Related Research Articles
The People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN), officially the Vietnam People's Army, also recognized as the Vietnamese Army or the People's Army, is the national military force of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam and the armed wing of the ruling Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV). The PAVN is a part of the Vietnam People's Armed Forces and includes: Ground Force, Navy, Air Force, Border Guard and Coast Guard. Vietnam does not have a separate Ground Force or Army service. All ground troops, army corps, military districts and special forces belong to the Ministry of National Defence, directly under the command of the CPV Central Military Commission, the Minister of National Defence, and the General Staff of the Vietnam People's Army. The military flag of the PAVN is the National flag of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam defaced with the motto Quyết thắng added in yellow at the top left.
The Vietnam War was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was a major conflict of the Cold War. While the war was officially fought between North Vietnam and South Vietnam, the north was supported by the Soviet Union, China, and other communist states, while the south was supported by the United States and other anti-communist allies, making the war a proxy war between the United States and the Soviet Union. It lasted almost 20 years, with direct U.S. military involvement ending in 1973. The conflict also spilled over into neighboring states, exacerbating the Laotian Civil War and the Cambodian Civil War, which ended with all three countries officially becoming communist states by 1976.
South Vietnam, officially the Republic of Vietnam was a country in Southeast Asia that existed from 1955 to 1975, the period when the southern portion of Vietnam was a member of the Western Bloc during part of the Cold War after the 1954 division of Vietnam. It first received international recognition in 1949 as the State of Vietnam within the French Union, with its capital at Saigon, before becoming a republic in 1955. South Vietnam was bordered by North Vietnam to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and Thailand across the Gulf of Thailand to the southwest. Its sovereignty was recognized by the United States and 87 other nations, though it failed to gain admission into the United Nations as a result of a Soviet veto in 1957. It was succeeded by the Republic of South Vietnam in 1975. In 1976, the Republic of South Vietnam and North Vietnam merged to form the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.
The Viet Cong was an epithet to call the communist movement and united front organization in South Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Formally organized as and led by the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam, it fought under the direction of North Vietnam against the South Vietnamese and United States governments during the Vietnam War. The organization had both guerrilla and regular army units, as well as a network of cadres who organized and mobilized peasants in the territory the Viet Cong controlled. During the war, communist fighters and some anti-war activists claimed that the Viet Cong was an insurgency indigenous to the South, while the U.S. and South Vietnamese governments portrayed the group as a tool of North Vietnam. It was later conceded by the modern Vietnamese communist leadership that the movement was actually under the North Vietnamese political and military leadership, aiming to unify Vietnam under a single banner.
Lê Đức Thọ, born Phan Đình Khải in Nam Dinh Province, was a Vietnamese revolutionary general, diplomat, and politician. He was the first Asian to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, jointly with United States Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in 1973, but refused the award.
The Ho Chi Minh Trail, also called Annamite Range Trail was a logistical network of roads and trails that ran from North Vietnam to South Vietnam through the kingdoms of Laos and Cambodia. The system provided support, in the form of manpower and materiel, to the Viet Cong and the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN), during the Vietnam War. Construction for the network began following the North Vietnamese invasion of Laos in July 1959.
The Army of the Republic of Vietnam composed the ground forces of the South Vietnamese military from its inception in 1955 to the Fall of Saigon in April 1975. At the ARVN's peak, an estimated 1 in 9 citizens of South Vietnam were enlisted,composed of Regular Forces and the more voluntary Regional Forces and the Popular Force militias. It is estimated to have suffered 1,394,000 casualties during the Vietnam War.
Cam Ranh Bay is a deep-water bay in Vietnam in Khánh Hòa Province. It is located at an inlet of the South China Sea situated on the southeastern coast of Vietnam, between Phan Rang and Nha Trang, approximately 290 kilometers northeast of Ho Chi Minh City.
Military Assistance Command, Vietnam – Studies and Observations Group (MACV-SOG) was a highly classified, multi-service United States special operations unit which conducted covert unconventional warfare operations before and during the Vietnam War.
The Republic of Vietnam Navy was the naval branch of the South Vietnamese military, the official armed forces of the former Republic of Vietnam from 1955 to 1975. The early fleet consisted of boats from France; after 1955, and the transfer of the armed forces to Vietnamese control, the fleet was supplied from the United States. With American assistance, in 1972 the VNN became the largest Southeast Asian navy and, by some estimates, the fourth largest navy in the world, just behind the Soviet Union, the United States and the People's Republic of China, with 42,000 personnel, 672 amphibious ships and craft, 20 mine warfare vessels, 450 patrol craft, 56 service craft, and 242 junks. Other sources state that VNN was the ninth largest navy in the world. The Republic of Vietnam Navy was responsible for the protection of the country's national waters, islands, and interests of its maritime economy, as well as for the co-ordination of maritime police, customs service and the maritime border defence force.
Tan Son Nhut Air Base (1955–1975) was a Republic of Vietnam Air Force (RVNAF) facility. It was located near the city of Saigon in southern Vietnam. The United States used it as a major base during the Vietnam War (1959–1975), stationing Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marine units there. Following the Fall of Saigon, it was taken over as a Vietnam People's Air Force (VPAF) facility and remains in use today.
