Did the NVA or VC cause more US casualties?

The US suffered 58,000 deaths in Vietnam. Is it known how many American casualties were inflicted by the NVA and how many were inflicted by the Viet Cong?

I’d assume the NVA inflicted the majority because they were an actual professional army while the VC was only a guerilla force.
 
First of all, about 11,000 of those fatalities resulted from accidents, including friendly fire I presume, not combat with the enemy. You may be right about the NVA but I was under the impression it didn't really fight like a conventional, professional army until around '72 when it made some headway against the ARVN.
 
I don't know how it equates to the American experience or who actually inflicted the most casualties but in the Australian experience all the actual battles involved the NVA. Long Tan in 1966 was an NVA regiment with a mobile VC battalion and the local D445 battalion. Op Bribie in 1967 had VC reinforced by NVA, Coral-Balmoral 68 was outside of Phouc Tuy and mostly NVA and Binh Ba 69 VC D445 was reinforced by some NVA troops from 33 regiment.

The rest of the time was small unit clashes, mostly VC and my guess is that these produced the most Australian casualties.
 
Well, the VC was basically a spent force after Tet and the NVA had to infiltrate through Cambodia to take up old VC positions. I would assume the NVA as a result, because they would have been responsible for the vast majority of casualties after Tet.

Also, the NVA was capable of launching prolonged offensives and seizing territory, which the VC were not. Most American combat fatalities were associated with seesaw battles over territory and counterattacks. American offensives generally were a lot lower in casualties because the amount of firepower employed made the combat portion negligible, for the most part. This firepower was the reason why the North Vietnamese suffered such massive casualties in the war, as well.

There is also the fact that a good number of US fatalities in Vietnam were non-combat from accidents and friendly fire. As in most 20th century wars, the majority of combat casualties came from mortars and artillery rather than small arms fire.

The VC's area of operations where they were the strongest and probably caused the most casualties was in the Mekong Delta. Combat there was intermittent, however, and heated up in 1967 before becoming a bit less active of a sector.

Most of ARVN's casualties before 1965 were from the VC, however.
 
Last edited:
Top