State of the Vietnam Era US Military

flasheart

Recently I've been reading about the particularly poor state of the Vietnam War era US Military and what seems to have been a particular low point in its history.
It looks like at times the US Military was in danger of seeing a collapse of morale, order and discipline due to anti war sentiment and dissent within its ranks.
Even on here I've seen a few threads discussing the poor state of the organisation and its apparently reduced capabilities in the aftermath of the Vietnam War.

The US navy seems to have been particularly badly affected as a result of the Stop Our Ship movement. This saw crew members of US Navy ships (in particular aircraft carriers) engage in things such as petitioning to prevent their ships from sailing to operations in Vietnam, joining anti war protests/spreading antiwar literature onboard and even deserting all the way to outright sabotage of their ships amongst other things. For example in July 1972 fires were deliberately started aboard the USS FORRESTAL and USS RANGER resulting in serious damage.
The worst incidents were a riot aboard the USS KITTY HAWK and a near mutiny aboard the USS CONSTELLATION (Which seems to have been particularly badly affected by various issues relating to dissatisfaction and antiwar sentiment amongst her crew).

In the wider US Military issues such as drug abuse, high desertion figures, widespread draft evasion and serious racial tensions (being the main cause of the incidents aboard Kittyhawk and Constellation) and even fragging of officers (the training of junior officers in this era seems to have a reputation of having been particularly poor) were apparently serious problems.
All of this was happening against the backdrop of a particularly turbulent time in US History.

There are plenty of recorded events of large numbers of serving US Military members and veterans having joined in demonstrations and protests against the Vietnam War and forming organisations such as The Concerned Officers Movement and G.I. Movement and of underground newspapers within US Military bases.

So my question is: How bad was the situation in reality?

Was the US Military ever affected in a serious way by these issues/where they widespread or just isolated incidents?

At any point did it look like the Military may have been danger of falling apart as a result of poor morale and discipline (Might this have potentially happened had the Vietnam War lasted longer)?

How long did it take the military to overcome these issues in the post Vietnam era?
 

CV12Hornet

flasheart said:
So my question is: How bad was the situation in reality?

Was the US Military ever affected in a serious way by these issues/where they widespread or just isolated incidents?

At any point did it look like the Military may have been danger of falling apart as a result of poor morale and discipline (Might this have potentially happened had the Vietnam War lasted longer)?

How long did it take the military to overcome these issues in the post Vietnam era?
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Quite bad. The Army was in by far the worst condition, taking the brunt of the fighting as they did. This is what a US Army colonel had to say about the situation in 1971:

The morale, discipline and battleworthiness of the U.S. Armed Forces are, with a few salient exceptions, lower and worse than at any time in this century and possibly in the history of the United States.

By every conceivable indicator, our army that now remains in Vietnam is in a state approaching collapse, with individual units avoiding or having refused combat, murdering their officers and non commissioned officers, drug-ridden, and dispirited where not near mutinous.

Elsewhere than Vietnam, the situation is nearly as serious.
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By several orders of magnitude, the Army seems to be in worse trouble. But the Navy has serious and unprecedented problems, while the Air Force, on the surface at least still clear of the quicksands in which the Army is sinking, is itself facing disquieting difficulties.

Only the Marines -- who have made news this year by their hard line against indiscipline and general permissiveness -- seem with their expected staunchness and tough tradition, to be weathering the storm

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CV12Hornet

Now, if it was quite that bad is up for debate. Historians dispute the allegation that the Army was nearing outright collapse. But what is clear is that discipline had been damaged quite badly in all but the Marines, especially in the Army, and drug abuse was a serious problem in all four branches.

There were other problems as well. Manpower retention was abysmal, which contributed to the problems when the Navy and Army, the most manpower-intensive branches, loosened discipline themselves in a bid to improve retention rates. The Vietnam War caused major financial problems and equipment dislocations, with development programs trimmed to free up money to buy existing weapons to keep up with combat attrition, and post-Vietnam budget cuts only compounded the problem.

As for when the Armed Forces full recovered? Somewhere between 1983 (Urgent Fury was a clear sign the Armed Forces weren't done getting their shit together) and 1991 (Desert Storm was a very clear sign that the Armed Forces had gotten their shit together).
 
gatordad699

gatordad699

CV12Hornet said:
Now, if it was quite that bad is up for debate. Historians dispute the allegation that the Army was nearing outright collapse. But what is clear is that discipline had been damaged quite badly in all but the Marines, especially in the Army, and drug abuse was a serious problem in all four branches.

