Traps in the Vietnam War. Vietnamese traps for Americans. Controversial symbol of the Viet Cong

During the Vietnam War (1964-1973), Americans faced one unexpected and very unpleasant surprise - a large number of Vietnamese traps. Because of natural features terrain - dense jungle, many rivers and swamps, as well as an underdeveloped road network, the Americans could not fully use vehicles, and were forced to rely on helicopters in huge numbers to move troops. In the Vietnamese jungle itself, in the depths of the territory, American troops, having no other option, were forced to move and fight on foot. And this is in conditions of average summer temperatures of more than 30 degrees and one hundred percent humidity. It is also worth remembering what the rainy season is in Vietnam - when tropical rains fall almost continuously for several months, flooding vast areas with water. Main character The film Forrest Gump talks about the rains in Vietnam:
“One day it started raining and didn’t stop for four months. During this time we learned about all types of rain: direct rain, slanting rain, horizontal rain, and even rain that comes from bottom to top.”

American Marines in murky Vietnamese waters

In the wilds of the Vietnamese jungle

A Piasecki H-21 Shawnee helicopter transports reinforcements and picks up the wounded. Vietnam. The beginning of the war. 1965

Army soldiers South Vietnam on the march

Vietnamese swamp. Batangan. 1965

An aerial cavalcade of Bell UH-1 "Huey". 1968

A column of the 25th Division on an M113 armored personnel carrier (APC) is moving along the “federal” road Tau Ninh-Dau Tieng. 1968

In such specific conditions, when even a few dirt roads turn into an impassable mess, and the use of aviation is problematic, the technical superiority of the American army is to a certain extent leveled out and Vietnamese traps become very effective and deadly.
Here are some of them.

The famous Punji trap was installed in large numbers on forest paths, near American bases, and being camouflaged under a thin layer of grass, leaves, soil or water, it was difficult to detect. The size of the trap was calculated exactly to fit the foot in the boot. The stakes were always smeared with feces, carrion and other bad substances. Getting your foot into such a trap, having your sole pierced by stakes and being wounded almost certainly caused blood poisoning. They often had a more complex design.

Broken shoe

Bamboo trap - installed in the doors of rural houses. As soon as the door was opened, a small log with sharp stakes flew out of the opening. Often traps were set in such a way that the blow would fall on the head - if triggered successfully, this would lead to severe injuries, often fatal.

Sometimes such traps, but in the form of a large log with stakes and a trip mechanism using a tripwire, were installed on jungle paths.
In dense thickets, the log was replaced with a spherical structure. It should be noted that the Vietnamese often made stakes not from metal, but from bamboo - a very hard material, from which Southeast Asia make knives.

Whip Trap - often set along jungle trails. To do this, a bamboo trunk with long stakes at the ends was bent and connected to a guy wire through a block. As soon as you touched a wire or fishing line (the Vietnamese often used it), the released bamboo trunk with stakes hit with all its might the area from the knees to the stomach of the person who touched it. Naturally, all traps were carefully camouflaged.

Big Punji is a larger version of Punji. This trap inflicted much more serious injuries - here the leg was pierced up to the thigh, including the groin area, often with irreversible injuries in the area of the “main male organ" The stakes were also smeared with something nasty.

One of the scariest big Punjis is the one with the rotating lid. The lid was attached to a bamboo trunk and rotated freely, always returning to a strictly horizontal position. The lid was covered with grass and leaves on both sides. Having stepped on the platform lid, the victim fell into a deep hole (3 meters or more) with stakes, the lid was rotated 180 degrees and the trap was again ready for the next victim.

Bucket Trap (bucket trap) - a bucket with stakes, and often with large fishing hooks, dug into the ground, camouflaged. The whole horror of this trap was that the stakes were firmly attached to the bucket at an angle downwards, and if you fell into such a trap, it was impossible to pull out your leg - when you tried to pull it out of the bucket, the stakes only dug deeper into your leg. Therefore, it was necessary to dig out a bucket, and the unfortunate man, along with the bucket on his leg, was evacuated using MEDEVAC to the hospital.

Side Closing Trap (trap with closing sides) - two boards with stakes were fastened with elastic rubber, stretched, and thin ones were inserted between them bamboo sticks. As soon as you fell into such a trap, breaking the sticks, the doors slammed shut just at the level of the victim’s stomach. Additional stakes may also have been dug into the bottom of the pit.

Spike Board Trap - These traps were usually installed in shallow ponds, swamps, puddles, etc. As soon as you stepped on the pressure plate, the other end of the board with stakes would forcefully hit upward and towards the person who stepped on it. A successful hit often resulted in death. An example of such a trap being triggered from the film “Southern Hospitality”.

