RS*,
I just saw some black and white footage of Aussies in the bush in Vietnam, and assume it to be from the earlier part of the Allied involvement in what was probably the early to mid-60s…
Of course most of them had FNs, but I think I saw one with what I think is called an Owen sub-machine-gun. Do you know how these tended to fare in 'Nam? Did the infantry like these weapons?
Might be an Owen gun if any remained in service after the replacement, and inferior, F1 was introduced around 1963. Otherwise it’d probably be an F1.
If it has one pistol rearwards of the top mag it’ll be an F1, if it has one pistol grip there and one pistol grip forward of the mag it’ll be an Owen.
The Owen was very popular with WWII diggers in the tropics. The F1 wasn’t.
Nick,
I’ve done a bit of research and it appears that the Owen was used in Vietnam in the early years, then replaced by the F1.
It’s probably not known much outside Australia, but the Owen has an interesting history, being invented by a lone inventor and then by remarkable good luck being taken up and refined by a manufacturer. Here’s a thorough treatment of the history, operation and technical aspects of the gun.
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/usr/wbardwel/public/nfalist/owen_gun.txt
The source comes from my old 2ic, I’ll ask him where he got that little snippet from. I’ve actually been looking for a good boo on Long Tan for a while now, my local waterstones has so far produced no results.
Naturally 
Running! I’m sure older, wiser and tougher infantry types who’ve done Junior/Senior Brecon will confirm to you that the weight they have to tab about with is not that far off.
It was definitely and Owen IIRC…
Here are some good ones on it, from an overall viewpoint and the viewpoints of participants at various levels, although Amazon and other book lists probably have some or all titles.
https://www.alibris.com/search/books/qwork/592119/used/Battle%20of%20Long%20Tan
http://www.alibris.com/booksearch?binding=&mtype=&keyword=long+tan+the+commanders
http://www.alibris.com/booksearch?binding=&mtype=&keyword=terry+burstall+soldiers+story
It’s an interesting story which still has unhealed wounds about whether or not there were intelligence failures or command incompetence which led to the Australian forces not being adequately warned about the enemy forces they could encounter.
There are differences of opinion among the participants and authors about various other aspects, such as illustrated here.
Transcript
17/8/2000
Hero of Long Tan’s “mercy killing” upsets comradesKERRY O’BRIEN: Tomorrow marks the 34th anniversary of the Battle of Long Tan, the bloodiest single encounter experienced by Australians during the Vietnam War.
18 diggers were killed in a rubber plantation near their army base at Nui Dat.
Retired sergeant Bob Buick, whose platoon lost 13 soldiers, has now written a book about the battle, in which he admits to killing a critically wounded enemy soldier the next day.
His admission has sparked its own war of words.
Bernard Bowen reports.
BOB BUICK, AUTHOR: You could feel the blast of the artillery and the rain was pouring down.
You could see the tracer coming, whizzing past you.
You change magazines when you ran out of ammunition and you were trying to kill the other bloke, who was trying to kill you.
You look around and there’s your mates, you know, the other blokes in your platoon, some dead, some wounded, some blokes shooting and getting shot at.
BERNARD BOWEN: Bob Buick is regarded as one of the heroes of Long Tan, decorated for his part in Australia’s bloodiest battle of the Vietnam War.
As platoon sergeant, he assumed command of his men when their lieutenant was shot dead, repelling the enemy against overwhelming odds and losing 13 diggers in the process.
BOB BUICK: You become a soldier, you’ve got a good chance of dying, a better chance of being wounded, and if you don’t get killed or wounded, you’ve still got the memories, so that’s part of being a soldier.
BERNARD BOWEN: They are memories Bob Buick has now put in print with the publication of his book ‘All Guts and No Glory’, a story he initially wrote for his family.
BOB BUICK: I got my son’s old computer and my wife said to me, Beverley said, “You better write a story about yourself because the kids don’t know what you did.”
LEX McAULAY, MILITARY HISTORIAN: It’s a book written by an infantry platoon sergeant who was called on to lead the platoon in a desperate action in time of war and I cannot recall any other book written by an Australian infantry platoon sergeant.
So, in that respect, I give him full marks.
