01 The Use of Armoured Vehicles in the Vietnam War
Description
This article is from the Vietnam FAQ, by Brian Ross, John R. Tegtmeier, Edwin E. Moise, Frank Vaughan, John Tegtmeier with numerous contributions by others.
01 The Use of Armoured Vehicles in the Vietnam War
Attitudes to the use of armour in Vietnam
Essentially, all the combatants in the Vietnam War, who used
armour, except perhaps the ARVN , did so reluctantly. It simply
did not fit the viewpoint present in any of the high commands as to
what sort of war Vietnam was perceived as.
Indeed Dunstan makes the point that the first deployment of US
armour to Vietnam was by mistake when Marines were dispatched to
help secure the Da Nang airbase following a Viet Cong mortar attack
which had damaged and destroyed several USAF B57 Canberra bombers.
It seems that MACV (Military Assistance Command Vietnam) had not
studied the composition of a Marine Battalion Landing Team and the
arrival of the integral armour of that unit had been greeted with
some consternation. Indeed the US Ambassador (who was defacto
commander of the US war effort in Vietnam) deemed them to be "not
appropriate for counter-insurgency operations"(1) The Marines on
the other hand did not see any reason why they shouldn't have been
brought and so the first US deployment of armour was by default
rather than by design.
The next deployment of Armour (tanks as against APC's that is), did
not occur until the arrival of the 1st Infantry Division ("the Big
Red One") incountry in late 1965. Up until that point, each US
Armoured and Cavalry unit which had arrived as part of the
deployment of its parent division had swapped its tanks for APC's,
usually in the form of ACAV's (Armoured Cavalry Assault Vehicles)
or if Mechanised Infantry its APC's to become leg infantry. It was
at the insistence of General Johnston, the US Army Chief of Staff
that the Divisional Cavalry Squadron should keep its medium tanks
so as to test the feasibility of the use of tanks in Vietnam. If
it performed well, then it would be possible to reinforce it to
full battalion strength, if it failed, then the reverse would also
be easily achieved with it becoming simply another APC mounted
unit.(2)
General Westmoreland, commander of MACV's reply to this decision
was that, "except for a few coastal areas, most notably in the I
Corps area, Vietnam is no place for either tank or mechanised
infantry units."(3) Indeed, even though it was against the wishes
of the Chief of Staff, the 1st Infantry Division's Cavalry
Squadron's tanks were kept at Phu Loi, and it took six months of
hard arguing to convince Westmoreland that his "no tanks in the
jungle" attitude was wrong before they were released for general
use.
While the 1st Infantry Division had led the way, it was not really
until the arrival of the 25th Infantry Division and its forceful
commander, Major-General Weyand who insisted, despite resistance
from both the Department of the Army and MACV, that his division
would deploy complete with all its armour elements intact, that the
US Army really started to make use of both tanks and APC's in a
combined arms role.(4)
This attitude though, was one which was to persist for many years,
until the armour enthusiasts had finally proven their detractors
wrong. Indeed, by 1969, after the Tet Offensive of 1968, General
Westmoreland had been so turned around by the successes enjoyed by
the armoured units during the defeat of that offensive that he
requested that all future reinforcements be armoured, rather than
infantry.
Even amongst the Australians this attitude was prevalent. The
infantry was considered "Queen of the Battlefield" with all other
arms supporting her in her efforts. So much so that the Sydney
Morning Herald's editorial questioned the announcement of the
deployment of the first squadron of Centurion tanks to Vietnam in
1967 by asking if they were to be used as "mobile pill-boxes" as no
other use could be foreseen for them in a counter-insurgency
war.(5)
However, within the Army already deployed in Vietnam, the attitudes
were somewhat different with the commanders of the 1st Australian
Task Force (1ATF), and Australian Forces Vietnam (AFV), Brigadier
Jackson and Major-General Vincent respectively both pressing for
the early deployment of tanks to bolster the Australian forces in
Vietnam. Army Headquarters though, had different ideas, despite
the evidence of the use of tanks by the US forces already present
in Vietnam. Vincent however demanded that tanks be given a higher
priority. They were needed because, he said, the infantry were
relatively ineffective in `search' operations without the quick,
responsive close fire support which can be provided only by
tanks.(6)
Amongst the "Free World" nations only it could be claimed that the
ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam) could be said to have been
most willing to accept the role of armour in their war from the
very beginning. However, they were severely handicapped because of
their dependence upon the US Army for both advisers and equipment.
With the already mentioned prevailing attitudes in the US Army
during the first half of the war, it was not surprising therefore
that it wasn't until after the 1968 Tet offensive that the ARVN
received their first medium tanks (M48a3's). Before then, they had
been intentionally limited by the US Army to only possessing light
tanks (M24's initially and M41's for most of the war) and APC's (M3
half-tracks initially and then primarily M113's) which of course
reduced their effectiveness.
