Those Wild Wonderful Tracks of Vietnam Part 1-Standard Models

One one three, track, bucked, what ever you want to call it, the M113 was one of the iconic vehicles of the Vietnam Conflict. I will not cover the history, if that's your interest, you can easily cover that on your own.


This is the bottom line, no frill base unit, seen here being employed by the ARVN. Marvin has added a secondary gunner laying on the far deck, manning a M1919A4. The ARVN quickly learned that exposed gunners had a high casualty rate.



M113 ACAV


Another common type of gun shielding. Sometimes with additional front shield from ACAV. I have seen this referenced as a "Okinawa" gun shield or ACAV, but nothing official, so hence the quotes. If you can add to my humble enlighten on this one, please PM me.



M106/M125 Mortar Carrier. The rear hatch was split on these and folded to the sides. In the first picture a M60 has been mounted in a tail stinger position. The second picture appears of be a Aussie track, which would account for the non-standard front gun shield.


A M113 with a AVLB.



A M132 Zippo Flame Thrower. The second photo shows the "belly of the beast", as well as what appears to be some folding chairs on the rear deck.


A M163 20mm Anti Aircraft system. I'm not sure how many of these were "in country", a few for sure. Some accounts indicate they were sometimes used against against ground ground targets, to really ruin Charlies day.



M548 used for Fuel and Ammo resupply. You call, we haul!



M577 used for about any duty that the standard M113 was too cramped for.


-BadMoon

Great photos.

It has nothing to do with the vehicles, but the next to last photo has a really cokol bunker in the left background.

Thanks for putting this together.

Tom

That's great stuff as usual Paul! On par with all your other works and the photos are amazing!

Great thing about these pictures is you can get some good ideas on how to weather your models.

Very nice pictures

Good stuff!
My understanding of the "Okinawa" type gun shield was that it was originally made locally for the ARVN after Ap Bac, where they had all of their TCs killed by the dug-in VC. In order to get enough about 4 dozen were made on Oki and sent over along with some patterns and jigs. They performed ok. Once more US units arrived the Bath Tub type was developed, which helped with side and rear armor (the VC got good at hitting TCs from the rear by that point) and allowed the ACAV side guns to have shields.

BadMoon wrote:

M106/M125 Mortar Carrier. The rear hatch was split on these and folded to the sides. In the first picture a M60 has been mounted in a tail stinger position. The second picture appears of be a Aussie track, which would account for the non-standard front gun shield.

Definitely an aussie track and International Harvestor F1 medium truck in the background.

url=https://servimg.com/view/20212589/42][/url]
A M113 with a AVLB.

I love this, the aussies had a variant with a dozer blade a one point and about 4 mine roller M113's.

Darby wrote:Good stuff!
My understanding of the "Okinawa" type gun shield was that it was originally made locally for the ARVN after Ap Bac, where they had all of their TCs killed by the dug-in VC.  In order to get enough about 4 dozen were made on Oki and sent over along with some patterns and jigs.  They performed ok.  Once more US units arrived the Bath Tub type was developed, which helped with side and rear armor (the VC got good at hitting TCs from the rear by that point) and allowed the ACAV side guns to have shields.

100% correct Darby.

The reason the ARVN TC's were getting killed so frequently was because they were fragile little blokes and the only way they could cock the 50's was to sit up on the edge of the cupola and use their legs to get a strong purchase on the other side of the cupola to have enough strength to load/reload!