The Vietnamese have launched mass production of traps

Press-action cartridge trap in a bamboo container. Various cartridges could be used, including hunting cartridges with shot or buckshot.
Although all these traps look impressive, of course, the damage they cause cannot be compared with mines and tripwire grenades. By constantly mining the territory and setting up tripwires, the Vietnamese managed to turn the presence of the American military on foreign soil into a real hell.

"Pineapple" (pineapple) - pomegranates, high explosive shells and other ammunition suspended from tree branches. To trigger it, you had to touch the branches. One of the most common traps during the Vietnam War.

Stretching - installed on the ground or close to it. The situation was aggravated by the fact that in the forest floor of the jungle, in the twilight, it is very difficult to notice the trap, and even more so in forty-degree heat and one hundred percent humidity, which clearly do not contribute to concentration.

In the photo from Vietnam - a well-installed Chinese guy hand grenade in the grass. Even with camera flash it is very difficult to notice.

Good shot. An explosion of ammunition at a Marine base as a result of sabotage. Vietnam. March 18, 1968

To prevent their own people from falling into traps, the Vietnamese developed an entire signaling system of sticks, leaves and broken branches arranged in a certain way. An experienced person could use these marks to determine not only that a trap was installed nearby, but also the type of trap.

Trap signs

This is not to say that the Americans did not struggle with this. The traps and signaling system were carefully and constantly studied. Conducted with personnel regular classes, published pocket instructions on traps and their neutralization. Miners began to be placed at the head of the groups.

Disarming a trap

For reporting traps found local residents rewards were paid.
USMC announcement of reward for reporting decoys

However, the American military still continued to fall into traps and be blown up throughout the war.

Cu Chi - countryside about 70 kilometers northwest of Saigon, which became a pain in the ass first of the French and then of the Americans. The same case when “the earth burned under the boots of the invaders.” It was never possible to defeat the local partisans, even though an entire American division (25th Infantry) and a large part of the 18th Division of the South Vietnamese Army were stationed close to their base. The fact is that the partisans dug a whole network of multi-level tunnels with a total length of over 200 kilometers, with many camouflaged exits to the surface, rifle cells, bunkers, underground workshops, warehouses and barracks, densely covered with mines and traps on top.

A large group can order a sightseeing bus; the excursion involves the active participation of tourists in what is happening. For example, they may offer to find a camouflaged entrance to a tunnel in a small patch in the jungle, and then squeeze through this hatch.

Surprisingly, this is generally quite possible; even fairly large Western tourists can climb through, albeit with difficulty. The bunkers have been brought to the surface, and the flat roofs have been replaced by high slopes, so that it becomes spacious enough to comfortably look at the Viet Cong-shaped mannequins depicting partisans in natural environment habitat.

Like many other things, metal was in terrible short supply, so the partisans collected numerous unexploded bombs and shells (and an absolutely incredible amount of them were dumped on a tiny patch; the jungle was simply demolished by carpet bombing from B-52s, turning the area into a lunar landscape), sawed , explosives were used to make homemade mines...

...and the metal was forged into spikes and spears for traps in the jungle.

In addition to the workshops, there was a dining room, a kitchen (with a specially constructed external smokeless hearth that did not give away the place of cooking with a column of smoke), a uniform sewing shop...

...and, of course, a room for political information.

And tunnels. A three-level system of tunnels secretly carved into the solid clay soil with primitive instruments in large groups of three or four people. One digs, one drags the earth out of the tunnel to a vertical shaft, one lifts it up, and another drags it somewhere and hides it under leaves or throws it into the river.

When the team makes its way to the neighboring one, a thick pipe made of a hollow bamboo trunk is inserted into the vertical shaft for ventilation, the shaft is filled up, and the bamboo on top is disguised as a termite mound, stump, or something else.

The Americans used dogs to search for entrances to tunnels and ventilation shafts. Then they began to hide captured uniforms there, usually M65 jackets, which the Americans often abandoned when providing first aid and evacuating the wounded. The dogs smelled a familiar smell, mistook it for their own and ran past.

If they did find the entrance, they tried to fill it with water or fire tear gas into it. But a multi-level system of locks and water castles protected the tunnels quite reliably: only a small segment was lost, the partisans simply brought down its walls on both sides and forgot about its existence, eventually digging out a workaround.

