The Ho Chi Minh Trail was a network of strategically crucial supply lines used by the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army (People’s Army of Vietnam) during the Vietnam War. This trail network, which the Americans named after North Vietnamese President Ho Chi Minh, was called the Truong Son trail in Vietnamese.
Most of the Ho Chi Minh Trail ran through neighboring Cambodia and Laos, connecting North Vietnam and South Vietnam while avoiding the major concentrations of U.N.
Some parts of the trail had been in use for centuries by local people; others were hacked from the jungle during the First Indochina War (1946 – 1954), in which the Vietnamese defeated the French.
The trail served as a major supply line for both manpower and materiel. During the Vietnam War(1955 – 1975), the trail evolved from a path for human porters or heavily-laden bicycles, to a truck road through the jungle. Sympathetic communist regimes in Russia and China supplied the trucks, which moved along roads up to 18 feet wide in places. Thick jungle canopy provided natural cover for the majority of the road; where the trees were not thick enough, the Vietnamese added extra camouflage to protect the trail from aerial surveillance and bombing. As of the dry season of 1965, the US estimated that the communists were using the Ho Chi Minh Trail to move some 195 tons of supplies to the south each day.
US forces responded to this threat by means ranging from large-scale aerial bombardment to cloud-seeding over Laos, in hopes of keeping the trail too muddy for truck traffic.
Explore best places to visit in vietnam with Hivietnam: find out when to go, view itineraries and read about lakes, bays, street food and water puppets
Explore best places to visit in vietnam with Hivietnam: find out when to go, view itineraries and read about lakes, bays, street food and water puppets
The United States had not declared war on the kingdoms of Laos or Cambodia, and the US Air Force was not authorized to conduct missions there. Thus, all operations against the Ho Chi Minh Trail were technically illegal. The North Vietnamese, in turn, began deploying anti-aircraft systems in 1968 all along the trail to protect it from American bombing runs. The trail continued to operate as the main life-line for communist forces until April 30, 1975, when the southern capital of Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese. Xem hanoi opera house
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