This is Part II of a two part story. A link at the bottom of this page will help you jump to Part I.

 

In Part I we looked at the Signal Corps’ role in 1966 (The War Begins in Earnest – 1966), when combat operations ramped up for the first time in that war. Here we continue the story.

By late 1967 combat operations were well underway, with ad hoc solutions popping up everywhere to the problems the intense pace of combat was causing. More than just an expedient, these jury rigged solutions were needed to keep the ball rolling. Wherever one turned it was clear that while the will to fight was there and the men were gung ho, from a systemic standpoint the means to support combat operations wasn’t. Whether it was logistics or material, the system strained to keep up with the pace of combat the commanders were setting as they led their men into the field to find and face Charlie.

Since everyone knew that the units had trained for aggressive combat, and that their TOEs were as up to snuff as they could be, there seemed to be no reason why the support systems wouldn’t be able to provide the combat infrastructure required to carry the operations… whenever and wherever necessary. But that wasn’t turning out to be the case… well, not every time anyway.

In lots of cases the people in the field were finding that their efforts were being thwarted by a combat support system that worked in training in Germany and the States but not in Vietnam. Whether it was how to protect local villagers after dark (when Charlie would come out to play), or how to make sure recon patrols had the communication they needed as they shifted their location thirty or forty clicks every few hours, the standard operating procedures that everyone was trained to depend on frequently failed, not because the procedures that underwrote them were bad but because they depended on systems and equipment that simply wasn't up to the task in Vietnam’s climatic, geographical and shifting combat zone conditions.

For the Signal Corps an example of this could be seen when it came to keeping combat commanders in communication with their field operations. Back in Europe during WWII it wasn’t unusual for a combat commander to be so far behind the front lines that he never heard a shot fired in anger. Instead, what he knew of a battle underway wound its way back to him via telephone wires, teletypes, motorcycle messengers, and the like. In Europe in WWII the system worked, and so it was used.

At the same time, this same system failed miserably in the South Pacific in WWII. Almost as though it was a precursor to what would happen in Vietnam, in the South Pacific getting the message through… and back again… proved a headache. Simply put, the support systems used in Europe didn’t work when they were transposed to the jungles of Borneo, New Guinea, Luzon, Peleliu, or the other battle sites the Pacific theatre of war is famous for. Instead, in the Pacific theatre combat commanders like Lt. Gen. Walter Krueger (commander of the Sixth Army) and Lt. Gen. Robert L. Eichelberger (commander of I Corps and the RECKLESS Task Force), knowing that every sort of system from logistics to communication would breakdown in the jungles, simply ignored the problem and fought on. With nary a nod to support, they simply hiked up their pants, waded off into the jungle swamps and went looking for Japenese to kill. Their attitude, just like that of Lieutenant General Jonathan Wainwright in the Philippines, was that the war had to be fought, regardless of whether the support systems worked or not.

In all of these cases, whether the problem was that a unit couldn’t communicate reliably, get its share of C-Rations, call in fire support from a squadron of de-navalized Douglas SBD-5 Dauntless (dive bombers), or something else, when it was time to fight they did… setting the best pace of war possible and letting the system do what it could to catch up.

And while in the South Pacific in WWII there wasn’t much those who provided the support could do to catch up, that wasn’t the case in Vietnam. In Vietnam, on the communications side at least, technology had advanced to the point that many of the systems involved could be integrated to work with each other… making it possible to substitute one system for another and get the whole system to work by jury rigging the two. Coming at a time before the concept of systems integration had yet to be invented, this ability to make things work together, even though none of the pieces were designed to, made all of the difference needed when it came to finding ways to support the communication needs of the U.S.’ anxious combat commanders—anxious to get at the enemy that is.

Like Patton of WWII fame, who often rode with the front elements of his tank corps, and Eichelberger who waded through the jungle swamps alongside his combat teams, the Army combat commanders of Vietnam wanted to be in the field overseeing operations, not sitting back in Nha Trang or Đà Nẵng reading reports. Yet while that was tough to do in WWII, in Vietnam there was one thing that made it possible for commanders to be as close to their troops as the smell of cordite… something WWII didn’t have: the helicopter. With helicopters at their disposal nothing was going to stop Vietnam’s combat commanders from being in the field.

