It was 69 years ago that the Battle of Dien Bien Phu came to an end after nearly two months of fighting. It saw the defeat of the French military during the First Indochina War at the hands of the Viet Minh communist revolutionaries. It was arguably a flawed plan from the beginning, and it should have served as a portent that the United States could never achieve total victory in South East Asia.
The French Returned
Following the Second World War, the French government attempted to reassert its control over French Indochina, which had been occupied by the Japanese military. It deployed a sizeable force to restore colonial rule and immediately came into conflict with the Viet Minh, the Communist-based movement headed by Vietnamese nationalist Ho Chi Minh that sought independence from France.
Fighting began in 1946, and the Viet Minh initially conducted guerrilla tactics, but with financial and weapons support from the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China, it began to adopt more conventional methods. The French military devised a plan to cut off Viet Minh supply lines into the neighboring Kingdom of Laos, which had remained a French ally. It sought to establish a base where it could attack and cripple the supply lines, but also to provoke the Viet Minh into an open, mass attack — which the French Union forces believed it could win.
The plan was essentially doomed to fail.
Beginning in November 1953, thousands of French paratroopers were dropped into the Dien Bien Phu Valley in the mountainous region near the Laotian border. The troops took control of a small airstrip and began to create a military stronghold, with a number of fortified garrisons set up on a 40-mile perimeter. A total of French 15,000 troops were brought in, but stretched thin having to defend so much ground.
Lessons From History
It was almost as if the French military didn’t know its own history. A sizeable French Army was surrounded and subsequently defeated during the Franco-Prussia War in early September 1870. Some 104,000 soldiers were captured, and the loss forced Emperor Napoleon III to abdicate.
Seventy years later, the French Army counted on the Maginot Line to blunt a German invasion, but the Germans simply went around the fortified positions in the Ardennes Forest. It was rough terrain that seemed an unlikely invasion route. However, the German military conducted a rapid advance — known as the Blitzkrieg — through the forest and encircled much of the Allied forces.
The French didn’t believe that the Viet Minh could conduct an attack through the rough terrain, and once again underestimated their enemy. Under the leadership of General Vo Nguyen Giap, the Viet Minh slowly prepared. His forces spread out until the Viet Minh literally surrounded the Dien Bien Phu valley, and they dug out well-protected artillery pieces.
In a move that the French never saw coming, Giap was able to have his troops bring in vast amounts of heavy artillery, including anti-aircraft guns. A volunteer force of men and women managed to move the weapons through the difficult terrain, dragging the guns up the rear slopes of the mountains, while others dug tunnels and fortified their positions. It wasn’t exactly a Blitzkrieg but the results were essentially the same.
A Two Month Siege
On March 13, Giap’s forces began the attack, unleashing an artillery bombardment of the French defenses. The Viet Minh guns were positioned so that they were all but impervious to French counter-battery fire while the fighting at times became reminiscent of the trench warfare of the First World War.
At first, the French were able to hold out, while supplies and even reinforcements were delivered by air. But slowly key positions were overrun and the perimeter contracted. As a result, air resupply became impossible — especially as the Viet Minh were able to bombard the airstrip from the high ground.
On May 7, 1954, the French garrison surrendered, while a handful of men were able to escape to Laos. Of the 11,000 French troops captured, fewer than 3,300 survived imprisonment.
As the loss at the Battle of Sedan brought down Napoleon III, the defeat at Dien Bien Phu brought down the French government. Later that year the 1954 Geneva Accords were signed, and France agreed to withdraw its forces from all colonies in French Indochina, which it had first gained control of in 1887.
Vietnam was “temporarily” divided along the 17th parallel, with control of the north given to the Viet Minh as the Democratic Republic of Vietnam under Ho Chi Minh, and the south becoming the State of Vietnam, nominally under Emperor Bảo Đại. It was supposed to end with unified national elections in 1956.
Instead, it merely set up the Second Indochina War, which saw the involvement of the United States.
