Did Soviet Troops Fight in the Vietnam War?
Yes, there were Soviet troops in North Vietnam, and in significantly larger numbers than their Korean War predecessors.
Although the Cold War never turned into a “hot war,” i.e., full-blown World War III between the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact on the side and the United States and its NATO allies on the other, that doesn’t mean that the two sides didn’t kill their fair share of each other’s personnel during that timeframe.
So then, that begs the question: did any Soviet troops also engage in combat against the United States during the latter country’s major shooting war in Vietnam? That is a question addressed by a recent video from the Simple History YouTube channel—reshared on MSN—titled “Were there Soviet troops in the Vietnam War?”
Bottom Line Up Front (BLUF)
Da, tovarishiy (“Yes, comrades”), there were Soviet troops in North Vietnam, and in significantly larger numbers than their Korean War predecessors: an estimated 844 commissioned officers, 1,153 noncommissioned officers (NCOs), and 1,274 junior enlisted airmen of the Soviet Union’s 64th Fighter Aviation Corps participated in the Korean War for the duration of the conflict; by comparison, according to a July 7, 2020, article on the Russia Beyond website titled “How the Soviets fought against the Americans in Vietnam,” “more than 10,000 Soviet military specialists were dispatched to Vietnam: from missile crews, pilots and signalmen to tank crews and doctors.”
Specifics of Soviet Military Participation in Vietnam
Interestingly, the Simple History segment states that:
“Unlike the American involvement, the Soviet Union’s engagement in the Vietnam War was highly secretive. However, what can be gathered is that they gave direct and indirect aid to the North Vietnamese on a vast scale, but stopped short of putting actual Soviet combat troops onto the front lines … Moreover, around 2,000 Soviet advisors were stationed in Vietnam assisting with radar and antiaircraft installations.
Well, we’re getting into semantic nitpicking here, but when the narrator says “actual Soviet combat troops,” he’s evidently only applying that label to Red Army infantry troops. After all, the narrator concedes that “Soviet pilots … were permitted to replace [North] Vietnamese pilot casualties. For example, Colonel Vadim Cherbakov reportedly shot down 6 American aircraft in 1966.”
Moreover, as per the Russia Beyond article:
“A special role was also played by Soviet anti-aircraft gunners. They not only trained Vietnamese People’s Army (VPA) personnel, but also took part in fighting themselves. It is in no small degree thanks to them that the U.S. Air Force and Navy, having lost more than 4,000 aircraft, failed to suppress North Vietnam’s air defenses and defeat the country.”
Indeed, the Simple History narrator acknowledges that the Soviet “advisors,” who were initially manning the antiaircraft artillery (AAA) guns and surface-to-air missile (SAM) sites until their North Vietnamese Army (NVA) counterparts were fully trained up, shot down forty-eight American aircraft from 1965 to 1966. (As far as that “4,000 aircraft” kill claim by the Russia Beyond piece, the U.S. Government officially acknowledges 1,737 planes lost.)
The Bolsheviks’ (and Brezhnev’s) Butcher’s Bill
Though the Soviet death toll in Vietnam paled in comparison to the 299 dead and 335 planes lost in Korea, the USSR’s participation in Vietnam was not without cost.
In their 2000 book Dirty Little Secrets of the Vietnam War: Military Information You’re Not Supposed to Know, military historians Albert A. Nofi and James Dunnigan report that the Soviets lost a total of sixteen killed in action during the Vietnam War (a figure corroborated by the Simple History) video. In addition, the video states that an unspecified number of Soviet sailors were wounded when their supply ships were struck during American air raids on Haiphong Harbor.
About the Author: Christian D. Orr
Christian D. Orr is a Senior Defense Editor for National Security Journal (NSJ). He is a former Air Force Security Forces officer, Federal law enforcement officer, and private military contractor (with assignments worked in Iraq, the United Arab Emirates, Kosovo, Japan, Germany, and the Pentagon). Chris holds a B.A. in International Relations from the University of Southern California (USC) and an M.A. in Intelligence Studies (concentration in Terrorism Studies) from American Military University (AMU). He has also been published in The Daily Torch, The Journal of Intelligence and Cyber Security, and Simple Flying. Last but not least, he is a Companion of the Order of the Naval Order of the United States (NOUS). If you’d like to pick his brain further, you can ofttimes find him at the Old Virginia Tobacco Company (OVTC) lounge in Manassas, Virginia, partaking of fine stogies and good quality human camaraderie.
Image: Wikimedia Commons.