There are a number of impacts that we could argue about the impact of the conflict in Vietnam but I am going to be talking about the 3 main points. They are how it was a military success, how it failed in its military objectives and how it didn’t have an impact on the NVA/VC because of their change of their tactics. In my opinion I don’t think the US bombing had a great impact on the conflict in Vietnam but it did have little impact.
The first point is Operation Rolling Thunder being a military success. Operation Rolling Thunder was the largest bombing campaign used by the US it lasted for 3 ½ years. For 2 years intensive bombing in Hanoi by the port of Haipong forcing the North Vietnamese to the negotiating table. As it shows from a CIA top secret document and it quotes “Four specific buildings in the Vinh Linh town were destroyed.” To support this quote is another from a CIA top secret document . “Headquarters of district administrative committee, state trade office, a theatre and a hospital were also destroyed.” This shows that ORT was a military success as it had done what it intended on doing therefore it had a positive impact as it destroyed military targets.
On the other hand another point is a failure in its military objectives, and had no impact. The military objectives were to kill the Vietcong and bomb them in to surrender. This became a problem for US bombing campaigns as it was hard to tell the Vietcong from the citizens of Vietnam and lots of innocent people lost their lives. The landscape of Vietnam was destroyed and this, along with the death of innocent people made the war unpopular. A quote from Hall has said “Enormous craters dot the landscape in many regions covering dozens of square miles.” To support Hall is a quote from Joseph Buttenger who attempted to document the effect that the war had on people of Vietnam in his book ‘Dragon Defiant’ (1972) “Hundreds of villages were destroyed by bombs and napalm, forests over vast areas defoliated and making the land infertile for years” This shows that it didn’t have much impact on it military objectives as it failed in its objectives.
Lastly, my last point is it had little success on the war as it didn’t impact on the North Vietnamese Army/Viet Cong because of their tactics. The tactics they used were guerrilla tactics where they used thing like land mines and build their own booby traps and build underground tunnels. This made it harder for the US to find the Vietcong. After all of the bombing the Vietcong build tunnels underground to try and risk less lives. The Vietcong also had weapons given to them by China and Russia that could defend against the bombing. A 2011 internet history blogger Abigail Pfeiffer talks about all of the equipment that was used by the North Vietnamese Air Defences. “In 1964 the north Vietnamese air defences included 1,400 AAA guns, 22 accquisitior radars and 4 fire control radars.” To support Pfeiffer in the quote is Ho Chi Minh . At his speech in 1967 he has said that the Vietcong will “never submit to force; never accept talks under the threat of bombs. This shows that Ho Chi Minh wasn’t afraid and he clearly had no intentions on giving up. This shows that the Vietcong had an advantage with defensive weapons, guerrilla tactics and an ambition not to give up. Therefore the bombing campaigns had no impact
Overall, I think that the Operation Rolling Thunder had little impact on the conflict in Vietnam. If the Vietcong had not have changed their tactics and had dug the tunnels then maybe the US bombing may have had a bigger impact than very little impact at all. After all of the bombing the US was forced to change their tactics to other ways of finding the Vietcong. Instead of the bombing they used search and destroy mission to try a kill the Vietcong but again this is a problem because you can’t tell them apart. Search and destroy missions are where the US used planes to go into the villages of Vietnam and burnt down homes and buildings. This was also a failure.