Since numerous shelling and bombing did not bring the desired result, the Americans eventually had to go underground themselves. In Tunnel rats, “tunnel rats,” they recruited short, desperate guys who were ready to climb into the unknown with one pistol, in which cramped conditions, darkness, mines, traps, which did not allow them to breathe, awaited them. poisonous snakes, Scorpios and, after all this, if you're lucky - evil partisans.

Now sixty meters of tunnels have been widened and illuminated so that tourists can squeeze through them. Even in them you have to move in an eternal half-squat, while simultaneously scratching the walls with your hips, elbows, shoulders and head. It's like running inside an endless nightstand.

The jungle in Cu Chi was fraught with many unpleasant surprises, from the already mentioned mines, which even blew up tanks like this M41, to the movie's famous homemade traps, some of which can be seen up close.

"Tiger Trap" Ji Ai walks along calmly, suddenly the ground under his feet opens up and he falls to the bottom of a hole studded with stakes. If he is unlucky and does not die immediately, but screams in pain, his comrades will gather nearby, trying to pull the unfortunate man out. Need I say that around the trap in several places there are exits from the tunnels to the surface, to camouflaged sniper positions?

Or more humane traps, “Vietnamese souvenirs”. A soldier steps on an inconspicuous hole, covered on top with a piece of paper with leaves...

The leg falls through, the pin from below pierces it, the pins on the sides not only pierce it, but also prevent it from being pulled out. As a rule, the soldier did not die, but as a result he lost his leg, and then received pins removed from his leg in a Saigon hospital as a souvenir. Hence the name.

The next couple of photos show a similar design.

As you may have already noticed, special attention They paid attention not only to the task of piercing the adversary, but also to pin him in place and not let him get off the hook. This “basket” was placed on flooded rice fields or along river banks, hiding under water. A paratrooper jumps out of a helicopter or boat, OPA! - we've arrived...

However, it happened that the task was not to injure, but to kill. Then they put on grinds like this, in which G.I. quickly stuffed himself under his own weight.

For those who liked to enter the house without knocking, simply by knocking down the door with a valiant blow, such a device was hung above it. The slow ones went straight to the next world, the quick ones managed to put the machine gun forward - for such, the lower half of the trap was suspended on a separate loop. So the efficient one, as the Vietnamese guide put it, then went to Thailand, a paradise for transvestites.

Well, the simplest, most reliable and popular design in the film industry. Since it flies much faster than the “home” one, there is no need to worry about having two halves. And so it will sweep away. The guide likes her the most.

Vietnamese dungeons:

We can talk about these traps for a very long time, paying tribute to the ingenuity, cruelty and resourcefulness of the Vietnamese. For the Americans, these “surprises” came as a very unpleasant surprise.

Due to the natural features of the area - dense jungle, many rivers and swamps, as well as an underdeveloped road network, the Americans could not fully use vehicles, and were forced to rely on helicopters in huge numbers to move troops. In the Vietnamese jungle itself, in the depths of the territory, American troops, having no other option, were forced to move and fight on foot. And this is in conditions of average summer temperatures of more than 30 degrees and one hundred percent humidity. It is also worth remembering what the rainy season is like in Vietnam - when tropical rains fall almost continuously for several months, flooding vast areas with water. The main character of the movie "Forrest Gump" talks about the rains in Vietnam:
"One day it began to rain and did not stop for four months. During this time we learned about all types of rain: direct rain, slanting rain, horizontal rain, and even rain that comes from bottom to top."

American Marines in murky Vietnamese waters

In the wilds of the Vietnamese jungle

A Piasecki H-21 "Shawnee" helicopter transports reinforcements and picks up the wounded. Vietnam. The beginning of the war. 1965

South Vietnamese Army soldiers on the march

Vietnamese swamp. Batangan. 1965

Aerial cavalcade of Bell UH-1 "Huey". 1968

A column of the 25th Division on an M113 armored personnel carrier (APC) is moving along the "federal" road Tau Ninh-Dau Tieng. 1968

Broken shoe

Big Punji is a larger version of Punji. This trap caused much more serious injuries - here the leg was pierced up to the thigh, including the groin area, often with irreversible injuries in the area of the “main male organ”. The stakes were also smeared with something nasty.

One of the scariest big Punji is with a rotating lid. The lid was attached to a bamboo trunk and rotated freely, always returning to a strictly horizontal position. The lid was covered with grass and leaves on both sides. Having stepped on the platform lid, the victim fell into a deep hole (3 meters or more) with stakes, the lid was rotated 180 degrees and the trap was again ready for the next victim.

