Back up for Gary's articles from PDF

[RescueRanger]

I have spoke with Gary from old PDF and asked permission to migrate his articles to our new forum, all his write up's can be found here.

Topics:

1. Battle Tactics 1 - Hammer and Anvil​

2. Battle of Gang Toi - 1965 AD Vietnam War Series​

3. The Great Emu War - 1932 AD​

4. 5 Ancient Battle that Change the World - Battle Of Alesia 52 BC​

5. Countdown to Gallipoli Series [ 4 parts]​

6. Battle off Samar (Last stand of the Tin Can - 1944 AD)​

7. Battle of Ong Thanh - 1967 AD Vietnam War Series​

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1: Battle Tactics 1 - Hammer and Anvil [Part 1]​

I am starting this thread on my break hoping to create some interest in Tactical Discussion, I may not be here to update this thread as I am going back to school after summer holiday in Australia ended in Jan 30. I am going to write maybe one more artice on Miltiary Tactics and be sticking around before Jan 20 then I am going to disappear from this forum again

I hope that member such as @AUSTERLITZ or @Levina or @PARIKRAMA can update this thread and keep the tactical discussion open for everyone. Meanwhile if you have any question, i'll be around to answer them before Jan 20, afterward. I am sorry, but maybe someone else can help you

So, without further ado, here is the first article.

Battle Tactics 1 - Hammer and Anvil

Introduction

Hammer and Anvil is a classical military tactics, it was used extensively by Alexander the Great during his conquest for half of the known world. Some historian even said it was Alexander the great who created this tactics, tho it's quite doubtful this is the case.

Hammer and Anvil is such a good tactics, even with weapon and engagement changed over time, we can still see its usage by modern military today, and one thing we cannot doubt is that it was hammer and anvil tactic that give birth to a lot of modern military tactics. either from trying to counter it or from modifying it usage over the time.

As such, this tactic deserve to talk about in this battle tactics corner. And it is our number one article.

Background History

Although no one can be certain when exactly is Hammer and Anvil tactics is created, some credited Alexander the Great, no one can be certain when did this tactics was first used in any military conflict. Chances are it was already used either by mean or by accident long before 350BC (bear in mind the earliest record for cavalry is at around 450 to 500 BC.)

However, one thing can be sure is that this tactics is made famous from Alexander the great during his conquer of half the known world.

When Alexander use it, he uses with his companion cavalry match up with heavy or light infantry to act as the Hammer and Anvil effect. It was used quite extensively as a part of his conquering campaign

In a historical sense, hammer and anvil were used numerous time and it's one of the old pillar of military tactics, even with time changed, with the advance weaponry, the hammer and anvil continue to be employed in theatre of war

How does it works?

In short, Hammer and Anvil worked by pinning your enemy, usually less mobile with your own infantry, then using a faster force to envelope your less mobile enemy from behind, thus pinning or hammering your enemy into the anvil (your own infantry) for the slaughter.

By passing or sandwiching your enemy between your lighter but faster force and your heavy and bulkier force, you can, as we say, chop them in the front and stab them in the back, and basically surrounding your enemy from all side, it will force them to fight inn two front, also, by enveloping your enemy, you also cut off their supply.

Easy enough to say, in reality, the success of an Hammer and Anvil tactics would require a number of factors.

1.) Geographic factors - Geographic factors works both ways, meaning it will work for or against both you and your enemy. Putting your enemy in a harsh terrain would ensure disengagement impossible for your slower enemy, however, same terrain will also work against your own fast troop. Theoretically, the best terrain for a Hammer and Anvil tactics is with river or ocean on one side of your enemy, and slope or flatland on the other

2.) Speed - The speed of your fast unit will need to be able to cover the gap between your enemy and their escape route, if your enemy can pull back and disengage before your fast unit converging on their retreat, then this will become a moot point.

However, moving too fast would present another problem, moving too fast would mean your enemy have time to prepare a two front war with your slower unit and your larger unit.

3.) Number and Strength - You need to have strength and number in both your hammer and anvil, your hammer can be of a smaller force, but your anvil must be able to absorb the blow from your enemy. Otherwise, when you hammer your enemy toward the anvil (your infantry), if there are too litter infantry to hold the line, what you basically do is simply hammer your enemy from behind and they broke your line and move forward.

In another words, your anvil must be strong enough, and good enough to take on the grind.

Tactical Consideration

For Hammer and Anvil tactics, there are two distinct considerations for this tactic

1.) Speed is the key, quick in, quick out, make sure your enemy cannot envelope your group, or in modern sense, bring artillery on top of you to bring down your attacks.

In extreme case, your enemy could actually be setting up a trap for you to engage a smaller force, scarified that smaller force and win a local engagement with you with tactical air support or artillery support. Or they will simply roll you over with a bigger force

2.) Anchoring the Hammer and Anvil, although a double Hammer and Anvil do exist (the one which you use cavalry on both side and roll up your enemy on both left and right flank), the anchor point of your tactics should be carefully chosen, the end goal is you want to roll up your enemy from behind, meaning you will need to anchor your infantry and your fast unit (in this case cavalry) to close a circle. otherwise you are routing your enemy, but not feeding them into your infantry grinder.

Counter Tactics

In some way, this tactics cannot be stopped once it started. But there are several thing you can do to push this tactics if you are in one.

1.) Using your fast troop to engage the hammer. Very old tactics, not quite useful today, but worked well in the old days, what you simply do is to crash your own cavalry (If you have them) into the hammer paths, and if you can destroy or disrupt the hammer blow, you will force your enemy back into a grinding war.

And because it usually mean your enemy have inferior number or strength (otherwise they would simply do a head on attack) Which mean you can usually crashed the anvil and break out.

2.) Using your own fast troop as a hammer. If terrain allowed (therefore this is such an important requirement for this tactics), you can simply replicate your enemy by launching your own hammer and anvil attacks, that way, we can see who break first and who break first, loses.

3.) More modern technique would call for a defensive approach with air/land/sea interdiction. It will be harder for modern warfare to pull off such a tactics, one thing is the advancement of secondary bombardment. Today, unlike ancient time, troop can be interdicted with ranged weaponry (such as Howitzer or Artillery) and the approach can be mined so the fast unit (such as tank) could be bogged down by defensive measure, as speed is the key, this will work against the tactic'

While most people believe a refused flank can help with defending the Hammer and Anvil tactics, this have proven in battle of Cannae as false, the hammer can simply stretch to a point it can still roll up your flank, and because the cavalry is mobile, they can simply go around your refused flank and attack you from the rear.

Case Studies

Battle of Gaugamela - October 1, 330 BC

The prime example for Alexander the Great with his companion cavalry using the Hammer and Anvil Tactic to destroy the Persian left flank.

Alexander, with his 47,000 troop, engaging a large Persian force led by King Darius III numbered from 60,000 to 90,000 troop and cavalry.

Holding the main Macedonian line is 30,000 heavy pike man of the Alexander Phalanx formation, with 9,000 supporting light infantry, and 7,000 companion cavalry, Alexander the Great laid out his battle line with a double refused flank formation looks like a Trapezium Shape. With both Cavalry unit on the side, arch back 45 degrees, and the main Phalanx on the center battle line, back up with light infantry and reserves.

Darius spread his force in a straight line, with both cavalry and chariot on the side, infantry in the center.

The battle open with Darius engaging both flank on Alexander's line in a cavalry battle, meanwhile the charging Persian engage the phalanx formation in the center. The last bit of the puzzle is for Darius to use his chariots onto Alexander command line, which in turn opening up a gap for Alexander to charge thru. While the chariot attack was either intercepted or rendered harmless by opening up the Macedonian rank and let the chariot harmlessly passed.

Seizing the gap with the confused Persian cavalry and chariot, Alexander charged thru the gap with his companion cavalry, using his reserve phalanx to hold down the Persian cavalry attacks..

After smashing into the Persian infantry line, Alexander return and engage the Persian line from behind, thus, hammering the Persian front line into Alexander's own Phalanx formation.

At this stage, both Persian center and left flanks collapsed, and king Darius escaped, only the Persian right and center right remain as a viable force, which threaten to roll over Alexander's own left flank, eventually Alexander own force reinforced their left flank and repelled the Persian attacks. But not before some Persian troop broke thru and looting Alexander's camp.

The overall battle is a success, with Alexander force being in a 2 on 1 long way (8/90,000 Persian v 47,000 Macedonian) and in particular, Persian cavalry outnumber Alexander's cavalry 2 or 3 to 1. The clever use of Hammer and Anvil save the day for Alexander

Battle of Cannae - August 2, 216 BC

Battle of Cannae is fought between Roman Empire and Carthage on Cannae, modern day southern Italy.

Carthaginian force numbered in 57,000 while Roman send out 8 Legions (instead of the usual 4) numbering between 50,000 o 60,000 (with high estimate to 80,000) troops. Mostly foot soldier, with roman fighting technique, these force would have been heavily armed and more importantly, heavily armored.

The Carthaginian position their troop in two reverse echelon, resembling a triangle. With the African infantry and Spanish cavalry in the center flanked by Spanish and Numidian cavalry on the flank.

The Roman have their usual legion march formation, packing their troop in a tight rectangular shape and march with discipline

With both side march into each other, Roman held their formation while the Carthage change his formation with and extended convex shape resembling a slight half oval or semicircle (depending on which source you read) but in all, the Carthage line draw back at the center, with the Spanish cavalry prepare to break rank. This shape also give the Carthage a longer line which best to absorb the initial roman smash because of the shape.

Battle started with both Carthage flank attack both Roman cavalry, routing the Roman cavalry early on in the battle, leave behind the Roman infantry, early in the battle, with the Roman infantry engaging the Carthage infantry in the middle, the Carthage pull back the center to stretch the line and absorb the shock from the Roman, as the line stretch longer and curvier, the Roman rooted deep into the Carthage rank, but at this point, Hannibal order the Libyan infantry, which is heavy pike man, to engage and roll up both flank of Roman rank, which is now deep inside the Carthage line. to round up the attack, the Spanish cavalry then roll to the back of the Roman Legions and completely surrounded the Romans.

Both African infantry and Spanish cavalry then hammer the Roman into the Carthage main line, which comprise of mostly Gaul and Iberian infantry, which is fierce hand to hand fighter.

As such, the Roman cannot chew thru the Iberian and Gaul line and at the same time being hammered in the back, and the attack fall apart. estimated 40,000 roman (or 6 Legions) decimated in this battle, and Carthage win the battle with an overall 2 to 1 odds.

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[RescueRanger]

1: Battle Tactics 1 - Hammer and Anvil [Part 2]​

Battle of Baghdad - April 3 - 12, 2003 AD

One of the battle I have actually fought myself, on the eve of the invasion of Iraq, the US military prepared a two front war headed by a mixed British and US Marine on the southern route, and US 3d Infantry division on the western route, this is the latest known example of Hammer and Anvil being use in modern warfare.

US Marine and the British force, numbering about 18,000 ill attack town after town thru Barsa, Qul'at, al-Kut and then onto Baghdad to the south, on the other hand, US 3d ID will attack along a Western route, smashing thru Nasiriya, Najaf, Karbala and then hook right into Baghdad from the West.

While the majority of Iraqi Republic guard will fight along the line of the US Marine and the British force, majority of them will ten be trapped between the US Marine to the south and the US 3d Infantry to the west, also with 173rd Airborne brigade airdropped to tikrit North of Baghdad, cutting off the Republic guard retreat.

In all, the US will have 30,000 soldier amongst the 1st Marine Division, 3rd infantry division, 173 independent airborne brigade and the British force. Facing off 50,000 Iraqi republic guard littered around both US forces objective.

US Marine tasked to take both Al-Kut and Nasiriya with minor casualty. while the US 3rd Infantry took Najaf and Karbala and move onto the Baghdad International in the West, from there, they used the BIA as the forward base and attack Baghdad from North West, where the Marine is approaching from the south, while the 3rd Infantry battle on the West and secure 3 ring road around the City of Baghdad, taking objective Moe, Larry and Curley from south west to north west, and taking Objective Diane.

The job of 64th Armored Regiment of the 3d ID is to force the Iraqi republic guard out of their position and move south by cutting from South West to North, and force them onto the Marine line, by which time, have established road block to the south of the city.

Rounding out the battle, the US loses at about 34 KIA with 5-600 WIA of their 30,000 troop, Iraqi suffered 2500+ KIA in the fight and unknown number of WIA, this has been contributed to the hammer and anvil effect started by the tanks of 3d ID.

Author : Gary Locke, BA International Affair CU Boulder, MPhil Strategic Studies, Australian National University, Captain US Army, 3d Infantry Division

All Right Reserved, do not copy or redirect this article without author permission

2. Battle of Gang Toi - 1965 AD Vietnam War Series​

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Coming to the 4th Battle of the Vietnam Series, today, i will bring you to the start of the war and look at one of the first battle fought betwen US/Australian and VC Forces. The battle officially make the first casualty of Australian Force other than the training command

Today battle will take you to the Gang Toi Hills, Bien Hoa province, Republic of Vietnam.

Background of the battle

The war for the United States is ust coming out from an advisory action into the one with major engagement role. With the planned Troop insertion and surge to 210,000 later next year. General Westmoreland are looking at bases to capitalise on the troop entrance. For that, they needed base to pacify the local region.

The plan was simple. Each division already in Vietnam will take up an area and make them the base of operation. 1st ID have Di An and the 25th ID have Cu Chi. While the 173 Bgd and the Australian Army 1RAR would have an dedicated area of Bien Hoa.

Bien Hoa is home to Bien Hoa Airfield. Where the USAF based on. The Bien hoa Air Base operate major air traffic operation in the area, a place have equal status between Saigon Tan Son Nut and Da Nang Airfield.

1RAR was under the command of US 173 Airborne Brigade at that time and their task is to pacify the area in and around the Bien Hoa Air Base.

At the same time, the VC uses the area extensively for their communication adn resupply effort, the area intersect with 2 river (Be River and Dong Nai River) and were the exit of the famous Ho Chi Ming Trail. VC have set up numerous bunker and underground complex to protect the effort on the area

Deposition of Forces :

In the Bien Hoa province, home to the US 173 Airborne Brigade (173 BGD) and 2nd Brigade, 1 Infantry (2/1). Australian force comprise of 1 Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment (1RAR)

VC forces in the AO at the start of operation Hump is Q762 (Q762R) Regiment and D800 (D800R) regiment.

In this specific battle, however, the Australian 1 RAR included only A company and the VC force have Company 238 (From Q761 R)to defend the bunker structure, which is where U1 HQ occupied.

Tactical Consideration

For the Australian, the consideration is to clear the given area and prepare for the area for future operation, theerefore the Asutralian Force are to be airmobile (to cover more area and quick reaction) and lightly armed. Fire Support Base (FSB) were set up near the SW quadron of the AO to provide fire support

While the VC have U1 HQ based on the area. This is C238 job to defend the area and being the hub for communcation and resupply. Their motivation is high and have certain combat support within the Australian AO. Although the main force were drawn into fighting other major battle in the immediate area as per operation hump. The resource and morale is high within the Gang Toi HQ TAOR.

The operation were to airlift 1st battalion, 503 parachute infantry regiment (1/503 PIR) and send them NW ward to patrol the side of Song Be River while the 1RAR will partol the jungle near Dong Nai River. The US/AUS force are to be air mobile and each company were deliever and extracted with Helicopter.

The VC on the other hand were in fortified defensive position on thwe plain of Gang Toi. Digging in and defending the whole area.

Start of Battle

November 5, 1100 zulu, the US and AUS force jumped off in 3 different LZ cleared by prep artillery fire provided by 105mm Bat in FSB Ace. The US landed in LZ King while the B Coy 1RAR landed in LZ princess and A/C Coy 1RAR landed in LZ Queen.

As the map suggested Hill 82 (Gang Toi) were occupied with a single company of VC force and the company were observing the landing in Queen in their overhead OP. Nov 5 Landing completed without any major challenge, according to battle report, only a few mortar round fired toward the LZ and did not create a serious threat to the Landing troop.

However, the Mortar Attack prompted the Australian Force believe there are spotter on the Hill 82. Later after the landing, during that day, A Company started to receive sprodic attack/skimishes as they approach the root of Hill 82. The B coy trverse tto their objective without major incident while the US force walks into a complex bunker system in their objective of Hill 65.

Nov 7 Passes without any serious engagement. The company turn around and prepared to be exfilled by the same LZ they were dropped off 2 days ago. With the Majority portion of the Patrol yielded virtually nothing, the Asutralian Force set out to set up NDP near the root of Hill 82 expect little or no attack from the VC

Nov 8, 0800, A company were ordered to move out and traverse thru the plateau of Hill 82 to reach LZ Queen and await for extraction the following day. Upon setting the heading, there were increasing VC activities and first a Scout was discovered and killed and the group subsequently discover a company sized camp site.

1540, the company was travelling in a single line file toward the hill with 1st platoon lead and 2 and 3 platoon followed, at this moment. 1630 The group arrived within 250 meter to the top of the hill, all hell broke lose.

1630, Nov 8, the lead section of 1 platoon were hit by 3 VC machine gun in 3 size creating an enfliade position to the Australian Force, the 3 MG nest were very well placed within each other with interlocking fire and kill zone pre-set in between. 5 men fell from the initial burst of MG fire and the Australian Troop then return fire while being pin down, with all but 1 casualty was recovered where he felt on top of the bunker. Repeated hit and presume dead.

After the initial burst of fire, A Company HQ requested 3 platoon to move up to block the path and relieve the pinned down 1 platoon. Being in a trail would limit the australian engagement by only allowing half to less to half of their troop facing the enemy, and the rest are forced to stuck behind their comarade.

Off the bet, within advancing 50 meter of the trail, 3 Platoon also come under heavy fire from VC bunker, ignoring the incoming fire and continue to advance. The A company suffer the second dead when a Machine Gunner got caught inside a wedge of tall tree, VC tried to retrieve the downed Gunner M-60 to add to their fire power, but was killed in point blank range by the dying Australian Machine Gunner before he collaspe on his own gun.

Now, the 1 platoon pinned down by incoming fire. 3 platoon were pinned down by their flank. The only solace with the Australian Company is the 3 platoon involvement preventing their flank to be overran. And although 105mm battery is available the drop is over the crest and into otherside of the hill (The gun position place the enemy beyond the Australian) and the spotter cannot spot the round for accurate fire support. A company decided to withdraw from the area. And therefore ending the battle early.

With everyman proceed with their own way to getting back to Company HQ, the 2 Australian dead were left behind and only recovered almost 40 years after the battle. At the end of the 2 hours battle, Australian suffer 2 KIA and 6 WIA, Company 238 suffered 6 confirmed KIA and 1 WIA. 5 VC felt prisoner.

2. Battle of Gang Toi - 1965 AD Vietnam War Series [Part 2]​

Importance of This battle

Being a soldier myself, i know for a fact that leaving your dead behind is not a very good business, this is not good for the morale and it is not good to individual troop the prospect of not getting the body back to proper burial and the prospect of dying alone in a foreign land is chilling, even when we are just talking about it.

This battle to more extend sees as a general American Strategy Failure within their control. The Australian Unit is small, when compare to the American Counterpart. They were not used to or to be use as a large scale sweep like this. This is also the biggest different between American Soldier and Aussie Digger. While the USGI are used to out in force and look for enemy, in the so called "Search and Destroy" mission. The Australian are more probe to small unit action and used to migrate from village to village

The failure of this battle to take hill 82 spell the demise of Joint US-Australian Operation in Bien Hoa area and it also signal the Australian to form their own Task Force and experience it's own little troop surge.

What gone wrong with the Australian??

The problem with the Australian is, they made 3 major error before the battle begin. Couple to the fact that the fighting in Hill 82 are not as exciting as the American Paratrooper in Hill 65. The operation in Hill 82 is treated as a side-show in the grand scheme of things.

Mistake 1. - The Australia were up that hill in a single file. Expect little to no enemy resistence. They march thru the hill as if they have own it. A single file march is extremely exposed to a well place machine gun fire, as the gun do not need to travese much to hit the bulk of the Australian Troop, while you have the smallest surface area contacted the enemy. In the Military, we called it being in Enfliade position

While it is good for quick march, but extremely expose to well placed ambush.

Second Mistake the Aussie made is the lack of recconnissance in the area. Although it is true that no war you fought can be 100% clear, the prospect of graduately discovering enemy position should have alerted the Australian to at least look for ambushes in the area. In this battle, no side guard were ever deployed. No forward recce party were ever send. No rear guard, no wing were send out on both flank, all of the above would have prevented or at least limited the damage done to the Australian. But none have done, hence the result as it is.

Third and last mistake committed by the Aussie is they approach the hill in the wrong direction. To enjoy better gunnery support, it's best that you enter a "Over your head" position, where you put your unit between your target and your gun, that way, the shell would flew over your head and hit the enemy. That's good because of two things. 1.) Round flew over your ehad guarantee that it will not accidentally drop on you, as it travel AWAY from you. (except, of course, short round) 2.) When you put your observer between your target and your gun, you can spot the round that go over you. Especially you are going up hill. If you are on one side, your gun and the enemy is on another side. In between there is an elevation (the hill) who is going to spot the impact of the round?? Or how?? You literally needed to be on the crest of the hill to spot the round going on the other direction. And that piece of land is currenly occupied by your enemy. If you can expel them, you don't need the gun anymore.......

NEVER PLACE YOUR ENEMY AND YOUR GUN ON ONE SIDE AND YOU ON THE OTHER. This is the most deadly mistake i reckon committed in this battle. If those artillery support can be accurate. A lot can be changed.

Legion of the Battle

Pte Richard Parker (KIA Nov 8 1965)
Pte Peter Gillson (KIA Nov 8 1965)

That's it, this is the 4th battle i have covered on Vietnam War, next battle will conclude this Vietnam Series and also serve as the opening of another series. Stay tuned.

 

[Nilgiri]

Is jhungary not going to join this forum? He will be missed!

There is also a great archive of Austerlitz old battle analysis that ought to be preserved as well imo.

 

[RescueRanger]

Is jhungary not going to join this forum? He will be missed!

There is also a great archive of Austerlitz old battle analysis that ought to be preserved as well imo.

