The French parachuted two battalions of the first wave of airborne troops into Dien Bien Phu on 20 November 1954. Ultimately 15,000 men would be air-transported into Dien Bien Phu as reinforcements. It was Verdun all over again. The intensity of the Communist bombardment churned the ground into a fine powder unsuitable to bunkers or trenches and the French did not construct one concrete fortification in Dien Bien Phu! The airfield at the besieged city, the key to the whole operation, was shelled frequently by Communist guns.

Officially Dien Bien Phu was occupied to draw off the Viet-Minh 316th division from attacking and overwhelming the guerrilla base at Lai Chau, and to demonstrate that the French could still defend Laos. Yet no large scale operation was planned by the French commanders in 1953 or 1954, their hopes being that they could force a battlefield stalemate in 1955.

The French position at Dien Bien Phu consisted on one fortress, Elaine, a smaller fort seven kilometers further south, Isabelle and two strongpoints on hill tops, Gabrielle and Beatrice. From these two hill tops the entire valley could be shelled, and yet both were lost one day after the battle began on 14 March 1954!

Eventually the Viet-Minh assembled the 351st heavy division, and infantry divisions 316, 304, and 308 to destroy the 12 French battalions In Dien Bien Phu.

By March 28 the city was lost; the three divisions had arrived to reinforce the 316th to begin a siege that could not be lifted. Two plans were considered for saving the fortress, an American one, the O'Daniel Plan, which called for a 200 mile "dash" from Hanoi to Dien Bien Phu by the G.M. units. The G.M. units would have to fight their way through two divisions of Viet-Minh troops (the 320th and 324th divisions) plus five independent regiments.

As Bernard Fall states in Street Without Joy, page 326, "The reason for the plan turned down for it was quite simply that it was the most wildly implausible plan... Such a plan had not even worked in September 1944, in the open plains of Western Europe, when British and American armor failed... to hack out the British 1st Airborne division..." The French plan called for an attack from Laos, but never came to fruition due to lack of military units to carry the plan out.

Dien Bien Phu fell on 7 May 1954 after a siege of 55 days, one day before the peace talks began. Only 76 men of the 15,094 who served in Dien Dien Phu survived the breakout and most made it to Lai Chau, the guerrilla base. Three months later the war ended with the collapse of the Red River Delta position. At the time of the cease fire on 20 July 1954 there were almost as many Communist guerrillas, militia, and regulars in the Delta as the French had defending it.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bodard, Lucien, The Quicksilver War Boston: Atlantic-Little, Brown and Co. 1967
Fall, Bernard. Street Without Joy Harrisburg, Pa, Telegraph Press 1965.
Tse-Tung, Mao. (translated by Brigadier General Samuel B. Griffith USMC ret.) New York: Praeger, 1961

More Tonkin War 1950-1954

Opening Involvement
The Battle for Hanoi January-June 1951
Hoa-Binh (Nov 1951 - Feb 1952) to Operation Lorraine (Oct-Nov 1952)
Dien Bien Phu