Battle of Ba Gia - Aftermath

Aftermath

The battle at Ba Gia, which marked the beginning of the National Liberation Front’s Summer Offensive of 1965, had dealt a severe blow to South Vietnam's armed forces. For the first time in the NLF’s history, their forces at Ba Gia successfully decimated a regimental-sized ARVN Task Force in battle. According to Vietnam’s official account of the battle, the Viet Cong killed or wounded 915 South Vietnamese soldiers, and 270 others were captured. In addition to the human casualties, the Viet Cong also captured 370 weapons of various kinds and destroyed 14 GMC trucks. South Vietnam, on the other hand, claimed to have killed 556 enemy soldiers, but only captured 20 weapons. Following their military victory, the NLF Quang Ngai Provincial Committee initiated a political campaign to exercise political influence over the province. By June 3, 1965, the National Liberation Front virtually controlled five districts in northern Quang Ngai Province (Binh Son, Son Tinh, Nghia Hanh, Tu Nghia and Mo Duc), home to 10,000 civilians.

Even though the fighting at Ba Gia was minor in scale, it convinced President Lyndon B. Johnson that South Vietnam's armed forces could not deal with the growing Communist forces by themselves. On July 20, 1965, U.S. Secretary of Defence Robert McNamara laid out three options before Johnson concerning the American involvement in Vietnam: 1) withdraw all American personnel from Vietnam to minimise their losses; 2) continue American commitments at their then approximate level of about 75,000 men; 3) substantially expand the American military presence in Vietnam. Ultimately, President Johnson chose the third option and decided to ‘Americanise’ the Vietnam War, and by July 22 the U.S. military was authorised to raise its combat strength in Vietnam to 44 battalions. Thus, total U.S. military presence in Vietnam grew from 75,000 to 125,000 men, drawn mainly from the U.S. Army and the U.S. Marine Corps. Undeterred by this growing U.S. military strength, North Vietnamese leaders decided to match American commitments by increasing the number of their troops in South Vietnam, thereby escalating the war.