Sadly Gary's started a new job and that leaves little time for stuff online due to a lot of traveling. I also intend to backup Austerlitz content, but not many days left and I am having to move content from other sections too.

Unless you want to take up the task of moving Austerlitz content?

3. The Great Emu War - 1932 AD​

Well, it have been a while since I have done any combat/battle history report, so I decided to re-boot the series, starting with this battle in 1932. If you are interested in these type of thing, you can find my other battle report here

https://defence.pk/threads/battle-and-combat-history-series.286181/page-2

The Great Emu War - 1932 AD

People fight war to win, this is what war were meant to be, fought to be the winner. Some war are destined to live through history, the test of time, some war were simply, meant to be forgotten. Nonetheless, to people who seen the true face of warfare, even thought the memory become distant, and nobody ever talked about it, the experience would remain a part of you forever, for those who fought in that war, the memory are with them forever.

Background

The years was 1932, approximately 15 years after the great war has ended, young man who were conscripted into fighting the great war were all returned, one way or another. since the ex-militiamen flocked back to Australia, there are job shortage to accommodate the influx of large scaled young group of guys.
Then the Government of Australia see this, and started to hand out land for returned servicemen. They can start their own farm and restart their own life.

Then come the 1929 great depression, where the government encourage the local farmer to increase their wheat product and subsidiary their wheat, while failing to deliver the promises made, the wheat harvest went on in 1932, however, the farmer was also threaten to boycott the wheat sale and the farmer/government relationship in Western Australia went to all time low.

The problem have been worsen by the years of neglect of culling of the national bird - The Emu, approximately 20,000 + emu running rampage in Wheatfield all over Western Australia, straining the already sour relationship between the government and the farmer, the farmer, ex-militiamen, instead of turning into local Agricultural department, requesting help from the Ministry of Defence, citing mistrust with the Ministry of Agriculture, the Government taking the chance to turn this crisis into opportunities, they acts, with extreme prejudice. By sending the Australian Army for the war on Emu.

Opposing Force

The Australian Force

Although the official figure of active participant have been disputed ever since the report of the war, the total participant were in no doubt a Brigade size of 4,000 ex-Australian Militia. Complement with this group is 2 machinegun (Lewis Machine Gun) sections of the 7th Heavy Battery of Royal Australian Artillery, commanded by Major G.P.W. Meredith.

The local ex-militia man were armed with local weaponry, mainly small arms, from .303 Lee-Enfield, Kar98 rifle to Pistol and Rifle of all Sort. While the Machinegun sections were armed with 2 Lewis Machine Gun with allotted 10,000 rounds bullet.

The Australian force aimed to have inflict a casualty of 30-50% of Emu Population and minimize the damage to the local West Australian Wheat Farmer.

The Emu - D. novaehollandiae




A reinforced Division size of Emu were estimated, although no exact number were sighted or recorded, an estimate of 20,000 + enemy combatant were in the Area during last survey.

Emu stand about 1.5 meters to 1.9 meters, weight about 20-60 kg, with an average build on 1.6 meter tall and weighted 40 kg, their tactics of choice is massive Emu-Wave attack, couple with some degree of Kamikaze attack. The weapon of choice included back kick, back flip and stampede.



Tactical Consideration

The tactical situation for the Australian is to maintain the tempo and press/pressure the attack and achieve a high kill ratio, as Emu outnumber Australian Soldier 5 to 1, (Typical estimation would see less than 2,000 Ex-militia actively engage to Emu-Combat, which Emu would then outnumber Australian 10 to 1)

Also, speed is the key, as each day Emu would consume the Wheatfield the Australian is holding, the longer it takes would mean a serious lost of profits.

On the other hand, the Emu would not have any tactical consideration on the account of well, Emu being Emu, they come, they eat and they bred. Plus, Emu outnumber Australian at least 5 to 1.

most Emu is fresh troop, just came out from the Hibernation from the long Australian Winter, this is the first thing most of them do immediately after a prolonged R&R period.

The Battle Begin

The Great Emu War, Day 1, November 2, 1932

on sighting report of a group of Emu, Platoon sized, near the Campion district, the soldiers and local militiamen, travel in formation behind the line of Emu and ready to open fire with the Machinegun. The burst, is not well placed and the Emu were amok after hearing the initial burst, burst into chaos and ran in every direction. The first battle lasted about 5 minutes, with 8 or 10 Emu being gunned down. The Australian drew first blood.

The Great Emu War, Day 2, November 4, 1932

November 3 have seen rain, which scatter the Emu population and the Army decided Nov 3 is not a good field day, instead they used that day to try and lay ambush for the Emu.

So, on the next day, they concealed gunner in Emu Hots Spot near a farm with a big pond (Location unknown), right off the bat, the concealed gunner report seeing at least 1,000 Emu gathering and having Wheat and water. The army ambush went into action.

Instead of chasing the Emu, the militia decided that they would wait until the Emu came within point blank range before opening fire. There they are, the Emu enter the kill zone with the first group almost just past the ambushing soldier, the Australian gunner thought he died and gone to heaven, he cannot believe his eyes, tree to tree Emu walking toward their Machine Gun kill zone. Then they open fire

The dream lasted almost as long, before the gun jammed after firing off about 20 rounds, the Emu upon entering the Ambush site have retreated, leaving behind countless of Emu Feather and some of their dead comrade, numbered between 10-12. The Gunner, having jamming the gun, almost gone home empty handed. Decided to call off the ambush.

The Great Emu War, Day 3, November 8, 1932

By November 8, the Commanding officer, Major Meredith realise their enemy is faster and quicker than then they original thought, now, instead of laying static ambushes, which to dismal result, the Major decided to mount the Machine gun on the back of a truck and trying to out run the emu and gun them down at the same time.

However, this is more or less easier to say then actually have to do it, on one hand, the truck gone off-road and the bumpy ride means bullet fired would not hit the target, also the recoil of the Lewis Machinegun means the gunner have to hold the gun in place while shooting with one hand, further destabilise the gun, and as a result, no emu was kill that day

After expanding 2,500 rounds of ammunition with less than 200 kill, the Army recall Major Meredith and planning to call off the whole War.

The Great Emu war, Part 2 November 13 to December 10.

After the Army wrapped up operation Emu on November 10. the Farmer again request MOD intervention for the Emu Problem they are facing, having red faced by the previous failure, Major Meredith had 3 days to go back to the drawing board and reform an attack plan that make sense.

The war was restarted on the 13th of November, with 40 Emu KIA. Now with a modified plan for mechanised attack, mounting another machinegun on top of a truck and stabilise it with make shift mount. Also employ ground troop to cull the Emu setting up ambush zone, the final battle see the extraordinary tactics used by the Emu.

The last operation see the Gun Truck having moderate success on killing Emu, with that mission, one Emu suddenly broke off from the pack it was running with. And charge the truck and slam head on toward the truck. The Emu, killed Instantly, but by its effort, jammed the steering column of the truck, resulting the truck veer off and crashed on some Farmers gate.

The extraordinary heroism for that Emu have effectively ended the Australian campaign on Emu in Western Australia. And the war is over, the major was recalled back on Dec 10 once again.

Aftermath

Perhaps the words said by Major Meredith is pretty much well rounded for the whole campaign. He was on record saying

"If we had a military division with the bullet-carrying capacity of these birds it would face any army in the world...They can face machine guns with the invulnerability of tanks. They are like Zulus whom even dum-dum bullet could not stop" Major G.P.W. Meredith

The original tactics was seriously underestimate the Emu capability, thought the can't fly, they still run pretty damn quick. And a machine gun cannot deal maximum damage unless the Emu pack was travelling enfilade toward the machine gun. Hence the dismal result.


Also the Australia have seriously underestimated the command structure and the tactics employed by the Emu, where the head honcho Emu would direct half of its force to charge the Australian Machinegun, some resulting overheat and jamming, the head honcho would also instruct another group to take advantage of the situation and get off with the wheat. And by the end of the conflict, the Emu also smart enough to understand well the range of a Lewis Machinegun and post non-essential combatant just outside the range. Couple with the fact that Emu Stampede was actually quite scary, it contribute the result of 987 emu kill, unknown wounded over 19,000 bullet, a rate that did not even remotely put a dent in the population. And defeated the Australian Effort.

4. 5 Ancient Battle that Change the World - Battle Of Alesia 52 BC​

Coming to this battle report, I will bring you to 5 Ancient Battle that help shape the today world, it can be said these 5 battle both directly and indirectly affect or alter the course of history. If the result of these battle were different, and there are highly probable that we will see a totally different world.

The First battle of this series is from the famous Roman General/Consul Gaius Julius Caesar, this is one of his earlier famous battle

Background

59 BC, Caesar secure himself the Roman Pro-consulship on the region of Gaul, today's France upon the Alps. After an extensive campaign, Caesar have been able to conquer much of the Gaul and have the other tribe subjugated by Caesar forces.

As the Triumvirate failed after Carssus death and the failing relationship between Caesar and Pompey, Eburones, an North-eastern Gaul tribe started a revoke by decimating Caesar 14th Legion in an Ambush and long story short (Not in a mood of giving a History Lecture) Vercingetorix was elected leader of the United Gaul force from different tribe and the Gallic War begin.

With a whole legion down, and Caesar was sort of dangle to dry by Pompey, which refused to send reinforcement, which put Caesar into his back foot and prevent Caesar to launch any attack on pacifying the Gaul. However, even though Gaul outnumber roman about 3 to 1, Gaul tribe is not a professional army like the Roman legion, and if the Gaul was force into a set piece fight with the Roman, chances are the Gaul would be the one that get cut to piece.

Vercingetorix sees that and organise this Gallic force into a hit and run tactic and harass the Roman into retreating back to Rome so that they can buy time to train and reform and fight off the Roman Army once they are back from their reorganisation.

With the Gaul violence toward Roman stepped up, Caesar was put into a precarious situation and after a defeat by Vercingetorix at Battle of Gergovia, Caesar retreated and seemingly, Vercingetorix gets what he wanted in the summer of 52.

While pursuing the retreating roman army, the Gaul unsuccessfully cut off the Roman retreat and Vercingetorix decided to bug out and return to their stronghold of Alesia and ready for winter.

But this is not what it may seems, upon retreating toward Northern Italy, Caesar force redoubted and turn around and chase the Gaul back to Alesia, now Caesar attempted to force a set piece with Vercingetorix when almost all of his force are now in once place. Alesia.

Tactical Consideration

For the Roman, their tactical situation is that they are on the bottom end of the scale no matter how you see it, they are a smaller force, they are on the verge of starving as the Gaul uses the scotched earth policy and force the Roman to spend some of its force to forge and also once the other Gaul tribe got the words they will send reinforcement for Alesia.

So for the roman, they neither have time nor strength on their side, however, as they are the one that cornered the Gaul, the only thing the Roman have on their tactical advantage is that the battle is in their initiative, they are forcing Gaul hand to fight their kind of battle, at least, until the Gaul reinforcement came.
On the other hand, the Gaul in Alesia also did not have time on their side, they are being sieged and with 70,000 Gaul warrior plus civilian, food ran out fast, although the situation is not really as bad as the roman as the Roman's supply base is over Italy and forging them to look for food, feeding 70,000 soldiers plus civilian is not a easy task.

However, the Gaul have their number, they have their reinforcement and they also have a defendable position. And more importantly, manpower to man the defences.

The Battle

The Battle begin with some cavalry skirmishes around the real estate in Alesia, Caesar judge that a frontal assault in a well defended town with a numerical superior enemy is a lost clause, what Caesar opted instead is to siege the town into submission.

The first thing the Roman do is to build a wall to wall in the Population of Alesia so that even if the Gaul decided to break for it using their numerical superiority, they would not be succeed.

Building a wall, or a circumvallation would negate the numerical superiority for the Gaul and also building a wall to contain Alesia would means they could not be able to sustain the siege and by walling in the occupant of Alesia, the Roman hope to limit the chance that the Gaul can call for reinforcement.

The Battle started in the beginning of September when the Roman lay the first 4 meter wall of the 18 kilometre area. The battle begin with Roman laying the wall and Gaul forces uses their mobile cavalry to harass the Roman work on the wall, as well as the food party. This have create a problem within the Roman rank but was anticipated by Caesar, however, since Caesar's reinforcement are hard to come by, he have no choice but to brace the raiding party mounted by the Gaul.

About 2 weeks in the walling phase, after Caesar gather enough cavalry of his own, Caesar ambush the Gaul cavalry and drove them back to the City, however, since the door of Alesia were shut until a time to be determined to ward off the Roman, the Gaul cavalry beats a retreat only to find the door shut close in front of them. And the whole cavalry party were slaughtered.

Seeing this, the Gaul decided change tactics, instead of sending put cavalry to harass the Roman wall building and food gathering effort, they now bet on the cavalry to punch thru the investment and call for cavalry literally, and hope that the Gaul reinforcement would be arrive in time and beat off the Roman and lift the siege.

Some Gaul cavalry did got thru the defence and headed out, seeing this, the Roman then proceed to build another wall outside of the original wall to wall the Roman in, the new wall, called Contravallation would effectively seal in the Roman sieging the Gaul, so it would have a Gaul Sieging Roman Sieging Gaul situation developed.

This time, before the reinforcement eventually came, the Roman had already build the Outer wall, along with ditches laden with anti-personnel trap and water filled drench to the inner wall, also accomplished is for the Roman to gather 30 days ration unopposed before the Gaul reinforcement came.

The commander that led the reinforcement is Commius, an ex-brother in arms with Caesar earlier in the Gallic war. A brief engagement broke out with the Roman scourging party still outside the wall and slaughter the Roman still gathering food. At the same time the Gaul inside Alesia decided to break out from the inner wall and engage with a series battle with Roman.

The battle does not last long and did not swing into Gaul favour, partly because of the Roman was a more disciplined force and basically both side of the Gaul is trying to break in to the Roman defence and the wall that Roman erected means it would be harder for the Gaul to go over.

The next day, the Gaul from the outside launch a night attacks, it met with some degree of success but as the Roman have the upper ground and the Siege machine the Roman brought with provide a better vision than the Gaul facing down, the Roman beats the attack with the help of the Cavalry


The final showdown happened on the next day, the Gaul had discover the weak point of the outer wall the Roman trying to hide and decided to push 60,000 men into the gap and with Vercingetorix personally lead the remaining Gaul inside Alesia and try to link up with the reinforcement.

Now the Gaul are about 2 :1 outnumbering the Roman, and both side broke into the area where the Roman was, now the Epic battle and the Set Piece Caesar looking for is now happening, and now, the undisciplined Gaul trying to attack a Packed Roman formation in a confined space. Which is a battle that favour heavily the Roman.

Now that the Roman are being compacted and the earlier defence works starting to pays off, the ditch and the drench delay Vercingetorix long enough so the Roman are mostly fighting with just one side of the Gaul blunts.

Now, with a third Gaul Force appear on the NE of the wall, Caesar now face a 3 front Gaul attack, Commius from the West, piling in by the gap, Vercingetorix from the inside and a new Gaul force hacking down the wall on the North East. Now Caesar have to commit the last of his reserves, which is him and 3600 last 13 cohorts of man and cavalry.

Normally it would be too much to take for any force to face a 3 way fight with a superior army that outnumber at least 3 : 1 to you, but since the Gaul were jamming 20,000 men in the tiny gap between the wall on the 2 shallow river. That bottleneck effect essentially eliminate the numerical superiority by feeding the Gaul force into Roman by piecemeal. The force inside Alesia are now too became a spent force from all the fighting and starving. And for that, the Roman successfully push off the Commius reinforcement and beginning chasing the relief force back to their own camps.

Now, Vercingetorix sees the defeat of the relief, and the morale enter an all time low, there are nothing better to do but surrender.

Post Mortem

While the epic battle ends the way in favour of Caesar and become one of the most memorable battle of all time, but it can actually swing either way, so what has done wrong by the Vercingetorix?

Vercingetorix knows from ground up that his force is not as hardly trained and disciplined as the Roman force, and hence he made into a great deal to avoid fighting a head on fight with the Roman, and instead using the mobility of the cavalry culture to engage the Roman in order to disrupt their efforts.

But when we look at the battle as it unfolded, we can see the Gaul was sucked into fighting a set piece head on engagement with the Roman.

Initially, Gaul gain a good deal of time, time that both side do not have by harassing the Roman forging party, and by the time it Caesar force was weakened by the constant harassment, Vercingetorix do a 180 and instead going on with the stuff that works for him. He opted to let the Cavalry, his best troop, to go for help.

In hind sight, this could be and would be a winning move, but once Caesar realise what Vercingetorix were up to, he raise another wall to wall themselves in, effectively negate the effect of the reinforcement.

What's more, with the best troop to perform hit and runs is gone, there are virtually nothing Gaul have in Alesia to actually contest the Roman for their wall building and forging.

By doing this, Vercingetorix essentially forgot one simple principle for any siege warfare, and that is the attacker have to be able to seal off the defender to conduct a siege, by letting the cavalry goes and not to contest the Roman effort to siege Alesia, effectively Vercingetorix himself allow the siege to happen in the first place.

That set of a chain reaction that allowing the Roman to gain upper hand by both finishing off the defence/siege works and food forging. And in the end, Vercingetorix's own action have put the Gaul from an advantage position, into their back foot.

However, the legacy of this battle did not end there. Now with Vercingetorix gone, the United Gaul front have collapse and Caesar are now in a position that process the most power within the Republic, and had Caesar loses this battle, which is pretty much Pompey intend to do so by purposing hanging Caesar to dry, he would not be in the position to challenge Pompey and would not be able to cross the rubicon with his legion and start the Roman Civil which resulting Caesar declare the Empire of Roman Empire for all Eternality
.
The battle strategy itself also replicated several time during the course of history, commander cannot see the distant goal and focus on the short term objective had again and again brought disaster result to battle time and time again, a better example would be the Battle of Britain where the German again have numerical superiority and was winning by bombing and harassing the RAF, but throw it all out with some feud with City Bombing.

 

[RescueRanger]

5. Countdown to Gallipoli Series​

[Part 1] Battle of Battleship Hill

The last battle of this series is the battle of battleship hill, strange things tho, battle of battleship hill actually in fact never happened, but it was the battle name that have been given to 2 separate battles (Battle of Chunuk Bair and Battle of the Nek) that supposed to capture a location called Battleship Hill.

As with the ANZAC tradition, the battles went to hell, and with no real estate gain for this operation but in the process, losing a great chunk of Australian and New Zealand man power.

However, this battle did also means the most for the Australia, In the Australian War Memorial, there was a plaque with 3 words cut deep into it "Mateship, Courage and Sacrifice" and this term was defined in the height of Battle of the Nek, where basically, 650 Australian from the 3rd Light Horsemen were ordered to die.
It is with this battle, the Australian realised their national identity and they were no longer fighting for the King and Mother Country, it was the Aussie blood that flow thru the vein of each Australian, and they are at war to fight for each other, and die for each other, a feat which define a generation.

Background

As with the 5 battle happening across the Gallipoli peninsula, the battle of Battleship hill was part of feign/real break out battle from ANZAC, the other battle were Battle of Lone Pine, by the 1st Australian Brigade, the Battle at Krithia Vineyard by the British 29th Division and the Landing at Suvla by the British 10th and 11th Division.

The call for battle of battleship hill is, again, at Baby 700, where the New Zealander will hook East to Chunuk Bair and the cross SW to attack Battleship Hill from NE, meanwhile the Australian 3rd Light Horse Brigade would cross the Nek and attack Battleship Hill from the West and finish a pincer attack on the ottoman on Battleship hill.

While the Chunuk Bair is not as high as Baby 700, or Big 700, not to mention Hill 971 in the Sari Bair range, however, this is the place connect the Nek, with lone pine and beach, capturing the Chunuk Bair would form a continuous line between the NZ and Australian Position, while t is reverse salient in the current situation and would greatly reduce the pressure from the Australian Defence point of view.

And a continuous line is formed, the force could consolidate and break out of the range to Hill 971.

The Battles

Both Battle of the Nek and the Battle of Chunuk bair were set to go at 0430, and while the Australian hold their defence line at the nek, the New Zealander have to move to location from their own position, from the Beach, the New Zealander have to move across Rhododendron Spur which leads to Chunuk Bair, and the Ottoman have established quite an amount of outpost overlooking the spur, all these out post have to be taken before assaulting the Chunuk Bair.

Battle of Chunuk Bair

There were 2 approach went thru the spur, the Northern Approach and the Southern Approach, which both approach will leads to the Apex, an staging area over Chunuk Bair, there, the New Zealander will launch their attack.

While the northern approach (Auckland and Wellington battalion) clear out ottoman opposition and arrived at the apex on time, the southern approach (The Canterbury) were lost during the fight and they have been delayed The Commander of the New Zealand Brigade decided to wait for the lost battalion instead of assaulting the objective with the force at hand.

The attack assume at 0800 (3 and a half hours after the battle of the Nek) and now the other battle have long been decided, with decisive ottoman victories, the ottoman knew the New Zealander were to attack Chunuk Bair and formed up and reinforce the position an hour prior to the New Zealander attacks.

The attacks then falter and disintegrated where 300 men were lost in the first assault between the apex and the Chunuk Bair ridge, and the distance is only some 400 yards.

The New Zealander then were ordered to dig in and wait for night fall before trying too attack again. And the Kiwi dug in for the rest of the day. 3 more battalions were dispatched for the anticipated night attack.

At 0300, 8th August, the next day, the Wellington attacked, followed by the Glouster, preceded by Artillery and Naval Bombardment, the Kiwi took the ridge without any casualty as the Naval Bombardment is so accurate that it driven out the some 500 ottoman defender

The ottoman then counter attack the Wellington battalion position and succeed to take part of the trench but largely repelled by the Wellington Battalion in the morning, however, a division a strength night attack was staged by the ottoman and successfully repel all New Zealand defender from Chunuk Bair for good the next day

The next morning, the ottoman continue to attack the Chunuk Bair, while the British trying to out flank the ottoman position by attack Hill Q, an elevation just North of Chunuk Bair, but to get then the British have to cross the farm then climb to Hill Q. The task were given to a combine brigade of the General Baldwin's 38th Brigade, again, as with the tradition ANZAC battle on that days and age, Baldwin got lost and cannot find the farm until morning the 9th August, the only battalion that reach the summit of Hill Q is the 1/6 Indian Gurka Rifle, which did not stayed long after firing on by friendly ships. The momentum once again stalled, and effectively doomed the Kiwis position in Chunuk Bair

And the force in the Farm was hit hard and repelled by a decisive counter offensive led personally by Mustafa Kemal.

