[CaptainCrunch]

Battle of Dien Bien Phu

When one looks back on some of the greatest defeats in Military History, the Battle of Dien Bien Phu certainly deserves mention. While not as well-known as Roman defeat at Cannae, The French getting crushed at Agincourt, or the Battle at the Little Bighorn. Dien Bien Phu displayed so many characteristics of failure that it led to the down fall of the French Government, and its ripples lead directly to the American failures in Vietnam.

Preparation

By the time of this battle, the French had suffered numerous defeats at the hands of the Viet Minh who were fighting for independence, and this had lead to the French continually replacing their area commanders who failed time after time to suppress the Viet Minh and had lead to a worse and worse situation for the French.

By 1953 the French who were continually relying on less and less stable supply lines had continually fallen back and were focused on defending the Hanoi Delta Region with the idea of a resupply and re-enforcement of their troops who would be able to turn aside Viet Minh incursions and retake the initiative.

Enter French Commander Henri Navarre a extremely experienced Fiend General who had fought in the first and second world wars and was given command of the French Far East Expeditionary Corps in Indochina. On arriving at his command, he was horrified by not only the lax conditions of the troops, but a lack of care and strategy. He was given the overwhelming job of rebuilding the French Military in Indochina. He also had to come up with a strategy for the French to blunt the Viet Minh offensive and allow the French to regain the Initiative. While the Hedgehog concept sounded good in practice (A hedgehog that is attacked will curl into a ball and let its spikes hold off the enemy) it was a failure, not because it was a bad concept, but because Navarre under estimated his enemy, had poor intelligence and a battle plan that a 12 year old would break.

In order to make this plan work the French would establish a fortified air base that was ajacent to the Viet Minh’s most commonly used supply lines and create an irresistible target for the Vietminh general Vo Noguyen Giap. At the same time, this would allow the French to use Air mobility to cut off the VietMinh rear areas in Laos and force the Viet Minh forward troops to break off due to a unwinnable supply situation.

The Viet Minh troops would be forced to deal with this base and thus commit the bulk of their troops to this endeavor, and the French felt that they would have a significant advantage in heavy weapons and armor and would win a conventional engagement.

Here’s the problem, a combination of poor intelligence and arrogance doomed the French offensive. First and foremost, Navarre underestimated his counter part and wrote off the Viet Minh as poorly trained and poorly armed and he felt that in a straight up tactical fight he was the better General. The French also didn’t think that the Viet Minh had access to heavy artillary and anti-aircraft weapons, and therefore the idea of a air mobile base in a valley seemed like a brilliant idea at the time.

At the same time Navarre knew deep down that this Hedgehog solution wasn’t a great one. The selected terrain in the valley wasn’t conducive to mobile warfar or the use of armor, his second option was to build a static defense line which would force Giap to throw his troops against well defended positions, but he didn’t have the troops to make this happen. His third option was the Hedgehog which was a combination of the two, a static base with armor supplied strictly by air.

Meanwhile from Giap’s side he had several aces in the hole. The Chinese had supplied the Viet Minh with heavy artillery pieces and anti-aircraft weapons. Giap then began to infiltrate the hills around the French base carefully recording the positions of French Artillery, troop placements, and supply dumps, as well using back breaking labor he began to move his heavy artillery onto the hills and valleys and sited his anti-aircraft weapon at key arrival and departure airlanes.

Navarre made another critical mistake as he appointed Colonel Christian de Castres as the base commander, De Castres began to set up 10 defensive positions around the central command.

Habrielle was to the North, Beatrice to the NE, Dominique to the East, Eliane to the Southeast, Junon to the South, Isabelle was also to the south and protected the reserve air strip, Claudine to the SW, Liane and Francois to the W, an Huguette and Anne Marie to the NE. These satellite defenses were designed to keep the Viet Minh offenses as far from the key airstrips and central command as possible. In retrospect this strategy threw away the French ability for a mobile or movement-based battle which was their greatest strength. Instead the French basically set up static defenses and went back to Trench warfare. De Castres also failed to use his men and air power to provide him with reconnaissance into the hills surrounding the air field which allowed Giap to continue to move in his troops and weapons.


Giap must have looked at this situation and smiled, but he still had a problem in front of him. Taking this base would be extremely difficult as even with the French throwing away key advantages, its defenses were formidable and in theory French Air Supply could re-enforce the garrisons and re-supply them indefinitely.

