NO SURE VICTORY: MEASURING U.S. ARMY EFFECTIVENESS AND PROGRESS IN THE VIETNAM WAR Gregory A. Daddis Lieutenant Colonel United States Army A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of History. Chapel Hill 2009 Approved by: Richard H. Kohn Alex Roland Michael H. Hunt Joseph T. Glatthaar Wayne E. Lee ©2009 Gregory A. Daddis ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT GREGORY A. DADDIS: No Sure Victory: Measuring U.S. Army Effectiveness and Progress in the Vietnam War (Under the direction of Richard H. Kohn) This study analyzes how the United States Army component of the Military Assistance Command-Vietnam (MACV) attempted to measure its progress and effectiveness while conducting counterinsurgency operations during the Vietnam War. It illustrates the difficulties staff officers and commanders confronted in identifying useful metrics for gauging success in an unconventional environment. Political, economic, and cultural factors all impinged on the course and conduct of the army’s counterinsurgency operations. These factors also influenced how commanders attempted to assess their effectiveness and progress. From a historiographical standpoint, most secondary literature on the Vietnam War maintains that the U.S. Army simply used “body counts” to measure its military effectiveness in a counterinsurgency environment. These sources contend that since army officers could not depend on traditional measures such as geography to determine if they were winning or losing, they reverted to the organizationally comfortable procedure of counting enemy dead. The purpose of this study is to correct this inaccurate simplification and, more importantly, to discover how the U.S. Army, confronted by an unfamiliar enemy and form of warfare, attempted to measure its successes and failures. It will do so by examining the army’s doctrine for counterinsurgency, its formulation of measurements to assess progress in the Vietnam War, and the army’s use and modification of these measurements during a long and complex war. In the process, this study investigates the army’s efforts to measure its progress and effectiveness in a number of key areas iii throughout the conflict: counterinsurgency operations, search and destroy missions, pacification efforts, and the training of South Vietnamese forces iv TABLE OF CONTENTS LISTS OF ABBREVIATIONS…………………………………..……………...vi LIST OF FIGURES……………………………………………………...………ix MAPS……………………………………………………………………..............x INTRODUCTION………………………………………………………..............1 Chapter 1 OF QUESTIONS NOT ASKED……………………………………….26 2 MEASUREMENTS WITHOUT OBJECTIVES ……………………...60 3 AN “UNPRECEDENTED VICTORY”………………………………..99 4 METRICS IN THE YEARS OF AMERICAN FIREPOWER………..139 5 ““WE ARE WINNING SLOWLY BUT STEADILY”……………….176 6 THE YEAR OF TET………………………………………………….218 7 “A TIME FOR TESTING”……………………………………............258 8 SOLDIERS’ INTERLUDE………………………………………..….295 9 STAGGERING TO THE FINISH…………………………………….325 CONCLUSION …………………………………………………………..........360 BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………………………………...380 v ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THE TEXT AFQT Armed Forces Qualification Test APC Accelerated Pacification Campaign ARCOV United States Army Combat Operations in Vietnam ARVN Army of the Republic of Vietnam CGSC Command and General Staff College CIA Central Intelligence Agency CINCPAC Commander in Chief, U.S. Pacific Command CIP Counterinsurgency Plan CJCS Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff COMUSMACV Commander, United States Military Assistance Command, Vietnam CORDS Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support COSVN Central Office of South Vietnam CTZ Corps Tactical Zone DMZ Demilitarized Zone DoD Department of Defense DRV Democratic Republic of Vietnam FLN Algerian National Liberation Front FM Field Manual FWMAF Free World Military Assistance Forces GVN Government of South Vietnam HES Hamlet Evaluation System JCS Joint Chiefs of Staff JUSMAPG Joint United States Military Advisory and Planning Group KIA Killed in Action LZ landing zones vi MAAG Military Assistance Advisory Group MACV Military Assistance Command, Vietnam MCP Malayan Communist Party NCO Noncommissioned Officer NLF National Front for the Liberation of South Vietnam NSC National Security Council NSSM National Security Study Memorandum NVA North Vietnamese Army PAAS Pacification Attitude Analysis System PAVN People’s Army of Vietnam; see also NVA PLAF People’s Liberation Armed Forces; see also VC PRG Provisional Revolutionary Government PROVN Program for the Pacification and Long-Term Development of South Vietnam RD Revolutionary Development RF/PF Regional Forces/Popular Forces ROAD Reorganization Objectives Army Division RVN Republic of Vietnam RVNAF Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces SAME Senior Advisor’s Monthly Evaluation SEER System for Evaluating the Effectiveness of RVNAF TCK-TKN Tong Cong Kich-Tong Khoi Nghia (General Offensive-General Uprising) TFES Territorial Forces Evaluation System VC Vietnamese Communist, Vietcong VCI Vietcong Infrastructure USAID United States Agency for International Development vii ABBREVIATIONS USED IN THE NOTES CARL Combined Arms Research Library. Fort Leavenworth, Kansas CMH U.S. Army Center of Military History. Fort McNair, Washington, D.C. FRUS Foreign Relations of the United States . U.S. Department of State. LBJL Lyndon B. Johnson Library Oral History Collection. Austin, Texas. JCSHO Joint Chiefs of Staff History Office. The Pentagon, Washington, D.C. MHI U.S. Army Military History Institute. Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania. NARA National Archives & Records Administration. College Park, Maryland. OSDHO Office of the Secretary of Defense Historical Office. Washington, D.C. TTUVA The Vietnam Archive, Texas Tech University. Lubbock, Texas. USAASL U.S. Army Armor School Library. Fort Knox, Kentucky. USAAWCL U.S. Army Aviation Warfighting Center, Aviation Technical Library. Fort Rucker, Alabama. USMA United States Military Academy, West Point, New York. VNIT Vietnam Interview Tape Collection, CMH. Fort McNair, Washington, D.C. WCWP William C. Westmoreland Papers WPSC Special Collections, United States Military Academy Library. West Point, New York. viii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. Map of Indochina, 1961……………………………………………………..…x 2. Map of I Corps Tactical Zone, 1965-1967……………………………………xi 3. Map of II Corps Tactical Zone, 1965-1967………………………………......xii 4. Map of III Corps Tactical Zone, 1965-1967………………………………...xiii 5. Map of IV Corps Tactical Zone, 1965-1967……….………………………..xiv ix Figure 1 All maps taken from Richard W. Stewart, ed., American Military History, Vol. II, The United States in a Global Era, 1917-2003 (Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, 2005) x Figure 2 xi Figure 3 xii Figure 4 xiii Figure 5 xiv INTRODUCTION “Then, no matter what we do in the military field there is no sure victory?” - President Lyndon B. Johnson “That’s right. We have been too optimistic.” - Secretary Of Defense Robert S. McNamara White House Meeting, 18 December 1965 On 6 June 1944, American, British, and Canadian forces launched their amphibious invasion against Hitler’s Atlantic Wall. Determined to secure a foothold on French soil, Allied soldiers labored through the English Channel’s surf only to be met by mines, obstacles, and the covering fire of German defenders. One American combat engineer in the Easy Red sector of Omaha Beach articulated the fears of many Allied commanders fretting the lack of progress on the 1 st Infantry Division assault beaches. “We were really just pinned down and couldn’t really see anyone to shoot at. Around ten o’clock things looked hopeless on our part of the beach.” 1 By mid-day, Lieutenant General Omar N. Bradley, the U.S. First Army’s commander, was becoming increasingly alarmed over stagnating conditions on the beachheads. Fragmentary reports from Leonard T. Gerow’s V Corps created added confusion. Bradley recalled that as the Omaha landings fell “hours and hours behind schedule” the Allied command faced an “imminent crisis” about whether and how to deploy follow-up forces. Throughout the day, Bradley and his officers agonized over potential German counterattacks. 2 1 John Zmudzinksi as quoted in Ronald J. Drez, ed., Voices of D-Day: The Story of the Allied Invasion Told by Those Who Were There (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1994), 239. For an excellent operational overview of this campaign, see Carlo D'Este, Decision in Normandy (New York: Harper Perennial, 1991). 2 Omar Bradley, A Soldier’s Story (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1951), 271. On the beaches, small groups of infantrymen struggled to make their way inland under withering German fire. Carnage was everywhere. A lieutenant in the U.S. 29 th Infantry Division estimated that for every one hundred yards of beach, thirty-five to fifty corpses lay slumped on the sand. 3 Despite the damage they suffered, the Americans slowly but perceptibly began pushing back the German defenders. Just before 1:30 p.m. Bradley received his first bit of good news from V Corps headquarters. “Troops formerly pinned down on beaches Easy Red, Easy Green, Fox Red advancing up heights behind beaches.” 4 As midnight approached, the Americans held a tenuous grip on the French mainland. They were, however, still far short of their objectives outlined in the original Overlord plans. The 4,649 casualties sustained in Bradley’s First Army on 6 June clearly indicated that putting 55,000 men ashore had been no simple task—despite the beach codenames