Battle of the Nek

the battle was supposed to be a supporting battle to Chunuk Bair and to draw out or dilute the ottoman defence in battleship hill, the main thrust is at Chunuk Bair, however, for Battle of the nek to work, it is very important that the Kiwi have to launch the attack at Chunuk bair at the same time as the Aussie launch the battle of the nek, but as described above, this is not to be.

The Nek would call for Naval Gun support before the Aussie going over, the Light Horse will charge the ottoman position just 30 meters away, in 4 waves, 150 men each.

The First wave will charge immediately after the cessation of artillery fire on 0430, and each wave will follow 2 minutes after, the whole battle would not last more than 10 minutes.

Instead, the naval gun fire stopped at 0423 with no one know if the gun fire would continue, that gave the ottoman about 5 minutes to go back and man their position, the first wave charged the ottoman position exactly 0430, and cut down within 30 second, most of them got shot immediately after launching themselves over and felt back to the Australian Own Trench, with estimated 98% casualty.

Second wave, seeing this, followed after 2 minutes, met with the same fate.

The Australian charging the ottoman position were told to unload their rifle and fix bayonet and so they can be go over "quickly" and most of the Light Horsemen felt to the ground before leaving their own trench, knowing full well that they can't fight back

Third wave were disrupted and a request to cancel the pointless charge have raise, and overruled by the command of the 3rd Light Horse, and went over a little more than 5 minutes after the second wave. Knowing that they were going to be killed by overwhelming ottoman rifle and machine gun fire, most of the third wave from 10th Battalion launch themselves then immediately hit the dirt, seeing they perform their duty, they crawl back to their own line, suffer 65% casualty. Which is the lowest of all wave.

And then, by the fourth wave, a serious question again raised about the point of the charge and a request to cancel the charge is now bring to the ANZAC command instead of the 3rd Light Horse command. but perhaps to suit this tragic ending, confusion arise and a section of 4th wave charge without waiting for the inquest and prompt the whole line launched over, suffer from 80% casualty.

That's 380 people felt dead and wounded in a window less than 30 minutes. Accounts have shown that both side were obvious silent after the battle of the nek, with the ottoman cannot believe the Australian would send wave after wave of man just to get killed.

Post Mortem

Command failure were blamed on the Chunuk Bair battle while the need to the Battle of the Nek had become a million dollars question for historian.

The need for charging the nek is gone when the New Zealander are not in position to attack Chunuk Bair at 0430, 7th August, the charge of the nek were then unsupported and also, charging the nek before an attack on Chunuk Bair would basically handed the ottoman the information that the commonwealth is going to attack Chunuk Bair, which is nothing but a big giveaway.

However, the charge in the nek were allowed to carry on despite the command knew the kiwi absent from Chunuk Bair can be interpret as one of the 2 decision making factors.

1.) The enemy line is just 30 meter away, the Australia could have try to charge it an overwhelm it anyway, with about 80-100 defender estimated, 600 Australian seems like a large enough number to overwhelm the ottoman defences, with Naval support (which is another great let down)

2.) The Australian launch the attack regardless to try to cut off ottoman support to Lone Pine, where the main game were that day, once they harassed the ottoman line at the nek, the ottoman would need to think twice before moving away from the nek and support the lone pine defence.

Either way, the decision maker feel the need justified the charge, knowing full well the consequence of an unsupported charge, and the charge were to went ahead.

Then the second question came, should they just stopped in 2 waves? Seeing their own soldier have been cut to pieces not even leaving their own trenches.

The problem is, once the charge gone ahead, you need to follow through otherwise if you launch half of your force to your objective and not supporting it, that would mean you condemn the first half of your force to death, either you send the second half of your force to be slaughter or you condemn the first half and cut lost, it would be quite honestly, "bad" either way. But under the circumstance, the launching of 3rd wave could still be justified.

Back onto Chunuk Bair, the New Zealander lost the initial momentum and attack the ottoman position before the ottoman can reinforce their position. As with almost all other battle fought in Gallipoli, the moment is gone and the command on site have been too slow to capitalise any gain in either surprise or decisiveness.
With Chunuk Bair going back to the Ottoman, the line remain unchanged before the August Offensive and the breakout did died when the ottoman retook the Chunuk Bair. Where both side will then settle with reinforcing their position until the British Commonwealth decided, it is too much, and pack up and left in December.

My Take on Gallipoli Campaign.

In hind sight, any campaign that failed and eventually led to overall victories is a waste, that mean you do not need to waste the resource you devoted in the losing campaign and the result of said campaign did not alter the final objective.

The problem is, we, student of history, usually benefitted by the hind sight, which we knew what had happened and what is relevant and what is irrelevant. But when you are on ground, trying to fight a war, and trying to win a war, you do not benefit from these hind sight and you have to try almost everything to try to tilt the odds in your favour.

I have led troop myself, I knew first hand how uncertainty can battlefield can get, the question is always not "What kind of stupidity you can allow to go" but rather what you can think of that other can't. And sometime it may look stupid, or nonsense or even crazy, but then commander have also need to remember, every battle is an odd you have to take, and who dares, win.

Going back to Gallipoli, when you look at the situation as of 1915, the Turks is fighting on the side of the Triparted power (Austro-Hungary and Germany) which mean the road to Russia thru Mediterranean were blocked and that is the only viable route to Russia during winter time, so the need to capture or capitulate turkey is indeed needed otherwise the Central Power can drive a wedge between the Eastern and Western Power and separate them.

While the battle is worth to fight, the way the battle being conducted is another story, but then can we actually blame how the battle went on with the commander? Granted, there are some moronic moment such as General Ferderik Stopford which never meant to command this much amount of troop. But do remember, it was 1915, when ships, ironclad, rifle and airpower did just appear in battlefield, and just because you can make them, that doesn't mean people know how to use them. The problem is, the tactics and strategy expired overnight, and the old line and file no longer effective with rifle, cannon, artillery and air power.

Commander have been given advance technology, but they don't know what it is and how to use them effectively. Hence even tho technological break thru like that, commander still trying to fight wars the way back in medieval time.

That is why Gallipoli Campaign, or to a point, the whole WW1 suffer extreme casualty, and then we can look at how war evolve from WW1 to the War in Iraq and Afghanistan in 2000s, exactly 100 years have passed, and we are still advancing in a pace we cannot keep up with our tactics and strategy.

In another note, the Gallipoli Campaign sees that Australian first fight for the King and Country, then fight for each other, and the national identity starting to appear that separate the Australian from the British. While the soldier would fight on as part of British Army until the end of WW1, 3 years later, but the emerging national identity have already been forge, and from that day on, they are not part of the Kings (or Queens now) Army, but they are ANZACs

Thank you for reading all these battle, I hope you have a good time as much as I am writing it.

Lest We Forget

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5. Countdown to Gallipoli Series​

[Part 2]Landing at Sulva Bay

Time skipped ahead 3 months, it's now August, and the position and situation in Gallipoli have not change a bit, a dead lock have been there since the 27th of April, and both side have now been dug in deep on their respective trench, the situation is entirely the same as in Western Front.


Not much can do to tilt the situation to anyone favor, the Commonwealth seems not be able to make headway inland, nor can the ottoman push the Commonwealth back into the Ocean, primarly, the Allied controlled the coast. Yet both side do not intent to put more troop into the grinder, and there are something they need to do, but the beaches in both AnZAC Cove and Cape Helles are already in Maximum capacity.
The solution is to open a third front, far away from the 2 choatic failure, in hope that that work and would allow a break out toward ANZAC Cove and Cape Helles.

The plan, however, did not change any, as usual, the plan was to land on Gallipoli, immediately capture an objective (in this case Tekke Tepe) and by assaulting the beaches in Suvla, the ANZAC will break out to Lone Pine, while the British will assault the Krithia Vineyard as a diversion.

The Battle

The Landing is destined to commence late night on the 7th August, with the moon over the crest, the landing will go ahead in pitch darkness.

The plan called to land the newly formed British 10th and 11th Division on shore and work their way to the high ground covering the Sulva area. The Aussie and the 29th Division will start their own diversory battle to divert troop and attention from ottoman empire and they would be going in the wrong direction. Couple with the fact that the landing is going to be at night, the reaction time for the turkish defender would be estimated at 36 hours, by then the British would already have force the local garrision out and occupied the high ground and possibly digging in.

At least, that was the battle plan.

The landing at Suvla started at 2200 on the 7th August, and continue on thru midnight, the landing, did not precede by naval bombardment, achieve complete surprise, The landing itself, however, also decended into chaos, due to the condition on landing at night, most of the immediate objective were not achieve, simply the commander on site do not know where the objective were and most importantly, where they were.

Compare the landing in Suvla and ANZAC Cove or Cape Helles, this landing uses specific landing craft which design on the sole purpose of amphibious landing, and the landing were planned but most would agreed that the landing is a controlled chaos.

At A Beach, the 34th Brigade landed with the objective to capture Hill 10, a small knoll overlooking the beach, was not capture until dawn, the 11 Battalion fought their way to Kiretch Ridge but that was the only success at night, else where on A Beach, the 9th and 10th battalion were pinned down between Lala Baba and the Salt Lake by sniper fire.

C Beach see the landing of 1oth Division, the 10th total achievement is 2 hill over to the right of the salt lake, confused and thirsty, the troop were settling for the night without any sort of further progress

D + 1

D + 1 sees the ottoman planned reinforcement somewhere after mid day as predicted it will take ottoman 36 hours from landing to send the troop to reinforce the position. On site, ottoman commander reported to Ottoman command the British landing is in a timid place where progress is slow.

Early in the morning of 8th August, British send a convoy to survey the landing at Suvla, and found the troop assembled in the beachhead with minimal activities, initially thought the troop at suvla have been moved further inland (account for the inactivities in the beaches) not until almsot mid-day, the British command were alerted that landing progress actually did stop at the ridge beyond the beachheads

The overall command at Suvla were still at the ship commanding the landing, but not down in the field, the soldier were, as described by some senior NCO - Taking a fiver. It was until late afternoon on 8th August, the overall command of commonwealth force in Gallipoli, General Ian Hamilton were notified the progress on Suvla.

Flight into a fist of fury, Hamilton inspect the beach himself and order an immediate attack on 1830 on the 8th August, a time where the Ottoman Reinforce due to arrive. And the march to Tekke Tepe was complicated due to darkness and terrain, the British troop did not launch an attack until 4 am 9th August. By then the Turks were already seriously entrenched themselves and set up a defensive position.

D + 2

D + 2 started with Ottoman counter attacked the British in Simictar Hill, and the defence of the above charge at Tekke Tepe by the 32nd Brigade, virtually wiped out the whole brigade.

The second day of battle saw see-sawing from both side by sending in their reserve and reinforcement into battle, however, the British was playing at an underhand as most of the troop send ashore 2 days ago did not have an overall objective and been send ashore confused and now without much of the supplies. The force now hold the beachhead at the ground they stand, and the chance to out manuover is now gone
Reinforcement not fed directly to defend the line held between Hill 10, Lala Baba and the Salt Lake.

Firing of General Stopford

While the overall command knew there would have nothing changed as long as Stopford remain as the commander of the Landing Force in Suvla, the general staff have cabled England to Kitchener to fire General Stopford, but if you think getting rid of Stopford then the problem will be solved immediately, then you are dead wrong.

Once Stopford is fired, he is out of the picture, but the next in line is a 3 way fight between 3 Lieutenant General, Juilan Byng, Beauvior De Lisle and Bryan Mahon. While the commander of IX Corp were assigned to Julian Byng, the commander of 29th Division (Byng old job) went to De Lisle and that Mahon resign as he cannot bear De Lisle promoted above him.

The power play paralyse the British troop at Suvla, to some extend over Cape Helles and resulting inactivities and indecisiveness over the whole month of August.

The Landing at Suvla ended officially when the last charge at Scimitar hill failed by the British Commonwealth on the 21st of August.

Post Mortem

The following quote from british military Historian J.F.C Fuller is best summed up the debaco in Suvla and the character of General Federick Stopford

"(General Stopford) have no conception of what generalship meant"

The plan for attacking at Suvla is quite sound indeed and although suffering from a bad start, the plan did gone to the plan and all the element, in hind sight were satisified to the original requirment. However, the command and the play out of the battle can only be described as diaster.

It was said that the man himself, is not promoted or put into the position because of his abilitiy nor experience, simpliest way to say is, he was put into that position because he is old and he have seniority.
However, no diaster happen simply for one reason. the troop is new, and hence the command structure failed the troop on ground but at the same time, it did not saved by the on field command where the safety line usually held.

The general was not making any decision, not even present in the battle, then for an experience field officer, he would know this would be for him to take charge, any officer with experience would do that, but luck (or bad luck) would have it that the troop were paired with an incompetent general and inexperience officer.
Unlike the Cape Helles landing or the ANZAC landing, where one did have the experience but did not have any chance to land and the other have an excellent plan but fail to carry out in the end, this landing, the landing at Suvla also start with a good plan, but was blogged down by an indecisive general and inexperience staff.

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5. Countdown to Gallipoli Series​

[Part 3]Landing at Cape Helles

There are wars that define a nation, US have the war of independence, while the Brits have Battle of Hastings, for the Canadian, it was the war of 1812. All these war or battle are the defining moment for their own respective country, that those country found out what they are. And in the tiny continent in the South Pacific. The Gallipoli Campaign would serve as their defining moment to find out who ANZAC really are.

April 25 of each year is the ANZAC day in Australia ad New Zealand, the 1 of 2 days that commemorate veteran of both countries, it is of the same calibre as Veteran day in the US, the term ANZAC was coined, along with the term "Digger" after Gallipoli and the ANZAC legend starts in that tiny piece of land over in modern day turkey. And this year, it would be the 100th anniversary of ANZAC day, which the battle was fought exactly 100 years ago, on April 25.

This article would be the first of 5 to count down toward the ANZAC day, each day, i will write an article and introduce a battle that fought between the Commonwealth and the Turks and the 5 days, the 5 most important battle during the whole campaign will be covered. Today, we start with Landing at Cape Helles.

Background

The Gallipoli campaign was born out of Turkey (known as Ottoman Empire back in WW1) alignment toward Germany back in 1910, having release the 2 German battleship into Turkey via Dardanelle signal the alignment of Ottoman Empire to Austro-Hungarian Empire as well as Imperial Germany.

Turkey, situated in the exit of Black sea is the quickest connection point between Russia and Continental Europe, not wanting to see Europe lose this viable route to Russia, British an French Navy first tired to be diplomatic and persuade the Turks not to join the German side, when all diplomatic means fail, the Franco-Anglo Navy try to force into the Dardanelle themselves rip the strait out of Turkey control, but the Naval campaign failed spectacularly and hence the need to occupied the whole peninsular were needed and an amphibious assault were ordered as a result.

Hence the land campaign for Gallipoli were devised.

The plan called for 5 Divisions from 3 Corps (Australian 1st Division, Australian and New Zealand Division from the Australian and New Zealand Army Corp (ANZAC), British 29th Division and the Royal Naval Division from the Mediterranean Expeditionary Force and the French Oriental Expeditionary Corps.
The ANZAC would land at Gaba Tepe, a position North of the British landing at Cape Helles while the French will land at Asiatic side of Gallipoli after the ANZAC and British landed.

The Battle

The battle called for 2 waves of landing force landed at 5 beaches at the same time, the first wave, known as covering force would land between 0600 to 0700 on target beaches, their task is to secure the beaches and clear out obstacle and allow the main force to move inland

The second wave, known as the main force, would land at 0900 onward and proceed to engage inland and capture the first day objective, when goes according to plan, the main force in V and W beach will assault the objective heads on, when the main force at Y and X beaches will flank the objective and the force with S beach will pin the enemy and cut off retreat.

V Beach

Landing of V beach can and did often compare to the Omaha Beach landing almost 30 years later. The landing on V beach is a disaster for the commonwealth troop.

The V beach is a gentle sloped beach which leads to an opening, up in the banks are turkish fortification, which overlooking the beaches.

The assaults started with element of Royal Dublin Fusiliers landing with small boat to secure a landing route from the further main game, the landing of SS River Clyde with 2,000 men of the Munster
Landing started at 0630, met with deadly cross fire upon landing. The smaller boat the Dublin travel in offer no protection when landing troops. And were a constant subject of machine gun attack, the only reprieve the Dublin got is when the SS River Clyde Breached and starting to land troop, that is when the Ottoman fire directed at the SS River Clyde

The first wave have been rendered ineffective by ottoman fire and the communication broke between First wave and the party off shore, not knowing the momentum stalled. The overall command ordered the main force to go ahead into an unsecured beach.

What follow is absolute chaos. What it does is, when the beach were not cleared, and British put more troop in, the only result is to jam the beach with people and soldier in the edge of the beach cannot move forward, as the beach is not cleared. But they can't move back either as the reinforcement jammed up the rear. What can they do is literally waiting their turn to get killed. And the group weren't moving anywhere and at 1030, the command suspending landing on V beach.

W Beach

W Beaches lay South West of Cape Helles with 2 cliffs on either side of the approach and the approach was mined and machine gun position are set on top of the hill top.

The defensive position can see clearly the beach and onto the ocean. Landing in the first wave will be the Lancashire Fusiliers, coming in with 31 wooden boat, or tug, they are to storm the beach and cut the defences for the main assault force.

As with V beach, the boat itself were not heavily armoured and were targeting before landing troop, troop dies in their boat and the first waves were soon declare ineffective.

The different between W beach and V beach is, troop does not land in one giant ship in W beach, so eventually, defensive fire were diverted enough to allow a good number of troop storm ashore. Once that happen, they unpinned the ottoman observing position. Hence completing secure at least part of the beach.
Main force hit the beach at 0915, after the partly secured beach are established and pushed on to Hill 114 and stopped there due to ottoman pressure

S Beach

S Beach is the only beach on the Asiatic side of the cape, and is an inland coast, which was lightly defended, by a single platoon of ottoman infantry. The landing party, and understrength battalion soon overwhelm the platoon and secure the beaches. The following main force landed at 0900 to consolidate the beach area without any incident

The lost is 65 attacker in the first wave, and none lost in the main group

X Beach

landing at X beach at 0600, by 0630, the cliff was fallen to the attacker without casualty, the defender, a single ottoman squad have retreated prior to land by the pre-landing bombardment, the force then assault hill 114 connect W beach to X beach, with Hill 114 taken before 1100

Main force landed in order to push onto Hill 114 and Hill 138 further inland, the troop succeed to attack Hill 114 with help from troop W beach, but cannot move further due to increase Ottoman persistence, the forces in X beach consolidate for the rest of the day.

Y Beach

Y beach is the furthest north of all position, over the ottoman defence line and the closest to the first day objective.

The landing is done by a battalion of Royal Naval Division and King's Own Scottish Borderers, the force landed between 0515 to 0530 under the cover of darkness unopposed, move up the cliff and send out scout party further inland.

While the scout assumed to nothing, the first wave dig in and wait for the main assault force, main force landed somewhere before 0900 and forces are dig in to form an perimeter. during the first night, the ottoman counter attacked with a reinforced battalion, forcing the British landed on Y beach to run out of ammunition. With the defence of the beachhead stretched very thin. Although the counter attack had been defeated and routed, the defending British troop sees that the beach is untenable, re-embark and vacate the beach at the second day.

Post Mortem

The landing itself comes in a mixed result, the landing at W beach and V beach were a disaster, while the landing on S beach, Y beach and X beach are cake walk. The problem lies in the way the initative being taken by the British

The landing at V beach is especially hard and lead to a point unrecoverable. Yet W beach also met with heavy resistance, but the different, which learnt in this battle and apply 30 years later is that, by landing a whole battalion (2000 people) in one single ship, the attacker concentrate their force so they are easier to be pinned down by the defender, instead of 30 boats (Which mean 30 targets) to hit the beach at the same time, which dilute the incoming fire, one single ship would mean all gun will be diverted to the ship once they release their troop. And the bottle neck of exiting port means troop are going to be slaughter as soon as they emerge out from the port.

Another problem is based on the relation of the beaches, where 5 beaches were given individual objective and either they complete their or not, they would be looking over their area of operation. That give rise to two situation.

1.) Once an objective is completed, the on site commander would not take any initiative and either move further inland or help the other beach by flanking other position. Instead, they would stay and wait for instruction.

2.) If an objective would not complete, they were to pin down over their own objective, without any communication, they were to be pinned and left to their own device.

It's important that overall commander should give the local force enough encouragement to exploit their advantage and fight their own war as the situation allowed. Instead, the situation in Helles is that no exploitation were done by those who achieve their local objective, and those who cannot, are left to wither and dies.

Essentially, the force steam halfway around Europe to land and dig in on the Turkish coast.

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[RescueRanger]

5. Countdown to Gallipoli Series​

[Part 4]Battle of Lone Pine

Battle of Lone Pine is one of the battle during the August Offensive, and in an off change, one of the winning battle the Commonwealth, mostly Australian, fought. The nature of this battle is extremely bloody.

Although the battle itself is a victory, this battle is a strategically defeat, because this battle did not serve its purpose of being decisive enough to draw away ottoman man power in Chunuk Bair and to some extend, the Nek, where both battle stalled and eventually fail. marking this the sole battle that enjoy some degree of success for the whole August Campaign.

Background

The August campaign saw the major push the Commonwealth need to break out of the Gallipoli area. The plan for the break out is a point of 5 battle involving 100,000 soldier of the commonwealth and 5 different battle.

The break out will call for the British to attack Krithia Vineyard, the Australian move up from the Nek, the New Zealand move south to Chunuk Bair, couple with the British land another 2 divisions north of ANZAC and finally with the Australian 1st Division taking the Lone Pine.

