NORTH VIETNAMESE ARMY

The People's Army of Vietnam, also known as the North Vietnam Army (NVA for short) during the Vietnam War of 1964 / 1965-1975, was formed in December 1944. She took part in the battles with the French in 1946-1954 with great success, giving them a spectacular defeat at the Battle of Dien Bien Pho in 1954. In both this war and the Vietnam War (1964 / 1965-1975), the primary type of NVA was infantry. This was due to, on the one hand, economic reasons, and on the other - the terrain of Vietnam, which made it impossible to use mechanized and armored units on a larger scale. During the war of 1964 / 1965-1975, the NVA was able to put around 450,000-500,000 soldiers into combat at a time. The army used various types of small arms, ranging from TT and PM pistols, through captured MAT 49 submachine guns, AK and AKM rifles, to RPD and DP machine guns. It is also often forgotten that the NVA had artillery units (e.g. 107 and 120 mm mortars), anti-aircraft weapons and armored forces composed of vehicles such as the T-54, T-55 or PT-76. The main strategy of the North Vietnamese forces was to inflict the greatest possible losses on the American troops and make them withdraw from the conflict. Exceptions to this strategy (e.g. the Tet offensive of 1968) only supported these assumptions. It is worth adding that this strategy turned out to be right, and the NVA finally won the Vietnam War despite suffering huge losses estimated (along with the Viet Cong) at around 650,000-800,000 killed.