Control of Hoa Binh allowed Giap three advantages. First, he could move forces unimpeded from their Tonkin highlands staging area, via the Boi or Chu river valleys, to the lower reaches of the Red River delta near Ninh Binh. Second, by traveling down the upper reaches of the Boi River valley, his forces could turn north to Cho Ben, thereby threatening Hanoi from the south. Finally, it allowed his logisticians an unclogged flow of arms and munitions from Viet Minh depots to forces in northern central Vietnam.

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Hoa Binh was important, and de Lattre had no doubts that Giap would fight for it. By retaking the town, de Lattre would force Giap to contend with the paratroops, riverine forces and his new Mobile Groups, who had the firepower and mobility to destroy Giap’s regular forces. Once they had, the region would be turned over to French-led garrison forces and, eventually, the Vietnamese army then in its infancy.

The first phase of the campaign, Operation Tulipe, kicked off on November 10, 1951, to seize the Cho Ben Pass and extend French military control beyond Provincial Route 21(the so-called Route des Concessions). While Colonel de Castries’ armored Task Force North attacked south to secure the Route 21 corridor at Cho Ben, ground elements of Colonel Clements’ Task Force Center attacked west from the Nam Duong region up the Day River, and linked up with the 1st Foreign Legion Paratroop Battalion (1st BEP), which had dropped into the flooded rice paddies adjoining Cho Ben at 0910 that morning. In conjunction with these thrusts, supporting operations were carried out by other task forces to the south and east of Cho Ben.

The Viet Minh abandoned Cho Ben after putting up only token resistance, but fighting along Colonial Route 21 proved harder, involving two battalions of Regiment 64, three companies of Regional Battalion 164, and local Viet Minh forces. French air superiority, mobility and firepower gave them the advantage. By 1430 that afternoon, the 1st Colonial Parachute Battalion (1st BPC), Commando Vandenberghe, and other elements attached to Mobile Group 2 had passed through the 1st BEP’s lines to reach their objectives two kilometers north of Cho Ben. With this French toehold in the Muong highlands, de Lattre moved on to Phase II.

During World War II, de Lattre had been criticized as being too rigid in his command style. Whatever de Lattre’s faults as a World War II field army commander, by 1951, inflexibility of command was not one of them. Following the seizure of Cho Ben, he restructured his forces into three operational groups and told them to take Hoa Binh by land, air and river. Operational Group North was built around Colonel Dodelier’s Mobile Group 7 and a riverine assault unit. Its six infantry, three artillery and one engineer battalions plus a squadron of armored cavalry would sweep south from the mouth of the Black River as far as Tu Vu, from which point the river’s course to Hoa Binh was dominated by mountains. Operational Group South, under Colonel Paris de Bollardiere, would push Colonel Vanuxem’s Muong battalions of Mobile Group 3 west along Colonial Route 6 to link up with a three-battalion paratroop task force that had dropped into Hoa Binh. Liaison between these two pincers would be maintained by Mobile Group 2, temporarily stripped to two infantry and one artillery battalions, operating as an operational liaison group.

General Raoul Salan, commander of French Army forces in all of Vietnam, exercised day-to-day control of the offensive, while General Gonzales de Linares functioned as commander of ground troops in North Vietnam. On Salan’s order, the riverine and ground forces began their movement on November 13. By nightfall, Operational Group North had advanced as far as Dan The and the Ap Da Chong crossroads along the Black River, but Clement’s liaison group got bogged down in dense vegetation. Then, during the early hours of November 14, Vanuxem’s Muongs of Operational Group South reached Kem Pass on Colonial Route 6.

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