Lone Pine is situated in the Middle of the ANZAC zone, connected Bolton ridge from the South and Monash Valley in the East, the battle field was named after a single Turkish pine stood over the Turkish defence on 400 Plateau. The key of the ridge connects 400 Plateau to Chunuk Bair which connect directly to Baby 700 and subsequently Hill 971

The point the ANZAC going to assault would allow the ANZAC to use a reverse crest and round the Baby 700 and possible flank it or develop a double envelopment to assault Baby 700. Hence the importance of the battle.

Unlike other area in the battlefield, Being in a plateau, the ground around lone pine is flat, it resemble No Man's Land in the western front, and the trench network created quite far away from both side, the Australian estimated it would take 15 minutes from the Aussie to charge into Turkish trench in lone pine
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The Battle

Lone pine had changed hand several time before the battle, it was held by Ottoman before the Gallipoli landing then ANZAC Captured it during the first week, and the ottoman recapture the area in May, and now the ANZAC is going to attack lone pine.

The attack started at 1730 when an Australian 1st Brigade charge over their own trench and launch into the ottoman trench, the brigade attack preceded by artillery bombardment and by the time the ottoman soldier re-emerge into their own trench after the bombing, the Australian were already more than half way there
The Australian 1st Brigade, at about 2000 strong, half diverted thru the tunnel system and the other half were "going-over", once the 1st brigade gone over the ottoman trenches, they realise the trench were reinforced with pine tree on top of the dugout and the soldier from 1st brigade cannot access the ottoman trench.

While some soldier tore away the bunker and occupied the trenches that way, some opt to go over the trench system and into the rear and storm the communication bunker and the HQ bunker, and gain access the frontline trench from the rear.

By then most Ottoman defender had retreated further north into Baby 700, which during the course of the assault had been bringing down plunging fire all along the ANZACs, while the ANZAC secure the frontline trenches, the frontline are still under intense artillery and sniper fire form Baby 700.

Still, the Australian have succeed to occupy lone pine.

Counter attack that night by the ottoman have been beaten back, as the ottoman did not have enough troop in the area to launch any meaningful counter attack, ottoman have 2 battalion (1 from 57th Regiment and another from 47th Regiment on ready counterattack that night. Against an almost full strength Australian Brigade (That's about 1200 ottoman against 2,000 Australian)

Day 2 sees the Ottoman have massed more reinforcement and now at 5 battalions strength, after reinforced by the 13th regiment, the ottoman launched repeat counterattack against the Australian line, however, the Australian did also brought up their own reinforcement and by the end of Day 3, the ottoman had given up retaking the Lone Pine, instead, the ottoman would harass the Australian in Lone Pine with troop in Baby 700

Post Mortem

The Battle of Lone Pine although did succeed in winning the tactical objective, the resource poured into the objective, however, is not proportional. While some historian suggest that, what is the point of lone pine if they pour a lot more resource then it already drained, and the problem is, one should never forget the Battle of Lone Pine was started as a feign attack

However, some would argue, up to that point in battle, the ANZAC have suffer one defeat after another, some would argue the Aussie need a lot more than just a feign attack, but a solid win.

But that do not really make sense that the command would purposely throw the whole campaign for just that solid win. But nonetheless, the battle had won, but the resource the Australian put into this battle did not have been out fought to the original objective, which does not draw much of the defender to relocate from Chunuk Bair and ultimately failed in succeeding at the breakout.

 

[RescueRanger]

6. Battle off Samar (Last stand of the Tin Can - 1944 AD)​

The second battle of last stand will bring you back to World War 2 at the sea of Philippine, to an unevenly match Naval Engagement off Samar. Where a tiny US navy contingent were pitch against a superior Imperial Japanese Naval task force in an Epic battle perhaps to all Naval History in the world.

Background of the Battle

October 1944 mark the year of Allied Invasion of Philippine and liberate the Filipino from the Imperial Japanese control The move would serve as severing the oil supply from Dutch East Indies (modern day Indonesia) and the Japanese Homeland.

With the oil production facilities in Dutch East Indies and the Naval Shipyard at home island, the Imperial Japanese Navy would have done for if Philippine falls to the Allies. As Japanese Naval Aviation were at a blinking point of destruction, the only real source of fire power left is the Battleship, Cruiser and the Destroyer left with the once mighty Imperial Japanese Navy.

The plan is to get those battleship forces smashed right against the American Landing Force currently unloading troop at Leyte, coast of Philippine. However, smashing the battleship head on would be suicidal, as US Naval Air Power is strong enough to deter any such attack, the Fighter/Bomber would have made mince meat out of those Battleship, even as mighty as Yamato and Musashi. US 3rd Fleet alone packed 6 Fleet carrier and assorted Escort and light carrier which made up to 600 planes in that group, also present with the 3rd Fleet Carrier is the Fast Battle ship, 6 of them and for a puny 23 ship Formation IJN force, even with Giant Battleship like Yamato and Musashi would still mean a hard fight with no a great chance of winning.

So a plan has derived code name Operation Sho-Go. Plan is, the Japanese Fleet will split 3 ways, The Northern Force, consist of the spent carrier force, which act as a bait to draw the 3rd Fleet out, the Center Force which would consist of the majority of fire power, and the Southern Force which consist of supporting battleship and destroyer.

The aim is for the Northern Force to draw off Halsey's 3rd Fleet, and hope that Halsey would take as many ships as possible, thus opening the coast for the Center Force and Southern Force. Then both force will move in a double envelopment thru San Bernardino strait and Surigaro strait and converge on the beach head on Leyte and the pincer will punch thru the American Fleet that defending the coastal area there.

On the other hand, the US 7th Fleet guarding the approach of the Leyte Beachhead is relax, comfortable and settle in the routine close air support role for the ground force landing in Leyte. The 7th Fleet commanding Admiral Thomas Sprague were noticed that the 3rd fleet were chasing after the Northern Japanese fleet, but was mistakenly think the Halsey have leave at least 1 Task group of his fleet help guarding the approach, instead, Halsey took all and not a single modern combat ship was left behind the approach to Leyte.

With the Japanese fleet now in visual sighting of the Northern Most American 7th Fleet Task Group, the American was surprised to see the massive battleship formation from the Imperial Japanese Navy.

The only thing that's stopping the Japanese unrelenting bombardment of Leyte shore is now rest on the small task group call sign 77.4.3, otherwise known as radio call sign Taffy 3.

At 07:30 October 25, 1944 the Battle Begin

Deposition of Force

The Japanese force consist of 4 Battleships (Yamato, Nagato, Kongo, Haruna), 6 Heavy Cruiser (Chokai, Haguro, Kumano, Suzuya, Chikuma, Tone), 2 Light Cruiser (Yahagi, Noshiro) and 11 Destroyers

The fleet was travel from NW Philippine Sea and travelling SSE on tactical column toward Leyte Gulf. With the Battle ship in the center of the group, surrounded by Heavy cruiser which was inturn headed by Light Cruiser and finally covered with Destroyer Screen. This is the standard formation for convoy to maximize the Anti-Air capability, while the destroyer screen search and destroy the enemy subs.

The American 3 Taffy task group is positioned tantum with each other covering that part of the Philippine Sea, with Taffy 3(77.4.3) on north, Taffy 2 (77.4.2) middle and Taffy 1 (77.4.1) South, a bit to the south of Taffy 1 would see a supporting element of the remaining 7th fleet, loaded with 6 battle ship and a few cruiser and destroyer, guarding the Surigao strait and had just fought withe the IJNs southern force last night

Each Taffy consist of 3 Fletcher class destroyer, 4 John C Butler Class Destroyer Escort (DE) which is a corvette in today standard.And 6 Casabanca Class or Sangamon Class escort carrier (CVE) for ground support and anti-sub mission, these little CVE is a lot smaller tham Light carrier and Fleet carrier, hold 28-30 planes compare to 50 in light carrier and 78 in a single Fleet Carrier On the day of attack Taffy 3 consist of 3 destroyers (Johnston, Heermann and Hoel), 4 DE (Raymond, John C Butler, Dennis and Samuel B Roberts) and 6 Escort Carrier (Fanshaw Bay, St. Lo, White Plain, Kalinin Bay, Kitkun Bay and Gambier Bay) The ship in Taffy 3 was anchored in an circle and with the carrier lay inside the protective screen of the Destroyer and Destroyer Escort.

Tonnages

The combine tonnage of the American shiop is 60,300 metric tons. Each Fletcher class destroyer weighted 2,700 tons, Each John C Butler Class DE weighted 1,350 tons where each Escort Carrier each weighted 7,800 tons. Full tonnage of each ship in Taffy 3 as follow:

USS Johnston (DD-557) - 2700 tons
USS Hoel (DD-533) - 2700 tons
USS Herrmann (DD-532) - 2700 tons
USS John C Butler (DE-339) - 1350 tons
USS Raymond (DE-341) - 1350 tons
USS Dennis (DE-405) - 1350 tons
USS Samuel B Roberts (DE-413) - 1350 tons
USS Gambier bay (CVE-73) - 7,800 tons
USS Kalinin Bay (CVE-68) - 7,800 tons
USS White Planes (CVE-66) - 7,800 tons
USS St Lo (CVE-63) - 7,800 tons
USS Kitkun bay (CVE-71) - 7,800 tons
USS Fanshaw Bay (CVE-70) - 7,800 tons

The combine tonnage of the Japanese exceed 200,000 tons. Where the battleship Yamato alone display 72,000 tons, full 10,000 tons more than ALL THE TAFFY 3 COMBINED. Tonnage information are listed as follow:

Battleship IJN Yamato - 72,000 tons
Battleship IJN Nagato - 32,700 tons
Battleship IJN Kongō - 36,600 tons
Battleship IJN Haruna - 36,600 tons
Cruiser IJN Chōkai - 15,600 tons
Cruiser IJN Haguro - 13,000 tons
Cruiser IJN Kumano - 13,400 tons
Cruiser IJN Suzuya - 13,600 tons
Cruiser IJN Chikuma - 15,400 tons
Cruiser IJN Tone - 15,400 tons
Light Cruiser IJN Yahagi - 6,650 tons
Light Cruiser IJN Noshiro - 6,650 tons
11 destroyer total displacement - 25,000 tons

Tactical Consideration

For the American, there are no turning back, the retreat of Taffy 3 and any of the Taffy element would mean an unopposed entry to Leyte Gulf and all the guns (18" on yamato, 14 inch on other battleship, 8 in on cruiser and 5 in on destroyer) would mean the Naval Landing Force would mean nothing more than mince meat to those gun. Yamato's ship gun can fire at 20 mile aways, meaning not only the American need to engage the Japanese fleet, but they also need to chase them off their gun range too.

The American also have a time consideration, with each passing minute, either 7th Fleet Battleship ship force or 3rd Fleet Battleship force would come closer for rescue, so the time factor is on the American side, that is if Taffy 3 can hold out a reasonible amount of time.

For the Japanese. The landing and eventual liberation of Philippine would mean a certain defeat in Naval War with the American, as both straite of Philippine was important for the Japanese Cargoship to traverse without getting the South China Sea's submarine playground. Losing control of Philippine would mean severing supply (Mainly Iron and Oil) from Dutch East Indies and the Shipyard in Japan Home island. Japanese force cannot allow an undisrupted landing in Leyte to proceed.

Time factor is not on Japanese side, as each minute pass mean the closer the US main fleet discover thier deceptive plan and turn around and head off the Japanese ship. The Japanese operation are to be smooth and easy, like cutting thru butter with a hot knife. otherwise the Tactical objective would be harder to achieve with each minute passing.

Opening Acts

The opening acts of the battle was a quiet one, the US carrier St Lo started the day with a 4 ship anti-submarine patrol while a TBF avenger discover the Japanese Fleet creeping up on the American fleet at speed.

At first the US fleet commander Clifton Sprague do not believe the formation is unfriendly, upon closer ID, the ship were indeed Japanese. At 0637, the sound of general quarter ring along with all Taff 3 Ship. The first official act of the battle is of those Anti-submarine patrol dropping their Depth Charge on the IJN Cruiser Tone, which bounced right off.

Upon receiving the Inforamtion, Taffy 3 command order their Carrier a easterly retreat while the destroyer and destroyer are to lay smoke and cover the Carrier withdraw. The carriers will then launch all available aircraft and head off to the Japanese Force. For the days mission, most aircraft were already loaded High Explosive bomb and depth charges for Ground support and Anti-submarine duty, nevertheness have no time to change, those plane took of the deck with what they have already loaded.

Being Escort carrier, there are 2 problems that pragued the Taffy 3. The first being escort carrier were not designed for Ship to Ship fight, thus does not have enough AP (Armor-Piercing) bomb that would pierce thru the thick armor of IJN battleship or cruiser, High Explosive (HE) Bomb would simply bounced off the armor belt of any Japanese Cruiser and Battleship. Second problem being Escort carrier was incredibly slow. At 17.5 knots, half speed of any other ship present in the battle field (Yamato can do 34 knows,which Destroyer like Johnston can do 32 knots normally and 42 knots overheating the boiler). That means it's not If the Japanese ship would catch up on Taffy 3 but when.

Nonetheness, the US Ship have to do what they can, and do something to stave off the inevitable.

First Salvo - with not much the US Ship can do (Planes launched and Gun out ranged) the next 15 minutes is just waiting for the Japanese ship to get in range with their gun. Right off the abt at 0700 to the dot, the longest range gun for all WW2 ship open fire at the Tiny Taffy 3 detachment. Yamato Open fire on their 18.1 inch main gun.

The official salvo were started with Yamato big gun, then Kurita ordered a general attack on the American Fleet. Each Japanese will break formation and proceed and engage their own target. Japanese ship took their own initiative to get in their own range, to their own target and engage said target.

Meanwhile The Carrier and Destroyer keep heading East and toward a rain squall hoping to get some respite.

American Counter-Attacked - Upon seeing the Japanese ship break formation, and the US carrier emptied their hanger, the Destoryer finished laying their smoke screen, then it's about time they carrier out their duty, that's to protect the Carrier. With nothing else to do, and the US destroyer gun and torpedo out of range ofthe Japanese ship, the only natural things to do is for the destroyer to take the fight and get in range with those Japanese ship.

Not waiting for order, Commander Evans's Johnston realised that is exactly what he have to do, and he break away and full steam ahead, and the some, toward the Japanese fleet. 1 Tiny destroyer against 23 large Surface battleship, which every single one of them are bigger than Johnston......

USS Johnston - At the same time the Japanese ship fire on the US carrier, Johnston move outside the Carrier protective circle and engage the japanese ship alone. The Johnston work his way up to the Japanese fleet, it would take 10 minutes for Johnston to heave and weave and dodging shell from Incoming Japanese fire to close to the gun range of Johnston, first target is the IJN cruiser, Kumano

At 10 nm Johnston open fire with their own pea shooter. 5 inch shell would bounce off any armored part of the ship, so the Johnston would aim their gun on the superstructure and the bridge, 45 hits in 5 minutes salvo, Johnston set fire on the bridge of Kumano. With Kumano bridge on fire, it is now not easy for the crew of Kumano to spot the position as the OP deck is on top of the bridge which now filled with smoke. The Johnston creep within torpedo range of Kumano for the first time, at about 6 mile out the Johnston fired all its torpedo toward the Japanese ship Kumano

At 0726, two to three torpedo hit and blew off the Bow of the Kumano, instantly taking it out of operation. Then with another Cruiser, Suzuya stop to asist the Stricken Cruiser Kumano, Johnston's torpedo run took 2 Heavy Cruier out of the fight, and IJN Kumano would be the first ship to lose in this engagement

As Johnston beat a hasily retreat under smoke screen, its luck ran out. It was first struck with 3 14 inch shell fired from Kongo, and 3 6 inch shell hit the bridge of Johnston. Practically killing and wounding everyone on the Bridge. Commander Evans was seriously hurt and the ship have beem cut to half speed and electronic system was shutted down.

USS Samuel B. Roberts - Right after USS johnston hitting Kumano with its 5 inch guns, the Commander of the Destroyer Squadron ordered their own general attack toward the Japanese ship. Smaller ship now sail with the bigger Destroyer and follow Johnston suit. Roberts was paired with the Destroyer Herrmann, where Roberts actually act on its own initiative to attack the Japanese. While being a small ship and under the smoke stack of Herrmann, the Roberts remain hidden until the ship was hit with a stray shell.

At 0800, at torpedo range, Roberts fire it's only capable armament, its 3 Mark 15 Torpedo. While still undetected, withdraw back under the cover of smoke. Where one of the torpedo Roberts fired hit and disable the heavy cruiser Chokai.

At 0810, upon rejoining the Carrier Formation after expanding its only available weapon against the japanese. The Japanese Cruiser Chikuma emerge out of a rain sqell and started boardsiding the US Carrier. Now intentionally put themselve in between the Japanese Cruiser and the American Carrier, Sam B Roberts now trading their own boardside with the heavy cruiser. With Japanese busy spliting their own 8 x 7.9 inch gun between the US carrier (possibly Gambier Bay) and Roberts.

A combine effort of Roberts and Herrmann 5 inch gun put in a mixture of all sort of 5 inch shell in Chikuma bridge, setting fire by star shell (Which were to use lumminating the skies at dark) and AA shell act as anti-personnel shell blowing sharpnel inside the Crusier Bridge. The 2 US ship disable number 3 turret on Chikuma and almost expanding all 600 rounds 5 inch shell stored with the ship.

Roberts luck ran out while busying with Chikuma, the other Japanese Ship open fire on Roberts. One of the cruiser shell eventually find its marks at 0851 and hitting Roberts in the boiler room, again cutting its speed by half, now a slow and small ship almost run out of ammo is a good target, Kongo finally sink the Samuel B Roberts at 0900 with a 14 inch salvo. 35 rounds of ammunition left inside Johnston.
USS Hoel - Hoel is the first ship to be hitted by the Japanese force, First 6.1 inch salvo from Yamato hit Hoel at about 0705. At range, Hoel sized up the situation, they were to "Counter Charge" into the Japanese formation trying to force them to break formation, with that goal set in mind, the Hoel commanding officer Commander Kintberger set their target on the nearest Battleship, the Haruna.

While the brave calavry charge only to one effect, that would be catching the attention of all the Japanese ship, soon shell of different color start raining upon Hoel, as one crewman put it, "It's kinda beautiful if you look at it" (Japanese gunner use dye on the shell to spot their round, as Japaneses gun is optical ranged, computer assisted direction, each gunner on their ship would have to spot the round, and each ship uses a different color dye to avoid confusion.)

While Hoel gone in all gun blazing, Japanese ship converge on Hoel and at 0750, Hoel was within range of their Torpedo and was fired at range of about 6 miles out. Did not register any hit. After half of what available torpedo strike, Hoel begin to take hits. Several Hits reduced Hoel to half speed, rudder jammed, aft turret malfunctioned. Commander Kintberger know the end is near. Instead of limbing back to the carrier formation like Johnston, Hoel get into position and fire the remaining salvo (5 torpedo) from their ship before ships losing its electric which would lead to the malfunction of the Torpedo Compressor unit. At 0800, Hoel launch the remaining Torpedo.

Now, with no torpedo left, Hoel trying to limb back to the carrier position, at 17 knots and with a jammed rudder, it is all but possible to. While egressing, Hoel shot at anything not American, in return, Japanese punch hole after hole in the hull of Hoel. At 0840, Commander Kintberger finally order the abandon ship order and the fight for hoel is all but over.

Still, Japanese cruiser got close to 2000 meter and virtually fire at the abandoned destoryer at point blank range. Any closer the japaense crew would get splashed by their own shapnel. Just as you seems the fight should be ended, the last 10 miuntes see the Hoel Forward 5 in gun duelling with a japanese tone class cruiser until the end. The Japanese only stopped firing at 0855 once Hoel kneel over and capsized.

USS Heermann - Heerman start off at the wrong side of the formation, at the farthest away from the battle. For Heermann to join the battle, she needs to run into the carrier formation that is fleeing East with smoke cover, after emerge out of other US ships smoke screen, on the way almost collided with Hoel and Samuel B Roberts. Heerman lead the charge on their own with Samuel B.

20 minutes from the order of attack, Heerman and Samuel B works their way up to the jaapnese group carefully and started firing on IJN Cruiser Haguro with their 5 inch gfun at 0750. While chasing splashes and Zigzagging into the torpedo position. Heermann was credited as the ship that put Yamato out of contention for 2 event happened during the attacks.

First Heermann were to launch a half salvo at 0750 toward the Cruiser haguro, however a 7 torpedo run forced the Haguro to break off and left open a spot inside the 3 battleship formation (Nagato, Haruna and Yamato) With the 7 torpedo gap consider widen the gap opened to the battleship, the Heermann took the advantage and charge inside the Battleship circle and get close to Haruna at about 4000 meters (~3 mile) and open fire on both 5 inch gun and the remaining 3 torpedo.

What that done was Haruna was able to evade all 3 torpedo and headed toward the Yamato, Yamato not bracketed with 2 of the torpedo aimed for Haruna and Haruna herself have to move North with Haruna to avoide either being hit by the American Torpedo or hit by Haruna herself...

Thus for the next ten minutes, both Yamato and Haruna was out of contention and for some inexplicit reason, yamato did not rejoin the fight with Hurana.

At 0803, after all torpedo expanded and believe they had hit something, Heermann start make it way back to the Carrier. All the while undamaged and dealling with Battleship Nagato.

At 0826 Heermann returned to the Carrier Formation and watching Samuel B Roberts duelling with Chicuma (The incident mentioned before) and join the 3 way fight between Chikuma, Samuel B Roberts and Gambier Bay. When the IJN force started to lend a hand to Chikuma, Heermann registered their first damage on the battle, and the Japanese Reinforcement effective sunk Samuel B Roberts. And the carrier Gambier Bay also felt prey to Chikuma, and sank at 0907, Heermann see no point to continue the duel, decided to make smoke and cover the still operating Carrier retreat.

The end of USS Johnston - At 0840 after retiring back to the Carrier formation, still running at 17 knots, Johnston spotted a group of Light Cruiser and Destroyer trying to do a torpedo run against the US Carrier Formation, with no other friendly ship in sight, Johnston takes on the responsibility to heads off the strike force.