Bucket Trap (bucket trap) - a bucket with stakes, and often with large fishing hooks, dug into the ground, camouflaged. The whole horror of this trap was that the stakes were firmly attached to the bucket at a downward angle, and if you fell into such a trap, it was impossible to pull out your leg - when you tried to pull it out of the bucket, the stakes only dug deeper into your leg. Therefore, it was necessary to dig out a bucket, and the unfortunate man, along with the bucket on his leg, was evacuated using MEDEVAC to the hospital.

Side Closing Trap - two boards with stakes were fastened with elastic rubber, stretched, and thin bamboo sticks were inserted between them. As soon as you fell into such a trap, breaking the sticks, the doors slammed shut just at the level of the victim’s stomach. Additional stakes may also have been dug into the bottom of the pit.

Spike Board trap - these traps were usually installed in shallow ponds, swamps, puddles, etc. As soon as you stepped on the pressure plate, the other end of the board with stakes would forcefully hit upward and towards the person who stepped on it. A successful hit often resulted in death.

The Vietnamese have launched mass production of traps

"Pineapple" - grenades, high-explosive shells and other ammunition suspended from tree branches. To trigger it, you had to touch the branches. One of the most common traps during the Vietnam War.

Stretching - installed on the ground or close to it. The situation was aggravated by the fact that in the forest floor of the jungle, in the twilight, it is very difficult to notice a trap, and even more so in forty-degree heat and one hundred percent humidity, which clearly do not contribute to concentration.

Good shot. An explosion of ammunition at a Marine base as a result of sabotage. Vietnam. March 18, 1968

This is not to say that the Americans did not struggle with this. The traps and signaling system were carefully and constantly studied. Regular training was conducted with personnel, and pocket instructions on traps and their disarming were issued. Miners began to be placed at the head of the groups.

Disarming a trap

Rewards were paid to local residents for reports of found traps.
USMC announcement of reward for reporting decoys

However, the American military still continued to fall into traps and be blown up throughout the war.

The article is written based on the books by Alan Lloyd Peter »Back. Part 1: Across the Fence" and "Back. Part 2: Into the Jungle."

During Vietnam War(1964-1973) Americans were faced with one unexpected and very unpleasant surprise - a large number Vietnamese traps. Due to the natural features of the area - dense jungle, many rivers and swamps, as well as an underdeveloped road network, the Americans could not fully use vehicles, and were forced to rely on helicopters in huge numbers to move troops. In the Vietnamese jungle itself, in the depths of the territory, American troops, having no other option, were forced to move and fight on foot. And this is in conditions of average summer temperatures of more than 30 degrees and one hundred percent humidity. It is also worth remembering what the rainy season is in Vietnam - when tropical rains fall almost continuously for several months, flooding vast areas with water.

The main character of the movie Forrest Gump talks about the rains in Vietnam:
“One day it started raining and didn’t stop for four months. During this time we learned about all types of rain: direct rain, slanting rain, horizontal rain, and even rain that comes from bottom to top.”

American Marines in murky Vietnamese waters

In the wilds of the Vietnamese jungle

South Vietnamese Army soldiers on the march

Vietnamese swamp. Batangan. 1965

A Piasecki H-21 Shawnee helicopter transports reinforcements and picks up the wounded. Vietnam. The beginning of the war. 1965

An aerial cavalcade of Bell UH-1 "Huey". 1968

A column of the 25th Division on an M113 armored personnel carrier (APC) is moving along the “federal” road Tau Ninh-Dau Tieng. 1968

It was no better in the mountains of Vietnam. Shau District

In such specific conditions, when even a few dirt roads turn into an impassable mess, and the use of aviation is problematic, technical superiority is leveled to a certain extent and Vietnamese traps become very effective and deadly.

Below are the most popular ones:

Punji

Famous Punji trap— was installed in large numbers on forest paths, near American bases, and being camouflaged under a thin layer of grass, leaves, soil or water, it was difficult to detect. Size traps was designed exactly for the foot in the boot. The stakes were always smeared with feces, carrion and other bad substances. Hitting the foot such a trap, led to the piercing of the soles with stakes and injury, which almost certainly caused blood poisoning.

Bamboo

Trap Bamboo- installed in the doors of rural houses. As soon as the door was opened, a small log with sharp stakes flew out of the opening. Often traps they were installed in such a way that the blow would hit the head - if triggered successfully, this would lead to severe injuries, often fatal.

Sometimes like this traps, but in the form of a large log with stakes and a tripping mechanism using a tripwire, were installed on paths in the jungle.

In dense thickets, the log was replaced with a spherical structure. It should be noted that the Vietnamese often made stakes not from metal, but from bamboo - a very hard material, from which Southeast Asia make knives.

