French Army commander General Henri Navarre employed 53 battalions of French infantry and artillery in an attempt to ensnare 30,000 Việt Minh troops thought to be secreted among the 2,000,000 strong local population in the marshy lagoons between Da Nang and Nha Trang in southern Vietnam.

The French faced a series of sacrificed rearguard actions for each village while the main Việt Minh forces remained elusive.

Võ Nguyên Giáp's troops gathered momentum and began to strike back, and together with the conduct of the Vietnamese National Army this forced the French to abandon Atlante.

The conduct of the ANV prompted French Chief of Defence Staff Paul Ely to comment that "It is now clear that, however sceptical I was when Monsieur Pleven asked my opinion on the possibility of the Vietnamese reliving us in the short term, I was still too optimistic.

Navarre received criticism for focusing on Atlante while operations were taking place at Dien Bien Phu, however historian Martin Windrow argues this to be unjustified given the contrasting nature of the two events.