Johnston was to cross the T to the lead ship of the Japanese Formation and the group trade fire with Johnston. The lead Light Cruiser seeing Johnston prepare to cross the T's to them and move to the west and either disengaging or wanted to use full boardside on Johnson. Meanwhile all the Japanese ship in that strike group launch their torpedo which would be effectively out of range.

Now, with the carrier temperory save, and the trailing element sinking (Hoel, Samuel B Roberts and Gambier Bay). Now almost all remaining Japanese Fire power are concentrate on the destroyer that's slow and smoking. With at many as 4 Cruiser and 6 destroyer open fire on Johnston, as the crewmember of Johnston later remembered "We cannot patch hole faster then the japanese making them" and Commander Evans ordered abandon ship at 0945, Johnston went under at 1010.

US Carrier and Fighter Support - Of the 6 carrier, US lose one (Gambier Bay) to naval gun fire from Chikuma and Possibly Yamato. That remain the only US carrier to be sunk by surface gunfire. US lose another carrier by Kamakazi attack followed by the Center Force assault (St Lo) However, while the carrier running away, White Plain did credit with a stinger blow which contribute to responsible for the sinking of Chokai.

Taffy 1, 2 would also lend theuir fighter arms to try and salvage the situation on Taffy 3. Combined total airpower numbered at 450 planes (Equal to 5 to 6 fleet carrier complement). Although Taffy 3 Airgroup first launched with HE bomb and Depth Charge, the airgroup with Taffy 1 and 2 would have loaded with whatever effective Anti-ship armament they have, including some AP bomb and aerial torpedo and those small guys, or flies (as the sailor that day nicknamed those planes) have been credited to 1 cruiser sunk (Chikuma) and 2 ship damage.

Even after expanding all their ordance, those aircraft would continue on and press on with mock strike and try to harass the Japanese fleet. In all FM-2 Wildcat, F6F Hell Cat and TBM Avenger would fire everything on the Japanese, i mean everything from Machinegun Bullet, Torpedo, Bombs (Both HE and AP), rockets, star shell, depth charge even some pilot fired their 38 calibur revolver on the Japanese ship....

Japanese Withdraw - As none of the Japanese Battleship damaged and Kongo score 2 ship (Johnston and Samuel B Roberts) With most of his ship intact, the Japanese nonetheness order a full withdrawal at 0920.

Though the Main battle ship was not damaged at all, Japanese already lose 2 heavy cruisers and a destroyer and 2 cruisers is heavily damaged, compounded with the risk that the 3rd fleet should have been turned back by now. The prospect of staying is not good.

Also contributing to this decision is that Kurita believed he is actually up against a bigger force than Taffy 3 actually is. The fact that Kurita refused to believe the Destroyer and Destroyer Escort can deal that serious a blow to his center force, the tenacity and ferocity of the American as well as the number of planes in the sky is all indication of a much larger force waiting to be seen. The Japanese does not recognize the profile of the 6 Escort Carrier and mistook them as Fleet Carrier, and coincidentally, the 450 Planes that Taffy 1,2,3 put up to an exact level to 6 Fleet Carriers (@78 planes each, 6 Fleet carrier would have 468 planes…). That fortified Kurita Belief that he was indeed up against at least large part of the 3rd Fleet.

Couple to the fact that by now Kurita had received the transmission on the Southern Force has all but destroyed by the American in the engagement. So, at 0950, all Japanese ship in formation headed north and disengaging with the American fleet.

This is at this stage, Clifton Sprague hear the most prolific comment on the whole WW2 from one of his crew “Damn it Boys, they are getting away”

What went wrong??

Normally I would be commenting on the tactics on both sides here, being not in the naval background, I do not know what’s what. So I made some call to Navy buddy as well as my cousin whom still serving with the USCG. And come up with this after report.

The moment Kurita gave the order of general attack started a chain of error on Kurita parts. The general attack descents the Japanese fleet in a chaos. What normally would do is for the battleship and cruiser to maintain a standoff range while the smaller Japanese ship (2 Light Cruisers and 11 Destroyers) would go in closer and pin the enemy, then the big gun on those battleship and heavy cruiser would have just take potshot and it will easily sink the American fleet that way.

When the General attack order were given, instead of a cohesion Military Unit, each ship descent into their own might, with no coordinate effort and no mutual support., where the big ship got mingle into a mist of small ship. It would present a very good target.

If Kurita instead of ordering a general attack and let the small ship swarm in, and the big ship stand at distance. This will also lead to a better command and control system for the Japanese. That way Kurita can see the battlefield at a whole instead of having him himself in the mix of battle. If he would have stood outside, he would have see he was indeed engaging a smaller force than he anticipated. But he would have been in tunnel vision if he allow himself to be in the mist of battle. Essentially with everybody focuing on the US ship in individual, nobody is looking at the grand picture.

Perhaps the reason why he disengage when the Yamato was attacked by a 3 torpedo salvo by heermann is a way that he try to salvage some command and control abilty and trying to gain an upperhand of the whole picture. But by then it was too little too late.

Command and Control failure, combined with the lack of insight of an enemy force and wrong estimation. Doomed the Japanese Fleet in this particular engagement.

Regardless on whatever happened that day. The end result is non-disputable. The Taffy 3 detachment display an extreme courage and facing an overwhelming odds and perform what they have to do to stave off being annahilated. And the reward is they got to live and fight another day.

For the Japanese, the failure of Battle off Samar means there would not have any serious contest at sea during the Philippine campaign and that would translate to the Naval Threat of the once migthy Japanese navy has been taken out, permanently.

Award and Decloration

For the action that's goes above and beyond the call of duty, Commander Evans was awarded the Medal of Honor for the charging of Japanese Fleet against insurmountable odds.

For the action that Taffy 3 display, the Unit was awarded with Presidential Unit Citation

Hope you enjoy this battle report and see you in a week's time

 

[Nilgiri]

Sadly Gary's started a new job and that leaves little time for stuff online due to a lot of traveling. I also intend to backup Austerlitz content, but not many days left and I am having to move content from other sections too.

Unless you want to take up the task of moving Austerlitz content?

3. The Great Emu War - 1932 AD​

Well, it have been a while since I have done any combat/battle history report, so I decided to re-boot the series, starting with this battle in 1932. If you are interested in these type of thing, you can find my other battle report here

https://defence.pk/threads/battle-and-combat-history-series.286181/page-2

The Great Emu War - 1932 AD

People fight war to win, this is what war were meant to be, fought to be the winner. Some war are destined to live through history, the test of time, some war were simply, meant to be forgotten. Nonetheless, to people who seen the true face of warfare, even thought the memory become distant, and nobody ever talked about it, the experience would remain a part of you forever, for those who fought in that war, the memory are with them forever.

Background

The years was 1932, approximately 15 years after the great war has ended, young man who were conscripted into fighting the great war were all returned, one way or another. since the ex-militiamen flocked back to Australia, there are job shortage to accommodate the influx of large scaled young group of guys.
Then the Government of Australia see this, and started to hand out land for returned servicemen. They can start their own farm and restart their own life.

Then come the 1929 great depression, where the government encourage the local farmer to increase their wheat product and subsidiary their wheat, while failing to deliver the promises made, the wheat harvest went on in 1932, however, the farmer was also threaten to boycott the wheat sale and the farmer/government relationship in Western Australia went to all time low.

The problem have been worsen by the years of neglect of culling of the national bird - The Emu, approximately 20,000 + emu running rampage in Wheatfield all over Western Australia, straining the already sour relationship between the government and the farmer, the farmer, ex-militiamen, instead of turning into local Agricultural department, requesting help from the Ministry of Defence, citing mistrust with the Ministry of Agriculture, the Government taking the chance to turn this crisis into opportunities, they acts, with extreme prejudice. By sending the Australian Army for the war on Emu.

Opposing Force

The Australian Force

Although the official figure of active participant have been disputed ever since the report of the war, the total participant were in no doubt a Brigade size of 4,000 ex-Australian Militia. Complement with this group is 2 machinegun (Lewis Machine Gun) sections of the 7th Heavy Battery of Royal Australian Artillery, commanded by Major G.P.W. Meredith.

The local ex-militia man were armed with local weaponry, mainly small arms, from .303 Lee-Enfield, Kar98 rifle to Pistol and Rifle of all Sort. While the Machinegun sections were armed with 2 Lewis Machine Gun with allotted 10,000 rounds bullet.

The Australian force aimed to have inflict a casualty of 30-50% of Emu Population and minimize the damage to the local West Australian Wheat Farmer.

The Emu - D. novaehollandiae




A reinforced Division size of Emu were estimated, although no exact number were sighted or recorded, an estimate of 20,000 + enemy combatant were in the Area during last survey.

Emu stand about 1.5 meters to 1.9 meters, weight about 20-60 kg, with an average build on 1.6 meter tall and weighted 40 kg, their tactics of choice is massive Emu-Wave attack, couple with some degree of Kamikaze attack. The weapon of choice included back kick, back flip and stampede.



Tactical Consideration

The tactical situation for the Australian is to maintain the tempo and press/pressure the attack and achieve a high kill ratio, as Emu outnumber Australian Soldier 5 to 1, (Typical estimation would see less than 2,000 Ex-militia actively engage to Emu-Combat, which Emu would then outnumber Australian 10 to 1)

Also, speed is the key, as each day Emu would consume the Wheatfield the Australian is holding, the longer it takes would mean a serious lost of profits.

On the other hand, the Emu would not have any tactical consideration on the account of well, Emu being Emu, they come, they eat and they bred. Plus, Emu outnumber Australian at least 5 to 1.

most Emu is fresh troop, just came out from the Hibernation from the long Australian Winter, this is the first thing most of them do immediately after a prolonged R&R period.

The Battle Begin

The Great Emu War, Day 1, November 2, 1932

on sighting report of a group of Emu, Platoon sized, near the Campion district, the soldiers and local militiamen, travel in formation behind the line of Emu and ready to open fire with the Machinegun. The burst, is not well placed and the Emu were amok after hearing the initial burst, burst into chaos and ran in every direction. The first battle lasted about 5 minutes, with 8 or 10 Emu being gunned down. The Australian drew first blood.

The Great Emu War, Day 2, November 4, 1932

November 3 have seen rain, which scatter the Emu population and the Army decided Nov 3 is not a good field day, instead they used that day to try and lay ambush for the Emu.

So, on the next day, they concealed gunner in Emu Hots Spot near a farm with a big pond (Location unknown), right off the bat, the concealed gunner report seeing at least 1,000 Emu gathering and having Wheat and water. The army ambush went into action.

Instead of chasing the Emu, the militia decided that they would wait until the Emu came within point blank range before opening fire. There they are, the Emu enter the kill zone with the first group almost just past the ambushing soldier, the Australian gunner thought he died and gone to heaven, he cannot believe his eyes, tree to tree Emu walking toward their Machine Gun kill zone. Then they open fire

The dream lasted almost as long, before the gun jammed after firing off about 20 rounds, the Emu upon entering the Ambush site have retreated, leaving behind countless of Emu Feather and some of their dead comrade, numbered between 10-12. The Gunner, having jamming the gun, almost gone home empty handed. Decided to call off the ambush.

The Great Emu War, Day 3, November 8, 1932

By November 8, the Commanding officer, Major Meredith realise their enemy is faster and quicker than then they original thought, now, instead of laying static ambushes, which to dismal result, the Major decided to mount the Machine gun on the back of a truck and trying to out run the emu and gun them down at the same time.

However, this is more or less easier to say then actually have to do it, on one hand, the truck gone off-road and the bumpy ride means bullet fired would not hit the target, also the recoil of the Lewis Machinegun means the gunner have to hold the gun in place while shooting with one hand, further destabilise the gun, and as a result, no emu was kill that day

After expanding 2,500 rounds of ammunition with less than 200 kill, the Army recall Major Meredith and planning to call off the whole War.

The Great Emu war, Part 2 November 13 to December 10.

After the Army wrapped up operation Emu on November 10. the Farmer again request MOD intervention for the Emu Problem they are facing, having red faced by the previous failure, Major Meredith had 3 days to go back to the drawing board and reform an attack plan that make sense.

The war was restarted on the 13th of November, with 40 Emu KIA. Now with a modified plan for mechanised attack, mounting another machinegun on top of a truck and stabilise it with make shift mount. Also employ ground troop to cull the Emu setting up ambush zone, the final battle see the extraordinary tactics used by the Emu.

The last operation see the Gun Truck having moderate success on killing Emu, with that mission, one Emu suddenly broke off from the pack it was running with. And charge the truck and slam head on toward the truck. The Emu, killed Instantly, but by its effort, jammed the steering column of the truck, resulting the truck veer off and crashed on some Farmers gate.

The extraordinary heroism for that Emu have effectively ended the Australian campaign on Emu in Western Australia. And the war is over, the major was recalled back on Dec 10 once again.

Aftermath

Perhaps the words said by Major Meredith is pretty much well rounded for the whole campaign. He was on record saying

"If we had a military division with the bullet-carrying capacity of these birds it would face any army in the world...They can face machine guns with the invulnerability of tanks. They are like Zulus whom even dum-dum bullet could not stop" Major G.P.W. Meredith

The original tactics was seriously underestimate the Emu capability, thought the can't fly, they still run pretty damn quick. And a machine gun cannot deal maximum damage unless the Emu pack was travelling enfilade toward the machine gun. Hence the dismal result.


Also the Australia have seriously underestimated the command structure and the tactics employed by the Emu, where the head honcho Emu would direct half of its force to charge the Australian Machinegun, some resulting overheat and jamming, the head honcho would also instruct another group to take advantage of the situation and get off with the wheat. And by the end of the conflict, the Emu also smart enough to understand well the range of a Lewis Machinegun and post non-essential combatant just outside the range. Couple with the fact that Emu Stampede was actually quite scary, it contribute the result of 987 emu kill, unknown wounded over 19,000 bullet, a rate that did not even remotely put a dent in the population. And defeated the Australian Effort.

4. 5 Ancient Battle that Change the World - Battle Of Alesia 52 BC​

Coming to this battle report, I will bring you to 5 Ancient Battle that help shape the today world, it can be said these 5 battle both directly and indirectly affect or alter the course of history. If the result of these battle were different, and there are highly probable that we will see a totally different world.

The First battle of this series is from the famous Roman General/Consul Gaius Julius Caesar, this is one of his earlier famous battle

Background

59 BC, Caesar secure himself the Roman Pro-consulship on the region of Gaul, today's France upon the Alps. After an extensive campaign, Caesar have been able to conquer much of the Gaul and have the other tribe subjugated by Caesar forces.

As the Triumvirate failed after Carssus death and the failing relationship between Caesar and Pompey, Eburones, an North-eastern Gaul tribe started a revoke by decimating Caesar 14th Legion in an Ambush and long story short (Not in a mood of giving a History Lecture) Vercingetorix was elected leader of the United Gaul force from different tribe and the Gallic War begin.

With a whole legion down, and Caesar was sort of dangle to dry by Pompey, which refused to send reinforcement, which put Caesar into his back foot and prevent Caesar to launch any attack on pacifying the Gaul. However, even though Gaul outnumber roman about 3 to 1, Gaul tribe is not a professional army like the Roman legion, and if the Gaul was force into a set piece fight with the Roman, chances are the Gaul would be the one that get cut to piece.

Vercingetorix sees that and organise this Gallic force into a hit and run tactic and harass the Roman into retreating back to Rome so that they can buy time to train and reform and fight off the Roman Army once they are back from their reorganisation.

With the Gaul violence toward Roman stepped up, Caesar was put into a precarious situation and after a defeat by Vercingetorix at Battle of Gergovia, Caesar retreated and seemingly, Vercingetorix gets what he wanted in the summer of 52.

While pursuing the retreating roman army, the Gaul unsuccessfully cut off the Roman retreat and Vercingetorix decided to bug out and return to their stronghold of Alesia and ready for winter.

But this is not what it may seems, upon retreating toward Northern Italy, Caesar force redoubted and turn around and chase the Gaul back to Alesia, now Caesar attempted to force a set piece with Vercingetorix when almost all of his force are now in once place. Alesia.

Tactical Consideration

For the Roman, their tactical situation is that they are on the bottom end of the scale no matter how you see it, they are a smaller force, they are on the verge of starving as the Gaul uses the scotched earth policy and force the Roman to spend some of its force to forge and also once the other Gaul tribe got the words they will send reinforcement for Alesia.

So for the roman, they neither have time nor strength on their side, however, as they are the one that cornered the Gaul, the only thing the Roman have on their tactical advantage is that the battle is in their initiative, they are forcing Gaul hand to fight their kind of battle, at least, until the Gaul reinforcement came.
On the other hand, the Gaul in Alesia also did not have time on their side, they are being sieged and with 70,000 Gaul warrior plus civilian, food ran out fast, although the situation is not really as bad as the roman as the Roman's supply base is over Italy and forging them to look for food, feeding 70,000 soldiers plus civilian is not a easy task.

However, the Gaul have their number, they have their reinforcement and they also have a defendable position. And more importantly, manpower to man the defences.

The Battle

The Battle begin with some cavalry skirmishes around the real estate in Alesia, Caesar judge that a frontal assault in a well defended town with a numerical superior enemy is a lost clause, what Caesar opted instead is to siege the town into submission.

The first thing the Roman do is to build a wall to wall in the Population of Alesia so that even if the Gaul decided to break for it using their numerical superiority, they would not be succeed.

Building a wall, or a circumvallation would negate the numerical superiority for the Gaul and also building a wall to contain Alesia would means they could not be able to sustain the siege and by walling in the occupant of Alesia, the Roman hope to limit the chance that the Gaul can call for reinforcement.

The Battle started in the beginning of September when the Roman lay the first 4 meter wall of the 18 kilometre area. The battle begin with Roman laying the wall and Gaul forces uses their mobile cavalry to harass the Roman work on the wall, as well as the food party. This have create a problem within the Roman rank but was anticipated by Caesar, however, since Caesar's reinforcement are hard to come by, he have no choice but to brace the raiding party mounted by the Gaul.

About 2 weeks in the walling phase, after Caesar gather enough cavalry of his own, Caesar ambush the Gaul cavalry and drove them back to the City, however, since the door of Alesia were shut until a time to be determined to ward off the Roman, the Gaul cavalry beats a retreat only to find the door shut close in front of them. And the whole cavalry party were slaughtered.

Seeing this, the Gaul decided change tactics, instead of sending put cavalry to harass the Roman wall building and food gathering effort, they now bet on the cavalry to punch thru the investment and call for cavalry literally, and hope that the Gaul reinforcement would be arrive in time and beat off the Roman and lift the siege.

Some Gaul cavalry did got thru the defence and headed out, seeing this, the Roman then proceed to build another wall outside of the original wall to wall the Roman in, the new wall, called Contravallation would effectively seal in the Roman sieging the Gaul, so it would have a Gaul Sieging Roman Sieging Gaul situation developed.

This time, before the reinforcement eventually came, the Roman had already build the Outer wall, along with ditches laden with anti-personnel trap and water filled drench to the inner wall, also accomplished is for the Roman to gather 30 days ration unopposed before the Gaul reinforcement came.

The commander that led the reinforcement is Commius, an ex-brother in arms with Caesar earlier in the Gallic war. A brief engagement broke out with the Roman scourging party still outside the wall and slaughter the Roman still gathering food. At the same time the Gaul inside Alesia decided to break out from the inner wall and engage with a series battle with Roman.

The battle does not last long and did not swing into Gaul favour, partly because of the Roman was a more disciplined force and basically both side of the Gaul is trying to break in to the Roman defence and the wall that Roman erected means it would be harder for the Gaul to go over.

The next day, the Gaul from the outside launch a night attacks, it met with some degree of success but as the Roman have the upper ground and the Siege machine the Roman brought with provide a better vision than the Gaul facing down, the Roman beats the attack with the help of the Cavalry


The final showdown happened on the next day, the Gaul had discover the weak point of the outer wall the Roman trying to hide and decided to push 60,000 men into the gap and with Vercingetorix personally lead the remaining Gaul inside Alesia and try to link up with the reinforcement.

Now the Gaul are about 2 :1 outnumbering the Roman, and both side broke into the area where the Roman was, now the Epic battle and the Set Piece Caesar looking for is now happening, and now, the undisciplined Gaul trying to attack a Packed Roman formation in a confined space. Which is a battle that favour heavily the Roman.

Now that the Roman are being compacted and the earlier defence works starting to pays off, the ditch and the drench delay Vercingetorix long enough so the Roman are mostly fighting with just one side of the Gaul blunts.

Now, with a third Gaul Force appear on the NE of the wall, Caesar now face a 3 front Gaul attack, Commius from the West, piling in by the gap, Vercingetorix from the inside and a new Gaul force hacking down the wall on the North East. Now Caesar have to commit the last of his reserves, which is him and 3600 last 13 cohorts of man and cavalry.

Normally it would be too much to take for any force to face a 3 way fight with a superior army that outnumber at least 3 : 1 to you, but since the Gaul were jamming 20,000 men in the tiny gap between the wall on the 2 shallow river. That bottleneck effect essentially eliminate the numerical superiority by feeding the Gaul force into Roman by piecemeal. The force inside Alesia are now too became a spent force from all the fighting and starving. And for that, the Roman successfully push off the Commius reinforcement and beginning chasing the relief force back to their own camps.

Now, Vercingetorix sees the defeat of the relief, and the morale enter an all time low, there are nothing better to do but surrender.

Post Mortem

While the epic battle ends the way in favour of Caesar and become one of the most memorable battle of all time, but it can actually swing either way, so what has done wrong by the Vercingetorix?

Vercingetorix knows from ground up that his force is not as hardly trained and disciplined as the Roman force, and hence he made into a great deal to avoid fighting a head on fight with the Roman, and instead using the mobility of the cavalry culture to engage the Roman in order to disrupt their efforts.

But when we look at the battle as it unfolded, we can see the Gaul was sucked into fighting a set piece head on engagement with the Roman.

Initially, Gaul gain a good deal of time, time that both side do not have by harassing the Roman forging party, and by the time it Caesar force was weakened by the constant harassment, Vercingetorix do a 180 and instead going on with the stuff that works for him. He opted to let the Cavalry, his best troop, to go for help.

In hind sight, this could be and would be a winning move, but once Caesar realise what Vercingetorix were up to, he raise another wall to wall themselves in, effectively negate the effect of the reinforcement.

