100 Fun Facts About Vietnam War

Vietnam was divided at which line of latitude after the 1954 Geneva Conference?

The Soviets and Chinese pushed the Viet Minh leader to accept it, arguing he would win the promised elections within a couple of years.

Which 1954 battle ended French rule in Indochina?

The Viet Minh hauled heavy artillery up the mountains around the French garrison and besieged it for eight weeks.

Which Viet Minh general commanded the 1954 siege that defeated the French?

The Geneva Accords were signed ten weeks after the garrison fell.

Who led South Vietnam from 1954 until his overthrow and death in a 1963 coup?

The coup was US-backed and came three weeks before Kennedy's own assassination.

The 1963 religious crisis in South Vietnam erupted after protesters in Hue were shot for displaying what?

The government was seen as favouring Catholics; Diem's brother Nhu ran the secret police blamed for the repression.

The Gulf of Tonkin incident of August 1964 involved which US destroyer?

It exchanged fire with three North Vietnamese torpedo boats on 2 August and came away with a single bullet hole.

What did later investigation conclude about the reported second Tonkin attack on 4 August 1964?

The ships had fired on radar returns; no North Vietnamese vessels were there.

The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution gave sweeping war powers to which president?

Congress passed it on 7 August 1964, five days after the first incident.

Operation Rolling Thunder was what kind of campaign?

It ran from March 1965 to November 1968 and dropped a million tons of ordnance on the North.

Which country became the most heavily bombed in history as the US tried to cut the Ho Chi Minh Trail?

Two million tons fell on it between 1964 and 1973, roughly what the US dropped on Europe and Asia in all of World War II.

The Ho Chi Minh Trail ran from North to South Vietnam mainly through which country?

The communists called it the Truong Son Strategic Supply Route after the Annamite mountains.

Which rival supply route, named for a neutral prince, carried more material than the one through Laos?

Cambodia's Prince Sihanouk had declared neutrality but let the North use the port of Sihanoukville.

The 1965 Battle of Ia Drang was notable as the first large-scale use of what tactic?

It was also the first time B-52s were used in tactical support; Hal Moore's account became We Were Soldiers Once... and Young.

Which US commander in Vietnam predicted victory by December 1967 and pushed the 'body count' metric?

He was replaced by his deputy Abrams in March 1968 after Tet and a leaked request for 200,000 more troops.

The Tet Offensive of 1968 was named after what?

Most South Vietnamese soldiers were on holiday leave when more than 100 cities were attacked.

Which building in Saigon was famously attacked during the opening of Tet?

The assault was a military failure but a public-relations disaster after months of official optimism.

Roughly how many communist troops took part in the Tet Offensive?

The offensive was a tactical defeat for them, with more than 45,000 killed.

Eddie Adams's Pulitzer-winning photograph 'Saigon Execution' shows a Viet Cong prisoner shot by whom?

General Nguyen Ngoc Loan pulled the trigger on 1 February 1968 in front of a film camera as well.

The Marine base besieged for 77 days in early 1968 was at which location?

Operation Niagara pounded the surrounding hills; Westmoreland insisted Tet was merely a distraction from it.

Which 1968 contingency plan weighed nuclear weapons in Vietnam before the White House killed it?

The other three were real conventional bombing operations.

The My Lai massacre of March 1968 took place in which South Vietnamese province?

Charlie Company was expecting to find a Viet Cong battalion that was not there.

Which helicopter pilot intervened to stop the killing at My Lai and was later decorated for it?

Ridenhour and journalist Seymour Hersh broke the story to the public in November 1969.

Of the 26 soldiers charged over My Lai, how many were convicted?

Lieutenant William Calley got a life sentence for 22 murders but served three and a half years under house arrest.

The policy of handing the fighting to South Vietnamese forces while US troops withdrew was called what?

He began troop withdrawals in 1969 while secretly bombing Cambodia in Operation Menu.

Which phrase did the president elected in 1968 use for the Americans he claimed supported the war?

The 1968 election had been won on his claim to have a secret plan to end the war.

The Kent State shootings of May 1970 followed protests over the war expanding into which country?

Ohio National Guardsmen fired about 67 rounds in 13 seconds, killing four students and wounding nine.

How many students were killed at Kent State?

Nine more were wounded, one of them permanently paralysed.

Who leaked the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times in 1971?

Charges against him were dropped after it emerged the White House Plumbers had broken into his psychiatrist's office.

Which defense secretary commissioned the secret study that became the Pentagon Papers?

He did not tell President Johnson or the Secretary of State it existed.

In the first Vietnam draft lottery of December 1969, which birthday was drawn first?

Every man born on that date between 1944 and 1950 got lottery number one.

