From Peter King, Australia's Vietnam (1983):alf wrote:The lessons learnt in Malaya, regarding the importance of training, field discipline, bushcraft and individual skills, and of good leadership, were to become especially important to our Army when, within a short space of years, Australian forces became committed to a new struggle in Vietnam.EKB wrote:Well, you know what they say about shooting from the hip. You could put the same question to Australia. Institutional resistance to maintaining permament special training programs is common in all of the armies.419* wrote: Perhaps America might have seen some benefit in forming a jungle training school long before 1943 as it was the only Western nation involved in a modern sustained jungle war in the Pacific. From 1902 to 1913 America had substantial forces involved in jungle fighting against the Moros in the Philippines. This was about three times as long as its WWII Pacific involvement.
Isn’t there a saying about those who do not learn from history being doomed to repeat it?
For starters, the jungle warfare training center at Canungra, Queensland, was closed from 1945-1955. The Australians did not have any counter-insurgency training programs in place during this period; indeed they did not even have a written guide prepared on the subject, such as the U. S. Marine Corps Small Wars Manual of 1940.
In the early 1950s, Australian Army staff officers (like John Wilton) rejected the idea of sending their troops to Malaya for those reasons and felt the Diggers could be of no immediate value to the British counter-revolutionary efforts. The Canungra jungle warfare center was reopened in 1955 only after the Aussie government conceded to British pressure in sending troops to Malaya. Unfortunately the jungle training given at that time was programmed in haste and also emphasized conventional warfare rather than hunting guerrillas, so it was not entirely useful for conditions in Malaya. The Australians of 2 RAR subsequently received their advanced jungle warfare training from Gurkhas and other Commonwealth army instructors.
When Australian infantry units arrived in Malaya during 1955, the commanding officer of 2 RAR (Lt. Col. J. G. Ochiltree) was not shown a copy of the British manual entitled The Conduct of Anti-Terrorist Operations in Malaya (ATOM), nor was he aware of its existence. Ochiltree was also critical of Canungra's method of teaching Australian soldiers to fire their rifles from the hip because it reduced shooting accuracy and in his opinion, it allowed some guerrillas to escape. He believed that British experience in Malaya proved that it took just a split-second longer to raise the weapon to the shoulder and this resulted in a more accurate shot. For more details, see Emergency and Confrontation by Peter Dennis and Jeffrey Grey.
As David Horner relates in his history of the Australian SAS, high ranking officers in the Australian Army were disappointed with the performance of the SAS during and after Vietnam conflict and they proposed to disband the entire regiment in the early 1970s. Specialized training camps are typically seen as an unnecessary expense in peacetime and often the target of budget cuts.
" ... Australia had earlier taken the part of inciter and goad of its ally, yet while the Australian government wished and plotted for the Vietnam War before its entry, Australia became involved only marginally in the combat when America's war began in earnest ...
... the military performance of the Australian Army Task Force in Vietnam brings out two serious failures of Australian policy. First, there was a lack of overall political or strategic guidance given to the Task Force command. Should it engage in battles with the main-force units of the guerrilla enemy, or undertake 'pacification' in the villages of the Phuoc Tuy province? The Task Force was not properly equipped for either role and, perhaps fortunately, it performed badly in both ... "
alf wrote: Malay taught Australia what was needed to fight gurellia warfare, Vietnam proved they learnt the lessons, the US finally started to come to terms 30 years past that event.
At least some Australian soldiers were intelligent enough to see that your general perception of Vietnam combat is in error. From David Horner, SAS: Phantoms of War (2002):
" ... The one shot one-kill idea was suitable for some situations, but Vietnam proved conclusively the effectiveness of using the maximum possible firepower ... "
-- Capt. A. W. Freemantle,
Australian SAS
" ... On 18th December 1967, Major-General Tim Vincent wrote to the Chief of the General Staff that the overall effect of the Task Force as a 'killing machine' was causing him some concern. He pointed out that except when the enemy presented himself for slaughter as he had at Long Tan, the infantry battalions were his least effective killers. He continued : ... what is clear that infantry on their own in search and destroy operations kill at about 3 to 1. The fleeting enemy and our rifle are too evenly matched. This was one of the reasons in asking for medium tanks which can accompany the infantry in most places with their canister guns. Dispersed or dispersing VC can nearly always elude our foot infantry who have insufficient immediate contact firepower while on the ground mobility of our infantry is no better and usually inferior to that of the VC ...
General Vincent also said that: " ... On the other hand, small parties of infantry operating where the enemy has freedom of unobserved movement can reap a comparative harvest ... We would like to do more SAS type ambush patrols but we do not have the Iroquois lift and gunships to do it ... "
The same methods recommended by Vincent were in widespread use long before by U.S. Navy SEALs, U.S. Marine Force Recon, U.S. Army LRRPs, and A-Teams from the 5th Special Forces Group.
alf wrote:That experience in Malaya operating at platoon strength etc was the reason why in Vietnam the Australian troops were so successful in combating the VC/NVA.
The only thing that Australian troops learned in Malaya was how to fight a handful of poorly-equipped irregulars who had nothing better than rusting small arms left over from World War II.
