The Tet Offensive was a major escalation and one of the largest military campaigns of the Vietnam War. The Viet Cong (VC) and North Vietnamese People's Army of Vietnam (PAVN) launched a surprise attack on January 30, 1968 against the forces of the South Vietnamese Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), the United States Armed Forces and their allies. It was a campaign of surprise attacks against military and civilian command and control centers throughout South Vietnam. The name is the truncated version of the Lunar New Year festival name in Vietnamese, Tết Nguyên Đán, with the offense chosen during a holiday period as most ARVN personnel were on leave. The purpose of the wide-scale offensive by the Hanoi Politburo was to trigger political instability in a belief that mass armed assault on urban centers would trigger defections and rebellions.
General William C. Westmoreland, COMUSMACV
VC prior to departing for Saigon-Gia Định
VC special forces are sworn into the forces before the Tet Offensive
VC troops pose with new AK-47 assault rifles and American field radios
South Vietnam, officially the Republic of Vietnam, was a country in Southeast Asia that existed from 1955 to 1975, the period when the southern portion of Vietnam was a member of the Western Bloc during part of the Cold War after the 1954 division of Vietnam. It first received international recognition in 1949 as the State of Vietnam within the French Union, with its capital at Saigon, before becoming a republic in 1955. South Vietnam was bordered by North Vietnam to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and Thailand across the Gulf of Thailand to the southwest. Its sovereignty was recognized by the United States and 87 other nations, though it failed to gain admission into the United Nations as a result of a Soviet veto in 1957. It was succeeded by the Republic of South Vietnam in 1975. In 1976, the Republic of South Vietnam and North Vietnam merged to form the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.
About 1 million North Vietnamese refugees left the newly created communist North Vietnam during Operation Passage to Freedom.
US President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles greeting President Ngô Đình Diệm of South Vietnam in Washington DC, 8 May 1957
A woman casting her ballot in the 1967 elections
An empty Huey helicopter is jettisoned over the side of a carrier to provide room on the ship's deck for more evacuees to land.