What's more, with the best troop to perform hit and runs is gone, there are virtually nothing Gaul have in Alesia to actually contest the Roman for their wall building and forging.

By doing this, Vercingetorix essentially forgot one simple principle for any siege warfare, and that is the attacker have to be able to seal off the defender to conduct a siege, by letting the cavalry goes and not to contest the Roman effort to siege Alesia, effectively Vercingetorix himself allow the siege to happen in the first place.

That set of a chain reaction that allowing the Roman to gain upper hand by both finishing off the defence/siege works and food forging. And in the end, Vercingetorix's own action have put the Gaul from an advantage position, into their back foot.

However, the legacy of this battle did not end there. Now with Vercingetorix gone, the United Gaul front have collapse and Caesar are now in a position that process the most power within the Republic, and had Caesar loses this battle, which is pretty much Pompey intend to do so by purposing hanging Caesar to dry, he would not be in the position to challenge Pompey and would not be able to cross the rubicon with his legion and start the Roman Civil which resulting Caesar declare the Empire of Roman Empire for all Eternality
.
The battle strategy itself also replicated several time during the course of history, commander cannot see the distant goal and focus on the short term objective had again and again brought disaster result to battle time and time again, a better example would be the Battle of Britain where the German again have numerical superiority and was winning by bombing and harassing the RAF, but throw it all out with some feud with City Bombing.

I'll try pitch in when I get some time for the best bits. I just checked waybackmachine on some specific URLs, yeah a lot are going to get lost (sadly).

Is there absolutely no way old webby can send one of admins here a backup database save of the forum and you guys just have it air gapped and secure, so there is archive that can be gone through at more measured pace to export here?

Basically an offline xenforo sandbox (so all privacy/liability stuff is no longer issue for webby since its no longer in public domain). I've only really worked with phpbb, but xenforo should have database save/archive feature as well.

 

[RescueRanger]

I'll try pitch in when I get some time for the best bits. I just checked waybackmachine on some specific URLs, yeah a lot are going to get lost (sadly).

Is there absolutely no way old webby can send one of admins here a backup database save of the forum and you guys just have it air gapped and secure, so there is archive that can be gone through at more measured pace to export here?

Basically an offline xenforo sandbox (so all privacy/liability stuff is no longer issue for webby since its no longer in public domain). I've only really worked with phpbb, but xenforo should have database save/archive feature as well.

That's a no-go as of the cut off the old forum is basically gone. Hence the scramble to start archiving and migrating all this content.

7. Battle of Ong Thanh - 1967 AD Vietnam War Series​

Hi, i am back, well, sort of, running on half capacity and the past 3 months have me running around trying to get my qualification up and now i am not that busy anymore so i can start dissecting battle again.

Presenting today battle is a 1 of 5 Vietnam War Battle Series i would like to discuss, in the coming month, i will publish a series of 5 battle that change the course of Vietnam war as part of the sequence, better do a themed round then jumping up and down in timeline right?

So, today's battle is Battle of Ong Thanh

Background of the battle :

The year was 1967, the third years of official US direct involvement on Battlefields in Vietnam, the average troop level at that period is about 170,000-180,000 peaked, so it was before the serious troop surge that happened between 1968 to 1970.

While US have been confined into small scale fighting over the jungle in SE Asia, the Vietcong (or VC) were reluctuant to come out and fight a set piece battle after suffer several lost in Ia Drang Valley, and operation Cedar Fall and Junction City, the US employ a large spherehead of smaller unit (Most likely Compnay level) to locate and draw out the VC and followed on by a larger organised attack involve usually a battalion. Said strategy were labelled "Hammer and Anvil" is part of US Army Search and Destroy doctrine.

On June 12, the element from 1 Infantry Division launched Operation Billings to search for the elements of the Viet Cong 9th Division, which had built-up strength around northern Phuoc Vinh area. 2d Battalion, 28th Infantry Regiment, 1st infantry division were tasked to pacifify position in Binh Doung Province near the Highway 13.

Numerous engagment saw 271 Regiment of VC regiment dogging the 28th Regiment and with previous engagement almost always ended in the VC melting back into the dense jungle after several attemp on several Special Force bases around the area. The 28th moved into Offence.



On 16 October, while conducting a search around the Ong Thanh Stream after some probing action were done in enarby area, LTC Allen found what believed to be a large scale bunker and tunnel network, after some drag and shoot, the US Forces pulled out in favor of air strike and artillery strike. While soften up the VC position. LTC Allen pull out all the US Ground force in the area and return to their NDP (Night Defensive Perimeter). The reason behind this is, by then the time is getting late and night started to set in, allen favor a fight which can maximize their supportive asset (Air Strike and Ground Support) and fighting at night will seriously deplete those ability. In stead of drag on the fighting, they pull out and infavor a recon-in-force early next morning.

Deposition of Forces :

The US fighting force in the area consist of 2/28, a battlaion of about 400 men with HQ C&C
However, most of the 2/28 were left at the NDP shown above to protect the NDP, the battle of Ong Tranh will see action of A/2 and D/2 minus the heavy weapon platoon, plus battalion command team. which is in all slightly more than a standard complement of a fully staffed company (144 men)
Both A and D company left their NDP at 0800 October 17 and travelling southward toward the enemy bunker system, With Alpha Leading and then Battalion Command, and finally D Company act as rear guard. Reaching battle area at 0956.

VC stength is about 1200-1500 men, with 2 regiments (271st and 272nd) in and around the area of battle. Both Regiment were on R&R and resupply run when the battle occur and for major regonisation for an operation to an unspecified objective in latter day.

The VC forces were around the bunker complex, upon the action on OCtober 16, both regiments were setting up around the bunker in 3 size for rear guard and incase the American return. Which they did.

Start of Battle :

With the A Company moving downward under preceding artillery barrage, the lead element of A Company sighted the VC activities ahead and were in process of setting up an ambush themselves, by the time the company Machinegun team were ready, the VC sighting has disappeared into the wood and moment later, a large force was felt decending thru the wood and enter the A Company AO.

The CO of A Company ordered to reinforce the ambush position, then came under intense fire from three side by machinegun inside hidden bunker. 1st platoon were pinned down and the initial barrage of fire have taken toll of the command level of A company as a whole, where the CO, FO of A company were wounder, Platoon leader of 1/A and 2/A were both killed. And about 30 minutes after that, A Company declared combat ineffective (More dead/wounded than able body) and withdraw thru the assembly point on the east.

At this time, Both Delta Company and Battalion command group which were trailing behind Alpha, started receiving fire as Alpha withdraw and regrouped with the rest. Notbeknown to Allen himself, that Alpha have taken a easterly apporach to rejoin, after hearing M60 fire directly in front of their column, mistakely identified the remain of Alpha is coming straight back to them, Allen order a hold of fire for Delta company. Which is a fatal mistake, whcih we will discuss later in this post.

At about 1 hour later, the 271st have now surrounding the newly formed Delta company on three sides. And taking advantage over the cease fire order Allen gave earlier, the VC now creeped up within Hand-to-Hand range and now render all support impossible, Allen assessed the situation, decided to call Bravo company ahead to cover both Alpha and Delta withdraw, and was himself wounded and KIA in subsequent withdrawal.

Fight lasted for 2 hours (from ~1000 to 1220) where the majority of America are now dead or wounded, commander of 271 assume the American force were either destroyed completely or become combat ineffective (Which is correctly assumed) not wanting reprise attack by US Air strike, withdraw back inside the tunnel complex.

Battle is thus concluded with Battalion CO Terry Allen KIA, along with all his entire command staff, Platoon leader of 1/A and 2/A also KIA along with 60 of the US Soldier, With every other man wounded. Of the original 140-150 strength, less than 10 able body emerge out of the jungle.

Importance of the battle

This is one of those few occasion how VC soundly defeated American before 1968, where it gave strength to the VC 271 and 272 regiment for further attack along the highway 13. The whole area were abandoned altogether until 1970.

For the US, the battle signified the end of US superiority over the Vietcong and that it's one of the earliest occasion to demostrate that VC have ability to co-ordinate a large scale attack and ambushes (Prelude of the 1968 tet offensive). The scale of this ambush is easy to see, 95% casualty rate achieved in less than 3 hours window (Although it was an accidenetal engagement). It should be studied by the Military Planner, maybe what happened in tet 1968 would never had happen, but was shelved because of the battle result.

What Went Wrong??

Basically, whatever it can went wrong and whatever wrong it listed in any military textbook happened in this battle. Let's set aside the Fatal error the CO 2/28 have made (The cease fire order), the time and place of battle is wrong, as well as the unit strength and the very purpsoe of this battle happened on the wrong line.

The original battleplan was to conduct a recon-in-force to see if the bunker complex is or still is occupied, however, with recon in force in mind, Allen did only left with a small portion of his own battalion. More importantly, without Heavy weaponry.......

The vision of 140 mem get in a complex bunker and tunnel system without the area being secure by a larger force is absurd at best, insane perhaps. Unlike a static fight, where the enemy march on to you in some distances, you will have time (and space) to call in whatever support elemet you wish to soften up the incoming troop and disrupt their leadership and defeat them in detail.

However, with a running engagement where you as an offender, such superiority of support is not available to you as this time, it is you and your troop that march into the enemy's position.

The only reason military planner and historian think Allen would made such decision is either he overestimated the effect of air and ground stirke on the day of Octobver 16, or seriously underestimate the enemy troop strength and ability. With POW captured on 16 say they are from 271 regiment, suffer 56 kill with earlier engagement. That mean they are facing not just company, or battalion but rather a full regiments of 1200- to upward 1500 or some cases 2000 men.

Poor planning is also blamed for this diasterous battle. Have Allen and command structure previously planned a withdraw position, they would have know the Alpha were withdrawing from East not directly south of their position. That in turn gave way to the fatal order Terry Allen gave

Poor excution is also a factor on this battle. When a unit tantum to another unit in column, like the case here now, the favor withdrawal method is a leap-frog, where the company behind set up Defence perimeter and allow the withdrawing unit to enter heads on and when the withdrawing unit put to safety, they will then form another DP to cover the withdraw from former DP, and so on. That way, there are soldier facing enemy position everytime a unit is withdraw and not just turn around and run. But turn around and run is actually the way they did it on that battle. While Allen expecting Alpha to come thru back their line and hold fire.

Finally is the cease fire order Allen gave, which is a grave error. The guard (Delta) are supposed to face the enemy and fire on them covering with withdraw. Allen waited too long for the Alpha to return, not knowing they are coming in from their SE. That amount of time allow enemy to get close. Without fire superiority solution for pinning down incoming troop, you lose time on letting the enemy get in your position.

Now the order of cease fire are supposed to be for the frontal elememt but nonetheness the whole company did not fire to cover and fend off the attack, with 1 hour passes, allen inadvertenly allow the enemy came so close that render friend close support impossible.

Facing an overhelming attack in number, 2 understrenght company of lightly armed infantry would of course cut to piece, without any ground or air support. This is the natural outcome of the battle. And this is what exactly happened on that day.

That conclude the battle report for today. Hope you enjoy this

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8. Battle of Long Tan - 1966 AD Vietnam War series​

I came to Australia after my service. One day, i get into a bar wanting to get a beer, turns out the establishment is a Return Servicrman Club (RSL), inside was a display, inside was photo and memorabilia from Vietnam War. I gone over to the display and look, it saids

"Long Tan, 1966"

Battle of Long Tan, may not be familiarised with by the people outside Australia. It was a provincial engagement that changed nothing by both US/Australian standard nor to Vietnam. Overhere, however, it was seen as THE iconic battle for Australian, in the same effect as in Galipoli in WW1, Kokoda Campaign in WW2 or Kapyong in Korea. In vietnam war, the Aussie have Long Tan.

I know little about Battle of Long Tan before, i know of the battle existed, and Australian involvement, that's it. So i asked the club staff, what is it about Battle of Long Tan that capture the Australian mind??

And it is also why this battle is the third battle i wrote about Vietnam War

Background of the battle :

Long Tan is a habitan village in Phouc Tuy Province, before the war started it was one of the pro-communist area in south vietnam, its resident lived thru and supported the Vietminh to resist french and when the time change, they supported the Vietcong for the current American occupation.

Oddly enough, this is the exact location the Australian choose to base their operation in, siting a quick assess to sea route for supply and an enclosed/secluded area which is prefect for their pacification program.

Australian involvement in vietnam way come 1962 when the Australian establish the Australian Army Training Team Vietnam in Saigon, when the war escalated in 1965, US also asked the Australian to step up with the involvement. Resulting a direct engagement of Australian via the form of 1RAR (Royal Australian Regiment). As the organisation grew bigger, the need for more personnel for a more permenant setting is required, resulting the establish of 1 ATF (Australia Task Force) and the Task Force was based out in Nui Dat, in vietnam southern province.

1ATF replace 1RAR as the station force in Vietnam, where 1ATF comprise of element from 5RAR and 6RAR. The Australian are to seperate from US Divisonal Command and have themselve taken care of their own section of battlefield.

Australian and US operation is very much different, where as US opt for a large scale search and destroy, using the mobility provided by Airmobile to insert large forces to any corner of the battlefield once their smaller force found and draw out the enemy. However, Aussie operate on a permanent fixture, sending patrol and establish safe zone (Much like the establishment of Green Zone in Iraq) Whedre they will pacifify spot after spot, seperate the insurgent from local.

1ATF ultimate goal is to dominate the whole Phuoc Tuy province, eventually listing all the area in to their TAOR (Tactical Area of Operation Responsibility) thus, "converting" the whole province and allow an en trenched Southern government establishment.

Deposition of Forces :

Australian 1ATF included 2 Battalions, the 5th RAR and the 6th RAR, supplimented with Battalions HQ, 2 Troop from 1st APC squadron, a troop from 3rd SAS Squadron, Combat engineer, 1 Field Regiment of Royal Australian Artillery (+ US A Battery 2/35 Battalion) Composed of the defence of Bases in Nui Dat Total strength is somewhere around 2000.

Oppositing the field is 2 Regiments from VC 5th Division, the 274 and 275 regiments operate in the area, totalling about 3,900 men. Supporting the 5th VC Division is D445 independent Battalion of 500 men and local rear support group that take care of Casualty of 50-100

Tactical Consideration :

The main Tactical Consideration for the Aussie is their base, apparently. Due to the limit number of troop, the base defence took half of their resource of stationed troop, and only leave appoximately one half to go out and about and carry on with their business. The base defence are rotated between 5 RAR and 6 RAR, while one is doing base security, the other are outside the wire and conduct patrol and interdiction mission to scout and disrupt the enemy.

US Asset from II Crop Tactical Zone can be called upon, but simply, it's some way away.

The main tactical consideration for the VC is also the Australian Base, with it as a ground of operation, they have disrupte the VC influence to the local villager, and that translated into hampered recruitment, dwindling ration from population, and harder to conduct insurgency.

Also of consideration is the weather, that part of vietnam would have full monsoon during that time of year (August) and visibility will drop, for the Australian, that mean disruption of airborne resupply and restriction of movement. For the vietcong, that mean troop are harder to gather for any major operation (Most VC troop are not mechanised) For which will play a significant role for what happened next.

Start of Battle :

A co-ordinated artillery bombardment were organised by VC to strike the base in Nui Dat, in response, the Australian send out company based patrol over to check for firing spot.

Aussie response by sending out B Coy toward the plantation while the A Coy, already on patrol NE of the AO, move SE toward B coy and a detactment of C company are laying ambush South and South West of Nui Dat

B Company with 80 men were to be relieve by D Coy on 18 August, while part of B Coy discharge fro mthe battlefield on 17th, the rest of B Coy patroleast of Nui Dat near the plantation.

1100 August 18, D Coy left their post in Nui Dat, tasked to link up with B company, then proceed to look for the VC artillery if B Coy did not found it, or follow and interdict if they do.

D company linked up what B company at 1300, and setup a defensive perimeter on and near the plantation, B company move back to Nui Dat sometime after 1300 and D company set off at 1500 due East continuing the search.

With 10th Platoon on elft, 11th on the right, and 12th held at research, the first shot came 1545 when the 11 platoon sighted VC movement ahead, forward element engage and wounded or killed 1 VC and the rest disappear SE to the wood and dense vegetation.

This contact proven to be critical, as 11 platoon now break formation and in pursuit of the fleeing VC, there were a gap exist between 1 and 10 platoon, still maintaining roughtly an inverted V formation, the 11 platoon were now 250 meter ahead of all other platoon and the platoon is now ahead at the point of the V.

At 1608 a brust of machine gun fire started the battle, with the main column of 275 regiment clashed on the flank of 11 platoon, pinned down the whole platoon. D company commander harry smith now halted the advance and trying to regroup but their effort to reach our to 11 platoon have been beaten back by a larger encircle force, by now, both 10 and 12 platoon have been engaging with their own battle. Only the back, facing a dense bamboo jungle were clear of Enemy fire, enemy fire on 3 side on D Company.

With casualty mounting, D company were pinned on the spot with minimal cover. Where 11 platoon have been hitted the hardest thanks to the explosing flank, smith repeated tried to rescue the 11 by ordering the 10 to link up, to no avail.

With situation getting increasing desperate, the only thing saving those Australian is from friendly artillery fire from Nui Dat. However, as most of the enemy fire were directed to the 11 platoon and they were outside the Company HQ sight, the FO for D Company have to rely on 11 Platoon's leader relay the co-ordinate. And due to the non-line of sight, artillery fire generally goes over the Australian to prevent friendly fire, which would destroy the VC formation in the back, but do not take pressure off the frontline fighting.

At that moment, platoon leader of 11 platoon were killed and situation got a lot worse, 11 platoon became combat ineffective, of the 28 men, only 7 were still fighting. Other was either dead or seriously wounded.

By now D Company CO Smith order the 12 platoon to try to link up the 11th from the right. 12 Platoon get as close as 150 meter, stopped by intense enemy fire and got themselve pinned down as well.

By now, nearly 2 hours had passed and after several enemy attamped outflanking, 11 platoon decided to leave the killed and wounded and withdraw toward 12 platoon, which throw a grenade before to mark their location. Of the 7, 5 got out.

Now, eventually 11 platoon (What left of it) got out of the 3 knoll, D copany now function as a single unit again, contributed to the wounded, the D company cannot move and have to defend the land they stand. Where 10 and 12 platoon, which wasn't hit as hard were given the task to defend the southern and southwestern route, where the enemy were most likely to attack from, the depleted 11 platoon and the HQ secion hold the line on the North West. First time since the opening of the battle, the artillery fire and all other support were not divided and now Smith can fully ulitise the support he has been given to try to beat back the VC.

Meanwhile at the base camp, facing a dilema of sending more troop to help D company, HQ contemplating sending out reinforcement to support the D company, but doing so will weaken
the base defence. Or, if not, D company will risk being overrun any second and suffer an embrassrassing defeat.

Finally a go-order were given for 1 APC Squadron to send out a troop of APC loaded with A Company, 6 RAR to relieve the D Company, at the same time, B company were ordered to double time back to D Company on foot to support D company.

Where B company reverse back from west and approach D compan y from East, A company with 3 Troop are limited on paved road because of the terrain, hence it will approach D company from the south. Meanwhile the 275 regiment moving north of D Company from East and established a ready position, meanwhile a company of D445 across the south and south east and converge into the Australian Position.

2 wave of human wave co-ordinated attack were repulse by a combine of artillery and clever use of terrain (Which Australian troop had occupied a reverse slope to the south) Thus the vietcong can only mount an attack by extremly close to the australian position, by the the bulk of force would already buckled by artillery fire and machine gun attack, and those who survive the artillery screening were quickly dispatched by small arms.

After holding the first 2 waves, the Australian are seriously tired and out of ammunition, just as the enemy organised a third wave to overran the Australian Position using the same template before. The A company via 3 troop and B company simutaniously arrive from South and West behind the VC assault force and unflanked the VC troop from behind. Thus scattered the assult wave from South and South West, the assault wave at North East looked at the situation, decided the assault have no more purpose to continue, decided to call off the attack and disappear from the battlefield.

As the relief is arriving, the attack on the East started to subside, the Australia are now triple in number (about 400 men) with 7 M113 APC support. The remaining VC force disengage and the battle on August are officially over, by then it was 2050, nightfall. With casualty evac'ed by 0031

Over August 19-21, there were scattered firefight and mopping up action, but the principal of the engagement is a clearing the battlefield and look for the rest of the 11 platoon that were left behind in the original position. all 13 were found with 11 bodies and 2 wounded. It was at clearing the battlefield did the Australian knows, rather than facing an reinforced company the command originally thought (Actually they thought it was platoon strength first ) By the Enemy death they collect (245 VC bodies), weapon variety (Range from ex US WW2 Weapon to soviet AKs as well as heavy weaponry), map that recovered and prisoner account, they then know the 108 men from D company were fighting a Reinforced Regimental force strength at 1500-2000 men, despite 15 to 20 to 1 outnumbered. The Australian hold the day.

Importance of the battle

The main reason why this battle is important because it was a tactical and strategic victory with the Australian force. This is the high water mark of the VC activities until the Aussie vacate those bases in 1972 when they left. The VC did not do any sort of damage or that scale after the Battle of Long Tan. VC have laid out an order to avoid fighting the ATF in massive scale again and relegated to harrassment action.

And perhaps the most important message in this battle is, the VC already adopted the way the American and South Vietnamese fight, however, the way the Aussie fight is an irregularity to even the VC. Where the VC have to study and find a way to break the Australian, that draw away brain power as well as man power. And in the end there are no other regimental action against the Australian later in the war, suggested that the VC never really find a solution to resist how Australian fought. Which in itself were an important achievement by the Australian.

Ambush or No Ambush??

This is a question even people, soldier and command were asking today. This question is also important to ask too, many of you who had not serve did not realise that it's a tactical failure to allow your troop to walk into ambush, without knowing there were one.

Obivoiusly you won't have 1,500 people walking around doing nothing, the original force of 275 were up to something before the 11 platoon and D company walk in and started an encounter engagement (unprepared engagement or chance engagement)

However, there are tell tale sign that the Battle of Long Tan were indeed an VC ambush and D company walked in unknowningly. First, it was a standard draw out tactics for Communist force to fire mortar and artillery in a fix structure and draw out investigator. Where lack of counter battery fire (Destroy or trying to destroy the Australian Artillery piece) suggest the VC artillery fire is hit and run and that will automatically spawn an reaction, in this case a company strenght patrol to locate the firing position.

