Hueys became valuable tools in the hills and jungles of Vietnam North Vietnam South Vietnamese president Ngo Diem gave them the name Viet Cong Suddenly banging gunfire echoes through the air The Americans have walked into an ambush They drop and press themselves into the ground Several fire their M60 machine guns or M16 rifles Bullets whiz past After a few minutes the firing stops A radio buzzes Voices talk quickly back and forth The sound of a helicopter grows louder in the distance Then a Bell
UH-1 Huey appears above a nearby clearing Long grass bends from the wind generated by its whipping blades The Huey has arrived to fly out the wounded A LONG BATTLE The Vietnam War 1954 1975 was fought in Vietnam Laos and Cambodia It goes by many different names The Vietnamese call it the American War Others call it the Second Indochina War or the Vietnam Conflict
Two sides fought in the Vietnam War On one side was communist North Vietnam and the Viet Cong The North Vietnamese army was a traditional military force The Viet Cong were less organized guerrilla fighters Other allies included the Soviet Union and China They wanted North and South Vietnam to be one country under communist rule On the other side was South Vietnam Its main ally was the United States Other supporters included South Korea and Australia They were trying to stop the WAR ON TV The Vietnam War became known as the first televised war By 1960 90 percent of Americans had a television in their homes The media used new technology to bring war coverage to huge audiences Reporters traveled to Vietnam Some reported directly from the battlefields They captured film and photographs Americans watched the images of war on the evening news However bloody violence was rarely shown These news reports helped shape people’s opinions on the war Historians still study the role the media played in the Vietnam War
takeover of South Vietnam They did not want communism to spread A NEW KIND OF WAR On August 2 1964 North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacked a US destroyer This occurred in the Gulf of Tonkin It was off the coast of northern Vietnam Two days later another US captain claimed his ship had also been attacked However the accuracy of this report has been debated PERSPECTIVES OLD VIEWS NEW WAR Many people believed the United States would surely beat the communists in Vietnam They thought the United States could win just like it had won other wars Historian Thomas G Mahnken writes The Vietnam War was a classic example of the American way of war The commander of US forces in Vietnam General William Westmoreland pursued a strategy that past generals would have been comfortable with one based on the massive application of technology and firepower to launch offensive operations to annihilate the enemy Technology was indeed useful However it was not enough to defeat the guerrilla fighters