Whip Trap (whip trap)

Trap Whip Trap (whip trap)- often installed on jungle trails. To do this, a bamboo trunk with long stakes at the ends was bent and connected to a guy wire through a block. It was worth touching the wire or fishing line (the Vietnamese often used it) and the released bamboo trunk with stakes hit with all its strength the area from the knees to the stomach of the person who hit it. Naturally, all traps were carefully camouflaged.

Big Punji

Big Punji— enlarged version Punji. This trap caused much more serious injuries - here the leg was pierced up to the thigh, including the groin area, often with irreversible injuries to the area "main male organ". The stakes were also smeared with something nasty.

One of the most terrible large Punji- with a rotating lid. The lid was attached to a bamboo trunk and rotated freely, always returning to a strictly horizontal position. The lid was covered with grass and leaves on both sides. Having stepped on the platform cover, the victim fell into a deep hole (3 meters or more) with stakes, the lid was rotated 180 degrees and the trap was again ready for the next victim.

Bucket Trap (bucket trap)

Trap Bucket Trap (bucket trap)- a bucket with stakes, and often with large fishing hooks, was dug into the ground and disguised. All the horror of this traps consisted in the fact that the stakes were firmly attached to the bucket at an angle downwards, and when hit by such trap It was impossible to pull the leg out - when trying to pull it out of the bucket, the stakes only dug deeper into the leg. Therefore, it was necessary to dig out a bucket, and the unfortunate man, along with the bucket on his leg, was evacuated using MEDEVAC to the hospital.

Side Closing Trap

Trap Side Closing Trap (trap with closing sides)- two boards with stakes were fastened with elastic rubber, stretched, and thin bamboo sticks were inserted between them. It was worth falling into this trap, breaking the sticks, the doors slammed shut just at the level of the victim’s stomach. Additional stakes may also have been dug into the bottom of the pit.

Spike Board (snake board)

Trap Spike Board (snake board)- these traps, as a rule, were installed in shallow reservoirs, swamps, puddles, etc. As soon as you stepped on the pressure plate, the other end of the board with stakes would forcefully hit upward and towards the person who stepped on it. A successful hit often resulted in death.

Trap cartridge

Trap cartridge pressure action in a bamboo container. Various cartridges could be used, including hunting cartridges with shot or buckshot.

Although all these traps and they look impressive, of course, the damage they cause cannot be compared with mines and grenades on tripwires. By constantly mining the territory and setting up tripwires, the Vietnamese managed to turn the presence of the American military on foreign soil into a real hell.

"Pineapple" (pineapple)

"Pineapple"(pineapple)- grenades, high-explosive shells and other ammunition suspended from tree branches. To trigger it, you had to touch the branches. One of the most common pitfalls during Vietnam War.

Stretching— installed on the ground or close to it. The situation was aggravated by the fact that in the forest floor of the jungle, in the twilight, trap very difficult, and even more so in forty-degree heat and one hundred percent humidity, which are clearly not conducive to concentration. In the photo from Vietnam - well installed stretching with a Chinese hand grenade in the grass. Even with camera flash it is very difficult to notice.

Often under a grenade or other ammunition installed a vessel made of thick bamboo filled with a mixture of ammonium nitrate and diesel fuel. This technique greatly increased lethal effect grenade explosion. So, December 6, 1968 in the Ho area Chi Minh Trail, one such stretching resulted in the death of 5 Marines and injuries varying degrees gravity another 12 from the group.

The tripwire was the most common trap during the Vietnam War.

Naturally, like in any other big war, the Vietnamese also massively used mines different types- ordinary push-action, jumping, on guy wires, directed action, which were often set to be non-removable, landmines along roads to blow up vehicles and armored vehicles, as well as ambushes and sabotage behind enemy lines.

To traps If they didn’t come across their own, the Vietnamese developed a whole signaling system from sticks, leaves and broken branches arranged in a certain way. An experienced person could use these marks to determine not only that there was a trap, but also the type of this trap.

Trap signs

It is worth noting that the North Vietnamese showed amazing resilience, determination and fearlessness in this war. They skillfully used their modest resources, as well as natural and climatic conditions their homeland, causing the maximum possible damage to the enemy.

This is not to say that the Americans did not struggle with this. Traps And signaling system carefully and constantly studied. Regular training was conducted with personnel, and pocket instructions on traps and their disarming were issued. Miners began to be placed at the head of the groups.

Miners at the head of the patrol. Vietnam. April 1972

Disarming a trap

Rewards were paid to local residents for reports of found traps. However, the American military still continued to fall into traps and be blown up throughout the war.