Vietnam War Bibliography:

The Climax: Têt and the Battle of Khe Sanh

 

For my own book on the Tet Offensive and related issues, particularly regarding intelligence and the role of the media, See The Myths of Tet below.

 

Eddie Adams, "The Pictures that Burn in my Memory," Parade Magazine, May 15, 1983, pp. 4-6. Adams was the AP photographer who took the famous picture of Brigadier General Nguyen Ngoc Loan shooting a Viet Cong prisoner through the head, on February 1 during the Tet Offensive (see also items by Tom Buckley and Horst Faas, below).

"Eddie Adams Interview." A pretty bad transcription of a very interesting interview of Adams, about Khe Sanh, the Nguyen Ngoc Loan incident, and other things. The transcript does not have a date, or identify the interviewer, but I believe it was David Culbert, a historian at Louisiana State University. The text has been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project, at Texas Tech University.

Agence France Presse, Vietnam: L'heure décisive. L'Offensive du Tet (fevrier 1968). Paris: Robert Laffont, 1968.

William Thomas Allison, The Tet Offensive: A Brief History with Documents. New York and London: Routledge, 2008. xviii, 266 pp. (The text is pp. 1-76; the documents are pp. 79-251.)

Thomas E. Anastasi, III, "Presidential Decision Making During Selected Foreign Policy Crises from 1950-1968 Analyzed Through the Use of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator." Ph.D. dissertation, Political Science, Boston University, 2001. AAT 3010443. xvi, 402 pp. Chapter 10, "Johnson and the Tonkin Gulf Resolution and the Tet Offensive" (pp. 287-333) does not look very good. The full text is available online if you are browsing the Internet from an institution, such as Clemson University, that has a subscription to ProQuest "Dissertations and Theses: Full Text."

Dale Anderson, The Tet Offensive: Turning Point of the Vietnam War. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Compass Point Books, 2006. 96 pp. Intended for juvenile readers, ages 9-12. Not very accurate. Two of the more conspicuous errors are the underestimate of U.S. casualties (p. 76), and treating President Johnson's announcement of March 31, 1968, as if it represented a halt to all bombing of North Vietnam (pp. 83-84).

Ang Cheng Guan, "Decision-making Leading to the Tet Offensive (1968)--The Vietnamese Communist Perspective." Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 33, No. 3 (Jul., 1998), pp. 341-353. The text is available to subscribers on JSTOR.

Robert C. Ankony, Lurps: A Ranger's Diary of Tet, Khe Sanh, A Shau, and Quang Tri. Lanham, MD: Hamilton Books (University Press of America), 2006. 306 pp.

Lt. Col. Robert Annenberg, "Intelligence Team Under Siege." Vietnam Magazine, February 2001, pp. 34-42. Annenberg was a human intelligence officer, stationed in Hue since the summer of 1967.

Michael Archer, A Patch of Ground : Khe Sanh Remembered. Central Point, Oregon: Hellgate Press, 2004. viii, 192 pp. Archer was a radio operator with the 26th Marines.

Michael Archer, The Gunpowder Prince: How Marine Corps Captain Mirza Munir Baig Saved Khe Sanh. Self-published, 2017. Captain Baig was the targeting officer who made American air strikes, in defense of Khe Sanh, more effective than could have been expected. Archer was Baig's radio operator.

Michael Archer, "A Deadly Dilemma," Naval History 37:4 (August 2023), pp. 22-27. Attempts to recover the bodies of Marines killed in fighting on the hills around Khe Sanh were likely to lead to further losses.

Michael Archer, "Right Marine at the Right Place," Naval History 35:2 (April 2021), pp. 48-53. Captain Baig.

Army (monthly magazine). Washington, D.C.: Association of the U.S. Army. Articles on the Tet Offensive include:

Peter Arnett, We're Taking Fire: A Reporter's View of the Vietnam War, Tet and the Fall of LBJ. New York: Associated Press, 2018. x, 301 pp. Covers the Vietnam War from the early 1960s through 1968; there is not as much emphasis on 1968 as the title would lead one to expect. Arnett was a reporter for AP in Vietnam from 1962 onward.

James R. Arnold, The Tet Offensive 1968. Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2001. 96 pp. Also published as Tet Offensive 1968: Turning Point in Vietnam. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004. 96 pp.

Charles Baker, Gray Horse Troop: Forever Soldiers. Powder River Publications, 2013. 375 pp. Baker was operations officer of the 5/7 Cavalry from January 1968 onward. During the Tet Offensive, the 5/7 was one of the units sent toward Hue from the north. Later the unit participated in the relief of Khe Sanh.

Bao tang phu nu Nam bo, Phu nu Sai Gon-Gia Dinh va Nam bo trong cuoc tong tien cong va noi day Xua Mau Than 1968. TP Ho Chi Minh: Tong hop Thanh pho Ho Chi Minh, 2018. 327 pp.

Joseph M. Belardo, Dustermen Vietnam: Story of the Last Great Gunfighters: Transcripts from My Vietnam Diary and Memoirs. Jacksonville, Texax: SamPat Press, 2010. 277 pp. I believe Belardo served with the 1/44 Artillery, an M42 Duster unit, August 1967 to August 1968. He was at Khe Sanh.

Michael Beschloss, Presidents of War: The Epic Story, from 1807 to Modern Times. Crown, 2018 (forthcoming). One chapter discusses President Johnson's dismay at discovering that senior military leaders were drawing up contingency plans for possible use of nuclear weapons at Khe Sanh.

Garnett "Bill" Bell, "Predicting Tet: Chargin' Charlie at Bien Hoa." Vietnam, February 2000, pp. 48-52, 73. Lt. Col. Charles A. Beckwith, who if I understand the article correctly was G-2 of the 101st Airborne Division.

Jake Blood, The Tet Effect: Intelligence and the Public Perception of War. New York and Abingdon: Routledge, 2005. xv, 212 pp.

Bo quoc phong, Vien lich su quan su Viet Nam, Ve cuoc tong tien cong va noi day Tet Mau Than, 1968. Hanoi: NXB Quan doi nhan dan, 2008. 651 pp.

Douglas A. Borer, Stephen Twing, and Randy P. Buckett, "Problems in the Intelligence-Policy Nexus: Rethinking Korea, Tet, and Afghanistan," Intelligence and National Security 29:6 (December 2014), pp. 811-836.

Mark Bowden, Hue 1968: A Turning Point in the American War in Vietnam. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2017. 594 pp. The index has been placed online instead of being printed at the end of the volume. A good, detailed account of the experiences of American troops in the battle for Hue, with a significant amount of discussion of the experiences of Communist troops and of civilians.

Walter J. Boyne, "Airpower at Khe Sanh." Air Force Magazine, August 1998 (81:8). The text has been placed online.

