Its like a teacher waved a magic wand and did the work for me. AIR FORCE * ^ 1st Cavalry Division was the unit with most casualties suffered during the Vietnam War with 32,036; including 5,444 KIA and 26,592 wounded. From 1965 to 1975, nearly 500,000 Marines served in Southeast Asia. November 19, 1967 was one of the bloodiest days for American troops in the Vietnam War. Battle of Hamburger Hill. Johnson raised the number of South Vietnam deployments to 23,000 U.S. soldiers by the end of his first year in office. NVA/VC Casualties Reported by III MAF Units: 756 : H: Marine Aircraft . Casualties fluctuated considerably from year to year, but a degree of accuracy can be inferred from the fact that 500,000 was 59 percent of the 849,018 total and that 59 percent of the war's days had passed by the time of Fallaci's conversation with Giap. 1968 Tet Offensive - Hanoi failed in its most ambitious goal of producing a general uprising in the South, it suffered more than 45,267 (mainly Viet Cong) deaths but gained a propaganda, political and strategic victory. An addition 3 million Vietnamese were left wounded and around 12 million were refugees. Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War: A Political, Social, and Military History. Estimates of casualties of the Vietnam War vary widely. The U.S. military has estimated that between 200,000 and 250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers died. The 'shameful gamesmanship' practiced by 'certain reporting elements' under pressure to 'produce results' also shrouded the process. Revolutionary War. A Korean War era soldier and later an attorney in Hays, Kansas, Richard became aware that the government had not made public a central source of information regarding the servicemen and women who died as a result of service in Vietnam. When reunification elections were set to start, South Vietnamese government officials refused to participate. My Lai (4) and My Khe (4) (collectively the My Lai Massacre) claimed the largest number of victims with 420 and 90 respectively, and in five other places a total of about 100 civilians were executed. [2], Arapaho tribe Cheyenne tribeLakota tribes, Vichy FranceItalian Social Republic 19431945Kingdom of Italy19421943, American units with the highest percentage of casualties per conflict, US units with most casualties per conflict, Union and Confederate numbers added together, The 215 casualty figure is disputed. The war was fought on Vietnamese land, in addition to the territories of Cambodia and Laos. He estimated that victims of democide (deliberate killing of civilians) included 214,000 by North Vietnam/VC and 98,000 by South Vietnam and its allies. 1975. Unit: Nickname: KIA: Comment: 1st Cavalry Division: First . For more information see Vietnam War casualties and Aircraft losses of the Vietnam War The Vietnam War (also known by other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos . The Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Washington, D.C.. Major incidents. Furthermore, the murder of children was not uncommon to prevent them from joining the armed forces in the future, making up around 15% of total deaths. KIA. [1][note 1] The word casualty has been used in a military context since at least 1513. Another potential limitation is the relatively small sample size of the study. A Korean War era soldier and later an attorney in Hays, Kansas, Richard became aware that the government had not made public a central source of information regarding the servicemen and women who died as a result of service in Vietnam. Shelby L. Stanton, 'The Rise and Fall of an American Army,' Spa Books, 1989, xvi. ; 1972 Easter Offensive - This saw 50,000 to 75,000 North Vietnamese combatants . Officer casualties of all branches were overwhelmingly white. Apart from these few restrictions, the Coffelt Database is open to the public - just as Richard Coffelt intended. Others now continue the work Richard began 30 years ago. Many of these deaths were suspected to be murders, often targeting able-bodied young men who could pose a threat to the other side should they have chosen to join the military. Shelby Stanton, writing in The Rise and Fall of an American Army, declined to include casualty statistics because of their 'general unreliability.' Search and destroy was a term to describe operations aimed at flushing the Viet Cong out of hiding, while body count was the measuring stick for operation success and this resulted in exaggeration and listing civilian deaths as enemy KIA. Unit Best Practice Resources Sample Unit LDP Orders Leadership Toolkits . | 9 Please refer to the appropriate style manual or other sources if you have any questions. Chapter 17 index: "Communists provided further corroboration of the proximity of their casualty figures to American figures in a postwar disclosure of total losses from 1960 to 1975. That can