The Tet Offensive

In late January of 68, when they celebrate the Vietnamese New Year (the festival of Tet) 38 of the 52 capitals of South Vietnam were attacked and many were practically taken. The former Vietnamese imperial capital, Hue, fell to the rebels and took several days to be recovered, after which the massacre was discovered around 3000 civilians by the North Vietnamese.

Saigon was under siege and the U.S. embassy itself was raided by a suicide bomber that almost reached the interior of the building. The Tet Offensive proved very damaging to the forces of EVN and the Viet Cong, but it was much more to the morale of the United States

The surprise was complete for the Americans and the ARVN. Here we find another clue about the U.S defeat in this war: the military intelligence could not provide clear and specific evidence about what was happening and what was coming.

Despite the tons of documents seized from the enemy in operations, the massive use of aerial photography and at the end of the war, spy satellites, to the dispersion of thousands of sensors in the forest and the use of very sophisticated for the time, third-generation computers, the National Security Agency was not aware of preparations for the offensive, nor the magnitude of the complex of tunnels that helped so much, nor the existence of the EVN headquarters in South Vietnamese territory.

So many times it came to situations where intelligence officials marked as important targets places that they really did not know whether they were or not, but if so, that would make up points. Of course these places must be inspected by the infantry. However, the Tet Offensive also kept a little surprise for the North Vietnamese commanding the soldiers in the south.

They resisted the attack with so few desertions and won several feuds. Air power almost completely wiped out the Viet Cong guerrillas (some 40,000 dead according to the U.S) and within days all the territory won by the guerrillas was recovered and the EVN lost most of the troops. Much has been debated whether or not it was the result desired by Giap and the leaders of Hanoi, but the views are almost unanimous on the effects whipped into the United States.