BERNARD BOWEN: Military historian and Vietnam veteran Lex McAulay describes the book as a no-nonsense memoir by a no-nonsense soldier.
LEX McAULAY: Some of the things that Bob has said in his book possibly could have been left unsaid, but that’s Bob Buick – what you see is what you get.
He’s up front.
BERNARD BOWEN: One chapter in particular has raised the ire of some of his comrades in arms.
In describing what happened the day after the battle, Bob Buick – seen here attending to a wounded digger – makes a brutally frank admission.
After coming across a critically wounded enemy soldier, a man the sergeant believed had absolutely no chance of survival, he shot him dead, reconciling it as a mercy killing.
BOB BUICK: It’s something that I think that is part of soldiering.
It’s just one of those things.
It’s nothing I’m proud of but it’s something I did at the time and if it had been me, I would have hoped that someone would have done the same for me if the roles were reversed, so it’s just one of those things that happens in war.
War is not nice at all.
TERRY BURSTALL, MILITARY HISTORIAN: The thing that I’m upset about is him going into graphic detail about killing a wounded enemy soldier, which is completely and utterly against the Geneva Convention.
BERNARD BOWEN: Military historian Terry Burstall is also a Long Tan veteran, although he wasn’t in Bob Buick’s platoon.
TERRY BURSTALL: Bob says it was a mercy killing in his book, but if it was a mercy killing, would he have done the same to an Australian?
Because it was only – we were only 15 minutes from a hospital by helicopter.
Helicopters had been in to take our own wounded out.
BOB BUICK: The criticism just rolls off my back.
BERNARD BOWEN: It doesn’t upset you?
BOB BUICK: No, no, no, I expected it.
At any time you put anything down on paper, no matter what it is, you’re going to rub someone up the wrong way, and who cares?
BERNARD BOWEN: But some Long Tan veterans accuse Bob Buick of reopening old wounds with his account of the battle.
President of the Long Tan Association, John Heslewood, who was a private in Bob Buick’s platoon, believes his book doesn’t serve any useful purpose.
JOHN HESLEWOOD, LONG TAN ASSOCIATION: There’s a lot of blokes who have have had problems over the years with things that happened in Vietnam, and over the period of years are starting to get over it with the help of friends and counselling and that sort of stuff.
And then all of a sudden you pick up a book and read that sort of thing, you know, about people being killed and that, wounded.
LEX McAULAY: I think Australian soldiers always judge each other harshly, and especially their superiors.
BERNARD BOWEN: Lex McAulay isn’t surprised that some former soldiers are sniping at their old platoon sergeant, but he believes the flak is unwarranted.
LEX McAULAY: If any reasonable army was going to war again and they could order another 10,000 copies of Bob Buick platoon sergeant, they probably would.
BERNARD BOWEN: Why do you think he is making these claims?
TERRY BURSTALL: Well, perhaps he’s making peace with his God.
I don’t know.
BERNARD BOWEN: Now retired and living on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, Bob Buick just shrugs off the criticism.
He knows that what happened while his men were clearing the battlefield has always been a sensitive issue, but he makes no apologies for his actions then or for his statements now.
BOB BUICK: There are critics no matter who you are or what you do, there’s always critics, so I didn’t write it as an official history – I just wrote it as the Bob Buick story.
http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/stories/s164813.htm
Ammo scales for the SLR in the BA was very much the same as that in the Napoleonic war (150) and not all of it was carried by the soldier but in company reserve. You are dealing with planning rates and the holding of ammo stokes prior to war starting as opposed to what they actually carry in combat. Some admin troops in both gulf wars only had a mag or so of ammo. But mech troops would have boxes in the vehicle to resupply on return after a short walk outside (being mech you carried/had available lots of stuff that light/air portable did not). The planning scale for the SLR was 5 mags plus a bandoleer of 50. One mag was with the CQMS as a company reserve. The bandoleer could and normally was link as opposed to clips of 7.62. You also had a slack handful of tracer. With the SA80 you still had the 5 mags but now the capacity was 30 not 20 and the bandoleer was 150 in 10 rd clips. The GPMG had gone from the rifle pl with the introduction of the LSW so no need to carry link. This changed with the introduction of the mini and the reintroduction of the GPMG back into the Pls.
