Search and Destroy

Search and Destroy

• Search and Destroy

• Chemical Warfare

• Defoliate

• Napalm

• Agent Orange

• Indiscriminate

Draw up a table to take notes as we investigate...

• Draw up a table to take notes as we investigate...

Apocalypse Now

• Apocalypse Now

• Search and Destroy

America decided to build safe, well protected military bases.

• America decided to build safe, well protected military bases.

• They would then wait for reliable intelligence to identify Vietcong strongholds.

• They would then search for these strongholds using helicopters and destroy them with a surprise attack from the air.

• Violence was often used to interrogate suspected Vietcong soldiers.

• Soldiers had to send back reports of body counts.

• They would also often burn down the village at the end of the raid.

• This led to the raids being nicknamed ‘Zippo Raids’.

However the raids were often based on poor intelligence reports.

• However the raids were often based on poor intelligence reports.

• The soldiers were often inexperienced and walked into traps.

• Sometimes innocent villages would be attacked.

• Civilian casualties were very high.

• For every VC weapon captured, six people died, mainly civilians.

• This all made the peasants hate the US and ARVN even more.

• It made them more likely to support the VC!

America also tried to destroy the Vietcong hiding places and their sources of food.

• America also tried to destroy the Vietcong hiding places and their sources of food.

• This meant destroying the jungle.

• The word for destroying leaves or foliage is to ‘defoliate’.

• This was attempted with two types of chemical weapons.

• Napalm – a liquid explosive to burn the jungle.
• Agent Orange – a weed killer.

A mixture of high explosive and petrol jelly.

• A mixture of high explosive and petrol jelly.

• It exploded and combined with oxygen in the atmosphere to burn anything in its path.

• It would stick to a victim’s skin and cause terrible burns.

• Around 20,000 tons of napalm were dropped between 1965 and 1973.

• It’s indiscriminate – large numbers of civilians would be killed or injured.

A chemical defoliant (weed killer) sprayed on to the jungle.

• A chemical defoliant (weed killer) sprayed on to the jungle.

• 82 million litres were dropped in the 1960s.

• 4 million acres of forest was wiped out.

• Soil, air and rivers were heavily polluted.

• 1.3 million people were affected by the chemicals.

• An estimated 500,000 children have since been born with birth defects linked to Agent Orange.

They were indiscriminate in nature – they could not distinguish between Viet Cong and innocent civilians.

• They were indiscriminate in nature – they could not distinguish between Viet Cong and innocent civilians.

• Many innocent people died.

• The Viet Cong were rarely successfully targeted.

• Opposition in the USA increased as the human horrors became apparent from chemical warfare.

Complete your table with as much detail as possible.

• Complete your table with as much detail as possible.

• Read page 166 of your text book to find extra detail.

Innocent civilians had died in many wars before Vietnam.

• Innocent civilians had died in many wars before Vietnam.

• But in these wars the horror had been kept from the public.

• Censorship and slow media communications meant that the reality of war rarely reached the public back home.

• But Vietnam was to be different.