The South Vietnamese Navy

The origins of local naval forces in Vietnam after the end of the Second World War reflected the confusion and developing conflict between Vietnamese factions seeking independence, as the Japanese departed and a French regime bent on restoring control over its colonies. From the declaration of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam on 2 September 1945 ¹ by the Indo-Chinese Communist Party under Ho Chi Minh, many believed that France would never regain the colonial grip that it had possessed before 1940. The Viet Minh approach was ‘long-term resistance war, self-reliance, and the appropriate fighting principle: guerrilla warfare and eventually advancing to mobile warfare’, ² a strategy which culminated in the humiliating French defeat at Dien Bien Phu in 1954.