Orignally Giap wanted to use Chinese Tactics, which is basically a fast and overwhelming thrust at the heart of the enemy, but even Giap could see that attempting to circumvent the French Satellite defenses would lead to unacceptable casualties. Instead he modified his plan and decided to use siege tactics and artillery and a more slow and steady approach to the battle. This would be a tactic that he relied on in the later Vietnam War.

Navarre was about to see if strategy and assumption fall apart big time.

The Battle Joined






On March 13, 1954 the Viet Minh opened up with a massed artillery bombardment on Beatrice which was staffed by the excellent 13th Foreign Legion Demi-Brigade. The Viet Minh used two batteries of 105 mm howitzers, 120 mm motars and 75 mm guns. A lucky shut hit the French Command Post killing the group commander and his staff leaving a massive leadership vacuum. Beatrice was basically flattened before they could fire any counter battery support. The French troops were driven back by the Viet Minh 312th Division backed up by sappers. The French were over run and forced to retreat to the Southern end of Beatrice and then were eventually overrun. 350 Legionnaires were killed in exchange for 600 Viet Minh, but in effect Beatrice had been eliminated, and a cease fire was called, and the French were allowed to evacuate their wounded.
It would be an understatement to say that Navarre and de Castries were shocked by the brutality and precision of the unexpected Viet Minh artillery and the failure of French Artillary to counter the threat. This led to French Artillery commander Col Charles Piroth to kill himself with a hand grenade.

The next to fall was Gabrielle. After the cease fire expired on March 14th. The Viet Minh fired up their artillery and went after the defensive positions and attacked the main airstrip shutting it down to resupply. Following the doctrine of the first attack, Gabrielle was decimated, its commander was wounded in the attack, and the base fell to a 2-regiment attack. Of particular note, De Castries tried to order a counterattack to re-enforce Gabrielle however Viet Minh artillary decimated a re-enforced Vietnamese Parachute Battalion. Gabrielle was wiped off of the match, 1000 French defenders were lost, while the Viet Minh lost nearly 2000 men.

Anna-Marie which was on the North Western satellite, fell with very little fanfare. The position was defended by a combination of French and Tai troops. However, Giap effectively used propaganda pamphlets and convinced the Tai’s that it was not their fight. In combination with the slaughters at Beatrice and Gabrielle most of the Tai’s simply left or joined the other side and the French were forced to leave an undefendable situation.

By then both sides were exhausted, and the fight slowed down to a stop. The Viet Minh used this time to resupply and re-enforce and move their artillery and AA weapons. The Viet Minh also effectively cut off Isabelle from Huguette, Dominque, Claudine and Elaine. Its important to note that de Castries basically gave up and retreated to his bunker, Renee Cogny the French Major who helped design the Hedgehog strategy tried to fly in but it was deemed to be too dangerous to land, he also considered parachuting in to take command but was talked out of it. The French Troops in effective were leaderless on the ground. It was rumored that there was a unofficial change of command as de Castries deputies seized command and kept de Castries in a figure head position.

The French attempted to re-enforce what was left of the base via air power however losses were heavy, and the parachute drops weren’t especially effective. The French did counter attack into the hills to go after Viet Minh anti-aircraft and this attack was successful on a moderate level, but the French were not able to effectively re-enforce and resupply and the situation was becoming desperate.
On March 30th the Viet Minh moved on Eliane and Dominique, at the same time the French launched Operation Condor where they used the SDECE’s special services against Viet Minh supplies and weaken their artillery attacks as well as sow uncertainty in the Viet Minh ranks. However, this attack failed to slow down the Viet Minh supply and artillery efforts.

Giap had found a winning formula using his artillary to devestate French defensive positions and demoralize French Troops, while sending in massed infantry assualts. The attack on Dominique was no different. The Viet Minh troops pushed the French back, and the French responded by using their anti-aircraft weapons and 0 elevated artillery to blast huge holes in the Infantry charge and the Viet Minh retreated and reinforced and attacked from the West. The battle ground down to a halt in the face of counter attacks by the french and renewed attacks by the Viet Minh, however the French were wearing down due to a bad supply situation and the inability of the French to re-enforce due to artillery. The battle had begun to resemble a first world war static trench battle.

By April 5th the situation had become desperate. The Viet Minh were at the receiving end of massive casualties caused by French Artillary and air power. Their resolve was snapped, and several units refused to move forward until Giap threatened them with mass executions if they didn’t engage. Meanwhile the French were dug in but were running low on water and ammunition. The French eventually relented and gave up Hugette and attempted to retreat to French lines but were cut to pieces. At this point Huguette had effectively fallen and the French had lost their life line in terms of the air field. The French tried to retake it, but the attack failed.