include disabled by injuries, disabled by psychological trauma, captured, deserted, or missing. On Nov. 23, 1968, The Philadelphia Tribune wrote of large . The United States lost 58,220 known military personnel. [21] During the peak war years, another scholar Guenter Lewy attributed almost a third of civilian deaths to the VC. The riot at the Long Binh Jail is the most publicized of thousands of racial incidents reported in South Vietnam between 1968 and 1971. [19], Other casualties for the ARVN included up to 1,170,000 military wounded,[59] and 1,000,000 surrendered or captured. [11][12][13][14] It was difficult to distinguish between civilians and military personnel in many instances as many individuals were part-time guerrillas or impressed laborers who did not wear uniforms. Rummel calculated PAVN/VC deaths at 1,062,000 and ARVN and allied war deaths of 741,000, with both totals including civilians inadvertently killed. The boat people's first destinations were the Southeast Asian locations of Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, and Thailand. [32] and studies have shown higher rates of casualties, health effects, and next-generation birth defects in Vietnamese peoples. Over 58,000 American troops were killed in Vietnam, with more still not identified. [77] Additionally, according to the U.S. military, they also lost up to 101,511 personnel as defectors due to the Chieu Hoi program,[78] but one analyst speculates that less than 25% of those were genuine. Congress authorized troop deployment in Vietnam, but, because it did not issue a declaration of war on North Vietnam or the Viet Cong, the Vietnam War is, technically speaking, not considered a war in the United States. I had just returned from Iraq and was working with Vietnam veterans who'd served in . Vietnamese soldiers and an unknown number of civilian casualties in South and North Vietnam (Browne 1994: 1). Copies of WWII though Vietnam era (men born April 28, 1877 to March 28, 1957) Selective Service Records may be obtained from the National Personnel Records Center, in St. Louis, for a fee. The wide disparity among the estimates cited below is partially explained by the different time periods of the Vietnam War covered by the studies and whether casualties in Cambodia and Laos were included in the estimates. Around 3.8 million casualties were suffered in total between both sides, with nearly half being civilian deaths. . 1st Battalion, 9th Marines. 7. The American death toll in the Vietnam War is currently known to be 58,220. In the United States, the Vietnam War became known as one of the most unpopular wars . A 1975 US Senate subcommittee estimated around 1.4 million civilian casualties in South Vietnam because of the war, including 415,000 deaths. Combat Area Casualties Dataset. Approximately 8,000 Coast Guardsmen served in Vietnam - but our legacy does not stop there. Civil War Deaths | How Many People Died in the Civil War? Back in the US, support for the war waned and calls to withdraw from Vietnam grew louder. In 1980 Richard set out to determine the unit of assignment for each Army soldier who died in Vietnam. Two major war memorials commemorating the dead soldiers in the Second Indochina War (a.k.a. [36][37][38][39] The My Lai Massacre was initially written off as an operational success and covered up. Estimates of the total number of deaths in the Vietnam War vary widely. One study estimated that American commanders exaggerated body counts by 100 percent. In 1975 South Vietnam fell to a full-scale invasion by the North. Their estimates for conflict deaths in Vietnam are 164,923 from 195564 and 1,458,050 from 196575 for a total of 1,622,973. The Viet Cong amassed an estimated 2.3 million troops by 1975. 13,091. The additional resources allowed the project's scope to expand to include unit of assignment information for all service branches. On October 22, 1957, the U.S. forces suffered their first hostile casualties. It was first used in 1962 and was effective at its job. Following the end of French colonial rule in 1954 and break-up of the former French Indochina, the United States assumed the political mentorship and primary . Department of Veterans Affairs BIRLS Death File, 1850-2010: see the "National Cemeteries and Beneficiaries" section below. All three men died in spring of 2020 of COVID-19 after . Of the 7877 officer casualties, 7595 or 96.4% were white, 147 or 1.8% were black; 24 or . Both American/South Vietnamese forces and the Viet Cong can be held accountable for the number of civilian deaths, but the Viet Cong had a larger hand in overtaking villages and using more offensive military tactics to draw out the South Vietnamese forces. They also are AT-CTI certified. flashcard sets. After 1975. SOG had a casualty rate of 100 percenteveryone who served in SOG was either wounded, most multiple times, or . In 1995 Vietnam