There were other problems as well. Manpower retention was abysmal, which contributed to the problems when the Navy and Army, the most manpower-intensive branches, loosened discipline themselves in a bid to improve retention rates. The Vietnam War caused major financial problems and equipment dislocations, with development programs trimmed to free up money to buy existing weapons to keep up with combat attrition, and post-Vietnam budget cuts only compounded the problem.

As for when the Armed Forces full recovered? Somewhere between 1983 (Urgent Fury was a clear sign the Armed Forces weren't done getting their shit together) and 1991 (Desert Storm was a very clear sign that the Armed Forces had gotten their shit together).
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I would say the end of the 70s to 1980 for the USN. My brother was a Fire Control Technician on a Perry FFG the second half of the 70s. He said it changed dramatically from 75 on. I joined in 82 and IMHO/Experience there was zero issues with anything discipline wise my entire time in. It was a totally professional force by then. No idea about the Army. Marines are, well, Marines.
 

flasheart

How widespread were the problems outside those forces deployed in or going to Vietnam (for example forces based in West Germany)?
 

Mark E.

I heard many in the late sixties, often college students, enlisted for a three-year stand so they could be sent to Europe and not Vietnam. I'm not sure if it is true, but I also heard the the top West Point grads went to Europe while the lower ones want to Vietnam, quite the opposite of war strategy.

When the draft ended in 1973, I imagine morale would slowly improve into the late seventies.
 

Father Maryland

Mark E. said:
I heard many in the late sixties, often college students, enlisted for a three-year stand so they could be sent to Europe and not Vietnam. I'm not sure if it is true, but I also heard the the top West Point grads went to Europe while the lower ones want to Vietnam, quite the opposite of war strategy.

When the draft ended in 1973, I imagine morale would slowly improve into the late seventies.
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Huh I'd heard the opposite. Namely that for the most part the armed services sent draftees to Europe or SK while " volunteers" ( of various sorts) were sent to Vietnam.
 

cjc

Mark E. said:
I heard many in the late sixties, often college students, enlisted for a three-year stand so they could be sent to Europe and not Vietnam. I'm not sure if it is true, but I also heard the the top West Point grads went to Europe while the lower ones want to Vietnam, quite the opposite of war strategy.

When the draft ended in 1973, I imagine morale would slowly improve into the late seventies.
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Manly because there was a wide spread belief that small wars like vetnam were great places to improve the worst of the army inorder to prepare for the big war that was sure to happen in Europe at any moment. Same thing happened during the Korean war as well.
 

flasheart

What were standards of training like at the time?
Was there ever any truth in the various claims of junior officer's often being of poor quality?
 

CV12Hornet

flasheart said:
What were standards of training like at the time?
Was there ever any truth in the various claims of junior officer's often being of poor quality?
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In short, significantly reduced. There is, of course, the well-documented problems with Air Combat Maneuvering training. The Marines, despite coming out the best of the four branches, reduced standards:

During the Vietnam War, more than 200,000 recruits graduated from Parris Island with the peak load being 10,979 in March 1966. No new battalions were added, but training was cut from 11 weeks to 8 weeks and the size of the recruit platoons was increased. In 1964 a standardized Marine Corps recruit training syllabus was adopted by both recruit depots.
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Compounding the problem was a deliberate reduction in the quality of intaken recruits for political reasons. This article details Project 100,000, which was an attempt by the Johnson administration to use the military as a welfare program by directing low-income young men into the military to meet manpower quotas and provide them with skills useful for their post-military life, caused the armed forces:


As far as junior officers being of poor quality, that's getting scholarly pushback these days. For more details, have this review of a book on the subject: https://today.ttu.edu/posts/2009/12...de-view-of-junior-officers-in-the-vietnam-war
 

flasheart

When was the overall low point for the US Military of the era in terms of things like morale and capabilities?

Apart from the already mentioned incidents were there any other cases of breakdowns in discipline/mutiny or even any occasions where commanders found themselves constrained by the fear of provoking such events?

Was the issue of fragging (murder of superiors) as widespread or as serious as its often made out to be?
 
David Flin

David Flin

Gone Fishin'
flasheart said:
Was the US Military ever affected in a serious way by these issues/where they widespread or just isolated incidents?

