The Battles at Dien Bien Phu and Khe Sanh

Paper Summary:

In an effort to better understand the battle at Khe San that involved Americans during the Vietnam War, the paper first examines the historical battle at Dien Bien Phu, which preceded the Khe Sanh battle by ten years. The paper points out that in order to understand the battle at Khe Sanh, it is necessary to first fully understand the Dien Bien Phu battle. The paper then goes on to discuss the battle at Khe Sanh and explain why the dien Bien Phu battle and the Khe Sanh battle were both similar and yet different.

From the Paper:

"During Khe Sanh, which began thirteen years later, the allied forces of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam and the United States defeated the numerically superior North Vietnamese Army. The battle took place on the Khe Sanh plateau in the Quang Tri Province of northern South Vietnam. There, the three phases of the fighting lasted from April 1967 through April 1968. The Khe Sanh plateau was critical terrain because the North Vietnamese Army used area routes to infiltrate into South Vietnam from Laos and the Demilitarized Zone. To curtail that activity, the allied forces had maintained some form of a combat base since 1962, but in1967, the North Vietnamese Army started building up significant conventional forces in the area around the plateau, and in an effort to deny the North Vietnamese Army control of this important terrain, the U.S. started increasing its own strength in the region."

More papers on The Battles at Dien Bien Phu and Khe Sanh:

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• Essay # 15007 : "French Failure at Dien Bien Phu"

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