Ho Chi Minh: a revolutionary communist

Published on : 03 April 20195 min reading time

In the city heavy rain. Hidden at the bus stop under the bridge.

The sound of the rain is very strong, it seems that the rain can not be even stronger, but in the next 15 minutes it gets stronger all the time. A certain vibration of the bridge and the earth is already felt.

But, having reached its peak, the rain diminishes rather quickly.

Ho Chi Minh City.

Now, few people know the details of the “American War”. The detailed history of the war goes beyond the scope of this story, so for a general idea, the information will be given in a simplified way.

Ho Chi Minh City is named after Ho Chi Minh. The old name of the city was Saigon.

Ho Chi Minh is a revolutionary communist, a national hero who fought for Vietnam’s independence from the French colonialists.

It should be noted that during this struggle, several million people died in neighboring Vietnam and Cambodia and Laos.

In the first stage, Ho Chi Minh managed to reject France’s demands at the cost of dismembering the country in the South and North Vietnam.

Then, a partisan struggle was waged, which became a direct confrontation with the American superpower.

North and South Vietnam, were divided by 17 parallels.

The Vietnam War began in 1957, when the communist underground of South Vietnam launched an armed struggle against the government of Ngo Dinh Din.

Since 1959, arms deliveries to Viet Cong (partisans) from the territory of North Vietnam have passed through the territory of Cambodia and Laos.

Since 1961, the United States has been directly involved in hostilities. In 1965, they sent a large military contingent to South Vietnam and launched an air bombing campaign in North Vietnam.

By 1968, the White House had not found a way out of this bloody and impassable peat bog. The international prestige of the United States was inferior to the plinth.

Anti-war protests, even in the United States, have turned into acts of disobedience: in clashes with the police, protesters, American citizens, lost their lives.

Despite the huge costs of war and the use of the most modern weapons, the US military could not cope with the partisans and suffered considerable losses. According to official data, 60,000 people.

In 1973, the United States ceased hostilities in Southeast Asia. In 1975, the war ended with the military victory of North Vietnam and the inclusion of South Vietnam in its composition, giving birth to an independent and united Vietnamese state.

About 8 million tons of bombs were dropped on Vietnam, three times more than the United States during the Second World War.

The cost of the Vietnam War has doubled compared to the Second World War.

There were so many bomb fragments that for decades, a specially constructed metallurgical plant worked on the collected scrap metal.

During the war, more than 3 million Vietnamese were killed, including 2 million civilians.

A large number of civilians were killed in Laos and Cambodia, which were also bombed by the United States because of the supply of partisans in southern Vietnam via their territory. The total mass of bombs dropped on Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam is about 14 million tons.

In early 1965, Soviet leaders decided to provide military technical assistance to northern Vietnam. According to A. Kosygin, President of the USSR Council of Ministers, aid to Vietnam cost the Soviet Union 1.5 million rubles a day during the war.

Until the end of the war, the USSR had delivered to North Vietnam 95 anti-aircraft Dvina S-75 missile systems and more than 7.5 thousand missiles, as well as many other weapons.

The Vietnamese made bamboo rocket models with such skill that American pilots often bombed them and imposed their command as a real result.

The approximate statistics on US aircraft shot down on the territory of North Vietnam are as follows: – 2568 (60%) anti-aircraft artillery pieces – 320 (9%) combat aircraft – 1293 (31%) anti-aircraft missiles

In the south of northern Vietnam, the width of the country is only 40 to 80 km; many of the planes fell on the territory of neighboring countries or at sea and were not counted.

After the first losses caused by the air defense missile system, the Americans took countermeasures. The Shrike self-guided missile was launched by an American aircraft to destroy anti-aircraft missile systems.

She was walking along the Dvina’s radar beam, and when she hit it, a multitude of bullets stole her, hitting soldiers and vehicles.

At first, the Soviet army controlled anti-aircraft complexes. According to official figures in Vietnam, fewer than 20 Soviet soldiers died.

The following method was used to fight the Shriks: when it was detected and the radar antenna radiation was turned on, it was set aside or lifted, and the radiation was turned off. The claw magpie, following the maximum of radiation, set aside or up and, after being extinguished, lost the head signal and fell to one side.

But since June 1971. steel will be used missiles with a BLOCK OF MEMORY OF THE OBJECTIVE (in case of sudden end of the radar). Such tactics forced Vietnamese rocket engineers to immediately change the position of the air defense system immediately after the salvo.

The main burden of confrontation in the air was “on the wings” of the two main types of combatants, the outcome of the fighting between them and which mainly determined the course of the struggle.

On the US side, the F-4 Phantom fighter was the main two-person heavy carrier (normal take-off weight over 20 tonnes). He was opposed by light MIGs. At the beginning of the war – MIG-17.

The Mig-17 is a subsonic machine, “weaker” than the American “ghost”. Therefore, they were used “ambushes”, namely:

The MiG-17s were in low-altitude service on the American bombers’ route, because of the low altitude where they were not seen by American radars. As MIG approached, bombers suddenly attacked them.

Escort hunters occupying a higher air corridor often simply did not have the time to prevent Migam.

Vietnamese Army
In the courtyard of the museum …

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