In addition, the ARVN was hampered by the uses (or rather misuses)
that the various political and military leaders put their armoured
units to. The main contribution that ARVN armoured units made to
the war before approximately 1967 was that of a securer of
political power. They were used in the long running series of
coups and counter-coups which rocked Saigon from the fall of Diem
in 1963 and the arrival of the US military on the scene in real
strength in 1966. This misuse earned for them the ironic nickname
"voting machines" amongst the Vietnamese.(7) So paranoid were the
ARVN commander's vying for control of the country in the various
juntas which formed and reformed in the period that the ARVN tank
units were always kept within a day's march or less of the capital,
Saigon and were forbidden to carry out any manoeuvres in the
direction of the Capital.
This paranoia was so severe that apparently one evening when US
advisers were delivering new M41 tanks after midnight to avoid
Saigon's normally chaotic traffic, the then dictator General Khanh
was so alarmed that he fled to Vung Tau, over 50 kilometres
away.(8) Air-Marshal Ky, not to be outdone by his army counterparts
managed to secure a squadron of M24 Chaffee light tanks for use by
the RVNAF at Tan Sohn Hut airbase (these were in fact the last
M24's in RVN service).
Now we must turn to the Vietnam People's Army (VPA) or North
Vietnamese regular Army (NVA) if you prefer the American
nomenclature. Even the VPA was reluctant to make use of Armour
because of the obvious difficulties of trying to move the vehicles
down the Ho Chi Minh Trail from North Vietnam, as well as keeping
them supplied. Indeed, reading the accounts of how they apparently
moved some of these vehicles over the difficult terrain so that
they could be use in South Vietnam seems fantastic (the PT76's used
in the attack on the Lang Vei Special Forces camp near Khe Sanh
were apparently carried intact over some sections of difficult
terrain and floated down rivers on log rafts poled along, according
to some US intelligence sources).(9)
While the initial response to the introduction of armour to the
battlefield by the "Free World" forces from the NLF (National
Liberation Front or Viet Cong) and VPA was to increase the quantity
and types of infantry AT weapons available to their forces in the
field this was only a temporary. Despite their rhetoric to the
contrary, the communist commanders were only too well aware that it
takes a very brave man indeed to hunt down a tank with an RPG in
the middle of a battle. That, coupled with the relative
ineffectiveness of the weapons at their disposal meant
problems. Dunstan quotes from a US Army report that M113's
sustained approximately, one penetration for every seven RPG hits.
Hits in
themselves averaged about one in eight to ten rounds fired
due to the inherent inaccuracy of the weapon. M41a3
penetrations were proportionally less because of its
superior ballistic configuration as compared to the
slab-sided M113. Statistical analysis reveals that only one
vehicle was destroyed for every seven penetrations and
casualties were 0.8 per penetration.(10)
Apparently, even the heavier recoilless rifles which the NLF and
VPA often fielded in their larger formations were nearly as
ineffective.(11) Nevertheless, these simple and effective weapons
were a constant and serious threat, as were the more effective
mines, on the battlefield.
However, with the increasing use of armour by ARVN and allied
forces, it was obvious to the VPA and perhaps more importantly
their Soviet and Chinese advisers, that the best counter was their
own armoured vehicles. An additional consideration surely would
have been that already the opposition had demonstrated the power of
armoured units to destroy VPA/NLF units whenever they encountered
them. With the changing nature of the conflict from stage 2
(guerrilla warfare) of Giap's and Mao's classic "People's War" to
that of stage 3 (open conflict) then the VPA would also need the
striking power that only armour could bring to a battlefield.
The VPA though, had a considerable distance to catch up, compared
with the ARVN and the allied forces opposing them, in gaining the
experience necessary to make effective use of armour. They turned
to the USSR for aid and were provided apparently with training
facilities to gain that experience inside the Soviet Union. One
commentator has suggested that the successes of the VPA in 1975
with the use of armoured units were initially learnt on the
"steppes of Odessa," information which was apparently gleaned from
the interrogation of VPA tank crew after the 1972 Easter Offensive
(which revealed that approximately 3000 of them had been trained at
Soviet Armour schools).(12)
However, the VPA evolved its own doctrines on the use of armour
which ran contrary to that of both its opposition and its main
advisers the Soviets in that the North Vietnamese did not,
according to Starry:
advocate the use of tanks in mass. Its doctrine stated that
armour would be employed during an attack, when feasible, to
reduce infantry casualties; however, only the minimum number
of tanks required to accomplish the mission would be used.
Battle drill dictated that lead tanks were to advance,
firing and to be supported by fire from other tanks and from
artillery. Close coordination between tanks and supporting
infantry was stressed as a key to success in the attack.(13)
Even so, it is obvious that the VPA use of armour was at first
stumbling but as confidence grew, by 1975 it had a unique
experience base to draw upon. So much so, that by the time of the
Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia in 1979, the VPA was able to
conduct a classic "blitzkrieg" style of invasion and carry it to
fruition with relatively few casualties.
Continue to:
My Books