While the Aussie looking for months before the battle found nothing, no battalion or regimental level evidence, the barrage strongly suggested an harrashment action. There are no indication than anything bigger than a battalion strength level enemy is out there, and hence the D company (also A and B company) expect no more than a company of enemy.

Also evidencing an ambush is the way the enemy positioned. It is a textbook blockade route by the D445. Where the D445 spaced apart in the begining in the rear were only used to converge on the Australian to cut their route to the south, where the attack commence on firing from 3 sides, this is also an evidence an ambush was set

But then again there are some suggestion that i wasn't. For example, the position of D445 were infact put in the rear of 275th Reg, but the timing is soimply sucked. If D445 were in a calculated sychonised attack, the D445 will appear on the back of D company and close the lid before the 11 platoon recover and everyone would still be facing the wrong direction. Yet it was almost 3 hours later the D445 converge on the Australian

Then there come the "Favouritable Ground" when the D company reunited, it was located in a so called favoritable position where the natural feature prevent an mass assult (Reverse slope, gentle curve and thick trees.) If an organised ambush were set up, the VC would have denied the Australian in such geographical feature, unless you want an extra challenge to the ambush you set up. The place is not a perfect place to set up an ambush, either a bit to the east and a bit to the south where open ground and flat ground will provide more advantage for the assaulting force.

And finally the "ambush" is located within Nui Dat artillery strike zone, so any ambush done would have done in a quick and swift manner, but not blogged down in a 3 to 4 hours fire fight. In the term of such ambush, you are require to quickly finish the enemy before they cna bring their big gun on you, infact if not for these big guns, the D Company would have long gone. Question is, can a 4 hours firefight be called "Quick and Swift"??

What generally accepted is, according to consences of Australian Military Historian, veteran and the commander of the VC force. That the 275 + D445 were to attack the weaken Nui Dat after drawing and decimating a compny out. However, either Australian Pace is quicker, a lot quicker or the VC expecting a different route than they original throught, the ambush was not prepared in the area, where the ambush transform to a general attack of the Australian Force where dragged on for 4 hours.

What Went Wrong??

Regardless if the engagement is or is not an ambush. The original idea of attack even a weakened Nui Dat were flawed. Only company, not battalion were send out for patrol, so even if you decimated a company, the defence strength will only lose a company (1/20 strength) For an assault on fix position, you need average 5 to 1 strength to 9 to 1 strength to finish the job, the VC force in that AO have no where near that number.

The pace of the VC movement is also the let down for them, while half of the balmes goes to the monsoon, still the movement is slower than expected as it gave time the Australia to drop artillery over them. While still seriously outnumber the Aussie, the artillery prevent any meaningful attack the VC can mount.

Another factor the Vietnamese done wrong is to allow the reinforcement to come without any harrassment, notice that in some sense, this battle is just like Operation market garden back in WW2. The airborne were spearheaded and waiting for the XXX Corp to come in to support them. Nazi harrasse the XXX corp so that they failed their ultimate objective. However, this time, the VC did not anticipated to intercept any ground rescue send by the Australian, they would need to ambush it on the road side to impede their rescue effort. In reality, 3 Troop were never really challenged and lost 1 killed and some wounded in 2 seperate engagement on route.

One final thing the VC did wrong is they fail to see the situation as a whole. Instead fixated on the D company by tunnel vision. If, indeed attacking the base in Nui Dat were their objective all along, the time it take to crush one company using full regimental strength is not acceptable, they already know they badly mauled that company, leave a brigade or even battalion can tie down said company and allow the mainforce to go after their objective. They may lose at their objective or they may not, but without doing it, the VC literally admit their own defeat by saying, "oh, i can't finish off that company, i would not go after the base" Unless their main objective is literally destroy that company, then it would still also be a failure, as the company survive the attack, so in the end they either switch their primary objective to the secondary and they fail, or they simply failed their primary objective. Which the double failure resulting a stragetic defeat for the Vietnamese force.

For the Australian, once again they were let down by the Military Intelligence, not knowing a bigger force (A lot bigger force) the VC have out there is a major mistake. Although all sign points to a regimental or greater force still the Australian go ahead sending one of its company to its doom. well, they survived in the end mostly because of luck and the inept attack by the enemy. But this does not masked the command failure on the Australian side

For D company, acting on insufficient intelligent, they got into their situation is a natural happening, under the same situation i would have lead my company in like that too, but the sheer courage and will to fight says more to the men of D company. Facing an truely overhelming odds, they still hold out for as long as the rescue come. This battle could have ended eitherway, if the 11 platoon were wipe out, there is a good chance that D company would be followed in a defeat in detail. Had the ground is not favoring the Australian, they may have been overran by the enemy. Had the rescue come min after the 3rd wave attack, there maybe nothing left to retrieve. All in all, in the end of the day, D company survived and the Vietcong were defeated, that i9s what mattered. And in fact, that was the result.

This conclude my third combat report on Vietnam War.

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[RescueRanger]

9. Siege at Dien Bien Phu (Last Stand of Dien Bien Phu - 1954 AD)​

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Last Stand – It's a concept of the ultimate, the poetic way to end. Fights or Dies. The concept had been intriguing to me for as long as I personally lead troop in battle, I have not been lucky (or unlucky enough) to had my own last stand moment, but if you look at it, the courage, the determination, the excitement. The moment when you are against overwhelming odds and the moment life is hanging at a balance, by a thin thread.

Not all decimation of a unit is a result of a last stand, last stand is defined as a unit facing overwhelming odds against a superior enemy and escape is either impossible or not feasible, or tactically requires staying behind (rear guard action)

Most Last stand is either the result of a siege or a campaign that goes horribly wrong and resulting retreating is impossible. Today, last stand kind of battle is a rare thing, as modern laws of war prevent a decimation of a unit that’s no longer combat effective and the studies of advance Military Planning always give priority to exit strategy. Last Stand is a thing of the Past.

Ok, so, let’s get back on track shall we? Today battle is a very close cousin with the last one I did a week ago. It happened in the same country, 13 years apart where the same person commanded virtually the same army twice.

Background of the battle :

Dien Bien Phu has happened during the last stage of the First Indo-China war, where the french is constantly losing ground and losing grip of the whole situation, the prospect of a victory is immensely important for the french, and their prayer got asnwered in a form of Battle of Na San.

Na San (Nà Sản) battle is a set piece fortress defence battle, a decisive battle that took place between the French Force and the Viet Minh ended in sounding French Success. The attacking force is decimated and the French were safely evacuated. The french realised by isolating a post, the Viet Minh would attack it with full force, the Viet Force will come out and fight instead of doing hit and run attack, and the french would just need to break the frontal assault, which is easy enough with their superior and massive ground and air support.

The strategy, known as Hedgehog, is a kind of Hammer and Anvil tacticsd modified with Modern equipment, after the infantry pinning the enemy, instead of a cavalry charge, the french uses their massive airpower to decimate the enemy.

The fact that Na San is a great success for the french (to which Vo never admit defeat in Na San) were considered so important that the french decided to duplicate thier strategy and try to recreate the success one more time, but this time would be of bigger scale, and in a place called DIEN BIEN PHU

Dien bien Phu is located in the NW corner of Vietnam, near the Laotian border, which geographically perfect for such a baiting attack. It was closer to the allied Laos and the post, an old airstrip, was surrounded by multiple range of mountain.which the french believe it would act as a natural barrier to funnel a large enemy siege force. However the truth is very far from the expected. In tactical term, the location is a diaster. Where the post is remote and isolated, that would also mean the post is harder to resupply from. Ranged at 120 mile from the nearest resupply depot. It would take about 2 hours for a return flight in case of a siege.

Also, the mountain range which would mean the enemy is harder to get in would also mean the reinforcement is even harder to come in when needed.

In all, morale is high and the plan to fortify Dien Bien Phu is green lighted. And an epic siege awaits.

Deposition of Force

The french composition of 15,000 troop in 7 defensive pocket or position and defended by -

Anne-Marie - 3rd Thi Battalion
Béatrice - 3rd Battalion/13th Foreign Legion Demi-Brigade
Claudine - 1st Battalion/13th Foreign Legion Demi-Brigade
Dominique - 3rd Battalion/3rd Algerian Rifle Regiment
Eliane - 1st Battalion/4th Moroccan Rifle Regiment and 2nd Tai Battalion
Gabrielle - 5th Battalion/7th Algerian Rifle Regiment
Huguette - 1st Battalion/2nd Foreign Infantry Regiment
Isabelle - 2nd Battalion/1st Algerian Rifle Regiment and 3rd Battalion/3rd Foreign Infantry Regiment

Those bases were supplment with their own artillery battery, airborne element and tanks regiments. As well as support unit such as Medical, Logistic, Intelligence and Engineer

Vietnamese Order of battl comprise of 4 Infantry Division, with supporting Artillery Brigade and assorted Engineer/Medica personnel, numbered appoximately 45,000 men

Tactical Consideration

For this operation. the tactical requirment for the French troop is to inflict heavy casuality of the Vietnamese Troop. Draw them out for a set piece battle. With infantry fixing enemy infantry position, the artillery and the Air force would start pounding the enemy position and maximize the casualty. The importantce of the defence lies in the river that run thru the position, the position would have been cutted into 2 and each part would directly support the other in case of an attack. Chances of an vietnam general attack against all held position is not high as the river and the mountain range prevent any co-ordinated movement against all french position at the same time.

The Vietnamese however, are not in a hurry, their requirement is to laid siege to the position, and mounting attack, as the wooded high land area surrounding the base were not yet occupied by the french, the Vietnamese will first occupied those highland and lay siege to the position. In effect, a turkey shoot when the siege were to begin. And the initiation is now on the Vietnamese side as they are the one who have the next move, as the french dug in

Start of Battle

Beatrice - The battle started with outpost Beatrice, at March 13, 1954, with the opening salvo score a direct hit on the command post. Killing the Battalion Commander and the entire command staff. While the Vietminh have the high ground overlooking the base, they place their gun slightly reverse of the crest, so for the Vietnam crew can see clearly the French base, where the french do not know where the Vietnamese gun was.

The battle for beatrice lasted for 12 hours, the defences is collasped on midnight March 14, French legion suffered 500 casualty and the Frenc troop were beaten back to either Gabrielle or Dominque

Gabrielle - with the fall of Beatrice, the outpost Gabrielle were no longer mutually supported with any french garrison and were now exposed and isolated to any Vietnamese attack. Follwoing the success of Beatrice, the Vietnamese attack preceded with Artillery Fire from the hill, following by the infantry attack.

Again duplicating their previous success, the Viet Minh agains score a direct hit on the command bunker and render the whole commanding element incapicitated.

Relief comes in the form of the 5th Vietnamese Para Battalion, but it's a little too late, the post were abandonded the next day, at March 15

Anne-Marie - Now with both Gabrielle and Beatrice gone, the tai troops were unease about their position in Anne-Marie, with propagander material distruibuted amongst the tai troop, they deserted their post and simply went home, Anna-Marie were evacuated on March 17.

Cease Fire - After the Capture of Anne-Marie, the remaining outpost in the form of a large Perimeter made up of Huguette, Claudine, Dominque and Eliane. At this point, the Vietminh would stop the assault and close the noose with the French and consolidate their gain. Effectively cut off Isabelle with the rest of the out post.

Eliane and Dominque - Renewed offensive came on March 30, trying to replicate the success with Gabrielle and Beatrice, the Vietminh troop again start attacking by prepertory artillery fire, graduate to infantry assault. However, both Eliane and Dominque is not isolated pocket such as Gabrielle and Beatrice, but rather an inter-locked defensive position, the prospect of success with a frontal attack is slim, hence trench warfare are used on these position.

The Vietminh did relative good on the opening attack, however, once Dominque 1, 2 and Eliane 1 felt to Vietminh, the rest of the position provide a superior supporting fire (as perimeter got smaller, french supporting fire now more converge) and the French troop now got pushed into a corner and now fighting teneaciously against the Vietnamese counterpart. While attacking Dominque 3 and and Eliane 2, the French reinforcement arrived (The only reinforcement of the battle) and tanks and gunnery support help the French Legion, Para and French-Vietnese Garrsion push the Vietminh back from their attacking position.

Huguette - Huguette is the outpost that overlooking and controlling the French Airfield, Huguette position is especially important as that was the "Lifeline" for which Supply can be flown in by air. Huguette is defended by the elite 2nd FFL battalion and they were attacked at the same days of the renewed offensive.

At this point, as with the early success enjoyed by the Vietminh to Eliane and Dominque, the success stalled after reinforcement held out key position of Huguette after the initial battle. The Vietminh then resort to tunnel and trench to surround the whole position of Huguette and trying to sieze it that way.

While the Vietminh dug tunnel, french start pushing resupply and troop forward and trying to retake their lost position, as with the Vietnamese, the french started off well, and were able to retake several key position both side of the river, however, with almost no reinforcement to spare. They were unable to hold out any counter attack launched by the Vietnamese. Thus in the process ceding those territories back to vietminh

It was at this point, the French realised that they were surrounded by trenches and Huguette 1 and Huguette 6 were totally surrounded. Both position would later felt to Vietminh as holding those position would become impossible with French ever dwindle manpower and resource. At the end of april, only Huguette 4 and 5 were held by the French, making the Airstrip is all but felt to the Vietminh control.

The Final Assault - Just after Labor day, Eliane 1, Dominque 3 and Huguette 5 felt to the enemy. Now with Dominque complete gone and only Eliane 2 and Huguette 4 stand in the way from a Vietminh victories. All hope is lost. With the airfield effectively in Vietminh hand, the supply could not even para-dropped to the french and reinforcement from Isabelle cutted off. French last courages act was witness for the whole battle (Probably the whole war) The Foreign Legion was dropped, by their wishes, to be with their besieged brothers even tho the situation has already casted and there are no return ticket. Where the jump would literally branded as pointless as the Para that jump would normally landed in Vietminh area and be wiped out. The act is the last heroic act that the war witnessed by the french, after that, no more supply, no more reinforcement could be flown in, and the last position is then decimated, and the French Surrendered.

All but 70 men (From Isabelle) are either killed or captured. Making this the last stand of the garrison

What went wrong??

For french, everything went wrong when they decided to jump in Dien Bien Phu first time in 1953. The location is isolated, indeed that would mean it would be harder for enemy to attack you, that would also mean you would have a hard time supporting your own troop.

When the area restricted to 1 or 2 approach, that mean it will be the same for you to resupply and reinforce your own troop with the same 1 or 2 approach, the only different is, this time the Vietminh would be waiting on the french, as the Vietnamese was on the outside and the French was on the inside, it would be nothing for the vietnamese but it would mean the french need to come from the outside to the inside to supply the garrison and replace the casualty, which is hard to do.

Second major mistake the french committed is they do not take the high ground, if you put the above deposition map on top of a topogical map such as the one below, you will know the Base (Dien Bien Phu Grid 237-029) is the lowland surrounded by hills that goes up to 1000 meter high.

Those highland were not contested nor occupied by the french at the begining of the operation. Where it was occupied by Vietminh position. When they successfully put guns there, then their gun/gunner would be directly stare at the French Base, and they can direct their own guns toward their target individually. For French, since they did not see those gun (Which were setup on the reverse slope) The french can only rely on counter battery fire and indirect fire with observer to fire on target. Which effectively mean enemy piece single against groupped gun with the vietnamese side have a direct advantage on marking their own target.

The 3rd mistake the French committed is the way they resupply the base, while half of those fault goes to the way they did not contest the surrounding high ground, And half of it goes to not enough supporting air force to supress AA before supply plane move in. This is simply becasue the enemy AA is too concentrate (A direct effect from smaller french perimeter) and the French Air Force is small and ancient.

The last mistake the French made is that they underestimate the Vietminh, from organising an co-ordinated attacks and the ability of Vietminh to deploy their artillery within such a range of the french base. The French also did not realise the key to a defence of the Bien Bien Phu should be one of the "Mobile fight" rather than a statistic fight. The strategy they use is to let Vietminh have the initiative everytime they started the attack. Hence in military term, Vietnamese would have the tempo on their own, and French were always in a up-tempo game. Which would only allow the french to counter the move done by the vietnamese. Not making their own move where the vietnamese were to counter them.

It would not work in the normal situation, it would especially not work if the french are in the static and they are following the game plan of the vietnamese and it will only lead to a result that the vietnamese wanted. For what it can do, it would be wiser for the French to lead the Vietnamese, and let them fight the french gameplan, the french can do it by moving their static defence into a more mobile defence. Active patrol, agressive attacks, those are what lacking from the whole battle from the French.

The only think french did well in this engagement is for their static defense. It was a wrong gameplan to begin with, but they do deploy their defensive measure right and hang on for as much as they could, Without the intersecting fire and the mutually supporting outpost position, their garrison would have been overrun months ago. The fact that even with a bad game plan, they still can make the Vietnamese bleed so much so they have to send in reinforcement is an indication of doing something right.

The Vietnamese did a exceptionally good job in this engagement, they play their game right, have achieve everything they set out to do and resulting a resounding success. The only thing i would say they did nt do well in the whole battle is the way they rely on frontal assault heavily.

Had French have more troop in reserve, vietminh would have lost the battle. Had French had more airpower and fire power, they would also had lose the battle.The way the vietnamese allow the french to cut them in with their artillery is risky, a siege is a siege, when you play with a upper hand on a siege, you got to have patient. And vietminh did not display that. If i were the Vietminh, i would probably play it long and play a better waiting game. Do a bit battle of attrition and wind down the french will to fight, "this is my country and we are not in a hurry" would be my way of game, that would certainly lead to lower casualty and a easier fight. This is the exact reason why this tactics (Frontal assault) would not work on the American 13 years later.

Dien Bien Phu vs Khe Sanh??

Many people had asked the same question, why one battle is a success and the other is not. Fought from the same person, same strategy and more or less same unit. Why this is a success in Dien Bien Phu but not in Khe Sanh?? Here is a comparson between the 2.

1.) In Dien Bien Phu, the French have taken the fort just 5 months prior. When they are not used to the surrounding environment. They do not have time to plan the defense and secure the surrounding area. In Khe Sanh, US occupied KSCB from the on set of the war, they would have 3 years to plan a possible invasion and attacks. Which is more than enough.

2.) French resupply point from Dien Bien Phu is 120 mile away, compare to the US point just over 30 miles aways. For every resupply flight that French at DBP made, the US would have 4 flight in.

3.) The size of the Air Force is different. French have a small airforce supporting DIen Bien Phu, while the US Air Force supporting Khe Sanh is at least 5 times larger. Thus, at least 5 times more supply to run to the base. Also combat element of USAF is a lot larger than just a few squadron of Hellcat and Bearcat, that would work a lot better for Counter AA fire and SEAD mission.

4.) The high ground in DBP was not occupied, hence a more compacted strong point the French is having. The vietnamese also have overlooking position on the french base camp at those hill. At Khe Sanh, the US occupied those high ground and that would force the vietnamese support further away (as the US can spot those vietnamese artillery on hill top) while vNVA/NLF does not have a good indirect fire capability (With a spoter spoting target for a whole group, which require high level of co-ordination.) the supporting fire from NVA/NLF are less concentrated and less accurated than the one gave in DBP (Where most CP were eliminated with first salvo of artillery fire and killing/incapacitating the whole french command structure)

5.) The goal is differnet. Where in DBP, the vietnamese goal is a defeat of the french there, nothing else. Hence General Vo are free to use whatever mean necessary to destroy the french. In Khe Sanh, the situation is differnet as now the NVA/NLF would also need to consider the war/battle being fought elsewhere. Resource got drawn away to the bigger Tet Offensive, regardless of the true intention of NVA/NLF, General Vo would fight the American with ine hand tied behind his back.

Regardless of the way the battle being handled, in the end of the day, French lose in hoping to create another Na San, while the vietnamese won, they do win the battle while paying a high price. But a victory is victory nonetheness. And this is a well and truely deserved for the Vietnamese.

 

[RescueRanger]

10. Battle of Loc Ninh - 1972 AD Vietnam War Series​

Background of the battle :

The Town of Loc ninh is the Northern Most of a chain of important town linking Saigon to Cambodia border, the same border where Ho Chi Ming Trail were originated.

Going back to 1967, a series of battle were fought in the very hotly contested Binh Long province in South Vietnam, it was a hot spot of VC insurgency activities back before tet.
All the town along High Way 13 were subject to serious VC infilitration up from An Loc down to Cu Chi, and it was also a battlesite where a few important engagement were fought between US/ARVN and NVA/VC force during the last fews years of 1960s

Fast forward to 1971. US has winded down all non-essential troop strength in the country and with only a fraction of strength left in the South, the NVA supported VC has become increasely agressive toward a bigger engagement aiming to inflict a sound defeat to the Southern Military.

December 1971 saw the failed Southern Response in the form of Operation Lam Son 719, the NVA top brass is considering an spring offensive (Later known as Easter Offensive) to follow up with the defeat of the South Vietnamese troop at Lam Son 719. US and ARVN knows something is up, as troop movement were detected near warzone C and near cambodia border. With large scale attack immement, the only thing lacking is the place. where would be the enemy attack from? And where are they going to hit??

Where not much enemy intel indicate anything, tradition suggested that the Northern objective is Tay Ninh province but infact it was the one next to it, the Binh Long Province, especially the target is An Loc

Over the next 3 months, the North is prepare a big organised combine arms strike toward An Loc while the Southern lay down plan to defend Tay Ninh, add to the confusion to the American, on April Fool days, NVA attack and sieze a Special Force base out of Tay Ninh area.

Loc Ninh is the northern most city in Binh Long Area. it have 2 outposts surrounding an airstrip that run North to South. With a camp on either end of the strip. Next to the airfield is thick rubber plantation run thru the airstripe from East to West. The town is a small town, moderatedly defended by part of 9th Infantry Regiment

With the die casted and the diversion in place, NVA force move into the attack on April 4, 1972.

