In 1962, counterinsurgency specialist Roger Hilsman gleefully reported that that helicopters were such a ‘terrifying sight to the superstitious Viet Cong peasants’ that they would flush from cover and be shot down as they fled. In fact, their panic was simply that of raw troops faced with a weapon for which they were unprepared. Within months of the beginning of the helicopter war the Viet Cong had developed a new set of tactics for dealing with helicopters, which they successfully applied in defeating a major South Vietnamese drive in the battle of Ap Bac (January 1963). The same misreading of the actual level of Vietnamese cultural and political development made American advisers impatient with the apparent illogic of local politics and created a pressure, which finally proved irresistible, for an American takeover of the war. (Slotkin 493)
Bookmarks