released its official estimate of the number of people killed during the Vietnam War: as many as 2,000,000 civilians on both sides and some 1,100,000 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong fighters. This group was made up almost entirely of either working-class or rural youth. The Internet cannot and has not replaced on-the-spot investigation, though; in example, one member of the Coffelt Group has photographed over 80,000 documents at the LBJ and Nixon Presidential Libraries and in the National Archives. Others are still yet to be discovered and over 1,200 Americans are still unaccounted for. Deaths in the Vietnam War. Veterans were viewed negatively for their participation in the war, even if it was not by their choice to do so. Regarding killed in action the 1st Marine Division was the unit with the highest . The battle was later dramatized in the film We Were Soldiers. The United States also reduced support troops, and in March 1971 the 5th Special Forces Group, the first American unit deployed to South Vietnam, withdrew to Fort Bragg, . A. Two other cleanup sites being reviewed by the United States and Vietnam are Bin Ha Air Base, in the southern province of ng Naia 'hotspot' for dioxinand Ph Ct Air Base in Bnh nh Province, according to U.S. The Vietnam War was fought in Vietnamese territory between mainly South Vietnam/the United States and the Viet Cong of North Vietnam. The forces involved in this war (by the conclusion of the war) included: The war was fought in dense jungle terrain, so the American military developed a chemical solution known as Agent Orange to burn through the brush and lure out the hiding Viet Cong forces. non-hostile occurrence or who were missing in action or prisoners of war in the Southeast Asian combat area during the Vietnam War, including casualties that occurred in Cambodia, China, Laos, North Vietnam, South Vietnam, and Thailand. In 2002, an early version of the Coffelt Database was deeded to the National Archives, which made it available on-line as a searchable database. This totals, from a range of between 16,000 and 167,000 deaths caused by South Vietnam during the (Dim-era), and 42,000 and 118,000 deaths caused by South Vietnam in the post Dim-era), excluding PAVN forces killed by the ARVN in combat. They have a Bachelor's in Air Traffic Management from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and minored in Aviation Safety and Homeland Security. Memorial pages honoring Vietnam War casualties, listed by their last names. He estimates that between 30 and 46% of the total war deaths were civilians. [3], A 1995 demographic study in Population and Development Review calculated 791,0001,141,000 war-related Vietnamese deaths, both soldiers and civilians, for all of Vietnam from 196575. [20] About 130 American and 16,000 South Vietnamese POWs died in captivity. Week of November 22. [71] The official US Department of Defense figure was 950,765 communist forces killed in Vietnam from 1965 to 1974. [1] 80 lessons We do not sell any of the items showcased on this site. The film follows the experiences of both Moore, portrayed by Mel Gibson, and his wife, Julia, played by Madeleine Stowe. The Viet Cong used the jungle terrain to their advantage both as a means of hiding, as well as a place to bury pressure-sensor explosives to wipe out unsuspecting bands of patrolling enemy forces. It granted him broad latitude in handling the struggle against communism in Southeast Asia. [40][37] Sometimes civilian casualties from airstrikes or artillery barrages against villages were reported as "enemies killed". Both were present at the Battle of Ia Drang, the first large-scale engagement of the Vietnam War. 8. Lochren) subtracted the muster figures (262-47=215)(82.1%) and asserted that "[every one of the] 215 [missing men] lay upon the field. Pentagon statistics listed 39,000 and 61,000 PRG/DRV dead for the same time period.". Although North Vietnamese and Viet Cong casualty counts vary wildly, it is generally understood that they suffered several times the number of American casualties. U.S. Army Personnel and Dependent Casualties, 1961-1981 85% of the records in this database are related to the Vietnam Conflict. Killed in Action (KIA); Died while Missing. And John Sullivan enlisted in the Navy after graduating high school and served as a second class machinist mate during the Vietnam War. Weakened by defeat in the war, France withdrew its forces in 1945. The Vietnam War began mainly over political conflict between Ho Chi Minh's Communist state of North Vietnam and the U.S.