French Small Arms of Dien Bien Phu
The French Army that went into action in the First Indochina War was initially issued with British and American uniforms and equipment, due to the fact that the French military was still recovering from four years of German occupation. Even in the latter stages of the fighting, the French troops could be mistaken for American GIs. The American M1 steel helmet was widely employed, and only a few units had received the French OTAN M51 helmets by the time of Dien Bien Phu.
A motley mix of American, French, German, and British small arms were provided to the French forces. Though the Pistole modèle 1935A had remained the standard sidearm, some French officers preferred even the German P38 pistol, chambered in the 9x19mm Parabellum round, while the American M1911 .45 caliber pistol was also carried by many officers and NCOs. French Air Force personnel as well as National Gendarmerie officers also were issued with the Browning Hi-Power.
The pre-World War II MAS-36 bolt action rifle was still issued in large numbers throughout the conflict, alongside the British Lee Enfield, M1903A3 Springfield, and German K98K. Photographic evidence even shows that some colonial troops were issued Berthier rifles dating back to the First World War!
A lesser seen, but still used weapon, was the American M1 Garand, while a number of the paratroopers who dropped into Dien Bien Phu were reportedly issued with the American M1 Carbine. It was preferred over the CR39, a paratrooper version of the MAS-36 that was fitted with a cast aluminum stock. In addition, the MAS-49 semi-automatic rifle, which was adopted in 1949, saw service in the latter stages of the conflict.
The Fusil-mitrailleur Modèle 1924 M29 (FM24/29), first adopted in the 1920s — and used in the early stages of the Second World War — remained the workhorse light machine gun of the First Indochina War. It served as the primary infantry support weapon, although the French also had a significant number of U.S.-made Browning M1919 .30 caliber machine guns. The FM24/29 featured a magazine similar in size to the British Bren Gun. As a result, many French troops continued to use British Pattern 37 web gear with Bren magazine pouches throughout the conflict as it was better suited to the climate than the French-made leather pouches that were issued to the French forces in Europe.
The pre-war MAS-38 submachine gun was used in small numbers and was gradually withdrawn with the adoption of the MAT-49 submachine gun that was developed by the French arms factory Manufacture Nationale d’Armes de Tulle (MAT) for use by the French Army. First introduced in 1949, the weapon gained considerable favor with airborne and mechanized troops, who prized the MAT-49 for its simplicity, ruggedness, firepower, and notably its compactness.
Viet Minh Small Arms of Dien Bien Phu
Even as the French Army in Indochina may have been a ragtag force, the Viet Minh were among the first Cold War-era insurgent forces that used literally any weapon it could acquire. In the early stages of the fighting, it used a mix of captured small arms. That included French Lebel Model 1886, Berthier, and MAS-36 rifles, as well as the French SMGs and even a few Chauchat automatic rifles; along with Type 99/38 rifles, and Type 11 machine guns that had been captured from the Japanese.
Even older weapons such as the Gras m1874 and the Hanyang 88 — the latter a German-made export model of the Gewehr 88 used by the Chinese Qing Dynasty — were employed by desperate fighters. The Hanyang 88 bolt action rifle was likely among the first weapons to be sent from the People’s Republic of China (PRC) after its victory in the Chinese Civil War. Likewise, a number of German Kar 98K bolt action rifles and Gewehr 43 semi-automatic rifles that had been used by the French Foreign Legion were captured and pressed into service.
Other Communist-supplied weapons included the Russian/Soviet Mosin-Nagent M1891 (and variants), the SVT-40 semi-automatic rifle, PM M1910 Maxim machine gun, Detyaryov machine gun, and PPSh-41 and PPS-43 submachine guns.
A variety of British weapons — including Sten Guns, Bren Guns, and Lee Enfield rifles — were also employed by the Viet Minh. Some of those were captured from French stocks, while others were smuggled into the country from China, Malaysia, and Thailand. At the time of Dien Bien Phu, the SKS, and AK-47 that would each be so iconic in the conflict with the United States and South Vietnam a decade later had not been provided in any significant numbers.
Given the vast number of small arms that each side used, it is a wonder how ammunition supplies were handled!