You would also have 51mm mortar distributed within the pl (but normally kept within pl HQ). A variety of grenades were carried depending on task but would consist of HE, smk WP and signal (coloured). When the 66mm was in use most would be offered one to carry. The 84 was restricted to the crew, so about 4 or 6. Can’t remember what the SMG scale was as no one took it seriously. If you were air portable you would also be invited to carry 81 ammo and possibly a Milan missile. When the 94 was introduced the scale was one each (deep joy).
A mortar man would also have his part of the mortar (about 6 Kgs) plus 2 bombs plus his SA ammo. The Green Howards did a trial (they were air portable at the time) with each man carrying what was meant to be their combat load for a heli lift behind the enemy. The number one could stand up and slowly walk but could not lift his foot onto the tail ramp of the Chinook. 
Anthony Hubert in Korea had his platoon carry double basic load. Plus as many grenades as they could carry.
And I remember one guy in Vietnam said, after stuffing his rucksack with M-16 mags, that he would rather go hungry one night than out of ammo one night.
That gives you a hint as how GI’s at the front think.
Deaf
Well, but all that aside, they still have to be able to carry it…
Thanks for that.
Nothing elevates a semi-informed thread like a very well informed post.
My recollection of Australian ammunition in the Vietnam era is that there weren’t any clips for SLR mags. I can’t recall anything like the SMLE charger for an SLR mag. My recollection is that we had to feed each round into the mag by hand. So we had to carry weight of the mags as well as the load rather than being able to carry lighter chargers to insert in a mag in action.
Link was carried for the M60 by the MG crew and dispersed among some other section members. It could be used to fill SLR mags in an emergency but that was only a secondary use against the primary use of feeding the MG.
When I was in service, a tank commander, each armor crewman was issued a 1911-A1 pistol. For this he had 2 magazines in a belt pouch. Each tank had a pair of M-3 smg’s and those came with a 4 mag pouch I believe the mags were 30 rds, but may have been 20. The tank itself loaded 63 rds (M-60-A1) for the main battery, 6k rds for the co-axial MG, and 800-900 rds for the M-85 Cal. .50.
I would be foolish to run around with only those few rounds for the pistol, and kept at least twice the number of magazines for my guys. In those days we had no mine dischargers on board, so the pistols, and smg’s were pretty much it for keeping the bugs away. If a neighbor was near enough, he might hose your vehicle with coax fire to clear away the trouble, but sometimes it wasnt possible.
Didn’t you have canister to use for that, among other things?
Oh Wow, this thread has suddenly turned extremely interesting!
The original FN had a split top cover and two notches so that you could load into the mag as it was on the rifle in a similar way to the SMLE.
The SLR had a full top cover and was issued with a sped loader for the five round clips. The one I saw were made of plastic and never left the stores (that’s why they are called stores) and as part of your training test you had to hand load loose rds into a mag in X seconds.
UK operational ammo came in clips of 5 and bandoleers of 50 and I think tins of 400. Stuff purchased for training came in cartons of 20, in liners of 200, in plastic boxes of 1000 or tins of 400. For a short time after the Falklands we had lots of captured ammo that was abysmal.
A bandoleer with clip.
The link bandoleer was for 50 rds but I remember getting 125/150 rds into it. Excellent bit of kit and enabled you the though link around the section without it getting dirty.
We would do that to the tanks and for some reason they would get very upset. :shock: The holes in sleeping bags, food boxes and water cans may have been the reason but I am not sure.
2nd of foot
Thanks for another highly informative post.
:mrgreen:
Maybe that explains why I can’t recall clips, as I was only ever in training. Or maybe my memory is just stuffed 40 years after the event. After reading your last post I’ve realised that I was also unthinkingly and wrongly equating ‘clip’ with ‘charger’ in my last post.
What I had in mind when I was referring to link was just MG belt, like this.
“Spare ammo?”
If it ain’t in the magazine ready to feed into the breech, it’s spare, or perhaps more accurately extra, at that moment.
Once upon a time (long before I started), my lot had a storeman known as “mickey the mud rat” who had realised that if he had nothing in his stores, he had no work to do. Therefore, whenever he saw an unsuspecting soldier near his stores he would grab them, wheel them in, and issue them with something. He’s probably unique in the history of arms, however.
