Thursday, June 1, 1972
S. Viets Learn To Kill Tanks
HUE, Vietnam (AP) --Before breakfast one day last week, an American sergeant strolled out of his bunker on the My Chanh defense line and blew the turret off an attacking tank.North Vietnamese tanks, he was demonstrating while also quieting down the neighborhood, are not invulnerable.Since Hanoi's general offensive began March 30, something near 400 Communist tanks have been knocked out, senior Allied officers claim --even allowing for some inflation and duplication in figures.U.S. advisers in the field say the North Vietnamese are bad drivers and the South Vietnamese, meanwhile, are mastering the art of killing tanks."The North Vietnamese must have some Russian advisers who showed them how to do it along classical lines. The Russians are pretty good at it, but these guys just haven't had the experience," suggested one American colonel."Moving tanks down the beach (north of Hue) in the open -they must be nuts."Other officers, including tank warfare specialists, call the Communist's armor tactics puzzling, if not simply foolhardy: Running tanks in the open with neither infantry nor air support is not smart.The initial impact of the North Vietnamese tanks, used in force for the first time in the war, was a key reason for the rout at Quang Tri and other early setbacks, senior officers say.Together with weapons like 130mm artillery guns, the Soviet-designed T54s, T59s and PT76s have created havoc among government troops who thought them invincible."They were killing 10 to 20 tanks a day for seven days and they still didn't learn that tanks could be stopped," said one officer. "But they"ve gotten over that, mostly."Now, field reports say, at least one unit has conquered its fear to such a degree that it let two Communist tanks get away by trying to capture them intact.The U.S. adviser at My Chanh knocked out the Communist tank with a wire-guided missile, fired like a bazooka. But other tanks have been stopped with "LAWs," light bazooka-type rocket launchers that are discarded after being used once, and also with ground and naval artillery, air strikes and opposing tanks.South Vietnam's only tank battalion, equipped with sophisticated U.S.-built M48 Patton tanks, performed well in the early stages but later lost most of its tanks in the fighting around Quang Tri.Scores of new tanks have been brought in, but senior U.S. officers say it will take some time to get the unit back into fighting shape.The Communists have tried to replace many of the tanks they have lost, and field officers say it is impossible to determine just how many they still face."S. Viets Learn to Kill Tanks", by (AP), published in the Pacific Stars and Stripes Thursday, June 1, 1972 and reprinted from European and Pacific Stars and Stripes, a Department of Defense publication copyright, 2002 European and Pacific Stars and Stripes.