVN troops over the course of February, at a cost of more than 4,000 casualties, more than six hundred of them killed in action. The withdrawing communist troops executed 2,500 civilians; total civilian casualties in the Battle of Hue were well over 5,000.
In Saigon communist troops who had been living in the city undercover prior to the attacks emerged to join with the North Vietnamese regular battalions attacking targets within and around the city. The communist troops were eventually defeated, but the shock value of their attack, and the number of attacks which were launched simultaneously, eroded the confidence of the Vietnamese people to resist, as well as the confidence of the American public in the veracity of their leaders on the scene and in Washington.
By mid-February, the Tet Offensive had been largely defeated, other than mop-up operations which went on through September. The casualties inflicted on the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong were heavy. So were the casualties on the Americans and their ARVN allies. The Tet Offensive, though a military defeat for the North Vietnamese, was a public relations victory, as more and more Americans began to strongly resist American involvement in Southeast Asia, with protests and demonstrations against the war growing in size and intensity as the year went on.