Operation Steel Tiger was a covert U.S. 2nd Air Division, later Seventh Air Force and U.S. Navy Task Force 77 aerial interdiction effort targeted against the infiltration of People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) men and material moving south from the Democratic Republic of Vietnam through southeastern Laos to support their military effort in the Republic of Vietnam during the Vietnam War.
The Sihanouk Trail was a logistical supply system in Cambodia used by the People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) and its Viet Cong (VC) guerillas during the Vietnam War (1960–1975). Between 1966 and 1970, this system operated in the same manner and served the same purposes as the much better known Ho Chi Minh trail which ran through the southeastern portion of the Kingdom of Laos. The name is of American derivation, since the North Vietnamese considered the system integral to the supply route mentioned above. U.S. attempts to interdict this system began in 1969.
United States involvement in the Vietnam War began shortly after the end of World War II in Asia, first in an extremely limited capacity and escalating over a period of 20 years. The U.S. military presence peaked in April 1969, with 543,000 American combat troops stationed in Vietnam. By the conclusion of the United States's involvement in 1973, over 3.1 million Americans had been stationed in Vietnam.
SS Greenville Victory was a cargo Victory ship built in 1944, during World War II under the Emergency Shipbuilding program. The ship’s United States Maritime Commission designation was VC2-S-AP3, hull number 18 (V-18). Post-war she was acquired by the U.S. Army and renamed as USAT Greenville Victory. She was acquired by the U.S. Navy in 1950, renamed USNS Greenville Victory (T-AK-237) and assigned to the Military Sea Transportation Service (MSTS) who operated her safely through the Korean War and Vietnam War campaigns. She was the lead ship in her class of 9 ships that were transferred to the MSTS in 1950. She returned home with two battle stars to her credit and was struck in 1987.
Cao Văn Viên was one of only two South Vietnamese four-star army generals in the history of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam during the Vietnam War. He rose to the position of Chairman of the South Vietnamese Joint General Staff. Considered one of "the most gifted" of South Vietnam's military leaders, he was previously called an "absolute key figure" and one of "the most important Vietnamese military leaders" in the U.S.-led fighting during the Vietnam War. Along with Trần Thiện Khiêm he was one of only two four-star generals in the entire history of South Vietnam.
Phạm Văn Đổng was a South Vietnamese general. In 1965, as military governor of Saigon, he had successfully repressed Buddhist mobs instigated by Thích Trí Quang of the Ấn Quang group and Thích Tâm Châu of Việt Nam Quốc Tự. With his commanding skills and knowledge, Đổng was regarded highly by American and French officers, and well respected by many ARVN officers. A staunch nationalist and anti-communist, he was considered an ally to the labor union, the Northern Catholics, several Việt Nam Quốc Dân Đảng factions, multiple Đại Việt groups, Việt Nam Cách Mạng Đồng Minh Hội high-ranking members, Duy Dân and Hòa Hảo leaders.
During the Cold War in the 1960s, the United States and South Vietnam began a period of gradual escalation and direct intervention referred to as the "Americanization" of joint warfare in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War. At the start of the decade, United States aid to South Vietnam consisted largely of supplies with approximately 900 military observers and trainers. After the assassination of both Ngo Dinh Diem and John F. Kennedy close to the end of 1963 and Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964 and amid continuing political instability in the South, the Lyndon Johnson Administration made a policy commitment to safeguard the South Vietnamese regime directly. The American military forces and other anti-communist SEATO countries increased their support, sending large scale combat forces into South Vietnam; at its height in 1969, slightly more than 400,000 American troops were deployed. The People's Army of Vietnam and the allied Viet Cong fought back, keeping to countryside strongholds while the anti-communist allied forces tended to control the cities. The most notable conflict of this era was the 1968 Tet Offensive, a widespread campaign by the communist forces to attack across all of South Vietnam; while the offensive was largely repelled, it was a strategic success in seeding doubt as to the long-term viability of the South Vietnamese state. This phase of the war lasted until the election of Richard Nixon and the change of U.S. policy to Vietnamization, or ending the direct involvement and phased withdrawal of U.S. combat troops and giving the main combat role back to the South Vietnamese military.
References
- ↑ Lind, Michael (1999). "Vietnam, The Necessary War: A Reinterpretation of America's Most Disastrous Military Conflict". New York Times. Retrieved 17 January 2014.
- 1 2 "The Cold Warrior". Newsweek. April 10, 2000. Retrieved 17 July 2011.
- ↑ "话剧《南方来信》" (in Chinese (China)). China Pictorial. April 1, 1965. Retrieved October 24, 2021.
- ↑ "京剧《南方来信》选段 刘嘉欣 -裘韵流芳演唱会" (in Chinese (China)). China Central Television. November 25, 2010. Retrieved October 24, 2021.
- ↑ "花脸名家 杨燕毅 京剧《南方来信》选段 1995年清唱实况录像". Bilibili (in Chinese (China)). February 21, 2020. Retrieved October 24, 2021.
- ↑ "李和曾 京剧现代戏《南方来信》【反二黄回龙/快板/二六/散板】唱段录音". Bilibili (in Chinese (China)). May 7, 2020. Retrieved October 24, 2021.
- ↑ "越战抗美故事连环画《南方来信》陈云华胡祖清绘画". Archived from the original on October 24, 2021. Retrieved August 28, 2023.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
