50 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.