The sheer scale and quality of the Vietcong threat was in no way similar to Malaya, and had the Australians instead soldiered up in the Central Highlands -- where the real war was fought against the NVA -- their infantry battalions would have been in for further rude awakenings.
alf wrote:AATTV techniques and method of operations were significantly different to many of those employed by their American allies. Experience in the jungles of Malaya and Borneo and limitations on the number of and facilities available to personnel had combined to produce very different tactics. Whilst American instructors expounded the virtues of the rapid deployment of large numbers of troops, massive fire power and decisive battles, Australians concentrated on individual marksmanship, the independence of platoons from battalion HQs, small scale patrols and ambushes. These differences frequently bought Australian advisers into conflict with their American superiors. The Australian policy of 'economy of effort' was directly opposed to the American idea of 'concentration of force'
Yet the facts show that the Australian Army's prewar conceptions about training to fight Vietcong guerrillas and NVA regulars were deeply flawed, and that they ultimately abandoned those beliefs during every major action they fought in South Vietnam.
Just got done reading Gary McKay's tour guide Australia's Battlefields in Viet Nam. He was a platoon leader with 4 RAR and it's clear from his own concise descriptions of Australia's Vietnam battles that they were always concluded with lots of firepower, e. g. from artillery, mortars, armor, air attack or some combination thereof.
alf wrote: A discussion on US effectiveness in Vietnam written in 1995. (By a USMC Colonel) Second, we must come to grips with the fact that our traditional form of warfare, i.e., high tech with overwhelming firepower delivered from a distant standoff, no longer solves problems. We must be expert infantrymen. For those who have not yet grasped it, in Vietnam, where our enemy's behavior was moving toward that of the fourth generation soldier, the major flaw in the U.S. military was that it neglected the art of the foot soldier. Events since Vietnam have reinforced this point. Many of us missed this point when we were in Vietnam because we were foot soldiers. We sometimes believed we were the center of attention though our top level seniors considered us a sideshow. But anyone who listened carefully to a single Pentagon briefing would have seen that the Military Assistance Command, our joint Chiefs, the Defense Department, and the President were depending not on the infantry but on bombs, artillery shells, and the high technology of the era this in what was clearly an infantry war. Fourth generation warfare will also be infantry warfare, war up close, in and among the people, and the infantrymen who can fight it cannot come from the low end of the intelligence curve. Ironically, in this age of technology, it is in the direction of the foot soldier that modern war demands we now move.
The opinions of an Australian SAS Captain and an Australian General indicate that the key to being a better foot soldier in Vietnam was in employing massive firepower, together with many more helicopter liftships and gunships to carry and escort those foot soldiers into battle.
alf wrote:All the arguements of how good the training facilties are in a country is a smoke screen. It is the contact with the enemy that actually shows the results.
More than 3,000 reconnaissance team leaders graduated from the MACV Recondo School at Nha Trang, including some Australians. It was run chiefly by American instructors of the 5th Special Forces Group. The course was designed for experienced soldiers only, and probably the best jungle warfare school of its kind in Southeast Asia.
alf wrote:The head of the AATTV, Ted Serong was a fascinating character and a highly professional officer. In Vietnam, as well as heading the Australian training team, Serong was appointed senior adviser on counterinsurgency to the commander of the US Military Assistance Command, serving under General Paul Harkins and then General William Westmoreland[/b]. These links, forged with the US military, were to determine his future career path, working for American interests rather than Australian.
By the end of 1966, General Westmoreland was extremely critical of the Australian Army in South Vietnam. He formally complained to Brigadier Stuart Graham and the Australian ambassador and this is mentioned in the Australian Government's official history, To Long Tan by Ian McNeill (1993):
" ... Behind their words of praise for the Australian soldier, the Americans were growing increasingly impatient with Australian methods ... Westmoreland chose January 1967 in which to make plain his dissatisfaction with the task force ... His anger and frustration at the unspectacular results by the task force began to show ... He was trying to get the Australians to take a more aggressive stance in the war ... Later Westmoreland set out the results of his visit in his diary. The Australians, he noted were 'very inactive'. Out of a Task Force of 4600 troops they put only six rifle companies in the field, because defence of the large base required the other two companies. He was concerned at what he saw as the lack of combat power being developed and the small results achieved for the size of the Australian investment ... "
Westmoreland added that: " ... The Australians were a little shocked at my comments, but I explained in all fairness to the command and to their reputation, this observation should be known ... "
Going by his own actions and writings on warfare, no one was a greater champion of small unit action than General Westmoreland. He founded the first Recondo School in 1958 while commanding the 101st Airborne Division and before that he commanded the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment. As such, General Westmoreland was very familiar with guerrilla warfare and sabotage techniques behind enemy lines using small parties of troops, but he also knew that for small unit actions to be effective, the enemy must cooperate by not concentrating his own forces.
The North Vietnamese Army steadily swelled in size and by 1975, they had about 700,000 troops, more than 600 T-54 tanks, and thousands of field artillery pieces (This does not include the communist guerrillas). To think that you could defeat this force by using small unit actions alone is incredibly naive on the part of alf, and anyone else who subscribes to his notions about the Second Indochina war.
Finally, to keep this discussion from straying too far off topic, General Westmoreland did propose a study as to whether Gurkha soldiers might be recruited for combat units or training units in Vietnam.