The French were effectively beaten at this point but still held onto the center. The Viet Minh finished off what was left of Eliane and Dominique and Huguette. Giap now had a massive advantage in every single way and was determined to use it to push the knife through the halt of the exhausted French troops.

On May 7th, Giap ordered an all-out attack with a massive preparatory time on target artillery barrage and then with a nearly 10 to one advantage infantry advantage the Viet Mingh over ran the French headquarters. The last message from the head quarters reported that they were blowing every thing up and while shouting a defiant Vive la France. At 6:20 PM on May 7th the last French garrison waved the white flag, and the battle was over.

When the battle started the French had 14,000 men in the field including 12,000 combat personal, by the end of the battle the French had lost nearly 3000 men, 4000 wounded and an estimated 11,000 men who were captured, on top of that they had seen nearly 200 aircraft damaged or shot down. This represented about 10% of the total French military commitment in Indochina and ripped the guts out of their military while destroying national moral.

At the same time this wasn’t a cheap or easy victory by Giap, who was willing to sacrifice men for victory. The Viet Minh committed 80,000 men to the battle and saw 4000 men killed and about 10,000 wounded.







The Aftermath

France was devastated, with 10% of their infield contingent, wiped out Moral on a military and civilian level crumpled. The French government realized that they were finished in Indochina, the Viet Minh had tumbled onto a strategy that the French Military could not defend against. Meanwhile Viet Minh moral soared, and this showed at the negotiating table. At the same time Giap had paid a bloody butchers bill, but had learned that his initial ideas of using Chinese tactics was not the way, and that the use of modern artillery, was his key to victory a lesson that he carried into Vietnam when he later faced the Americans.

The American’s were badly stung in this loss, they had paid about 80% of the French costs in the war as they saw the French as a force to block the rise of communism. Instead the French fled and the American’s were left holding the bag. The American’s approached the British and other allies to form a joint military operation in Vietnam but were rebuffed. The American also realized that the French were never going to win the war without help, and suggested the use of battlefield nukes for the use in the battle to basically nuke Viet Minh positions in the hills of the valley, but were rebuffed by the British. The American’s realized that they would eventually be forced to replace the French in Indochina to prevent the fall of another domino.

The day after the fall of the last outpost, the Geneva Conference opened. The conference was designed to address several situations that had risen from the Korean War and Indochina war. It was decided Vietnam would be split into the Communist North and the State of Vietnam in the south, this was supposed to be temporary and revoked upon agreed upon national elections, but eventually Vietnam would be unified by force.

The French government was shattered and then fell. The nation mourned, restaurants and theatres were closed, and the nation was shocked at their defeat by a third world rebel group. Eventually mourning was replaced by rage and within a month of their defeat the government under Joseph Laniel resigned and was replaced by Pierre Mendes who’s party formed a coalition with the French Communist Party.

General Giap was a controversial figure, some criticized him for his willingness to sacrifice lives for victory, however it needs to be argued that it was probably the only way that he was going to succeed in fighting and beating two of the most prevalent and advanced Western Militaries in the 20th century.

General Navarre took a huge reputational hit and was blamed for his miscalculations and under estimation of the Viet Minh and his from the rear leadership style. He could stay in the Military but was replaced as the Commander of France’s Indochinese forces. He stayed in the military until 1956 when he retired. A political hardline he warned that a political coup in France might be necessary due to the rise of communism in the government.

General de Castries was captured when the Viet Nimh over ran the command headquarters. He was held for 4 months and the returned to France as a sign of good will by Giap. He was appointed as a commander of the 5th Amour Division, but left the Military after a car accident in 1959

This battle again is a prime example of a terrible battle plan, backed up by arrogance and a lack of proper intelligence. It was deemed as a failure of the French Military and Political Leadership to understand their enemy. At the same time this also showed the inflexibility of Navarre who knew that of his three options in Indochina that the one he selected was mediocre at best, but fought the battle anyways handing the initiative over to his enemy, instead of doing the right thing, and not letting the enemy dictate the time and place of a battle. It could be argued that Navarre should not have used the Hedgehog strategy and consolidated his forces where he could get back to the idea of mobile tactics instead of static tactics.

At the same time, while this was an overwhelming win by General Giap, he was viewed as fairly callous in sacrificing his men for a victory to the point where he suffered a major moral hit in his army to the point where many units refused to fight and were forced to at the point of a knife or gun.

While this battle signaled the end of French Imperialisms and empire building in the region, it lead to a more devastating war in the future where American leadership both on the Military and Civilian side of things replicated the poor decisions of the French, it took 20 more years for the lesson to be learned.