The French Came Up With a Brilliant Plan…
The French might have had more firepower than the Viet Minh, but like the US a decade after the French left, they were unable to turn that advantage into a decisive victory. The lightly armed Viet Minh would not fight the kind of war that the French hoped their colonial subjects would fight. They simply refused to stay in place and offer the type of stand-up pitched battle in which superior firepower could overwhelm them. At wit’s end, French commanders hatched a plan to entice the guerrillas to mass for a pitched battle: offer them an irresistible lure.
That lure was to be French paratroopers airdropped into an isolated base, Dien Bien Phu. The Viet Minh, unable to resist the opportunity to destroy the isolated French, would flock to the area. The garrison, kept supplied by air, would resist. They would draw in more and more Viet Minh into a battle of attrition, in which they would be wrecked by superior French firepower. The paratroopers were dropped into Dien Bien Phu, whose main feature was an airstrip in a valley encircled by hills. As seen below, things did not go in accordance with the plan.