Brig. Gen. Zeb B. Bradford, "With Creighton Abrams During Tet." Vietnam Magazine, February 1998, pp. 42-49, 66. Bradford, then a major, was Abrams' executive officer. Interesting for its stress on how dissatisfied Abrams was over the lack of intelligence warning. Bradford says on p. 48, probably with some exaggeration, "In the immediate aftermath of Tet, Abrams wanted to fire every intelligence officer in Vietnam."

Peter Braestrup, Big Story: How the American Press and Television Reported and Interpreted the Crisis of Tet 1968 in Vietnam and Washington, 2 vols. Boulder, CO: Westview, 1977. xxxvii, 740, x, 706 pp. One-volume abridgment New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983. Updated one-volume abridgement (there is a new Introduction, and four pages of additions and corrections at the end of the volume) Novato, CA: Presidio, 1994. xviii, 613 pp. A very detailed study, with great amounts of documentation. Some of Braestrup's generalizations about the misdeeds of the media are not supported by the evidence he presents.

Richard L. Brown, Palace Gate: Under Siege in Hue City, Tet, January 1968. Atglen, PA: Schiffer, 1995. 192 pp. A firsthand account of the first seventeen days of the battle for Hue, by an Air Force Lt. Col.

Peter Brush, "Aerial Lifeline to Khe Sanh" Vietnam, Vol. 12, No. 4 (December 1999), pp. 30-36.

Peter Brush, "Home is Where You Dig It" Vietnam Generation, Vol. 4, No. 3-4 (Summer-Fall, 1992), pp. 94-98. Observations on life at the Khe Sanh Combat Base.

Peter Brush, "Operation Niagara." Vietnam Magazine, December 1999. The very heavy U.S. bombing operation that helped the defense of Khe Sanh. Peter Brush has placed a slightly different version, with footnotes, online.

Peter Brush, "Reassessing the VC Role after Tet." Vietnam Magazine, February 2002, pp. 34-43, 64. Argues against the widespread view that the Viet Cong were essentially eliminated in the Tet Offensive.

Peter Brush, "Recounting the Casualties at Khe Sanh." Vietnam Magazine, 20:1 (June 2007), pp. 28-37. A version that has footnotes is online at the author's web site.

Peter Brush, "Perspectives--Khe Sanh Could Have Been Another Dien Bien Phu if the NVA Had Cut Off the Marines' Water Supply." Vietnam Magazine, August 1997, pp. 58-60. Peter Brush has also placed online a slightly different version, with footnotes, titled "The Unexploited Vulnerability of the Marines at Khe Sanh.

Joe Buccino, "Burn the Village to Save It." TCK Publishing, 2024 (forthcoming).

Tom Buckley, "Portrait of an Aging Despot," Harper's Magazine, April 1972, pp. 68-72. Profile of Nguyen Ngoc Loan, including Loan's comments on his motives for the famous killing of a prisoner February 1, 1968.

Tom Buckley, "The Villain of Vietnam," Esquire, 91:11 (June 5, 1979), pp. 61-64. Nguyen Ngoc Loan, again.

J.R. Bullington, "Trapped Behind Enemy Lines." Vietnam Magazine, February 1999, pp. 18-24. Bullington, a Foreign Service officer assigned to CORDS, was in Hue when the Tet Offensive hit.

Dick Camp, Jr., "Remembrances: The Siege of Khe Sanh, 1968." Leatherneck, LXXXVI:3 (March 2003), pp. 34-39.

John Carland, "Daniel Ellsberg and the Tet Offensive," Journal of Military History 83:2 (April 2019). A brief essay (pp. 541-44) by Carland, followed by the full text (pp. 545-52) of a memorandum for the record by Ellsberg, "Impact of the VC Winter-Spring Offensive," February 28, 1968, in which Ellsberg described the situation in dire terms, treating the Communists' Tet Offensive as having been much more successful than it actually had been.

George A. Carver, Jr., "Culture and Politics in Vietnam." Lecture presented at the National War College, 29 February 1968. 34 pp. Carver, the Special Assistant for Vietnam Affairs (SAVA) to the Director of Central Intelligence, added a discussion of the Tet Offensive to the overall discussion of the history of Vietnam and Vietnamese politics that had been his originally intended topic. He indicated (p. 32) that it was not yet clear which side would end up as the winner from the Tet Offensive. The text has been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project, at Texas Tech University.

Douglass Lee Chatfield, "Dateline Saigon: The San Jose 'Mercury' and San Jose 'News' Report on the Tet Offensive, January-February 1968." M.A. Thesis, San Jose State University, 1993. 148 pp. AAT 1353000.

Chinh Dao, Mau Than 1968: thang hay bai? Houston, Texas: Nhom nghien cuu Viet su, 1989. 354 pp.

Bruce B.G. Clarke, Expendable Warriors: The Battle of Khe Sanh and the Vietnam War. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007. xix, 167 pp. Clarke's discussion of the fight for the village of Khe Sanh, south of the main combat base, in which he was involved, is very useful. His discussion of much broader issues is less so.

Bernard D. Cole, "A Noglow in Vietnam, 1968: Air Power in the Battle of Khe Sanh." Journal of Military History, 64:1 (January 2000), pp. 151-158. Cole was a Naval Gunfire Liaison Officer (NGLO) from mid-1967 to mid-1968. He comments that his presence at Khe Sanh, out of range of naval gunfire, did not make a lot of sense. He offers a variety of general thoughts on the battle, in addition to his personal recollections.

John Corbett, West Dickens Avenue: A Marine at Khe Sanh. Novato, CA: Presidio, 2003. 208 pp. pb New York: Presidio (Ballantine), 2004. xii, 256 pp. Corbett, a Marine private, arrived in Vietnam at the beginning of January, 1968, and was immediately sent to Khe Sanh, where he served in the 81mm mortar platoon of Headquarters & Service Company, 26th Marine Regiment. He was in Vietnam until January 1969, but the book is mainly devoted to his time at Khe Sanh, January to April 1968.

John T. Correll, "Tet: North Vietnam's 1968 offensive failed, but public opinion converted it into a defeat for the United States".   Air Force Magazine, 91:1 (January 2008), pp. 50-55.

Captain John S. Cowings, "Reaction of Combat Service Support Troops under Stress: The Small Maintenance Support Unit in a Combat Environment" Thesis, Master of Military Arts and Art and Science, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, Ft. Leavenworth, KS, 1975. iv, 128 pp. Cowings, as a 1st Lieutenant, had commanded a maintenance forward support company during the Tet Offensive. But this is not an account of his own experiences; it is a rather abstract study.

Sergeant Major William T. Craig, "Armored Assault on Lang Vei." Vietnam Magazine, February 1995, pp. 30-36.

Walter Cronkite, "Report from Vietnam," CBS News, February 28, 1968. This is the famous special broadcast, not presented as part of the CBS Evening News, that has often been cited as a crucial turning point in the war.

David A. Crum, The Far-Away Dream: My Vietnam Memoir. Bloomington, IN: AuthorHouse, 2018. xiv, 116 pp. Crum was in the battle of Hue as a private in H Company, 2/5 Marines.

Thomas L. Cubbage III, review of Wirtz, The Tet Offensive: Intelligence Failure in War, in Conflict Quarterly, Summer 1993. The review, not very favorable, presents Cubbage's version of the Hanoi policymaking that produced the offensive; Cubbage describes this as Giap's plan.

Thomas L. Cubbage III, "Intelligence and the Tet Offensive: The South Vietnamese View of the Threat." In Elizabeth Errington and B.J.C. McKercher, eds., The Vietnam War as History (New York: Praeger, 1990), pp. 91-116.

David Culbert, "Television's Visual Impact on Decision-Making in the USA, 1968: The Tet Offensive and Chicago's Democratic National Convention", Journal of Contemporary History, 33:3 (July 1998), pp. 419-449. Has considerable detail about the Nguyen Ngoc Loan incident.

Cuoc tong tien cong va noi day Mau than 1968. Hanoi: NXB Quan Doi Nhan Dan, 1998. 460 pp. A collection of relatively short essays, mostly under ten pages, by an impressive set of authors, some writing on broad topics, some on quite specific ones.

Carlos D'Costa, "Media Coverage of the Tet Offensive 1968," M.A. thesis, Florida Atlantic University, 1981. iv, 47 pp. Too short to cover this topic adequately. Available to subscribers through ProQuest.

Michael Dedrick, "Heroes of Tet" Mekong Review, October 2017. In 1968, Dedrick was an "Analyst/Interrogator/Linguist" working at the Combined Military Interrogation Center in Cholon. During the Tet Offensive he was assigned to question Ba Den, one of the wounded Biet dong (special attack troops the Americans called "sappers") who had been captured during their attack on the US Embassy. Many years later, he went back to Vietnam and was able to interview several other former Biet dong.

John Edmund Delezen, Red Plateau: Memoir of a North Vietnamese Soldier. El Dorado Hills, CA: Corps Productions, 2005. iv, 141 pp. Rev. ed. (available only for Kindle as far as I have been able to learn) self-published on Smashwords, 2013. The story of Nguyen Van Tuan, a PAVN soldier who fought in the Khe Sanh campaign, written by Delezen at Tuan's request.

"Dinh Moul" (pseud.), interviewed by Philip Cargill, "Montagnard's Lang Vei Ordeal." Vietnam Magazine, April 1998, pp. 26-32.

Drew Dix, The Rescue of River City. Fairbanks, Alaska: Drew Dix Publishing, 2000. xiv, 241 pp. Special Forces Staff Sergeant Dix, an advisor to the Provincial Reconnaissance Unit of Chau Doc province, won the Medal of Honor for his actions in the defense of Chau Phu in the Tet Offensive.

David Drake, a Vietnam veteran, has written two science fiction novels based on the Tet Offensive, interesting in that the two present diametrically opposed interpretations of it.

Ronald J. Drez and Douglas Brinkley, Voices of Courage: The Battle for Khe Sanh, Vietnam. New York: Bullfinch, 2005. 186 pp.

David Douglas Duncan, I Protest! [subtitle on cover but not on title page Khe Sanh, Vietnam]. New York: Signet/New American Library, 1968. The bulk of the book is a collection of photographs, without captions, that photojournalist Duncan took during an eight-day stay at Khe Sanh in February 1968. There is also an introduction, bitterly critical of US policy.

Anthony O. Edmonds, "The Tet Offensive and Middletown: A Study in Contradiction", Nobody Gets Off the Bus: The Viet Nam Generation Big Book, Volume 5 Number 1-4, March 1994. A detailed look at reactions to the Tet Offensive in the local newspapers of Muncie, Indiana, plus the college newspaper of Ball State University.

Mary Englar, The Tet Offensive. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Compass Point Books, 2008. 48 pp. Intended for juvenile readers, ages 9-12.

Michael Ewing, Khe Sanh. Toronto and New York: Bantam, 1987. 158 pp.

Horst Faas, "The Saigon Execution", The Digital Journalist, October 2004. The killing of a Viet Cong prisoner by Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan in Cholon, during the Tet Offensive.

Richard A. Falk, Appropriating Tet. Princeton: Center for International Studies, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, 1988. 47 pp.

Thomas Fensch, ed., [Top Secret]: The Vietnam War: Confidential Files on the Siege and Loss of Khe Sanh. New Century, 2001. 332 pp. The words "Top Secret" on the cover do not seem to be generally regarded as part of the title.

John W. Flores, "Marine's Sacrifice in the Battle of Hue." Vietnam Magazine, February 1999, pp. 26-32. Sergeant Alfredo 'Freddy' Gonzalez won the Medal of Honor, posthumously, after being killed Feb. 4, 1968, in the battle for Hue.

John W. Flores, When the River Dreams: The Life of Marine Sgt. Freddy Gonzalez. Authorhouse. Sergeant Alfredo Gonzalez Went into Hue as acting commander of 3d Platoon, Company A, 1/1 Marines. He was killed February 4, 1968, and awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously.

Ronnie E. Ford, Tet 1968: Understanding the Surprise. London: Frank Cass, 1995. xxi, 218 pp. Forewords by Gen. William Westmoreland, George Allen.

Captain Ronnie E. Ford, USA, "Window of Opportunity." Vietnam Magazine, February 1995, pp. 38-45, 74.

John L. Frisbee, "The Battle of Bunker Hill 10." Air Force Magazine, January 1985 (68:1). The defense of Bien Hoa Air Base against enemy attack, January 31, 1968. The text used to be online, but no longer seems to be.

John L. Frisbee, "Hero of Bien Hoa." Air Force Magazine, February 1993 (76:2). The defense of Bien Hoa Air Base against enemy attack, January 31, 1968. The text has been placed online.

Lieutenant Colonel John R. Galvin, "The Relief of Khe Sanh" Military Review, January 1970, pp. 88-94.

Giai phong Khe Sanh, Huong Hoa: Mau Than, 1968: ky yeu hoi thao khoa hoc. Hanoi: NXB Quan doi nhan dan, 1998. 350 pp.

Marc Jason Gilbert and William Head, eds., The Tet Offensive. Westport: Praeger, 1996. xiv, 286 pp. The full text is available online to paid subscribers of Questia.

Russell W. Glenn, et. al., Ready for Armageddon: Proceedings of the 2001 RAND Arroyo-Joint ACTD-CETO-USMC Nonlethal and Urban Operations Program Urban Operations Conference. CF-179-A. Santa Monica: Rand Corporation, 2002. xx, 112 pp. The section particularly relevant to the Tet Offensive is Appendix B: "Lessons Learned, Operation 'Hue City'" (pp. 95-112), focused on the actions of C Company, 1/5 Marines.

Tom Glenn, "Was the Tet Offensive Really a Surprise?" New York Times online, November 3, 2007. In 1967, Glenn, a Vietnamese linguist with NSA, was in Pleiku province, assisting the US Army SIGINT team that supported the 4th Infantry Division and the 173d Airborne Brigade. In October they attempted to warn the commander of the 4th Infantry Division about an impending offensive in the vicinity of Dak To, but the warning was ignored. In December he shifted to Bien Hoa, where he soon saw similar signs of an impending enemy offensive in that area, but Westmoreland rejected that warning.

Captain Wynn A. Goldsmith, "River Rats to the Rescue at Ben Tre." Vietnam Magazine, February 1998, pp. 26-32. PBRs of River Section 534.

Kendall W. Gott, Breaking the Mold: Tanks in the Cities. Fort Leavenworth, KS: Combat Studies Institute Press, 2006. xii, 132 pp. Chapter 2 (pp. 23-45) covers the battle for Hue in 1968.

Patrick Hagopian, "The 'Frustrated Hawks,' Tet 1968, and the Transformation of American Politics," European Journal of American Studies 3:2 (2008).

Eric Hammel, Fire in the Streets: The Battle for Hue, Tet 1968. Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1991. xxvi, 371 pp. pb New York: Dell, 1992. xxviii, 371 pp.

Eric Hammel, Marines in Hue City: A Portrait of Urban Combat, Tet 1968. St. Paul: Zenith, 2007. 168 pp. Heavily illustrated.

Eric Hammel, Khe Sanh, Siege in the Clouds: An Oral History. New York: Crown, 1989. x, 508 pp.

William M. Hammond, "The Tet Offensive and the News Media: Some Thoughts on the Effects of News Reporting," Army History no. 70, Winter 2009, pp. 6-16.

Col. Pat Hanavan, USAF, Ret., Caribou Airlines: A History of USAF C-7A Caribou Operations in Vietnam, Volume II, Tet Offensive: 1968. CreateSpace, 2013. 430 pp.

Glenn E. Helm, "Surprised at Tet: U.S. Naval Forces in Vietnam, 1968." Pull Together, vol. 36, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 1997), pp. 1-5. Text also on a Naval Historical Center website.

Albert Hemingway, "Seventy-Seven Days in Hell," Vietnam Magazine, June 1990, pp. 30-37.

David Earl Henard, Victory Stolen: The Perspectives of a Helicopter Pilot on the Tet Offensive and Its Aftermath. Baltimore: PublishAmerica, 2008. 202 pp. The parts of this book dealing with matters to which Henard was not himself a witness are pretty inaccurate.

John B. Henry, "February, 1968," Foreign Policy, no. 4 (Autumn 1971), pp. 3- . Mr. Henry had been able to interview a number of key people while researching his undergraduate honors thesis at Harvard, including Westmoreland, Wheeler, and Komer.

George C. Herring, "Tet and the Crisis of Hegemony," in Carole Fink, Philipp Gassert, and Detlef Junker, eds., 1968: The World Transformed (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 31-54.

Ho Khang, Tet Mau Than 1968 tai Mien Nam Viet Nam. Hanoi: NXB Quan Doi Nhan Dan, 1998. 226 pp.

Ho Khang, The Tet Mau Than 1968 Event in South Vietnam. Hanoi: The Gioi, 2001. 146 pp.

Ho Khang, Tet Mau Than 1968, buoc ngoat lon cua cuoc khang chien chong My cuu nuoc. Hanoi: NXB Quan Doi Nhan Dan, 2005. 375 pp. Hanoi: NXB Chinh tri quoc gia, 2008. 414 pp.

Hoang-An, et al., Saigon mau lua: Tet Mau than. Fort Smith, Arkansas: Song Moi, (1986?). 193 pp.

Col. Hoang Ngoc Lung, The General Offensives of 1968-69.  1981. McLean, Virginia: General Research Corporation, 1978. v, 157 pp. Written on contract for the U.S. Army. The text has been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project, at Texas Tech University, in three parts: Front matter and pp. 1-43, pp. 44-95 and pp. 96-157.

Hue xuan 68. Hue: Thanh uy Hue, 1988. 353 pp.

Colonel John Hughes-Wilson, Military Intelligence Blunders and Cover-Ups, rev. ed. New York: Carroll & Graf, 2004. x, 438 pp. The chapter "'I Thought We Were Supposed To Be Winning?' - The Tet Offensive, 1968" (pp. 165-217) has some interesting thoughts. But it has no source notes, and is very carelessly written. Errors range from the trivial (the map on p. 182 shows Haiphong northeast of Hanoi instead of southeast, and shows Hue and Da Nang far south of their actual locations) to fundamental (p. 172 says "the Americans had effectively won" the Vietnam War by 1967). So I cannot trust this work.

Lt. Col. Frederick F. Irving, USA, "The Battle of Hue" Military Review, January 1969, pp. 56-63.

Brig. Gen. Albin F. Irzyk, Unsung Heroes, Saving Saigon. Raleigh, NC: Ivy House, 2008. xiv, 212 pp. Irzyk commanded the U.S. Army's Headquarters Area Command in Saigon, from September 1967 onward.

Dominic Johnson and Dominic Tierney, Failing to Win: Perceptions of Victory and Defeat in International Politics. Cambridge:, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006. The chapter "The Tet Offensive" is pp. 127-163. I have skimmed this briefly; the authors appear to me to be exaggerating the extent to which the Tet Offensive was perceived as an American defeat.

Gregg Jones, Last Stand at Khe Sanh: The U. S. Marines' Finest Hour in Vietnam. Boston: Da Capo (Perseus), 2014. xx, 358 pp.

Kenneth N. Jordan, Sr., Marines Under Fire: Alpha 1/1 in Vietnam: From Con Thien to Hue and Khe Sanh. Publish America, 2008. 514 pp. A Company, 1/1 Marines, January 1967 through spring 1968.

General Walter T. Kerwin, interviewed by Lt. Col. James Jay Carafano, "Desperate Hours During Tet: Inside MACV Headquarters." Vietnam Magazine, February 2001, pp. 27-32. Kerwin was General Westmoreland's chief of staff. Interesting for the discussion of planning for the possible use of nuclear weapons in the aftermath of Tet.

CDR G. Paul Kish, "Obscuring Victory and Defeat: The Vietnamese Tet Offensive: An Operational Perspective." Paper written for the Department of Joint Military Operations, Naval War college, 1995. pp. i-iv, 1-15, v-x.

LT CDR Nancy V. Kneipp, "The Tet Offensive and the Principles of War." Paper written for the Department of Joint Military Operations, Naval War college, 1996. 25 pp.

Charles A. Krohn, The Lost Battalion: Controversy and Casualties in the Battle of Hue. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1993. 224 pp. Rev. ed. The Lost Battalion of Tet: Breakout of the 2/12th Cavalry at Hue. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2008. pb New York: Pocket Star Books (Simon & Schuster), 2009. xxvi, 320 pp. The 2/12 Cavalry (1st Cavalry Division), sent without adequate support to attack a strong PAVN force on the outskirts of Hue, Feb. 3 1968. Author was the battalion's intelligence officer.

Berneice Lanier, "Personality: For a civilian logistics specialist working at Long Binh, the harsh realities of war were difficult to accept." Vietnam, February 2000, pp. 12, 66-70.

Berneice Lanier, A Rooster at Tet. Huntington, WV: University Editions, 1998. 219 pp.

Mike Larson, Heroes: A Year in Vietnam with the First Air Cavalry Division. Bloomington, Indiana: iUniverse, 2008. xviii, 251 pp. Larson served from July 1967 to July 1968 as a combat reporter for the Public Information Office of the 1st Cavalry Division. Nine chapters (pp. 1-26, 127-159) deal with the Battle of Hue, and there are also a few pages on Khe Sanh.

Raymond R. Lau, "The 1968 Tet Offensive in Vietnam and the Seizure of Hue: A CORDS Advisor Remembers," Studies in Intelligence 61:4 (December 2017), pp. 1-14.

Christopher R. Leahey, "Hegemony and History: A Critical Analysis of How High School History Textbooks Depict Key Events of the Vietnam War." Ed.D. dissertation, Binghamton University, 2007. ix, 265 pp. AAT 3273586. The main focus is on the events surrounding the Tonkin Gulf incidents of 1964, and the Tet Offensive of 1968.

Major Marilynn K. Lietz, "Why the North Vietnamese Launched a Major Military Offensive During Tet 1968." Thesis, Master of Military Art and Science, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, 1978. viii, 228 pp. [Not recommended; the research seems careless.]

Aaron Lillie, "Politics, Protest and Revolution: The Origin and Evolution of the Urban Networks of the NLF and the Communist Party in Central Vietnam, 1930-1975," Ph.D. dissertation, History, University of Washington, 2021. DA 28549600. xiii, 330 pp. Deals mostly with the period up to 1968.

Major Jonathan S. Lockwood, USA, "The Failure of Intelligence." Vietnam Magazine, February 1995, pp. 22-28.

Major J. E. Longhofer, "An Analysis of the Psychological Necessity of Censorship in Combat Zones" Thesis, Master of Military Arts and Art and Science, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, Ft. Leavenworth, KS, 1970. x, 197 pp. Critical of the behavior of the press in Vietnam. Looks particularly at the Tet Offensive and the Battle of Ap Bia Mountain ("Hamburger Hill").

John C. McManus, "Battleground Saigon." Vietnam Magazine, February 2004. Particular focus on the 3/7 Infantry, 199th Infantry Brigade.

Stéphane Mantoux, l'Offensive du Têt: 30 janvier - mai 1968. Paris: Tallandier, 2013. 224 pp.

Robert Maras and Charles W. Sasser, Blood in the Hills: The Story of Khe Sanh, the Most Savage Fight of the Vietnam War. Lyons Press, 2017. 288 pp.

James I. Marino, "Strategic Crossroads at Khe Sanh." Vietnam Magazine, December 1999, pp. 38-46.

Peter Maslowski and Don Winslow, Looking for a Hero: Staff Sergeant Joe Ronnie Hooper and the Vietnam War. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005. 688 pp. Sergeant Hooper won the Congressional Medal of Honor for an action of February 21, 1968, near Hue; he was with D Company, 2/501 Infantry, 101st Airborne Division.

Capt. David V. Mastran, USAF, Vietnam 1968: Turning Point. Self-published, 2016. 269 pp. Mastran arrived in Vietnam in December 1967, an Air Force lieutenant on a team assigned to evaluate "McNamara's Wall" (the Igloo White sensor system monitoring traffic on the Ho Chi Minh Trail). Developing a computer simulation of interdiction operations soon became Mastran's primary task.

Mau-than Sai-gon: tong hop hinh anh va thong tin chien truong tu hai phia. TP Ho Chi Minh: NXB Tre, 1988. 140 pp.

Theodore F. Meyer III, "Fighting Forces: A member of the 219th Military Intelligence Detachment had his baptism of fire during the Tet Offensive." At Long Binh. Vietnam, February 2000, pp. 16-20, 71.

 

Edwin Moïse, The Myths of Tet: The Most Misunderstood Event of the Vietnam War. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2017. xi, 276 pp. Argues that the Tet Offensive was larger in scale than many authors have acknowledged. The Communist forces involved were larger, they sustained unusually intense combat much longer, and they inflicted heavier casualties on the American forces than has often been suggested. It was this reality, not exaggerations by the American media, that undermined political support for the war in the United States.
Table of Contents and other relevant information

 

Edwin Moise, "The Myths of the Tet Offensive," in Michael Aung-Thwin and Kenneth R. Hall, eds., New Perspectives on the History and Historiography of Southeast Asia: Continuing Explorations (London and New York: Routledge, 2011), pp. 229-254.

Edwin Moise, "Lyndon Johnson's War Propaganda" Published online by the New York Times, November 20, 2017.

Edwin E. Moïse, "Tet in the News," Vietnam magazine, February 2019, pp. 30-37.

James M. Mueller, "Tet in Hue." Vietnam Magazine, February 1997. Mueller was a clerk-typist for MACV Advisory Team 3 (the advisors to the ARVN 1st Infantry Division).

NBC News, "Viet Cong Terror—A Guerrilla Offensive," NBC News Special Report, January 31, 1968. Broadcast late in the evening of January 31 in the United States. Considerable video footage of the fighting inside the US Embassy compound and elsewhere in Saigon, brief video of the aftermath of the attack on Danang Air Base. Refers to the Viet Cong as "terrorists," exaggerates the coordination of the offensive but fails to make clear how widespread it was.

Ngo Vinh Long, "The Tet Offensive and Its Aftermath," in Jayne Werner and David Hunt, eds., The American War in Vietnam (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Southeast Asia Program, 1993), pp. 23-45.

Nguyen Ha Thanh, ed., Tet Mau Than 1968: 40 nam nhin lai. Hanoi: NXB Lao Dong, 2008. 175 pp.

Lien-Hang T. Nguyen, "The War Politburo: North Vietnam's Diplomatic and Political Road to the Tet Offensive." Journal of Vietnamese Studies, Vol. I, nos. 1-2 (February/August 2006), pp. 4-58. It is temporarily available online (I don't know for how long) as a University of California Press web page.

Lien-Hang T. Nguyen, Tet 1968: The Battles that Changed the Vietnam War and the Global Cold War. New York: Random House, 2019 or 2020 (forthcoming).

Nguyen Van Nhan et al., Mau than: truyen ky. TP Ho Chi Minh: Tre, 1988. 239 pp.

Nguyen Van Tao, Saigon, Mau than 1968. TP Ho Chi Minh: Van Nghe, 1988. 353 pp.

Nha Ca, translated and with an introduction by Olga Dror, Mourning Headband for Hue: An Account of the Battle for Hue, Vietnam 1968. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014. 378 pp. Paperback with only insignificant modifications Bloomington: Indiana University Press,, 2016. An account by a Vietnamese woman who was in the city. Vietnamese original Giai khan so cho Hue. Saigon: Thuong-Yeu, 1969. 523 pp.

Keith W. Nolan, Battle for Hue: Tet 1968. Novato, CA: Presidio, 1983. The full text is available online to paid subscribers of Questia. Pb New York: Dell, 1985.

Keith W. Nolan, The Battle for Saigon: Tet 1968. New York: Pocket Books, 1996. xiii, 274 pp.

Don North, "VC Assault on the U.S. Embassy." Vietnam Magazine, February 2000, pp. 38-47, 72. North was there, as a reporter for ABC News.

Don Oberdorfer, Tet. New York: Doubleday, 1971. pb New York: Avon, 1972. 397 pp. Reprinted, with a new preface added, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. A good overall account of the battle, by a reporter for the Washington Post.

Don Oberdorfer, "Tet: Who Won?" Smithsonian, November 2004, pp. 117-123. Quite good.

Major Robert J. O'Brien, "The Attack on the American Embassy during Tet, 1968: Factors that Turned a Tactical Victory into a Political Defeat" M.A. Thesis, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, 2009. x, 103 pp.

Jim Ogle, Chau and the CIA Ladies: A Memoir of the Tet Offensive. Xlibris, 2012. 72 pp.

François d'Orcival and Jacques-François de Chaunac, Les marines à Khé Sanh: Vietnam 1968. Paris: Presses de la Cité, 1979. 247 pp.

Major General David E. Ott, "The Tet Offensive 1968", Field Artillery, March-April 2006, pp. 22-27.

Alexander Ovodenko, "Visions of the Enemy from the Field and from Abroad: Revisiting CIA and Military Expectations of the Tet Offensive," Journal of Strategic Studies, 34:1 (2011), pp. 119-144.

Chester J. Pach, "Tet on TV: U.S. Nightly News Reporting and Presidential Policy Making," in Carole Fink, Philipp Gassert, and Detlef Junker, eds., 1968: The World Transformed (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 55-82.

Pham Van Son, ed., Cuoc tong cong kich, tong khoi nghia cua Viet-Cong Mau Than, 1968. Saigon: Quan luc Viet Nam Cong Hoa, 1968. 400 pp.

Ltc. Pham Van Son, ed., The Viet Cong "Tet" Offensive (1968). 490 pp. Translation of the item above. A study written by the Military History Division, Joint General Staff, RVNAF.  490 pp. (Available in a reprint from the Dalley Book Service, Christiansburg, VA.)  The text has been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project, at Texas Tech University, in nine parts: pp. 1-54, pp. 55-106, pp. 107-156, pp. 157-206, pp. 207-256, pp. 257-306, pp. 308-357, pp. 358-407, pp. 408-459, pp. 460-490. The text is more consistently legible in Dalley's reprint, but the illustrations are clearer in the online version. The text is also available online in the Combined Arms Research Library of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College. Also reprinted under the title Tet 1968: The Communist Offensive that Marked the Beginning of America's Defeat in Vietnam. Salisbury, NC: Documentary Publications, 1980. 490 pp.

William R. Phillips, Night of the Silver Stars: The Battle of Lang Vei. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1997. xv, 179 pp. PAVN attack on the Special Forces camp near Khe Sanh, Feb 6-7, 1968.

COL Thomas F. Pike, ed., Military Records, February 1968, 3rd Marine Division: The Tet Offensive. CreateSpace, 2013. 210 pp.

Robert Pisor, The End of the Line: The Siege of Khe Sanh. New York: Norton, 1982. pb New York: Ballantine, 1983. xii, 306 pp. pb New York: Norton, 2002. 319 pp. A big conventional battle out in the hills, that occurred at about the same time as the Tet Offensive (early 1968).

Victoria Pohle, The Viet Cong in Saigon: Tactics and Objectives during the Tet Offensive.  RM-5799-ISA/ARPA. Santa Monica: Rand Corporation, 1969.  x, 75 pp or xv, 75 pp. (published in two slightly different versions, both dated January 1969, both designated RM-5799-ISA/ARPA, but differing in that the longer one has a Foreword and a Bibliography of Related Rand Reports added on pp. iii-vi, which expand the overall length of the front matter from x to xv pp.). The text of the longer version is online at the Rand Corporation. The text of the shorter version has been placed on-line in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project, at Texas Tech University, in two parts: pp. i-x, 1-40 and pp. 41-75.

John Prados and Ray W. Stubbe, Valley of Decision: The Siege of Khe Sanh. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1991 (pb New York: Dell, 1993).

John Prados, "Khe Sanh: The Other Side of the Hill." VVA Veteran, July-August 2007, pp. 23-26, 45.

John Prados, "Tet in II Corps." VVA Veteran, 30:2 (March-April 2010), pp. 29-31, 46.

Merle Pribbenow, "General Vo Nguyen Giap and the Mysterious Evolution of the Plan for the 1968 Tet Offensive." Journal of Vietnamese Studies 3:2 (Summer 2008), pp. 1-33.

Sophie Quinn-Judge, "The Urban Movement and the Planning and Execution of the Tet Offensive,", Cold War International History Project, 2014.

Rand Vietnam Interview Series Tet-B -- Refugees' Reactions to Tet Offensive. - Interview rept. for 1968. Available through NTIS. 248 interviews.

Rand Vietnam Interview Series Tet-VC -- Organizational Activities of Viet Cong during the Tet Offensive. - Interview repts. for 1968. Available through NTIS. 82 interviews.

Andrew Rawson, Battle Story: Tet Offensive 1968. History Press, 2013. 160 pp. Judging from the brief excerpt I have seen, this is not very good.

Earl Rice, Jr., The Tet Offensive. San Diego: Lucent Books, 1996. 96 pp. Intended for juvenile readers.

Major Dale S. Ringler, How the North Vietnamese Won the War: Operational Art Bends but Does Not Break in Response to Asymmetry. Ft. Leavenworth: School of Advanced Military Studies, 2001. iii, 54 pp. Theoretical analysis of the Tet Offensive of 1968.

James S. Robbins, This Time We Win: Revisiting the Tet Offensive. New York: Encounter Books, 2010. viii, 364 pp.

James S Robbins, "An Old, Old Story: Misreading Tet, Again," World Affairs, 173:3 (Sept-Oct 2010), pp. 49-58.

Brenda Rosen Rodgers, "A Civilian in Tet '68." Vietnam Magazine, February 1997, pp. 43-48. Brenda Rosen was a public health education adviser, working for AID in Saigon.

Gordon Rottman, Khe Sanh 1967-68. Osprey, 2005. 96 pp.

Sai Gon duoi nhung tank khoi: Ky niem 30 nam tong tan cong va noi day dong loat Tet Mau Than 1968: truyen va ky. TP Ho Chi Minh: Nha Xuat Ban Van nghe TP Ho Chi Minh, 1998. 296 pp.

William E. Rowe, "Defending Long Binh." Vietnam Magazine, February 1995, pp. 46-52. The 856th Radio Research Detachment.

Sai Gon duoi nhung tang khoi: Ky niem 30 nam tong tan cong va noi day dong loat Tet Mau Than 1968: truyen va ky. TP Ho Chi Minh: NXB Van nghe TP Ho Chi Minh, 1998. 296 pp.

Charlie Samuels, The Tet Offensive. Gareth Stevens Publishing, 2014 (forthcoming). 48 pp. For juvenile readers.

Scenes of the General Offensive and Uprising. Hanoi: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1968. 82 pp. The text has been placed online in the Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project, at Texas Tech University.

David F. Schmitz, The Tet Offensive: Politics, War, and Public Opinion. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005. xvii, 183 pp.

Jack Shulimson, Tet--1968. Illustrated History of the Vietnam War, no. 18. New York: Bantam, 1988. 158 pp.

Lewis M. Simons, To Tell the Truth: My Life as a Foreign Correspondent. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2022. xviii, 278 pp. The Associated Press (AP) sent Simons to Vietnam in July 1967. Chapter Five (pp. 75-94) deals with the Tet Offensive. Simons was in Ban Me Thuot for the beginning of the offensive, then shifted to Hue.

George W. Smith, The Siege at Hue. Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1999.  pb New York: Ballantine, 2000.  xv, 270 pp.  Smith, a U.S. Army captain, was an information adviser to the ARVN 1st Infantry Division.

[Russell Jack Smith, et al.], "Intelligence Warning of the Tet Offensive in South Vietnam (Interim Report)" [no date on the document, but other sources indicate it was dated April 8, 1968.]   An interagency working group chaired by Russell Jack Smith, Deputy Director for Intelligence, CIA, produced this report at the request of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. They worked from written materials and from interviews conducted during the week they spent in Vietnam, March 16-23, 1968.

Colonel Jack Speedy, "Charlie Company to the Rescue." Vietnam Magazine, June 1990, pp. 22-28. 3d Platoon, C Company, 1/502 Infantry, was sent to land on the roof of the U.S. Embassy during the fighting in Saigon. The author, then a captain, was the company commander.

Doug Stanton, The Odyssey of Echo Company: The Tet Offensive and the Epic Battle to Survive the Vietnam War. New York: Scribner, 2017. xix, 312 pp. Partly a biography of a single individual, SP/4 John S (Stan) Parker, and partly an account of the experiences of Parker's unit, Echo Company, 1/501 Infantry, 2nd Brigade, 101st Airborne Division, which arrived in Vietnam in mid-December 1967. When Santon widens his focus to look more broadly at the Tet Offensive and the Vietnam War, he is often inaccurate. He particularly exaggerates the role of the North Vietnamese. For example, "In those first predawn hours of the Tet Offensive, about 100,000 North Vietnamese regular army soldiers attacked thirty-six cities throughout South Vietnam" (p. 87).

Judy Thornton Stark, Tête à Tet: Honeymoon Under the Bed. New York: Vantage, 2006. 249 pp. Ms. Stark arrived in Saigon, on her honeymoon, January 30, 1968.

David B. Stockwell, Tanks in the Wire: The First Use of Enemy Armor in Vietnam. Canton, Ohio: Daring Books, 1989. 205 pp. New York: Jove, 1990. The PAVN attack on the Lang Vei Special Forces Camp, 1968. The accuracy of this book has been questioned.

Harry G. Summers, Jr., "The turning point of the war: psychologically defeated by the Tet Offensive, LBJ was also defeated by his top national security advisers," Vietnam Magazine, February 2008.

CDR Joseph W. Swaykos, "Operational Art in the Tet Offensive: A North Vietnamese Perspective." Paper written for the Department of Joint Military Operations, Naval War college, 1996. 20 pp.

Tap chi lich su quan su, special issue on the Tet Offensive, February 1988.

Tet: The Turning Point in Vietnam. Colloquium in Contemporary History, number 11. The texts of the talks presented at this seminar, September 29, 1998, have been placed online by the Naval Historical Center.

Thuy Linh, ed., Nghe thuat quan su viet Nam trong hai cuoc tong tien cong va noi day Tet Mau Than 1968 & mua xuan 1975. Hanoi: NXB Lao Dong, 2012. 439 pp.

Tong tien cong va noi day Mau Than nam 1968 gia tri lich su. Hanoi: NXB Chinh Tri Quoc Gia, 2014. 436 pp.

Tong tan cong va noi day xuan Mau Than (1968) o Sai Gon-Gia Dinh. TP Ho Chi Minh: Nha Xuat Ban TP Ho Chi Minh, 1988. 86 pp.

Tong tien cong va noi day xuan Mau Than (1968) o Sai Gon-Gia Dinh. TP Ho Chi Minh: Nha Xuat Ban TP Ho Chi Minh, 1995. 93 pp.

Robert Tonsetic, Warriors: An Infantryman's Memoir of Vietnam. New York: Presidio (Ballantine), 2004. x, 198 pp. Tonsetic was in Vietnam October 1967 to October 1968, a captain assigned to the 199th Light Infantry Brigade (Redcatchers). He commanded C Company, 4/12 Infantry (Warriors) January to June 1968. There is a fairly detailed account of the unit's involvement in the Tet fighting.

Robert L. Tonsetic, Days of Valor: An Inside Account of the Bloodiest Six Months of the Vietnam War. Casemate, 2007. 304 pp. This appears to be a more detailed account of the events covered in the preceding item.

Robert J. Topmiller, Red Clay on My Boots: Encounters with Khe Sanh, 1968 to 2005. Kirk House, 2007. 208 pp. Topmiller was a Navy Corpsman at Khe Sanh in 1968.

Adrian G. Traas, Turning Point, 1967-1968. Washington, DC: US Army Center of Military History, 2017. 77 pp.

Tran Bach Dang, "Mau Than: cuoc tong dien tap chien luoc", Tap chi lich su quan su, February 1988, pp. 57-64.

Tran Van Tra, "Tet: The 1968 General Offensive and General Uprising," in Jayne S. Werner and Luu Doanh Huynh, eds., The Vietnam War: Vietnamese and American Perspectives (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1993), pp. 37-65. Originally published in Vietamese as two articles, "Tet Mau Than, chien cong hien hach [Tet, the Year of the Monkey, a glorious feat of arms]," and "Thang loi va suy nghi ve thang loi [Victory and reflections on victory]," Tap chi lich su quan su [Journal of military history], February 1998, pp. 8-23, and April 1998, pp. 36-45.

Tran Van Tra, Can nhan ve xuan Mau Than, 1968. TP Ho Chi Minh: Nha Xuat Ban Tre, 1998. 228 pp. This collection of essays actually covers a much broader range of topics than the title suggests; there are several on the glorious leadership of Ho Chi Minh, and also essays on the battles of Binh Gia and Ba Gia, Operation Junction City, and even the late 18th century ruler Nguyen Hue.

Anthony Tucker-Jones, "TET: The Hollow Victory," Military Illustrated, 265 (June 2010), pp. 24-31.

Anthony Tucker-Jones, The Vietnam War: The Tet Offensive 1968. Pen and Sword, 2015. 160 pp. Heavily illustrated.

Tuoi tre Sai Gon - Mau Than, 1968. TP Ho Chi Minh: Nha xuat ben Tre, 2008. 319 pp.

LCDR Charles A. P. Turner, "American Leadership and Decision-Making Failures in the Tet Offensive" M.M.A.S. Thesis, U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, 2003. viii, 66 pp.

Jobie Turner, Feeding Victory: Innovative Military Logistics from Lake George to Khe Sanh. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2020. One of the five case studes is the battle of Khe Sanh (pp. 207-260).

"The Uncertain Oracle: Some Intelligence Failures Revisited." Published electronically on the U.S. Army Military Intelligence Center Huachuca History Program web site. 18 pp. The cases considered include the Tet Offensive and the Son Tay POW rescue mission.

US Agency of International Development, Mission in Vietnam, Special Bulletin. AID issued this series of bulletins daily from February 9 to 20, 1968, and intermittendly thereafter, in response to the crisis created by the Tet Offensive. Nos. 1-17 are available online as a single large .PDF. In the listing below, page numbers refer to the electronically numbered pages in this .PDF, not the original page numbers as printed in the Special Bulletin.
          No. 1: February 9, 1968 (pp. 1-4)
          No. 2: February 10, 1968 (pp. 5-9)
          No. 3: February 11, 1968 (pp. 10-17)
          No. 4: February 12, 1968 (pp. 18-25), with a map supplement (pp 26-31), that has maps of every district of Saigon except District 7.
          No. 5: February 13, 1968 (pp. 32-38)
          No. 6: February 14, 1968 (pp. 39-47)
. . .
          No. 17: March 9, 1968 (pp. 137-39)

Erik Villard, The 1968 Tet Offensive Battles of Quang Tri City and Hue. Washington, DC: US Army Center of Military History, 2008. v, 82 pp. There is also a private sector reprint: CreateSpace, 2015. 192 pp.

Erik B. Villard, "Battle for Kontum," Vietnam Magazine, February 2003, pp. 28-33, 64.

Alex Wahlman, Storming the City: U.S. Military Performance in Urban Warfare from World War II to Vietnam. Denton: University of North Texas Press, 2015. xvi, 368 pp. The Battle for Hue is the last of the cases considered.

Nicholas Warr, Phase Line Green: The Battle for Hue, 1968. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1997. xxv, 235 pp. 2d Lieutenant Warr commanded a platoon of C Company, 1/5 Marines, in the battle for Hue.

Major Claudius E. Watts III, USAF, "Aerial Resupply for Khe Sanh." Military Review, December 1972 (vol. LII, no. 12), pp. 79-88).

General Frederick C. Weyand, interviewed by Col. Harry G. Summers, Jr., "Troops to Equal Any." Vietnam Magazine, 1:1 (Summer 1988), reprinted in Vietnam Magazine, August 1998, pp. 34-41. Includes considerable discussion of Tet, and the role of the media.

James H. Willbanks, The Tet Offensive: A Concise History. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006. xxvii, 264 pp. I have read only a short part of this, but that part looked good, except for an underestimation of American casualties.

Charles Wills, The Tet Offensive. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Silver Burdett Press, 1989. 64pp. Intended for juvenile readers.

Richard Worth, The Tet Offensive. Philadelphia: Chelsea House, 2002. 96 pp. Intended for juvenile readers.

David T. Zabecki, "Battle for Saigon." Vietnam Magazine, Summer 1989, pp. 19-25.

David T. Zabecki, "Battle for Saigon." Vietnam Magazine, February 2008, pp. 26-33.

David T. Zabecki, "The Tet Offensive, 40 year on," Vietnam Magazine, February 2008, pp. 9-12. A lot of authors exaggerate Vo Nguyen Giap's role in the planning for the Tet Offensive, but this is the most extreme example I can recall seeing. Also notable for its portrayal of Tet as a "desperate, last-ditch gamble" by the Communist forces.

 

The Virtual Vietnam Archive of the Vietnam Project, at Texas Tech University, is placing online a huge quantity of U.S. Military documents, and some from quasi-military and non-military agencies such as CORDS and the CIA. Some of those relating to the Tet Offensive and the Battle of Khe Sanh:


 

SEE ALSO The Order of Battle Dispute and the Westmoreland Lawsuit. Many of the works listed there either deal directly with the Tet Offensive or are HIGHLY relevant to it. They deal with accusations (well founded, in my opinion), that U.S. intelligence was seriously underestimating enemy strength in South Vietnam, in the months leading up to the Tet Offensive.

Return to Table of Contents

Next section: The Huê Massacre

Copyright © 1996, 1998, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, Edwin E. Moise. This document may be reproduced only by permission. Revised September 13, 2023. Opinions expressed in this bibliography are my own. They could hardly be the opinions of Clemson University, since Clemson University does not have opinions on the matters in question.