David Doyle - Vehicles and Heavy Weapons of the Vietnam War

Vehicles and Heavy Weapons of the Vietnam War

David Doyle

First published in Great Britain in 2021 by

Pen & Sword Military

An imprint of

Pen & Sword Books Ltd

Yorkshire Philadelphia

Copyright David Doyle 2021

ISBN 978 1 52674 364 0

eISBN 978 1 52674 365 7

Mobi ISBN 978 1 52674 366 4

The right of David Doyle to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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As with all of my projects, this book would not have been possible without the generous help of many friends. Instrumental to the completion of this book were Dana Bell, Scott Taylor the archivists at the Mack Museum and Rock Island Arsenal, US Army Engineer School History Office, the Ordnance Museum, the members of the National Dusters, Quads and Searchlights Association, the FCA North America Archives, Vintage Power Wagons, David Bundy, David Viscardi, Doug Kibbey, Mike Weaver, Carl T. Heller, Chris Harlow, William Powis, James Lyles, John Adams-Graf, Steve Zaloga, Mike Haines, the staff and volunteers at the Patton Museum, the late Fred Crismon and Eric Mueller, and the staff at the National Archives and TACOM LCMC History Office. Most importantly, I am blessed to have the help and support of my wife Denise, for which I am eternally grateful.

Introduction

The battlefields of Vietnam have been littered with US-built military equipment since World War II. Much of the gear was used by the French during the French-Indochina war, and would be familiar to students of WWII US production. This volume, however, focuses on the vehicles and heavy weapons used by US forces during the period that the United States actively participated in the war in Vietnam from 1965 through 1973.

This book is broken into three major sections, describing wheeled tactical vehicles, track laying combat vehicles, and artillery and heavy weapons, both wheeled and tracked. In all cases, within these groups the topics are arranged by size.

Within these groups, the vehicles are identified by both Standard Nomenclature List (SNL) number, which begins with the letter G. From the mid-1920s until well into the Cold War era, US Army weapons and material were cataloged through a system known as the Standard Nomenclature List (SNL). Within the SNL were various groupings Group A was automatic weapons, small mortars, carts and light artillery. Group D was heavy field artillery, and most important for the purpose of this book, Group G was tank and automotive material. A numeric suffix was added to the SNL group to define various families of vehicles. For example, the -ton 44 Dodge truck series which includes the familiar M37 was SNL G-741.

As a rule, the various series of vehicles within each family or numeric suffix have similar power trains and chassis, but the bodies vary sometimes widely. However, as with so many rules, there are a few exceptions to this.

The SNL G system, though not widely used by troops or enthusiasts, is actually much clearer than the more familiar M-number system. In that system, a M1 could be a helmet, a carbine, a rifle, a tank or a myriad of other things.

Since World War II, GIs and the public have referred to military -ton 4 4 trucks as jeeps, but in reality, the name Jeep is a trademark which has been owned by a variety of organizations, including Willys-Overland Motors, Kaiser-Willys, American Motors, Kaiser-Jeep and now Fiat-Chrysler. Further, many of the vehicles identified by GIs as jeeps were not only not built by any of these firms, they werent jeeps at all!