At any point did it look like the Military may have been danger of falling apart as a result of poor morale and discipline (Might this have potentially happened had the Vietnam War lasted longer)?

How long did it take the military to overcome these issues in the post Vietnam era?
Click to expand...

I have a perspective on this. In 1976, I was asked to help in the training of US Marines at Parris Island. They wanted someone to help with training who was not infected by the US malaise.

The US Marines weren't as bad as the US Army in this period, but I can confirm that morale was appalling, discipline was dubious (to the eyes of a Royal Marine, at least. It had the form of spit and polish and breaking the will without retaining self-discipline. It was creating little robots unable to think. Maybe the US Marines have always worked that way, but at the time, it didn't give good results). The training was laughably brief and superficial (but then, I would say that. 8 weeks to train a US Marine. 42 weeks to train a Royal Marine). Fitness standards were not high.

The junior officers I came into contact with were, without exception, a sorry bunch. Essentially, not one I came into had any sort of rapport with their platoon. Everyone of them felt that the mere wearing of officer rank made them privileged and to a man, their focus was on promotion, not the care of their men. I can't speak for what might have happened in Vietnam, but if the officers there were anything like those I saw, fragging was to be expected. Think Captain Sobel from Band of Brothers, only more so.

But the biggest problem by a long, long way was the quality of the NCOs. Oh dear. In any army, the backbone is made up of the NCOs. One expects NCOs to be on the make. That's almost part of the job description. What I didn't expect was quite how much emphasis was placed on this to the detriment of running a platoon.

From 1976 onwards, things improved, but it took a decade or so for the US Marines to reach what I would regard as vague competence. I understand from contacts that the US Army was in a far, far worse state. To the point that non-US units openly stated that they would rather have an open flank than have an American unit covering it.

An Australian I know (or knew - he has recently died) was in Vietnam, and he maintained that US patrols made useful bait. Australian patrols would follow a US patrol, which he described as being shambolic, lacking fieldcraft, and blind to terrain, and waited for it to get ambushed, allowing them the chance to ambush the ambushers. I've no way of knowing how true that is, and how much of it is a story polished in the telling, but there appears to be at least a core of truth here.

My view is not a wide one. I was only in one place for six months, and I only saw the US Marines, so it is a simple, single snapshot. It was, however, a fairly detailed snapshot within that limitation. I can't comment on how widespread the trouble was, but what I saw was, to put it mildly, not impressive.

Mind you, my conversation with a Soviet Captain up in North Norway/USSR (neither of us were entirely clear where we were in relation to the border) suggests that things were not one whit better in the Soviet Army. That was in December 1971, and believe me when I tell you it was cold. He'd been appointed to command a section of ski troops. He was born and bred in that well-known snow resort of Sevastapol. Since I was an East End boy, I could hardly boast, and we exchanged the view that senior commanders would have difficulty finding their arse with both hands. I rather suspect similar views can be found in any army that has ever existed.
 

muskeg13

I came on active duty in the summer of 1981, and I can tell you that from my limited perspective the overall state of CONUS Army units (outside of the 82d Airborne and maybe the 101 Air Assault Divisions) was still pretty poor. General apathy and drug use was widespread. Carter era budget cuts and restrictions against taking adverse personnel actions left us with worn out left over equipment from Viet Nam and no money for spare parts (if they were still available), not enough money for meaningful training, particularly live firing, and having to deal with droves of incompetents and malcontents on top of everything else. Junior officers (including me) and newly enlisted soldiers inspired by Reagan and made fearful by the admonitions of those like Sir John Hackett's "The Third World War" were gung ho to do our part to defend freedom against the mighty Russians, but too many mid-grade officers and NCOs spent too much time avoiding work and just hung around to draw a government paycheck.

"Going to the field" in the early '80s was a nightmare. Every jeep in our battalion had cracked frames and fuel and fluid leaks, making them unsafe to drive, but we "Circle Xed" them for continued limited use rather than walk and suffered numerous accidents. The unfunny joke was "How do you know your vehicle has run out of oil? Answer: Because it isn't leaking ." Our 12 fire support teams (FISTs) were supposed to have specially equipped M113 APCs, but 11 teams had to make do with 8 old jeeps. Our M561 Gamma Goats and M520 Ammo Goers were mechanical abominations when they rolled off the assembly lines during Viet Nam and eventually became so unsafe and unrepairable that they were permanently parked in a fenced in portion of the motorpool known as the junkyard. Actually, the whole motorpool was a junkyard. Of our battalion's 18 M109 Howitzers, all 18 never left the motorpool under their own power, and by the end of any exercise, most had to be towed back to garrison for maintenance. We had no operable ex-Viet Nam night vision equipment and no canvas for any jeep or any tentage, which had gone to house the ex-Cuban Mariel Boat People. Logistically, almost everything sucked.

