CS Vietnam – further thoughts from reading “Valley Of The Shadow”

[Hoplite1963]

I have just had a week’s holiday and took the opportunity to finish reading “Valley Of The Shadow”, (VofTS) Kevin Boylan and Luc Olivier’s new book on the siege of Dien Bien Phu.

In addition to the earlier post put up on Viet Minh Artillery casements there are a couple of other ideas that come to mind from reading it that might merit application to the CS Vietnam game.

First off the use the French made during the siege of the US M55 quad .50 calibre M2 MG system as an indirect fire weapon. This system is already available in CSME for the French army around this time with a direct fire range of 1250 meters or 5 hexes. However I have done some digging around on the internet searching on the basis of “M2 .50 cal machine gun in the indirect fire role” and found articles suggesting that when employed for indirect fire that the 50 calibre M2 MG has an effective range of 3000 to 4000 meters or 12 to 16 hexes.

As has been done with the WW1 mod perhaps some consideration should be given to having duplicate M2 and M55 platoon units designated as indirect fire ones, with a somewhat greater range of say 12 to 14 hexes” with the same fire cost, but with 2/3 to ½ the combat strength to allow for the greater dispersion of fire across the “beaten zone”.

Down the line the whole issue of indirect fire for medium and heavy machineguns generally is something that should perhaps be looked at. Probably best to do this as part of the preparation for the West Front II core game as the British Army (who had led the way in developing indirect fire MG tactics in the Great War) included a machinegun battalion in the TOE of their infantry divisions and further developed their massed machinegun indirect fire tactics integrated with the use of 4.2” mortars and heavy 3.7” AA guns in the indirect fire role to lay down what became known as “pepper pot” Barrages.

Secondly VofTS brings out very clearly how the Viet Minh used trench construction as an offensive tactic both to get right up to French strongpoint’s before assaulting them and also to isolate and cut off outlying French positions.

As far as I know at present only Construction Engineer units are able to built trenches. Perhaps Viet Minh infantry units circa 1954 should be given this ability as well for use in those longer Dien Bien Phu scenarios, who knows with the capacity to adjust light conditions from day to night and back again perhaps somebody will do a scenario covering the entire battle.

On a more general level VofTS) reaches a couple of interesting conclusions. First off, that if the French had committed 1 or 2 of the reinforcement paratroop battalions to the battle that they sent later, in late March before the second Viet Minh offensive that they could well have blunted this completely and won the battle.

Even more interestingly the book implies that this counterfactual outcome would not necessarily have made that much difference long term, as in any case the Viet Minh were forced to settle for much less than their military position should have entitled them to at the Geneva peace conference by the Soviets and Chinese who were more interested in deescalating the Cold war, and that with France looking to get out of Indochina at Geneva in any case a Victory by them at Dien Bien Phu might have simply have made it easier for them to have signed up to the same deal (basically a draw) that they actually did put pen to paper on.

Regards

Ian

[Oberst_Klink]

Thanks for the recommended read, Ian. I collected some other interesting stuff on my blog, while doing some research about the French period of the Indochina conflict though. Atm, I am reading 'War of Wars' though.

Klink, Oberst