Why was not an atom bomb used on hanoi in vietnam war? Was it russians? Not war lover but need to know :(?

Question

Watched "once we were soldiers" and it brought tears to my eyes. I hate the whole thing about religion in wars as I am atheist and I watch Afghanistan and Iraq with deep revolt but with the end of world war II with Enola g*y on a hitheto unknown city of Hiroshima why was this not done on Hanoi?

Answer 1

Because the decision to use the bomb in Japan was not made lightly

No president would want that as his legacy

The go ahead was given after much hard considerations and in the end it was made to save millions of lives

The same reasoning could not be used in Vietnam when militarily we were winning the war anyway

The NVA had all but admitted defeat after TET, until the American media got a hold of the story and agendized it

Answer 2

Fear of reprisal from Communist bloc. the cold war was still running .

Answer 3

Good question.

General Curtis LeMay, architect of the US Air Force's Strategic Air Command, the man responsible for the conventional bombing of the Japanese mainland during World War II, advocated the use of saturation bombing during the Vietnam conflict both as a military man and during his candidacy for vice-president in 1968.  One of his more famous quotes was "Tell the Vietnamese they've got to draw in their horns or we're going to bomb them back into the Stone Age." (Gen. Curtis LeMay, May 1964).  General LeMay later said in a 1968 interview with the Washington Post, "I never said we should bomb them back to the Stone Age.  I said we had the capability to do it.  I want to save lives on both sides." (1)

His sentiments were shared by many people who were frustrated by what was being portrayed in the press as a "quagmire" which the US and South Vietnam could never win, despite the actual outcome of the 1968 Tet Offensive, which while bloody was a telling defeat for the Communists.  Rumors that Senator Barry Goldwater, the Republican candidate for President in 1964, favored the use of nuclear weapons in Vietnam were central to his opponents' campaigns during that election.

Ho Chi Minh himself said that the Communists would not win on the battlefield, but in America, where in fact the press carried the Communists' side admirably, printing complete fabrications by the "Winter Soldiers' Committee" alleging misconduct by US troops as factual without any serious attempt at fact-checking.  This was probably key to Congress' disgraceful decision to strand the South Vietnamese without the materiel aid which was promised them once we withdrew our troops.

Nuclear weapons, of which the US had a considerable variety ranging from sub-kiloton yield Special Atomic Demolition Munitions (SADMs) deployable by 2-man SEAL teams to multi-megaton strategic warheads deliverable by ICBMs or aircraft, were used to back the US presence in Europe and Asia up as a deterrent - to convince the Soviets they really didn't want a war with us.  

As our nation's impatience with the war in Vietnam mounted, there was a growing number of people who asked "Why, if massive conventional bombing in Vietnam wasn't working, couldn't we simply "bomb Vietnam back into the Stone Age?"

In answer to this question, in 1967 the Institute for Defense Analyses' JASON Division, a group of independent scientists with in-depth knowledge of nuclear weapons and other strategic weapons systems which is often consulted by the Federal Government on highly-classified discussions studied how the use of nuclear weapons in Vietnam would actually play out.  The study was classified SECRET until declassified recently under a FOIA request by the Nautilus Institute's Nuclear Policy Project.(2)

The JASONs' most unsettling conclusion was that the Chinese and Soviets might well consider either employing nuclear devices against us in retaliation for our use of nuclear weapons against the North Vietnamese and Viet Cong, or giving that sort of weapons to the North Vietnamese (as they had already given every other sort of weapon from handguns and assault rifles all the way to surface-to-air missiles and jet fighter aircraft to North Vietnam and the VC).  

Then they very carefully detailed what damage the whole country of South Vietnam, our military bases in the area and our troops stationed there would sustain if either of the two Communist nuclear powers were to give the Viet Cong guerillas small tactical nuclear devices to smuggle into South Vietnam in small boats of the sort common to the area.

Other studies by authorities on nuclear weapons effects were also cited - most notably, Herman Kahn's top secret study for the Hudson Institute on the advantages and disadvantages of using tactical nuclear weapons in various situations. (3)

The conclusion was that the game wasn't worth the candle - that our enemies, not being reliably altruistic, would escalate the war in Vietnam as much as we did, up to and including the use of nuclear weapons, and that the contamination of the Vietnamese countryside by nuclear fallout as well as the carnage from blast effects and fire would be worse for the people of Vietnam than if the war were simply conducted using conventional weapons - which is what we wound up doing.  About the only strategic weapon available to us that we didn't use on Hanoi was fuel-air explosives, a weapon which we had (the BLU-82) but reserved for clearing helicopter drop zones very quickly.

For some reason we opted not to use the BLU-82 on strategic targets in North Vietnam or assemblies of NVA troops, opting instead to stick with dropping large quantities of "iron bombs" - conventional high-explosive bombs - on these targets.

Answer 4

There was never a need for it.

We had the conventional firepower to bring that country to its knees but the President and his advisers chose not to.

If they would not use conventional weapons to full effect, they certainly would not even consider using nuclear.

Answer 5

Lyndon Johnson believed North Vietnam had secret treaties with Russia and China.For that reason he always held back on his attacks on North Vietnam.Nixon is unreliably reported to have threatened the use of nuclear bombs in Vietnam.He probably got the idea from Eisenhower whose threats to use them in Korea helped to end that war.What good would it have done to blast Hanoi when the Chinese would have blasted Saigon in return?

Answer 6

IMHO...I think the view of the destruction that the atomic bomb caused was enough testimony as to the true power of nuclear energy as a weapon.  As a result, I believe that the world vowed never to use such a destructive force ever again and fear the production of such a weapon to be constructed for the use as a weapon.  That is why the world comes together to prevent nations in creating such weapons.

Hiroshima and Nagasaki will hopefully be the only time the world will ever witness the devastating chaos of such a device.

Answer 7

WW11 & the war in Vietnam were very different scenarios. It was clear the Japanese would have fought on with phenomenal loss of life on both sides. It was a courageous decision for Truman to take.

Answer 8

there were too many nationals in the country to nuke vietnam.  russia would of got involved to if they had and russia wouldnt make a nice enemy.  Also after Hiroshima I think they realised that oops this isnt the way it should of been done. too much controversy!!

Answer 9

Maybe because the nation of Vietnam never actually attacked the USA thus initiating war in the first place.

Answer 10

Because by the time of the Vietnam war the USA were not the onluy nation with nuclear arms.

North Vietnam was supported by China - a nuclear strike would have brought reprisal from them.