DISASTER AT DIEN BIEN PHU

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DISASTER AT DIEN BIEN PHU

• The end of French rule in Vietnam

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THE SITUATION IN 1954

• France had been fighting an increasing dirty
  war (sale guerre) in Indo-China to keep control
  of Vietnam.
• Despite considerable financial assistance from
  America, the French had not been successful in
  defeating the Viet Minh.
• The French were seeking a means to fight a
  decisive battle to inflict a defeat on the Viet
  Minh.

3
The site of the battle

• Dien Bien Phu was on the border with Laos.
• It was a narrow valley that was a considerable
  distance from French supply lines based around
  Hanoi.

4
The French plan

• Navarre, the French commander, aimed to use
  French forces as a bait for the Viet Minh.
• He did not believe that the Viet Minh could
  assemble a force strong enough to defeat the
  French forces.
• He believed that French tanks and planes could be
  used to destroy the Viet Minh.
• He began to build up an armed camp at Dien Bien
  Phu to encourage the Viet Minh to attack him.

5
An historians view

• As Navarre, the French commander, poured troops
  into Dien Bien Phu, Giap increasingly felt that
  this was the place to stand. The French, he
  observed, were "completely isolated" in the
  valley and dependent on airlifted supplies, which
  meant that they could be strangled. By contrast,
  their domination of the surrounding mountains
  gave the Viet Minh forces both the advantage of
  height for their cannon and a way to bring food
  and equipment in from the rear.
• Karnow, Vietnam A History. 1994

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The Viet Minh buildup

• Giap, the Viet Minh commander, began to build up
  his forces, bringing men and material secretly
  through mountainous areas.
• Navarre built an airfield to act as his main
  supply link to headquarters.

Members of the Peoples Militia resupply Viet
Minh troops around Dien Bien Phu
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A false assumption

• As in modern warfare the role of the artillery
  was to be decisive.
• Navarre did not believe that the Viet Minh could
  provide sufficient artillery to threaten his
  base. He was wrong, as this quote indicates.
• For three days Dong's company had been dragging
  the heavily camouflaged guns up the mountain,
  moving it no more than a yard a minute, half a
  mile in a whole day. To ease its passage, a long
  trench had been hacked out of the limestone by
  hand, and a camouflage of thick foliage had been
  woven into wide nets strung across the gully
  above their heads. The gun was the last of
  twenty-four 105-millimeter howitzers which
  General Giap's 351st. Heavy Artillery Division
  had dragged undetected through the five hundred
  miles of mountainous jungle between Dien Bien Phu
  and the Chinese border.
• Grey, Saigon, 1982

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The Viet Minh strategy

• Giap wanted to wait until he had sufficient
  strength to overwhelm the French.
• He accumulated forces and munitions to be able to
  mount a decisive massed assault.

Viet Minh 50,000, including 33 infantry
battalions, 6 artillery regiments and 1 regiment
of engineers. 20,000 working on supply trails
leading to the valley. French 13,000, half of
whom were inexperienced in combat
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The assault begins

• On 13 March 1954, Giap launched his attack on
  Dien Bien Phu with a huge artillery barrage
  (right)
• Meanwhile Viet Minh troops moved forward to
  attack different French fire bases (right)

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Eliminating the fire bases

• As the artillery pounded the fire bases, Viet
  Minh troops moved in to overwhelm them one by
  one.
• French artillery and planes could not locate and
  destroy the carefully camouflaged guns.
• The airstrip was destroyed, preventing the French
  from easily re-supplying or reinforcing the
  French forces on Dien Bien Phu.

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Reinforcing failure

• Despite the deteriorating situation French
  paratroopers still volunteered to jump into Dien
  Bien Phu to assist with its defence.

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It was the major surprise of the battle."

• "All around our positions, the enemy had created
  a network of camouflaged paths which permitted
  the (unhindered) transport of ammunition ... to
  the vicinity of the batteries. We knew that a
  large number of artillery and antiaircraft gun
  emplacements had been prepared, but their
  camouflage had been so perfect that only a small
  number of them had been located prior to the
  beginning of the attack ... This way of using the
  artillery and AA guns was possible only with the
  "human ant hill" at the disposal of the Vietminh
  and was to make shambles of all the estimates of
  our own artillerymen. It was the major surprise
  of the battle."
• Navarre, Agonie de L'Indochine, 1956

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The final assault

• On 7 May 1954, Giap ordered the final assault on
  the remaining French positions at Dien Bien Phu.
• At 5.30pm Navarre ordered a ceasefire and the
  battle was over.

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Why did the French lose?

• Navarre misread Giap's ability to move a huge
  force rapidly, so that his own troops were
  outnumbered by a ratio of more than five to one
  during the trial by fire. He rejected the notion
  that the Viet Minh could devastate his men with
  artillery deployed on the hills above
  Dienbienphu, nor did he foresee that the enemy
  emplacements would be protected by camouflage and
  antiaircraft guns against bombing from the air.
  He failed to anticipate that Giap's howitzers,
  poised within easy range of his airstrip, would
  cut off flights in and out of the valley, making
  it difficult for his besieged soldiers to receive
  supplies or evacuate wounded - much less withdraw
  themselves. He also chose a terrain presumably
  suitable for tanks only to discover that, unlike
  its description on his maps, its cover of thick
  bush entangled armoured vehicles and its monsoon
  rains flooded the plain in spring.
• Karnow, Vietnam A History 1994

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The cost of the battle

• The battle lasted 55 days.
• The Viet Minh lost 7900 killed and 15,000
  wounded.
• The battle cost 2000 French lives and 5600 were
  wounded.

Some of the 6500 French prisoners that were taken
after the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu.
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What now?

• Though the Viet Minh had won the battle, it did
  not immediately follow that they would become the
  rulers of Vietnam.
• A conference was being held at Geneva to
  determine the future of both Korea and Vietnam.
• In the tense Cold War atmosphere of the time,
  superpowers would determine Vietnams immediate
  future.