How many tunnels did the Vietnamese dig? During the Vietnamese War, the North Vietnamese forces managed to dig a 400 km tunnel system that they used to hide and to attack the South Vietnamese and Americans.
Tunnels have often been used as a tool of war. They weren’t often used in ancient battles, because it would take too long to dig and forces were never really in one place for long enough. They would be dug during sieges. Forces would try to tunnel into or out of a town that was besieged. The largest use of tunnels was probably during World War 1. These tunnels were dug by both sides and one of their main goals was to get explosives underneath the enemy lines. In World War 1, both sides were stuck in their trenches and there was no movement for months at a time. This made it logistically possible to dig a lot of tunnels. It is not known exactly how many tunnels were dug during World War 1 because a lot of them were destroyed, but it was many kilometers.
There are many dangers of being a tunneler, especially if the tunnel is long. If it’s a narrow tunnel, which most of them were, you need to work in a very confined space and have a method to remove the earth that is dug up from the head of the tunnel. You need a system of lighting, unless people are working in the dark. Most soil is wet, so you need a system to drain the tunnel so that it doesn’t flood. You also need a way to get air into the tunnel because it is unlikely you can dig air holes. And you need to be able to support the roof of the tunnel so that it doesn’t collapse on the person digging. All these are problems you would have if you dug a tunnel anywhere. If you are digging a tunnel in a warzone, as they were in World War 1 and Vietnam, you need to be able to dig quietly enough that the noise of digging won’t be heard on the surface. Sound carries well through earth. If people in the trenches heard the sound of shovels scraping, or people talking, they would dig a small hole and drop a grenade in it. And the above ground was shelled a lot, so there is even more likelihood that the tunnel will collapse.
When America invaded Vietnam, they had the superior technology and firepower, so the Viet Cong fighting forces had to change the way they approached the war. They couldn’t take on American forces on an open battlefield because they wouldn’t stand a chance. They became guerrilla fighters, popping up here and there to harry the enemy, hoping to cause enough damage that the Americans would leave. To do this, they needed to be able to appear suddenly in a place and they needed to be able to disappear again. Tunnels gave them that advantage.
They didn’t start digging the tunnels for the Vietnam War. The first tunnels were dug in the 1940s. Vietnam didn’t start fighting with the Vietnam War, their fighting started a century before when they were colonized by France. Then, during World War 2, they were colonized by the Japanese and had to keep fighting. After World War 2, the French wanted their colony back and there was even more fighting. The first tunnels were dug during World War 2 to hide arms. Over the next few decades, these tunnels grew and joined to other networks until there were over 250 km of tunnels by 1965. The Viet Cong continued using them through the war with them Americans. The Americans and their Allies found the tunnels and they sent soldiers down to hunt the Viet Cong, but the tunnels were very small and narrow, making fighting incredibly difficult. The Viet Cong could easily move to another area, stay there until the Americans had left, and then move back again. The soldiers that went down the tunnels became known as tunnel rats.
The soil underneath the area was excellent for tunnel digging. It was a hard clay that was very easy to shape. It drained fairly well as well. The only problems were holding up the ceilings. They used wood, but after the American bombing, there wasn’t enough wood left, so they used anything they could get their hands on. The bombs also collapsed the tunnels. Vietnam had several problems that the soldiers in the Second World War didn’t have to contend with. The first problem was that Vietnam has a lot of venomous snakes, insects, and lizards, which love a deep dark hole. Being bitten or stung was a huge problem. There was also a sanitation problem because many people were actually living in these tunnels. A vast amount of them had malaria and intestinal parasites. It was a pretty hard life. Still, without the tunnels, they might not have been able to hang on long enough to beat the French, the Japanese, the French again, and then the Americans. And this is what I learned today.
Sources
https://www.thenmusa.org/articles/tunnel-rats-of-the-vietnam-war
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%E1%BB%A7_Chi_tunnels
Image By Kevyn Jacobs – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=90229
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