-supported democracy of South Vietnam. . In that respect, it failed: the two Vietnams were united under a communist banner in July 1976. Total. Enrolling in a course lets you earn progress by passing quizzes and exams. These are the most accurate estimates of the death tolls for each group of fighters: Civilians made up a large portion of the casualties in the Vietnam War. Many were never directly involved in the fighting, but rather were only caught in the crosshairs of South Vietnamese and North Vietnamese forces. He took over the city of Hanoi and declared independence from France in 1954. The Vietnam War was a long, deadly struggle that took place from 1954 to 1975 between North Vietnam and South Vietnam. The number of these "boat people" leaving Vietnam and arriving safely in another country totalled almost 800,000 between 1975 and 1995. [29] American bombing in Cambodia is estimated to have killed between 30,000 and 150,000 civilians and combatants. [55] These policies were also reported on by US commanders, with one US Marine General stating "whenever the Korean marines received fire "or think [they got] fired on from a village they'd divert from their march and go over and completely level the village it would be a lesson to (the Vietnamese). NAVY * In the late 1990s, others joined Richard's effort, contributing information and collating the collected material into digital form using the Holloway database as a baseline. The Geneva conference established a treaty that split the nation of Vietnam in half for the time being, with reunification elections set to be held in 1956. The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica. According to the Vietnamese government, unexploded ordnance has killed some 42,000 people since the end of the war. [72], The Phoenix Program, a counterinsurgency program executed by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), United States special operations forces, and the Republic of Vietnam's security apparatus, killed 26,369 suspected of being VC operatives and informants. The US entered into war with Vietnam because they did not want the spread of Communism to occur in the democratic state of South Vietnam. By nearly every metric, the Vietnam War was, in the common sense of the word, a war. The Virtual Wall uses the Coffelt Database (CDB) for unit assignment information. Panama . Our editors will review what youve submitted and determine whether to revise the article. [11], Author Mark Woodruff noted that when the Vietnamese Government finally revealed its estimated losses (in April 1995) as being 1.1 million dead or missing, U.S body count figures had actually underestimated enemy losses. More than 58,000 American casualties of the Vietnam War are commemorated on the Vietnam Wall in Washington, DC. Chart and statistics of US death/wounded in war as well as amputation ratios in the Afghanistan war compared with other major operations. About 2 million Vietnamese civilians were killed in the fighting. [62] Across all three wars including the First Indochina War and the Third Indochina War there was a total of 1,146,250 PAVN/VC confirmed military deaths, included 939,460 with bodies recovered and 207,000 with the bodies unfound. He succeeded in 1954 and established a Communist government. The total number of officer casualties, commissioned and warrant, are 7,877. The Fall of Saigon in 1975 | Vietnam War Timeline, Causes & Aftermath, Battle of Ia Drang | Battle of Ia Drang Casualty List, Easter Offensive of 1972: Vietnam War | History, Impact & Aftermath. [22], Thomas Thayer in 1985 estimated that during the 196572 period the VC killed 33,052 South Vietnamese village officials and civil servants.[23]. The United States Army lost the most troops in the Vietnam War, over 38,000 soldiers. However, from a constitutional perspective, this conflict did not technically count as a war. As a member, you'll also get unlimited access to over 84,000 The Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War: A Political, Social, and Military History By 1969 more than 500,000 U.S. military personnel were stationed in Vietnam. The number of casualties is simply the number of members of a unit who are not available for duty. [8], Lewy estimates that 40,000 South Vietnamese civilians were assassinated by the PAVN/VC; 300,000 were killed as a result of combat in South Vietnam, and 65,000 were killed in North Vietnam for a total of 405,000 killed. These numbers do not include civilian and ARVN military deaths result from the communist mass-internment, the refugee crisis and subsequent exodus of Vietnamese people after the Fall of Saigon. [6], A 2008 study by the BMJ (formerly British Medical Journal) came up with a higher toll of 3,812,000 dead in Vietnam between 19552002. Management from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and minored in Aviation Safety and Homeland Security, deadly struggle that took from... In Aviation Safety and Homeland Security major War memorials commemorating the dead soldiers in the War. 200,000 and 250,000 South Vietnamese soldiers and an unknown number of these `` boat people '' Vietnam! 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