Deposition of Forces :

As stated, Loc Ninh is a relatively small town with aboiut 4000 local resident. The defence on this town islight to moderate. The intown garrison comprise of the 9th ARVN Infantry Regiment, 5th Infantry Division, complemented by the 1st Cav Squadron, 1st Regional Force Battalion of 200 men and part of 74th Border Ranger battalion Both deployed North of Loc Ninh.

There were also a Regiment Level Task Force south of town - TF52 in reserve comprise of element of 52nd Regiment and 48th Regiment south of Loc Ninh

Opposition to thE Southern Force were the North Vietnam 5th and 9th VC Division 14,000 strength in total, they were stationed west of Loc Ninh and attacaking from the town from the west via direct apporach, effective seperating the defending garrision (9th Regiment) and their Reserve (TF-52)

Start of Battle :
On April 4 0650, VC 5th Division crossed the Cambodia border and attack Loc Ninh, preceding with Artillery (81mm mortar, 105mm howitzer and 122 mm rocket) bombardment.With Jump off point, the incoming NVA division spearheaded first time with 25 supporting tanks (PT-76) and a few Armored Vehicle with an organised assault, their target is the overhelm the garrsion of 9th Regiment HQ located southern end of the airstrip.

US advisor provided invalued Support fire and mark the first ever close air support use of AC-130 Spectra gunships of the war. The gunship rotating calibre weapon is proven to be a good match for the incoming agressor where 40mm Bofor used for breaking up incoming enemy troop and the 7.62 minigun and 20mm vulcan used to pin down or strip across a secton of enemy in close range.

Repeated assault were made on the first day trying to break into the 9th HQ, but was beated back by a mix of Spectra and Snake and Nape Airstirke provided by US Carrier stationed off Vietnam Coast.

At the end of the first day, HQ was intact and the 5th VC Division were beaten back, with high cost on both side all the while making the defender to confine in a smaller out post instead of soreading out in a vast area

Nothing has change much on the 5th, with repeating attack fro mthe west and those attack were repeatingly repulsed by superior US Air Power with Southern Casuality mounted.

ON April 6, afraid the garrison cannot hold out for any longer, the overall threater commander Brigadier General Le Van Hung ordered TF-52 to relieve the 9th Regiment. However, before the lead element of TF-52 reaches the outskirt of the area, they were pushed back by a combine ambushes and artillery fire by the NVA.

With man power dwindling, at night of April 6, only about 200 of the original 1800 defender left, the other were either killed, wounded or surrendered to the VC. Of the 200 defender, more than half were able body wounded (Walking wounded)
At this point, the garrision command surrendered first light April 7, leaving some 100 defender and the 7 American advisor to continue the fight with 2 Enemy division. That afternoon, TF-52 failed to reach the 9th and pull back to an loc to avoid being the next to be eliminated, seeing all hope is lost. the garrision in the Loc Ninh dissolve and make their way back to An Loc. Of the original nearly 2000 defender, less than 100 reappear in An Loc, all of the US Advisor were capture or killed by the VC force as well as any functioning leadership structure of the 9th Regiment, command structure are either killed, wounded or surrendered to the Enemy. And 5th VC division took Loc Ninh somewhere at 1000, 3 hours after the garrison commander surrendered.

Importance of the battle

The reason i choose this battle instead of the better known Operate Lam Son 719 or battle of An Loc is that, this mark the true high water mark of South Vietnamese government, beside Battle of An Loc (Which the victory of ARVN is mostly because of this battle) it has been failure after failure.

This battle, coupled with Lam Son 719 see the incompententce of South Vietnamese Military as a fighting force alone, however, seeing LS719 is an offensive run and Loc Ninh is an offensive run. It is literally worse for a force not to be able to defence a static structure or location than attacking one. As you will not lose the war if you failed at attack, however, you lose ground when you failed to defend. This is the reason why i think this battle is important

What Went Wrong??
If i have to pick one reason and blame it for the outcome, i would say this battle should never happened in the first place.

Whatever way you see it, either you are more than compentent enough to know where the enemy will strike and prevent them from striking their intented target. or once you realise you are too late to react to the battle, you pull everyone out before they were trapped and eliminated. This battle did neither.

Okay, it's easy to blame the Military Intelligence for their failure to warn of the correct target. But one fact just bugged me for the whole battle, that is, even you know they are going to strike, why there aren't any combat patrol send out to notify where the major enemy column heading?

It is already 2 late when the VC/NVA force strike, by then only thing keeping the defender alive is the air support. And you cannot rely on air support forever. When you are facing an overhelming enemy and you are in defensive, what you should do is to gather the troop for a last stand type defence instead of breaking them up for a few pocket. That way, you concentrate the air and ground support while you maximize your defence capability, pick a place where the main piece is going to happen, instead of trying to defend every inch of your area. This is a serious tactical error.

Another tactical error happened on that battle is the order of TF-52 to relieve the stranded 9th. It would have make sense if the order came on immediately after the attack (On April 4) or i will let it slide if you order them the next day (April 5) But waited 2 and a half day before knowing that particular regiment need relieve?? You better off not doing it at all, as you will just feeding the enemy in a piecemeal course and you WILL ended up losing both 9th and the TF-52 for sure.

At the end of the day, they did do one thing right, actually 2 things if you counted the recall of TF-52 is one of them. That is they hold out 2 divisons of VC troop as long as they can, and allowing the necessarily force to regroup and resupply and fortified their position in An Loc. 1,800 successfully hold out 2 divison of 14,000 men for 3 days and 2 nights, that is the main contribution why An Loc survive to fight another day in just 3 days time, after the battle of Loc Ninh concluded.

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11. Siege of Khe Sanh - Vietnam War Series 1967-1968 AD​

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Coming to the end of the series, this is the last battle from the current Vietnam Battle Series. But by no mean I am not going to cover any Vietnam Battle anymore, just I am finishing up the 5th Battle from Vietnam.
Today's battle will bring you to the DMZ, where the North and South Vietnam divided. To a place called Khe Sanh, the Siege of Khe Sanh Combat Base (KSCB) Part of the bigger operation with the Tet offensive.

Background of the battle

As the battle stepped into 1968, the war was moving nowhere, and now the NVA and NLF is cooking up something. Spring of 68 would see perhaps one of the most complicated and massive attack from the Northerner, today knows as Tet Offensive.
Saying the Siege of Khe Sanh is a part of tet is actually an understatement, the engagement has been planned for months and it was started in November the previous year and lasted well into April of 68' and complete withdrawal from Khe Sanh is finally finished in July in 68

The plan for Khe Sanh is planned so the US/ARVN would draw their troop northward and pave the way of the actual tet, so when it hit the lunar new year, there are not as many troop stay behind. In effect, the Siege of Khe Sanh were used to draw troop and attention away from what's actually about to happened.

Deposition of force

The US main defending troop for KSCB is the 26th Marine Regiment, 3 full battalion with approximately 2000 men, other unit were also there to defend the KSCB and the surrounding hill

1. 1st Battalion, 9th Marine regiment reinfirce KSCB on Dec 13
2. 37th ARVN Ranger Battalion reinforce the 26th on Jan 27
3. South Vietnamese CIDG and US Special Force occupy the camp at Lang Vei
4. BV33 Loatian Battalion were later joined Khe Sanh after their position were overran by NVA troop

Troop deposition is as follow:

I Company 3/26 Occupied Hill 881S
K Company 3/26 Occupied Hill 861
E Company 2/26 Occupied Hill 861A
rest of the 2/26 Occupied Hill 558
2d Platoon, A/1/26 Occupied Hill 950
1/9 Occupied West of KSCB near Hill 689
USSF/ARVN CIDG occupied the Out post at Lang Vei

The KSCB was defended by rest of the 26th Regiment + 37th Battalion ARVN Ranger with 2 Battalion 13 Regiment artillery support the defence of KSCB

Total about 7000 men

North Vietnamese Force were deployed NW and SE of KSCB, the key Unit is 325C division NW of KSCB and 304 Division SW of KSCB, while element of 29th Battalion and 95C regiment were East North East Blocking the US Base from the East.

Total Vietnamese effort in this about 40,000 (25,000 assault force (325C and 304 Division), 15,000 blocking force)

Tactical Consideration

The ultimate goal for the US forces is simple, hold out for as long as the siege goes. The whole base survived by putting reinforcement/replacement in, resupply the base constantly and evacuate out the wounded. The Objective as defined by Gen. Westmoreland is to face a general onslaught against the main attacking force thrust from the North over the DMZ and win a decisive engagement against a combine effort of NVA/NLF Forces.

The ultimate goal for the North Vietnamese serves in two. 1.) They would like to try andn overrun the US Bases in Khe Sanh, deal a humiliate defeat to the American, win a battle with a set piece with the American. 2.) Served as a diversion to the American so they will focus on the Northern Battlefield and draw out resource from the south, thus paving the road for the oncoming Tet Offensive.

For the US side, they have no choice but to fight, as they were under siege, moral factor should be mid-low, but agumented by the better experience, better equipment and overhelming firepower

For the NVA/NLF side, they are the instigation of this battle, moral factor is high, with highly motivated troop. NVA have above average training and equipment too, however, the let down was the support and firepower front. Still NVA/NLF force brought in tanks and artillery for this battle.

Begining of Siege

The siege began back in April 1967 when the NVA force trying to sieze the hill 861, the nearest to the KSCB

Battle of Hill 861 - April 1967

The battle started when a team of US oberserve were ambush and attacked when scouting the Hill 861, 4 dead and the remaining observer prompt the 1/9 to move on to the hill and set out for a recon run.

the 2 Company of the battalion were ambush right off the bat andbecome combat ineffective during the night ambush. With the rest of the Bravo Company Pinned down and cannot move with all the dead and wounded, the Marine decided to dig in and wait for rescue.

Rescue come in the form of a Kilo company, along with the remain of Bravo. Pushed the NVA line back and secure the Hill 861 which is the closest hill overlooking both KSCB and Hill 558

Battle of Hill 881 - April-May 1967

As the same contact from the Hill 861, comes Hill 881 (Or 881S), the battle of Hill 881 is even more bloody than 861. With the Hill 861 Secure, the 3rd battalions was converging south of Hill 881, as they march their troop in, the whole hill instantly light up, with more prepared firing position than Hill 861, the Marine have to call in heavier substance to gain upper hand in fire support. The possible overrunning of the Marine Battalion were high, but the NVA were beaten back time after time from the prepared position, when they were oliberated by American Air Strike. After the US battlion captured the Hill, they had found 40 times more prepared position than in Hill 861, indicating a divison or regiment strength enemy were there nt so long ago. infact, it was the 325C divison headquarter they had uncover.

Battle of Hill 881N - April-May 1967

Where the 3/3 were htting hill 881S, the 2/3 were jump off from Hill 861 which they previously took and move on with success onto Hill 881N. The fight on Hill 881 North were not so much recorded in marine history the only thing I do know is that they had secured 881N at the same day with 881S and the resistence were not as tough as at hill 881S when they were atleast facing 1 regiment strengh of enemy.

With the hill battle secure, the area surrounding Khe Sanh were calmed down for a little bit as the NVA then trigger some Border Battle that cover the area of Con Thien and Dak To. These 2 battle will not be cover in this report as they are not part of the siege but the intention of these border battle happening in September 1967 is clear, draw troop out of Khe Sanh and draw attention of US Top Brass onto the Northern District.

Actual Siege started 1 months before tet Offensive


Fall of Khe Sanh Villege - January 22

The Khe Sanh were captured by the NVA troop on the Jan 22, it was a pre-requirsit of the campaign and the villege see little fighting before it fall in the 22nd

Battle of Ban Houei Sane January, 23-24 1968

The first move for NVA is to attack the Laotian Garrison in Ban Houei Sane, manned by a Royal Laotian Battalion BV-33, approximately 700 strong, augmented by travelling mountain people and garrison's own family. Approximately 3000 people in total. NVA forces included the 3 Bn from 24th Regiment, troop level about 2000, attack and seize the camp at Ban Houei Sane
What's different is this battle is also the first time with North Vietnamese Troop sending and using combine force attack a fixed Position, the NVA troop were augmented by 13 PT-76 tank from NVA 198 Armoured Battalion. The tank were travelled down south from the famouse Ho Chi Ming Trail and enter the battle.

The battle of Ban Houei Sane served 3 purposes for the NVA
1.) To test the Combine force tactics, which is new to NVA
2.) To initial the first move, grab the tempo
3.) To secure the jumping point from Ho Chi Ming Trail to Route 9, so their advance force will not be harrassed and tsupply can flow in within any interruption

The night of Jan 23 was poor, with overcast and rain over the AO, and the speed of the NVA advance proved too much, with Air Support cannot pin point friend or foe on the ground, the battalion were defeated in just 3 hours by a superior force 3 times its size and with armor support.

Battle of Lang Vei - Feb 6/7 1968

With Ban Houei Sane done, the NVA next logical step would be the SF camp at Lang Vei. The camp sit squarely in route 9, which lies in the middle of supply route between Khe Sanh Siege Force and their supply depot near Ho Chi Ming Trail. Naturally, Lang Vei has to go.

Lang Vei was defended by a garrison of nearly a battalion of 500 CIDG with US Special Force. Where there also presented the Survivor of Laotian Battalion BV-33 the camp was defended a bit over Battalion Strength. Where the attacker stays the same, 3 Bn from 24th Regiment and their tank support.

Battle of Lang Vei started when the US Special Force observed the NVA tank harassing the Company 104 fence south of the perimeter. Artillery and air strike were called and 3 tanks were knocked out but the company 104 position inturn were overran by the NVA force with combine infantry and armor attacks. Come next is the attack of 102 and 103 from West and South West. This time with a combination of 3 tanks and 2 rifle company assault. Overwhelming the 2 company and their 100 men in minutes.

Now, basically in complete disorganise, the soldier of the Lang Vei were either trapped inside the last remaining position, the command bunker, or has already escaped to Khe Sanh. With the initial attack lasted 5 hours. The Lang Vei Camp were completely overran by the NVA, but it was not until 2 days later, did the last of the American and ARVN abandon their position in Lang Vei.

The Siege

With The fall of Lang Vei, the land rule is then officially blocked, no more supply and troop can be brought in and out using Route 9, and the siege officially begin.

The siege started off with assorted mortar attack, artillery attack and rocket attack. Range from 81 mm mortar, 120mm artillery and recoilless rifle round to 130 mm rocket.
With the indirect fire, come infantry attacks, in the form of WW1 era trench warfare. NVA sapper battalion would dig trenches from their jump off point to as close as the base as possible. As the US Marine were still holding the High Ground to the North and North west, NVA/NLF trenches runs South to north to the ARVN Ranger Battalion position and West to North through the 9th Regiment Position

As soon as the trenches appear to the KSCB defender, they would call in Air strike and artillery strike to destroy the trenches and the occupant inside. The method used were called “the kill box”.

When mass scale enemy attacking the base. The forward observer would call-in support to bracket the enemy. That would limit the enemy scope of attack. Afterward, they will call in an walking artillery to go up and down inside that bracket and effectively breaking up the formation.

Whatever escape the kill box and continue with the attack would then be cut down by small arms fires from the defender.

The Pin and Splash method were the only way to hold the base together and preventing the base from being completely overrun by the enemy.

Apart from the daily routine of being attack, US force would also conduct short patrol to test the strength of the attacker with mixed result. Sometime those patrol would not see any action at all, other time could be completely wiped out. On 2 occasions, 2 platoons were sent over the wire to investigate and were ambushed severely, only a few member of those patrol got out.

The Battle of Logistic

While the siege is going on, you still need to find a way to supply your troop, bring in the replacement and brought out the dead and wounded. Being a siege, the only possible way be supplied is by air.

Well, when you can think of it, the enemy could too, so it would be a shame if the NVA did not put some AA up the entrant route and the exit route trying to shoot them down.
When a plane about to come in to land, that’s when they were the most vulnerable, because the runway can’t move and when you have to land, you need to line up with the runway to land. That’s where your course is set, and that’s where they will attack you.


So, to keep supplying the base, the enemy AA would have to be suppressed, but that would also be a challenge in itself, I mean, it’s ok if you only need to supply KSCB, but there are also Hilltops and Out Post too, and they would also need re-supplies. What worst? Those Hilltops and outposts are too small to land a C-130 so chopper like Ch-46 or UH-1 were needed, and they flew slower than the C-130.

Solution comes when the French, some 13 years ago, when the French have a similar problem delivering rounds to different target, but they want to hit them all at the same time. What they do? They time the artillery round, and making it TOT (Time-On-Target) and they would all be fixed at the same moment and hit their separate target.

What US Air Force do is, they will send out 3 Squadron of A-4 or F-4 and SEED all the location that needed to be supply, and brought in all the supply chopper and cargo plane in at the same time, the whole perimeter would be re-supplied within 30 minutes. Then all element egress out and leave the area.

Supplying the base this way will require both coordinated effort and luck. In the beginning of the siege, the weather is not as good and supply bring in that way is low, and chopper and planes coming in took longer to find their bearing and sometime missed approach altogether.
However, with more experience and better weather, soon those bases were able to sufficiently supply without any hitch.

Withdrawal of the US troop

Soon, both US and NVA lost interested at this siege. The NVA simply have no point going on, as neither their objective were seems to be able to achieve, the Base is no where near captured, and the Tet offensive had came and gone. There are no needs to diversion anymore. The Prospect of saving and lifting their troop for future operation is more potent than continuing on diverting interest and resource to the siege.

On the other hands, the American after Tet offensive has seen the war have been going nowhere but at the same spot. The American public has significantly lost interest for the war in general. This reflects in the denial of request for 200,000 more troop surge during 1968-1969. The Military planner started to draw down involvement in the war. Hence there must be a way to take those Marine out of the Base.

So, from April both sides is thinking of disengaging. While NVA/NLF pulls out their divisions and regiments one by one, the American started Operation Pegasus to reopen Route 9 and facilitate a ground exertion of the Marine.

The US Army 1st Air Cav was called in to fight their way thru route 9 and reach the marine. All the while Marine/Navy CB and Army Corp of Engineering were to move in behind the 1st Cav and repair the road. Fighting is hard when the 1st Air Cav fought with the blocking force of the NVA 95th Regiment.

On April 8, the Air Cav reaches the KSCB and started relieving the Marine from the defense of KSCB meanwhile the road were declare to be opened 3 days later and facilitate the Marine Withdrawal.

As the NVA also withdraw their present from the Area, the Defender at Khe Sanh shrink from 3 battalions to 1, and then most of the works were mop up operation, retrieving the dead from previous ambushes, destruction of the perimeter, but the battle still gone on between the US Force that behind and the NVA/NLF Force that left behind.

With the last Marine died on 1 July, the Base was totally evacuated on 5th July, and the NVA/NLF occupied the abandoned base and claim victory. Ending the Siege of Khe Sanh.

What Went Wrong??

In reality, both sides did some good tactical and strategic thinking but failed in all other aspect.
For the American, they did a good job to attack and hold the high ground surrounding the base. The 4 Hills (881S, 861, 558 and 950) hold a string of defensive position north of the Camp. With 689 always under contested by 9th Regiment, all those hill were denied access or exclusive access from the Vietnamese.

This serve 2 purpose, 1st, by controlling those hill, you effectively expanded your perimeter, where Hill fight are always favor the defender, that’s why the Marine were able to hold those position with a single company even when facing regimental assault. Also controlling those hill increase your LOS beyond the base area, hence you can call artillery and air strike fire on enemy Beyond those hills, those frontline and hit the assemble area, usually somewhere far away at the bottom of the valley.

You also denied the right for enemy direct fire. The NVA could have directly fire on the Base if they own the hill and set up gun there.

Another advantage from the American controlling those hills is they diluted the Anti-Aircraft Volume from the NVA. As they have to space out those guns further away from the Base, the distance covered will be multiplied to the concentration. Meaning you will need more guns to have the same concentration as if you have a closer pit. This will then translate to less gun shoot at those incoming chopper and cargo plane. That is why the US air drops are more effective then the French.

However, the Marine committed a Major error when they allow the post at Lang Vei fall without any serious contention. Lang Vei was a very important stop gap post on Route 9, controlling Lang Vei effective control the in and out of the Base land route.

Regardless of what Colonel Lownds think, the Special Force camp at Lang Vei is very well defendable if reinforcement were dispatch quickly and that would hold the line longer and give more time for the FO and disrupted or even beat back the attack.

The reason why Lownds abandon the camp is that he do not want to risk the 2 company going out there and help out the Special Force. But the situation is so that the US is still controlling the area between Lang Vei and Khe Sanh, they could have venture out and help out those SF/CIDG

We will probably never know if Lownds send in those 2 company reinforcement will change anything, but the fact that Lownds did not order those reinforce mean a definitely fall of Lang Vei. What we know is, those SF/CIDG hold out for 2 days, with overwhelming attacks. Reinforcement could as well change the whole game.

For the NVA, the single on major mistake they make is they do not press on with those hill battles. Hill 861, Hill 689 and Hill 881S can swing either way, especially Hill 689 when the US defender were down to only 30 men but the final blow never came to push the American out from 689. The key to a siege is to take the high ground, the same tactics they had achieved during the siege of Dien Bien Phu, yet they were not copied and repeated here.
Without those hills, they may as well call off the siege.

Another mistake NVA made is the lack of military objective. If the goal is to divert attention from the south, then the whole siege would have ended after Tet was effectively gone. But this was not the case, and if the goal is to overrun an American base, then the NVA did not commit enough troops for the job.

After Operation Pegasus, the US effectively reopened route 9 and the “Siege” at that stage were actually broken. Had the US force not withdraw on their own, they could have been there forever until the end of the war, and this is probably what NVA troop can salvaged in this situation, that a poetic victory from an withdrawing occupant.

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[super falcon]

What about migrating individual records

 

[RescueRanger]

What about migrating individual records

I am sorry I don't understand your question, do you mean individual ID's? If so this cannot be done without the member agreeing to create an account here.

 

[super falcon]

I am sorry I don't understand your question, do you mean individual ID's? If so this cannot be done without the member agreeing to create an account here.

So we have to start from scratch here

 

[RescueRanger]

So we have to start from scratch here

Yes, if you want to move any articles/threads you will have to do it manually. Like many of us who are backing up the old forum content are doing.