Customer Reviews

Vietnam Tracks (Revised Edition): Armor in Battle 1945-75 (General Military)

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Finally a book that maange to circumvent some of the deeply entranched myths about armored forces and Vietnam. Detailing the use of armor from the first indochina war (it's nice to see the exact fate of each of the 10 M24 in Dien Bien Phu, the fact the the garrison destoyed the last ones when surrendering break many miths abbout their early distruction by the vietminh as is enlightening the amount of punishment they, light tanks, were able to sustain). The book then moves forward to detailng the creation of the RVN armored forces, the entry of the marine armor, the Army part and the importazn contribution of the ANZAC armored forces. Also the NVA armor is examined.

Beside the informative text the pictures are reasonbaly good. Some of the shots are widely known, but other really less and the color section is well done.

If you are interested in armored operations in vietnam this book is both a must and an introduction before tangling the magnus opus of General Starry, Mounted Combat in Vietnam.

Mostly Armored Personnel Carriers, but some M-48 battle tanks as well. But by the time the Army commissioned a study that proved that armor operations were more feasible than previously thought, all of the units that were going to Vietnam were already there. That's the Army's story anyway. I believe the real reason for the under-deployment of armor in Vietnam was that the top management was never able to dis-embarrass themselves from the fallacies of Counter Insurgency Warfare.

Dunstan's book is a straight-forward, comprehensive account of armored combat in Vietnam from the French War all the way through the NVA's final - armor spearheaded - invasion of South Vietnam. He very nicely blends in tactics and equipment, operations (some good war stories here), and plenty of photographs. And Dunstan does not only focus on U.S. Armor; he covers every nation that ever took armor into South Vietnam.

I was the teenage gunner of an M-48A3 battle tank that belonged to the 26th Engineer Battalion, Americal Division. Combat engineer units do not ordinarily have tanks but that machine was assigned to us as a replacement for an M-728 Combat Engineer Vehicle that had been clobbered in an ambush. By 1970 it was the only battle tank in the entire division (the armored cavalry units had Sheridans). My crew and I flew that tank for nine months until we were ordered to turn it in to a depot in Danang in November of 1971. It was, if I'm not mistaken, the last American battle tank in Vietnam, but because of its assignment to the Combat Engineers it never made it into the history books.

According to Dunstan it is rumored that a CEV engaged and destroyed an NVA tank late in the war. IF that is so, it would have been the last remaining CEV in my engineer tank platoon, by then part of the Provisional Engineer Company, 196th Light Infantry Brigade (a remnant of the Americal), sometime after I came back to the States in January, 1972.

It was the experience of a lifetime and I would very much like to hear from Dunstan.

Richard Vidaurri

Author: The Gates of the Shadow
richvidaurri@gmail.com