Having just finished reading the Australian Official Histories of SVN I'd be very careful about claiming any Australian talent for pacification.  Dealing the the NLF forces in the bush - absolutely, but pacification - ha ha , only if you believe your own bs.  Read the histories is my advice. Incidently I was there too during my mercenary service so I'm in a position to judge the histories.  All that said, it can also be argued that Aust forces never had any oppurtunity to practice pacification in SVN.  I find knowledge of the facts is usually useful.

I'd suggest reading the UK Board of Inquiry report (less verbatim evidence) published on MoD's web site.  Now, a BoI's purpose is to establsih the facts and make recommendations to prevent their re-occurance not to apportion blame.  That said the report is fairly clear, and in a footnote it also highlights a key inconsistency in the USAF Inquiry report, although its also suggests that this has been corrected on direction from the US convening authority / commanding general.

 

The key facts are that the A-10s were never given authorisation, as required by their procedures, to attack the target that was the HCR & RE.  They just did it.  It also appears that the UK tps were at and not beyond their ordered limit of exploitation, and were not beyond the reported FLOT. It also appears that the A10s didn't tell the ground controller (USMC from 3 ANGLICO) what they were doing!  Of course there were extenuating circumstances, the aviation psychologist considered that the lead pilot, a Maj, was suffering information overload.  This was exacerbated by the other pilot, a LTC, being a tad gung ho and possibly pressuring his leader.

 

The best that can be said is negligence in slightly extenuating circumstances.

 

I have to say that offering 'its happened before' as an excuse suggests an organisation incapable of learning from its mistakes and having no particular interest in doing so.  I find this difficult to reconcile with the notion of professional armed forces.  The original USAF report, if I've interpreted the UK footnote correctly, suggests a 'sleight of hand' attempt to avoid the logical deduction.

Having just finished reading the Australian Official Histories of SVN I'd be very careful about claiming any Australian talent for pacification.  Dealing the the NLF forces in the bush - absolutely, but pacification - ha ha , only if you believe your own bs.  Read the histories is my advice. Incidently I was there too during my mercenary service so I'm in a position to judge the histories.  All that said, it can also be argued that Aust forces never had any oppurtunity to practice pacification in SVN.  I find knowledge of the facts is usually useful.

I have.

Now you should go read David Horner.

 

So you were in the Corps Area where the RAR served, eh?

 

Would love to hear your take on it.

 

Maybe you can tell me what happened to our lost Cranberry too while you are at it.

 

 

The US 2 FFV, a corps equivalent grouping, was in the SVN 2 Corps Tactical Zone.  1 ATF was a very small part of this - to put some perspective in, in early 1968 2 Aust inf bns were involved in an operation totalling 79 allied manouvre bns.

 

1 ATF was a 'brigade group' formation of all arms.  Although US C rats contained turkey I do not recall any cranberry sauce being provided.

 

The pacification problem actually rests with decisions in Canberra.  The big mistake was leaving US advisors with the Vietnamese forces and agencies in Phuoc Tuy instead of replacing them with Australians.  Even the Phoenix program, which was quite sucessful in other parts and put the NLF infrastruture under a lot of pressure was a total joke in Phuoc Tuy.

 

Incidentally there's some singularly stupid RAAF views expressed in the RAAF volume of the official history.

I have to say that offering the complaint that "Americans are lax about friendly fire" (which is not what you have said, but certainly is what other Brits have said on SP) is little more than ignorance of reality.  No, I for one haven't read any report and certainly don't have the inclination to do so, nor do I need to since you've summarized it so nicely (thank you).  And what I say is not "it has happened before" but rather "it almost never happens anymore specifically because of the great effort we exert to prevent it" and that is true precisely because we are a professional armed force.  To assume there will be zero errors is unprofessional; to reduce errors as much as possible consistent with all other demands on resources and mission accomplishment is professional.

 

That's part of the problem, were the US involved professionals or merely dilitante amateurs?  The A10s were from the Idaho National Guard and 3 ANGLICO were not regulars either.  Enthusiasm, being a volunteer, etc is not enough.  My experience of the part time forces is that they are generally very good at what they've been trained to do, but not very good at appreciating the wider picture and how it might affect them.  This is normally provided by properly integrating them with regulars.  One of the problems with the part-timers is that they all volunteer for the exciting training but often find better things to do when it's the 'boring' stuff.

 

Part of the wider problem in this case was some confusion about the formal military status relationship between 3 Para and the ANGLICO team.  The latter should have been under TACON of 3 Para, which would have meant they'd have been supervised by the battery commander of I Bty (3 Para's DS bty).  Because of the status confusion he was not supervising them as he should have been.  That said if the supervision had been there I suspect it would not have prevented the incident, the cause of which was the A10 leader 'losing the plot' and acting without authority. 

 

Of course the command relationshp matter and 3 Para also manifested itself later with regard to the 6 MPs who were killed.  This might suggest there's a problem in the detailed staff work.  But of course every soldier knows staff work is just bureaucratic bs in rear HQs and nothing to do with proper soldiers :-)

 

 

 

As my earlier post said, I have been reading the Aust Offical Histories and was there, so I don't need a broad brush and not entirely accurate lecture.

 

It is true that by the end of 1967 the NLF forces in the bush in Phuoc Tuy were well on to their back foot.  However, their cadres and infrastructure in the populated areas were almost untouched and their links between the two were not as bad as they should have been (the minefield was supposed to be part of the solution to this).  Pacification/counter-insurgency is not just dealing with the fighters in the bush.  The problem was that 1 ATF's TAOR excluded the populated areas!  Therefore conducting successful counter-insurgency by Aust forces in Phuoc Tuy was impossible.  The question that the published volumes of the official history don't (yet) review is how on earth anybody seriously thought they could conduct a successful counter-insurgency in Phuoc Tuy by applying the 'Australian Way' and without dealing effectively with the NLF cadres and infrastructure among the population!  The most charitable suggestion is that 1 ATF, even for the 3 years at peak strength, was not big enough to keep pressure on the NLF forces in the bush, interdict their links with the population and put in the intelligence effort to winkle out the cadres (even if they'd been allowed to) or to turn the people against the cadres.  The latter needed competant Viet efforts as well and therein lay a problem, which might have been improved by having Aust advisors to the Viets and ensuring better unity of action between Viet and Aust from 1966 onwards.  Of course there were tricky political implications.

 

Incidently, the Tet General Offensive was dealt with quite quickly in Phouc Tuy, it was over within a week.  The deployment North in Apr/May was to pre-empt the Second General Offensive, which the allied operation Toan Thang did, Aust ops in AO Manly (FSB Coogee), AO Bondi (FSB Coral) and AO Newport (FSB Balmoral) were part of this.