Agent Orange was sprayed under which operation?

It contained trace amounts of TCDD, the most toxic of the dioxins.

Besides Dow Chemical, which other well-known company produced Agent Orange?

Nine chemical companies in total made the herbicide.

What was 'Hanoi Hilton' the sardonic nickname for?

Hoa Lo Prison was built by the French around 1900; its name is usually translated as 'fiery furnace'.

The 1972 Easter Offensive by North Vietnam prompted which US air campaign?

The North attacked with 300,000 troops and hundreds of tanks as US ground forces were leaving.

The December 1972 'Christmas bombing' of Hanoi and Haiphong went by what name?

It was meant to force Hanoi back to the table and reassure a reluctant Saigon.

Which two negotiators of the Paris Peace Accords were awarded the 1973 Nobel Peace Prize?

The North Vietnamese negotiator refused to accept it.

On what date were the Paris Peace Accords signed?

The deal let 200,000 communist troops stay in the South and set up a prisoner exchange.

Operation Frequent Wind, the final airlift out of Saigon, holds what record?

More than 7,000 people were lifted out over the final two days before the city fell.

What song, played on Armed Forces Radio, was the secret signal that the Saigon evacuation had begun?

It followed a coded weather report about the temperature being 105 degrees and rising.

Why were some helicopters pushed off US Navy ships during the evacuation of Saigon?

The decks were clogged with South Vietnamese aircraft that kept arriving.

Saigon fell to North Vietnam on which date?

The city was renamed the same day.

Saigon was renamed after which person?

He had died of heart failure in 1969 and never saw the reunification.

Under what name was Ho Chi Minh born?

He used dozens of aliases in his life and gave at least five different birth years.

What job did the young Ho Chi Minh hold on the Newhaven–Dieppe ferry in 1913?

The story that he trained under Escoffier at London's Carlton Hotel has never been documented.

The term 'Viet Cong' is a contraction of a phrase meaning what?

It began as an insult used by anti-communist nationalists and stuck.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall in Washington was designed by whom?

She was a 21-year-old Yale student when her minimalist design won; the Three Servicemen statue was added later to placate critics.

In what order are the names listed on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial?

The list starts at the apex in 1959, runs to the end of the east wall, then resumes at the far end of the west wall and returns to the apex in 1975.

Which two major US allies declined to send troops to Vietnam?

Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, the Philippines and South Korea all sent forces under the Many Flags programme.

Approximately how many US service members died in the Vietnam War?

Estimates for Cambodian deaths run to 300,000 and the Vietnamese toll to well over a million.

Who won the 1972 US presidential election against a rival who promised immediate withdrawal from Vietnam?

George McGovern's platform of leaving at once was crushed in a landslide.

Which future game show host served in Vietnam as an Army disc jockey on the Dawn Buster radio show?

Pat Sajak signed on each morning with the same shouted greeting Adrian Cronauer made famous, more than a decade before he took over Wheel of Fortune.

Which country stood in for Vietnam when Stanley Kubrick shot Full Metal Jacket in a derelict gasworks?

England doubled for Vietnam: the ruined city of Hue was the disused Beckton Gas Works in East London, dressed with 200 palm trees imported from Spain.

Which conference detail did delegates to the Paris peace talks on Vietnam argue over before negotiating?

The shape of the table mattered because a round one would seat the Viet Cong as Saigon's equals; the compromise was a circular table ringed by separate square ones.

What is the nickname of the US Navy fighter school founded in 1969 after poor dogfight results over Vietnam?

Top Gun grew out of a 1968 Navy study into the failings of its air-to-air missiles against North Vietnamese fighters, and a 1986 film made the school a household name.

Operation Popeye, a secret US program, tried to stop North Vietnamese supply trucks by doing what?

Seeding clouds to make rain was meant to stretch the monsoon by 30 to 45 days a year, turning dirt supply roads to mud and setting off landslides.

Which heavyweight boxing champion was stripped of his title in 1967 for refusing the draft during the Vietnam War?

Muhammad Ali was convicted of draft evasion and kept out of the ring for more than three years; the Supreme Court threw out the verdict 8–0 in 1971, months after his comeback.

Which US president pardoned Vietnam War draft evaders unconditionally on his first full day in office?

Jimmy Carter kept a campaign promise the day after his inauguration, but the pardon covered only draft evaders and left out those who had deserted.

Which lighter brand did a 1965 CBS report show US Marines using to set village huts alight in Vietnam?

Zippo lighters doubled as soldiers' diaries: troops had them engraved with personal mottos, and the surviving originals became sought-after collectors' items.

Which Peter, Paul and Mary song title became US troops' nickname for the AC-47 gunship in Vietnam?

