COMMENT – LONG TAN AUSTRALIA’S VIETNAM STORY
ED: For those of you who haven’t read the comments on the website, the following was written by Ernie Chamberlain
Readers will have noted several errors in this 22-minute video. In particular, five times the narrator refers to the enemy force at the Battle of Long Tân as: “NVA,” “North Vietnamese troops/forces.” However, the principal enemy force elements were the 275th VC Main Force Regiment and the D445 VC Local Force Battalion.
Data on the strength and composition of the 275th VC Regiment at the Battle can be determined from the detailed notebook of the 275th VC Regiment quartermaster, Đào Thanh Xuân. This document, captured in early February 1968 by 2RAR/NZ (ANZAC) during Operation Coburg, was only recently translated and analyzed. The notebook’s entries can probably be regarded as far more factual than accounts published in post-war Vietnamese histories, such as those of the 5th VC Division (2005), the 275th VC Main Force Regiment (2015), and the D445 Local Force Battalion (1991 and 2004).
The quartermaster’s notebook records his detailed strength-reckoning of the Regiment on 20 August (i.e., two days after the Long Tân battle). This list totaled “852,” which is 159 less than the Regiment’s strength figure of 1,011 that he had recorded on 9 August. On the D445 VC Battalion’s strength, the biannual reports of its commanding officer, Bùi Quang Chánh, and its political officer, Đỗ Văn Liên, dated July and early August 1966, respectively, show that the Battalion’s strength was “403” and “392.”
Of course, any enemy KIA or WIA figures for the Long Tân battle would also have to include probably quite small numbers from HQ 5th VC Division elements, the HQ Bà Rịa-Long Khánh-Biên Hòa Province Unit, the Võ Thị Sáu Civil Labour Company, C.12-65 Bình Giã Assault Youth Unit, the “Surgery Element,” reconnaissance elements (5th VC Division; and C.982), and possibly a Z39 artillery element.
The seemingly macabre and petty “accounting” related above is perhaps not particularly relevant to the main story of that fierce battle in August 1966. On claims of “North Vietnamese” at the Battle, while the enemy force at Long Tân was almost solely “Viet Cong,” the 3rd Battalion/275th VC Main Force Regiment was originally the D605 NVA Battalion (of the Bắc Sơn Regiment). This battalion infiltrated into the South in late 1965 (about 2,000 km/112 days) and was incorporated into the 275th VC Regiment in April 1966 following the 275th Regiment’s earlier heavy losses in attacks on Vỏ Đắt and Vỏ Su posts in Bình Tuy Province.
In summary, I have assessed the VC troop strength at the Battle of Long Tân as numbering about 1,750 and believe that 210 were killed on the battlefield.
Detail is included in Chamberlain, E.P., The Viet Cong 275th Regiment, 2022 (220,500 words); and The Viet Cong D445 Battalion, Their Story and the Battle of Long Tân, 2016 (348,200 words) – and in several multi-page Research Notes.
