Talk:NLF and PAVN strategy, organization and structure

message: The focus of this article is on battle from the VC/NVA point of view, as opposed to the massive flood of material covering the American perspective. Does not attempt in-depth coverage of political history, American battles, American equipment, communist theory, political personalities, or general Vietnamese history. For these the reader is referred to the detailed articles below, It seeks to fill a missing gap - a ground-level strategic and tactical view of how communist forces won their war.
*Weapons of the Vietnam War
*Vietnam War (lists)
*Vietnam War
*Guerrilla warfare
*Communism
*Vietnam
Gathering material now to launch. If anyone has any relevant material, by all means. Admittedly article might be a bit ambitious and might need scaling back, but that will be seeen in time. It fills a gap in the other Wiki Articles on Vietnam which cover mostly:
*a names and dates historical rundown, 
*American weapons or equipment, or
*political personalities.
*individual battles from American point of view
The gap to be filled is a "ground level" view of "how" and "why" the VC and NVA fought as they did from their point of view. How for example did the VC/NVA "three strongs" doctrine stack up against  hard-nosed battalions of Marine or Army troops? Focus is on MILITARY aspects to avoid getting bogged down in pro/anti-war arguments. Those arguments are best left for a more political history type article not this one. Good articles of individual US Military ops to be referenced but not duplicated here. Enriquecardova 05:07, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed. Which is precisely the reason for this article. There is a lot on AMerican technology and the political aspects, but little on the HOW of the communist side. To understand the full picture of course, things like organization, weapons, logistics and some ideology must be talked about. It is not POV to say that communist theory influenced VC/NVA operations for example- this is part and parcel of the entire Vietnam War. Guerilla warfare mixes politics and war closely. On the balance however the military side is the focus. There is a lot of technical material that may require its own article.Enriquecardova 23:54, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Focus of article

message: Current headings/outline are meant to serve as a guide to help with the info flow, not a rigid structure by any means.
Due to time constraints, currently focusing on putting content in the article, with more detailed editing and Wikification to be done later. Enriquecardova 23:56, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Headings meant to serve as a guide

message: Article had been renamed to Viet Cong and PAVN strategy and tactics
by User-Blnguyen. This may technically be more correct as both forces were part of PAVN, although the term NVA is used throughout most of the American literature to refer to ground force regulars of PAVN. Leaving the change/rename for now.Enriquecardova 21:55, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Title of Article

message: Ths section incorporates technical notes  on VC/NVA weapons and organization not in the main body of the article, from earlier versions of the article. Information from these notes and earlier versions is worked into the article but may need its own separate write-up. They are included here for reference. 
Diversity of communist force weapons
* A partial list of the range of communist arms is shown below:
::SKS Rifles,
::K-98 or japanese similar,
::Submachine guns
::MAT-49 modified barrel to fire Mauser-type or Tokarev Ammo(.45)
::Captured "Grease Gun" American Submachine gun
::PPSH Russian Submachine gun,
::AK-47 Kalashinikov assault rifle
::Chicon T-56 Chinese clone
::mozin-nagant russian rifle
::captured M14,or other american rifles,
::Machine guns:
::RPK and RPD russian,
::captured BAR type
::Vickers machine gun,
::Tokarev Pistol .45 mauser type bullets(76.2,not AK type)
::Makarov pistol 9 mm
* The M-16 compared to the Ak-47: When first introduced, the M-16 sometimes jammed and failed to extract the spent cartridge. This flaw cost the lives of several US troops. Later corrections improved the M-16, fulfilling its promise as an accurate, automatic rifle with greater range than the Ak-47.
American operations
The other weapon the Vietcong used was booby traps. These were crucial to the morale building of the Vietcong and brought down American morale. Searches that used to be called search and destroy soon were called search and avoid. The booby traps the Vietcong used were simple, yet lethal. The booby traps weren't however the full attack, when a soldier went down injured a group formed around him and then the Vietcong snipers had a field day and killed the rest of the soldiers. These search and destroy mission took a toll on the Americans and as morale went down so did the will to fight, soon the Americans came to realise they were fighting a war that was already lost. Missions such as search and destroy affected a lot of soldiers psychologically.
Whent the Vietcong built the tunnels to avoid Agent Orange they made a concealed entrance to a cooking station.  They would keep food and spare weapons there.  If the Vietcong were trapped underground they would be able to secretly collect enough food supplies for the soldiers.
---------------
Writer unknown but contribution listed here for reference as info given is incorporated into article.
Enriquecardova 06:46, 17 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Technical Notes and earlier versions

message: This article is very long and needs to be spun off into smaller sub-articles. Blnguyen  (bananabucket) 07:05, 13 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed. I have made a 3-way split as follows, with the main article being renamed strategy and organization. Hope it works.
*NLF and PAVN strategy, organization and structure
*NLF and PAVN logistics and equipment
*NLF and PAVN battle tactics
Enriquecardova (talk) 06:25, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

text: Shouldn't there be parallelism in the choice of names? If you want officialese, it should be "PLAF and PAVN." If want common names, it should be "Vietcong and North Vietnamese." Kauffner (talk) 15:37, 17 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Forking 

message: I removed the photo of the execution of  Nguyen Van Lem. Currently, it lacks a fair use rationale for this article, as we need to add according to the non-free content policy. Normally I'd add one, but in this case I'm not sure how it would be worded - the image was being used to illustrate General Nguyen Loc Loan, rather than for its own sake, and the photo itself wasn't discussed in the article beyond describing it. Thus I figured I had better leave it to someone else who knows the topic better to work out if the photo is required here for that purpose. My apologies if this causes in problems. - Bilby (talk) 13:09, 2 July 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  General Nguyen Loc Loan photo 

message: Has anybody noticed that the top 5 contributors to this article were either sock puppets who have been banned or unregistered editors?  
There's good material in this article, but the presentation and the language leave a lot to be desired and the POV is not always neutral.  I don't know whether I have the fortitude to undertake a full revision of the article, but it needs it. Smallchief (talk  08:49, 7 September 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Sock puppets wrote this article

message: Was it divided into the same regions as the military organization? I don't see anything about this in the article. 108.45.79.25 (talk) 18:06, 7 March 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  So what was the political and administrative structure, outside the military organization? 

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thread_title:  A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion