Vietnam Additions

You may recall a short while ago I managed to acquire six boxes of Revell US and NVA 20mm plastic figures during the recent Modelzone sale. the boxes have sat on my desk in the same place as when I brought home and I was all set to consign them to the cupboard for a rainy day. I also mentioned about tackling a Memoir 44 variant for Vietnam as it would be farely easy to put together. Well the variant exists as a scribbled side of A4 but has gotten no further in the face of Balkan 15mm figures, Morschauser games and cobbling together a naval version thereof. However, I popped over to Othellos - a secondhand bookshop in Leigh and well worth a visit if you are passing - with a selection of titles to exchange and came across the three titles in the picture. It is fairly safe to say that these three have pretty much given me sufficient background detail to be going on with.

The first book is Vietnam by Stanley Karnow and is described as the 'First Complete Account of Vietnam at War'. It is a great doorstop of a tome and accompanied the TV series (I missed that one for sure!) and so is as good a place as any to get the background to the war. Aside from the American involvement the book also covers the French side as well so appears to be fairly complete in its coverage.

The second is Armoured Combat in Vietnam by General Don Starry. This traces the evolution of US armoured tactics in Vietnam and is full of all the detail that you would want in respect of organisations, equipment, tactics and analysis of selected actions with maps. It also covers the unhappy French experience of armoured warfare and how this coloured the US view in the early stages of the war.

The third book is The Vietnam War Handbook by Andrew Rawson. this book is nothing less than an encyclopedia of the just about everything US associated with the war. It covers organisations, what units were where and when; the role of the air force and navy as well as brief looks at the free world allies and both the armies of South and North Vietnam. Certainly worth having on the book shelf.

The final acquisition came from a local toy shop and is the Airfix 1:76 scale kit of the M113 ACAV. This is a nice little kit and I was very pleasantly surprised to see that you could build it as a standard M113; not just as the ACAV variant. I was also pleased to note that this model fits nicely on a 3" RAFM hex transfer so perhaps the Memoir 44 variant may have a little more chance of being realised sooner rather than later...................;-)