Puff the Magic Dragon was a C-47 transport, the military DC-3, refitted with three miniguns firing out of its left side; its radio call sign was simply Puff.

Which country's founding declaration supplied the opening sentence of Vietnam's own proclamation in 1945?

The United States gave the speech its first line, on the equality of all men; an American OSS officer, Archimedes Patti, said Ho read him a draft days earlier and that he offered corrections to that sentence.

Which CBS anchorman told viewers in February 1968 that the Vietnam War was heading for a stalemate?

Walter Cronkite had just returned from a reporting trip made in the wake of the Tet Offensive, and an opinion poll later named him the country's most trusted man.

Which Creedence Clearwater Revival single of 1969 attacked the way the well-connected escaped the Vietnam draft?

Fortunate Son took John Fogerty about 20 minutes to write, with David Eisenhower, the grandson of a president, in mind.

Which 1986 Best Picture winner did Oliver Stone base on his own time as an infantryman in Vietnam?

Platoon was the first Hollywood film written and directed by a Vietnam veteran, and Stone gave himself a cameo as an officer in its final battle.

Which Joseph Conrad novella did Francis Ford Coppola transplant to the Vietnam War for the 1979 film Apocalypse Now?

Heart of Darkness is set in the Congo of the late 19th century, and the film keeps the name Kurtz for the renegade colonel played by Marlon Brando.

What nickname did US soldiers give Dong Ap Bia, the A Shau Valley ridge they stormed and then abandoned in 1969?

Hamburger Hill got its name from troops who said the fight ground men up like meat; the Army left the summit within weeks, and senators attacked the generals over it.

Which district outside Saigon hid the vast tunnel network that served as a Viet Cong base for the Tet Offensive?

Cu Chi's tunnels held hospitals, weapon stores and sleeping quarters, and one stretch was later widened so that visitors could crawl through it.

Near which South Vietnamese coastal city did 3,500 US Marines land in March 1965, opening the American ground war?

Da Nang drew the Marines because its air base needed guarding, and that base grew into one of the busiest airfields in the world.

Which Bell helicopter, officially the UH-1 Iroquois, became the workhorse and enduring symbol of the Vietnam War?

The Huey took its nickname from its original designation, HU-1, and the name stuck even after the Army renumbered the aircraft UH-1 in 1962.

What slang term did US troops in Vietnam coin for attacking their own officers, usually with a grenade?

Fragging took its name from the fragmentation grenade, which let a killing pass as an accident or enemy action; some 900 explosive attacks were logged from 1969 to 1972.

Which nickname did US troops in Vietnam commonly use for the Viet Cong?

Charlie came from Victor Charlie, the way radio operators spelled out VC, and troops stretched the name to cover North Vietnamese regulars as well.

Which future US senator and presidential nominee was shot down over North Vietnam in 1967 and held for over five years?

John McCain refused an early release that his captors offered once his father, an admiral, took command of all US forces in the Vietnam theater.

Which future secretary of state commanded a Swift boat in Vietnam, then testified against the war before the Senate?

John Kerry was wounded three times in combat, then told the Fulbright hearings that US policy in Vietnam was itself the cause of war crimes.

Which future US vice president enlisted after Harvard and served in Vietnam in 1971 as an Army journalist?

Al Gore enlisted so that his draft status could not be turned against his father, an anti-war senator who lost his seat before Gore shipped out.

What word did captured Navy pilot Jeremiah Denton blink in Morse code during a 1966 North Vietnamese TV interview?

Torture, spelled out with his eyelids while he feigned trouble with the studio lights, gave US naval intelligence its first confirmation of how captives were being treated.

Which comedian's 1970 NBC special, filmed before troops in Vietnam, drew one of the highest US ratings ever?

Bob Hope made 57 USO tours between 1941 and 1991, though in Vietnam he had trouble persuading other performers to join him.

Which civil rights leader denounced the Vietnam War from the pulpit of New York's Riverside Church in April 1967?

Martin Luther King Jr. gave the speech exactly one year before his assassination, and the NAACP and leading newspapers called it a mistake.

Which freelance reporter exposed the My Lai massacre in 1969 and won a Pulitzer Prize for the story?

Seymour Hersh saw the story rejected by Life and Look, so a small anti-war news service sold it to 35 newspapers instead.

Which novelist and Vietnam veteran wrote The Things They Carried, a 1990 collection of stories about foot soldiers?

Tim O'Brien made himself the book's protagonist and dedicated it to the fictional men of Alpha Company, blurring the line between memoir and invention.

Which US president restored full diplomatic relations with Vietnam two decades after the fall of Saigon?

Bill Clinton had lifted the US trade embargo on Vietnam the year before, and he made a historic visit to the country himself in November 2000.

