Battle of Dien Bien Phu Timeline

Operations at Điện Biên Phủ began at 10:35 on 20 November 1953, as French paratroopers dropped onto the valley to establish a fortified air-land base.

Max Hastings stated that 'In 2018 Hanoi has still not credibly enumerated its Dien Bien Phu losses, surely a reflection of their immensity.' Mark Moyar's book Triumph Forsaken lists Viet Minh casualties as 22,900 out of an original force of 50,000.

The French garrison came under sporadic direct artillery fire from the Viet Minh for the first time on 31 January 1954 and patrols encountered Viet Minh troops in all directions around them.

The Viet Minh assault began in earnest on 13 March 1954 with an attack on the northeastern outpost, Béatrice, which was held by the 3rd Battalion, 13th Foreign Legion Demi-Brigade.

The Battle of Dien Bien Phu took place between 13 March and 7 May 1954, pitting the French Union garrison against Viet Minh forces under General Võ Nguyên Giáp in a decisive confrontation of the First Indochina War.

The fall of Điện Biên Phủ was a disaster not just for France but also for the United States who, by 1954, was underwriting 80% of French expenditures in Indochina.

The fall of Dien Bien Phu, in a strictly military perspective, represented a very serious failure but one that in the immediate, that is to say, spring of 1954, did not upset the balance of forces present in Indochina.

By the end of May 1954, mediation by the Red Cross enabled the evacuation of 858 of the most severely wounded prisoners from the fallen fortress.

The Geneva Conference opened on 8 May 1954, the day after the surrender of the French garrison at Dien Bien Phu.

Image source: 1954 Geneva Conference

The partition of Vietnam was agreed in the 1954 Geneva Accords signed ten weeks after the battle.

The partition was supposed to be temporary, and the two zones were meant to be reunited through national elections in 1956, which were never held.

The last French forces withdrew from Vietnam in 1956, ending nearly a century of French colonial presence in the country.

Image source: French Indochina

The surrender of the French garrison on 7 May 1954 ended the battle and became an enduring symbol of Vietnamese resistance and decolonization, remembered through films, songs, and commemorations decades later.

The beginning of the 1966 film Lost Command starring Anthony Quinn showed the battle towards its end.

Image source: Lost Command

In January 1968, during the Vietnam War, the North Vietnamese Army under Võ Nguyên Giáp's command initiated a siege and artillery bombardment on the US Marine Corps base at Khe Sanh in South Vietnam, as they did at Điện Biên Phủ.

Image source: Battle of Khe Sanh

By 1968, the US military presence in Vietnam dwarfed that of the French in 1954, and included numerous technological advances such as effective helicopters.

The US Air Force dropped 114,810 tons of bombs on the North Vietnamese at Khe Sanh, roughly as many as dropped on all of Japan in 1945 during World War II.

The 1989 pop rock song We Didn't Start the Fire by American artist Billy Joel mentions the battle ('Dien Bien Phu Falls') in the second verse of the song.

Image source: We Didn't Start the Fire

The battle was a subject in the 1992 French film Dien Bien Phu written and directed by Pierre Schoendoerffer, who had been present at the battle as a war cameramen.