Tag Archives: 5e BPVN

Tay Ninh Umbrellas

Posted on by Leave a comment

March 1963. Static line ARVN paratroopers jump from USAF Fairchild C-123 Providers of the 346th Troop Carrier Squadron (Assault) during Operation Phi Hoa II, a tactical air-ground envelopment strike against Viet Cong in the Tay Ninh Province of South Vietnam. Between 13-22 March, no less than 1,181 ARVN paras hit the silk over Tay Ninh, near what would later be known as the “Iron Triangle” north of Saigon.

Official period caption: “Sixteen C-123s dropped more than 840 parachutists in two minutes after Vietnamese Air Force tactical fighters and bombers had worked over the area. A smoke bomb, dropped minutes before the assault, marks the drop zone.”

USAF Photo 342-AF-93093USAF, National Archives Identifier 542293

South Vietnam fielded a full four-brigade airborne division by the 1970s, with 1,000 American airborne-qualified advisors attached, although they pulled very few large combat jumps such as at Phi Hoa II. They were primarily delivered by helicopter but did continue to put their chutes to work in myriad small squad and platoon-sized recon missions (often in places they never officially were) to watch roads and conduct ambushes and small-scale raids.

Before the above image was taken, the ARVN Airborne Group, as it was termed at the time, had already made five increasingly larger combat jumps– leaping in to reinforce the garrison at Bo Tuc in March 1962, setting a two-company ambush behind a VC group north of Saigon in July 1962, conducting a battalion-sized raid at An Xuyen in August 1962, and finally two regimental-sized drops at Ap Tan Thoi and Ba Rai in January 1963.

They had a lineage that went back to the old French, who recruited and trained 1e BPVN, 3e BPVN, and 5e BPVN, which were airdropped into Dien Bien Phu in 1954. The French raised at least four colonial airborne battalions and five independent companies during their fight against the Viet Minh.

Of note, the C-123s of the 346th at the time were also used to train Air America crews and in Ranch Hand defoliant spraying operations, which were no doubt a bonus to the ARVN paras.

Yankee Brandt 60

Posted on by 2 comments

Some 81 years ago this month, January 1954, Dien Bien Phu, French Indochina, members of the newly-formed 5e BPVN (5e bataillon de parachutistes vietnamiens) of Groupe d’Opération Nord-Ouest (GONO), operate their American-made M2 60mm mortar.

You have to love the mix of TAP 47/52 lizard camo jackets and American M1 helmets as well. Réf. : NVN 54-9 R61, Daniel Camus/ECPAD/Défense

Based, ironically, on the French Brandt 60mm Mortier Modèle 1935 and licensed by that company for production in America, the U.S. M2 mortar was a hit with light infantry of all strokes for the last half of the 20th Century. Weighing just 42 pounds all-up (which is light for a mortar), a five-man crew (two in a pinch) could land 3-pound shells out to a mile away for as long as the ammo held out, even topping 30 rounds per minute if the rounds are staged and ready.

The French paras loved it in Vietnam.

Légionnaire du 2e bataillon étranger parachutiste (2e BEP) Roger Chapel, working a 60mm M2 mortar in Indochina, 10 May 1952. Note the crowd-pleasing belt of M49A2/3 HE mortar bombs around his waist– some 18 pounds of shells– and the M4 Collimator sight on the left of the mortar. Réf. TONK 52-123 R12, Jean Péraud/ECPAD/Défense

The French developed a light mortar shell vest with segmented front and back canvas pockets to carry 8 rounds of 60mm mortar ammunition (24 pounds of shells) for use in Indochina and later Algeria. These could be used to carry extra machine gun magazines too like 16 Bren .303/MAC 24 7.5mm magazines, a cool 16 Ba mươi ba “333” beer cans, or 8 magnum-sized ‘Foster’s lager’ beers!

The M2 was replaced in U.S. service by the new and improved (47 pounds!) M224 60mm company mortar after 1978, but you can be sure that thousands old the old “Yankee Brandts” still linger on in arsenals across the Third World.