Which general, later the namesake of the Army's M1 battle tank, took command of US forces in Vietnam in 1968?

Creighton Abrams was rated by George Patton as his one peer among tank commanders, and he ran the war until 1972 before becoming Army chief of staff.

Which elite Army unit was the subject of Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler's ballad, the top Billboard single of 1966?

The Green Berets were Sadler's own outfit: he began the song while training as a Special Forces medic, and it held number one for five weeks.

Which Puccini opera is retold in Miss Saigon, the 1989 musical set around the fall of South Vietnam?

Madama Butterfly's geisha and naval lieutenant became a Saigon bar girl and a US Marine, and the musical grew out of a magazine photograph its composer came across by chance.

Which river's delta in southern Vietnam was patrolled by the assault boats of the US brown-water navy?

The Mekong delta was home to the Mobile Riverine Force, which paired Navy assault boats with an Army infantry brigade and operated from a floating base.

Which Asian ally sent some 320,000 troops to fight in Vietnam over the war, a foreign force second only to the US?

South Korea was repaid with billions of dollars in US grants, loans and contracts, money that helped several of its biggest conglomerates take off.

Which country's D Company held off a far larger Viet Cong force in a rubber plantation at Long Tan in August 1966?

Australia's D Company, 108 men counting a three-man New Zealand artillery observer party, fought through a monsoon downpour that cut visibility to about 50 metres and turned the ground to mud.

Which country launched a surprise invasion of Vietnam in February 1979, less than four years after Saigon fell?

China struck to teach its former ally a lesson for toppling a friendly regime next door, then pulled its troops back after about a month.

Which harbor city declared itself a port of first asylum for Vietnamese boat people and kept camps open until 2000?

Hong Kong held more than 64,000 boat people at the peak in 1991, and its last camp, at Pillar Point, shut only in May 2000.

Which neutral European country openly granted asylum to several hundred American deserters during the Vietnam War?

Sweden took in around 800 deserters and draft dodgers and welcomed them publicly, which soured its relations with Washington.

What did US helicopter loudspeakers play over the jungle at night to scare Viet Cong fighters into deserting?

Recorded ghostly voices, the heart of Operation Wandering Soul, played on a belief that the unburied dead wander in pain forever, but fighters who saw through the trick simply shot at the sound.

Which airline, covertly owned by the CIA, flew cargo and agents across Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War?

Air America grew into the largest air carrier in the region despite its secret owner, and it shut down in 1976, a year after Saigon fell.

Which Cold War idea did Eisenhower describe in 1954, warning that losing Indochina would start a chain reaction?

The domino theory pictured countries toppling one after another, and successive US administrations used it to justify intervening far from home.

Which change did the 26th Amendment make in 1971, pushed along by anger at 18-year-olds being drafted for Vietnam?

It lowered the voting age from 21 to 18, after campaigners pointed out that draftees could be sent to war yet had no say at the ballot box.

What did Mary Beth Tinker and fellow Iowa students wear to school in 1965 to protest against the Vietnam War?

Black armbands got Mary Beth and two others suspended, and in 1969 the Supreme Court ruled that students keep their free-speech rights at school.

What name did New Yorker television critic Michael Arlen coin for the Vietnam War as Americans watched it at home?

The living-room war was also the title of Arlen's first book, a 1969 collection of his television columns, and the phrase became a staple of writing on the conflict.

Agent Orange, the herbicide sprayed over South Vietnam's forests, took its name from what?

A stripe on its drums, painted orange, identified the blend inside each 55-gallon container, which was sprayed to strip away jungle cover from 1962 to 1971.

Which CIA-designed campaign of the Vietnam War set out to destroy the Viet Cong's political infrastructure?

The Phoenix Program counted 81,740 suspects as neutralized, roughly a third of them killed, and critics branded it an assassination campaign.

What was the formal name of the Viet Cong's umbrella organization, established in December 1960?

The National Liberation Front was founded at a village in Tay Ninh Province on North Vietnam's initiative, to stir up insurgency in the South.

Which general was president of South Vietnam from 1967 until he resigned days before the fall of Saigon?

Nguyen Van Thieu had taken power as head of a military junta in 1965, and after leaving for Taipei he eventually settled near Boston.

On which US carrier did a South Vietnamese major land a two-seat Cessna carrying his wife and five children?

USS Midway's crew learned of the plan from a note the pilot dropped on a low pass, and he put the little plane down on the center line with no tailhook to stop it.

Which Saigon building's gates did a North Vietnamese tank crash through on the final morning of the war?

Independence Palace was the seat of South Vietnam's president, and after the war it became known as Reunification Hall.