Between '81 and '83 many things began to change for the better. We were able to begin weeding out the incompetent, lazy and bad actors, pay and benefits improved, we began to have more funds for training and repairs and we started to get a lot of sorely needed good new equipment. Regan's massive defense build-up began to pay off. Stateside, we started to get a lot of good new equipment, like the HMMWV, HEMMT, 5T medium cargo trucks, M1 Tanks, Bradleys, artillery ammo vehicles, and a lot more.

I spent '84 and '85 in non-line assignments, and on returning in 1986, was amazed at the transformation that had taken place. By the time of the First Gulf War, results vindicated the Reagan defense revolution, and I realized that I was in a different Army than the one I'd joined ten years earlier. Finally, it was a strong good Army that really was ready to take on the mighty Russians if called to do so.
 
haider najib

haider najib

Can i ask how did the us military rebuild itself post vietnam? I don't know where to look for this info. How did they fix drugs issue, moral, and bad shape of the military and make it strong how does one do that?
 

Father Maryland

flasheart said:
When was the overall low point for the US Military of the era in terms of things like morale and capabilities?

Apart from the already mentioned incidents were there any other cases of breakdowns in discipline/mutiny or even any occasions where commanders found themselves constrained by the fear of provoking such events?

Was the issue of fragging (murder of superiors) as widespread or as serious as its often made out to be?
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From what I know it was a real thing but to some extent overblown. And by and large fragging incidents didn't tend to consist of say field infantry officers who were incompetent being killed. The majority of cases involved REMF types mostly assholes pissed off about things like say their officers/NCO's giving them form of reprimand for say stealing supplies to sell, doing or selling drugs, showing up to work drunk and the like.

But "asshole decides to roll a grenade into the tent of a NCO/officer who chewed him out for trying to smuggle a couple kilo's of heroin home or operating heavy equipment while completely shitfaced" isn't as good a story as "incompetent brutal infantry officer killed by his own men in order to prevent them from getting killed by their CO's incompetence."
 

KingSweden24

Father Maryland said:
From what I know it was a real thing but to some extent overblown. And by and large fragging incidents didn't tend to consist of say field infantry officers who were incompetent being killed. The majority of cases involved REMF types mostly assholes pissed off about things like say their officers/NCO's giving them form of reprimand for say stealing supplies to sell, doing or selling drugs, showing up to work drunk and the like.

But "asshole decides to roll a grenade into the tent of a NCO/officer who chewed him out for trying to smuggle a couple kilo's of heroin home or operating heavy equipment while completely shitfaced" isn't as good a story as "incompetent brutal infantry officer killed by his own men in order to prevent them from getting killed by their CO's incompetence."
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An entirely new meaning to “Drunk History”
 

173rd LRRP

Father Maryland said:
Huh I'd heard the opposite. Namely that for the most part the armed services sent draftees to Europe or SK while " volunteers" ( of various sorts) were sent to Vietnam.
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I was with 173rd LRRP. Most of the parachute infantry were draftees (admittedly they had volunteered Airborne in AIT). Responders at a number of sites on line say that 80% of their companies in E3 through E5 grades were draftees.
 

Major Major

In 1974 British author Peter van Greenaway wrote Take the War to Washington. A "discardable" unit stages a mutiny, takes over an aircraft carrier, and sails for Washington to bomb the city as revenge.

How a group of demoralized draftees are supposed to operate a ship, make sure it gets to the Atlantic, and launch a strike is sort of taken for granted. But the book is a fable, like his other book, The Man Who Held the Queen to Ransom and Sent Parliament Packing, where an army captain with a few men overthrows the British government and takes power, instituting progressive neutralism (i.e., withdrawing from NATO, taking over Rhodesia). You see, he gets higher-ranking officers, administrators, etc. to obey him by saying "You can be replaced."

But it's a fable, like M. J. Engh's Arslan, and fables don't need plausiblity, coherence, etc. . .
 
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