This is a look at Cambodia’s use of WWII tanks and armored vehicles before the coming of the Khmer Rouge in 1975.
Tag: Vietnam War
transplanting South Vietnam’s WWII warships to the Philippines 1975
Fifty years ago this May, ships of the South Vietnamese navy fled to the Philippines as Saigon was overrun.
Recently media outlets have covered this story, often as “…how America stole a whole navy in 1975!” which is not correct. Meanwhile many naval observers worldwide are aware that the Philippines later received these WWII-era warships, but not really aware of the steps to make that happen.
This will be less technical data and more a look at the behind-the-scenes hoops that the USA jumped through to transplant a fallen ally’s WWII-era warships into another ally’s fleet.
(The escape: Overloaded with refugees, HQVN Lam Giang arrives at Côn Son as Saigon falls in 1975. It had been LSM-226 during WWII.)
(The payoff: BRP Miguel Malvar, formerly South Vietnam’s HQVN Ngoc Hoi and the WWII US Navy’s USS Brattleboro, serving the Philippines in the 21st century.)
WWII firearms in the FOMCAT
I don’t know how many readers have an interest in military bureaucracy. Probably not many.
This is a look at how WWII-legacy weapons were cataloged in the Foreign Materiel Catalog, the FOMCAT, a now-forgotten US Army publication of the Cold War era.
USS Forster: four flags, three nations, five conflicts
Many of the US Navy’s destroyer-escorts (DEs) of WWII had varied lives after the war, but perhaps none more than USS Forster (DE-334).
rise & fall of the WWII beach bombardment rocket
Newsreels from WWII often show rocket ships during amphibious assaults. The massive wave of outgoing ordnance was photogenic but may have led to the belief that there were many more of these specialized warships than were actually fielded. After WWII, these same ships and weapons would serve again during the Korean War, then during the Vietnam War, before altogether fading away from the US Navy.
(LSM(R)-196 in action during WWII.)
(Mk102 automatic twin-barrel rocket launcher.)
(The WWII rocket ship USS Clarion River (LFR-409) firing Mk102s during the Vietnam War.)
Denmark’s long-serving “Faxe”s / salute to WWII Yard & District Craft
The fuel lighters Rimfaxe and Skinfaxe, formerly WWII American 174′ YOs, had a long and successful career in the Danish fleet. Looking at these two ships is also an opportunity to examine the US Navy’s remarkable Yard & District Craft program of WWII, which now eight decades after the war has been all but forgotten by the general public.
(A 174′ YO-65 class lighter of the Yard & District Craft program running trials on Lake Michigan during WWII.) (photo via navsource website)
Commandos of CASI
Air America, the now-famous “front company” airline of the CIA, flew WWII aircraft alongside modern types during the Vietnam War. By now Air America has already been thoroughly written on elsewhere. Less well-known is a similar setup in the same timeframe, also using WWII aircraft: Continental Air Services Incorporated.
(C-46 Commando during WWII.)
(C-46 Commando of CASI at Long Tieng, Laos during 1975.)
the T-34 in Laos
The USSR’s most-produced tank of WWII, and most successful during that war, was the T-34. After WWII many nations received this tank, one of the more obscure ones being Laos.
(Soviet soldiers with a T-34 during WWII.)
(Lao T-34 during the 2010s.)
(Ex-Lao T-34s in the Russian Federation during 2020.)
The path by which these T-34s came to Laos and then “returned” to Russia is quite winding and interesting.
For starters, they didn’t really “return home”, at least not in the strictest sense of the words. They are all Czechoslovak post-WWII production, having first gone through Vietnam.
proposed 1980 update of WWII destroyers
I debated on this topic as perhaps it is too bland for general reading, but perhaps readers will be interested not only in WWII military technology but how decisions about it was made in later decades.
(The launching of USS Dyess (DD-880) during WWII. A third of a century later, USS Dyess would be one of the Gearing class candidate ships for the study below.)
There were many proposals to upgrade WWII warships. For every success like the GUPPY submarines, many more proposals never saw daylight. They were too expensive, or mechanically impossible, or just dumb ideas to begin with. Today they survive only as poorly-documented sketches.
(The July 1980 report which spelled the end for WWII destroyers in the US Navy.)
However this proposal: to upgrade WWII Gearing class destroyers for service deep into the 1980s, was a reasonable idea to explore, mechanically feasible, and thoroughly documented in the unclassified realm. As it was never done, it is forgotten today. So hopefully it will be of some interest.
(The decommissioned USS William C. Lawe (DD-763) on the right, which in 1983 had been the very last WWII destroyer in the US Navy.)
WWII Benewah class in the Vietnam War
Normally a barracks ship would probably be thought of as one of the most boring things in any fleet, but four Benewah class barracks ships of WWII were successfully retasked as riverine combatants during the Vietnam War.
(Launching of the barracks ship USS Benewah (APB-35) during WWII.)
(USS Benewah with a UH-1 Iroquois and riverine warfare craft off the Vietnamese coast in 1969.)
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