This simple device… the helicopter… changed U.S. combat operations forever. The freedom and mobility it gave commanders was unprecedented. Add to this the freedom and mobility it gave the troops themselves and it was only a matter of time before the whole concept of combat was changed. Prior to the helicopter only two men had been able to demonstrate a mode of mobility that dramatically changed field combat: Custer and Patton.

In Custer’s case he found ways to maximize the mobility horses gave his cavalry. And while that mobility eventually got him into serious trouble at Big Horn, when among other things he used it to outstrip his ability to communicate with Major  Marcus Reno to his rear and call for support, for the most part it worked well for him. As an example, prior to his famous last stand (on the hillock known as Last Stand Hill, just to the north of the Greasy Grass Ridge) Custer singlehandedly rode his horse at breakneck speed, for a full 20 minutes, the entire length of the battle zone’s edge (along the northeast side of the Little Bighorn River), to personally assess the strength of the Oglala, Hunkpapa, Cheyenne, Sans Arc and Minneconjou opposing him.

Ducking constant fire the entire way, he returned to his troops with enough knowledge of the enemy’s position and layout to order his defenses be set on Little Big Horn. Without the mobility of a horse, preplanning like this could not have happened. The fact that he wrongly assessed the situation and as a result moved his men into an indefensible position and lost the ensuing battle, is irrelevant. What he did was what mattered—he used the mobility his horse gave him to assess the battlefield and from that proximate, first hand information then set his battle plans. Good work on his part… all except a) the fact that he assessed the situation wrong,  b) picked an indefensible place to rally his men, and… perhaps most important… c) used the horses at his disposal to outpace his means of communicating with the troops sitting on the other side of the hill who could easily have come to his defense.[1]

Patton, on the other hand, brought his communication with him. Built into every tank he sat inside of were 1930s vintage transmitters/receivers that mostly operated on FM wave bands (frequency modulation). FM signals, while of more limited range than AM (amplitude modulation) due to the weaker power supplies of the times, were less affected by the electrical static generated by an AFV (Armed Fighting Vehicle). With all of the other noise bouncing around inside of a tank, this proved a huge advantage.

As to the kind of radio sets Patton and his men used, all were developed by the Signal Corps, mostly in the late 1930s and early 1940s. Identifying them was easy, as they each used the SCR designator… standing for, of course… Signal Corps Radio. This, plus a three digit number, was enough to let you know not just who developed the piece of equipment involved (an important point when you consider the number of Allies each developing their own communication systems), but also what version radio you were using. The communication equipment placed in each AFV was drawn from what we today would call an integrated series of transmitters, receivers, power supplies, MICs, antennas, and other accessories. This allowed individual AFV configurations based on the type and level of communication necessary for the unit involved. Via this little trick of interoperability it was possible for Patton’s people to equip their tanks with the type of communication needed for each particular mission and the terrain involved... something Custer most certainly did not have.

For Patton, this, plus the fact that most of his tank corps’ activities took place over the relatively flat ground of Europe, where the air might be cold but at least wasn’t destructively steamy as it was in the jungles of New Guinea—and the fact that the tanks involved in a combat operation were in relatively close proximity to each other—meant that for WWII’s equivalent of the horse, communication worked.

Among the sets depended on at that time were:

 

What we can see from this is that when it came to commanders that set a fast pace of combat, the earliest, General Custer, acquired his ability to set a fast pace from innovative use of horses, to create America’s first truly effective cavalry. Unfortunately, since radios had yet to be invented he depended on signal flags as a means of communication. Unfortunately too, with the speed he imbued in his maneuvers he soon outstripped the communication system's ability to support him. We all know how that ended.

Later in time commanders like Patton used the combination of speed and communication to their advantage too, this time gaining speed of maneuver from tanks instead of horses, and better communication from FM radio sets developed by the Signal Corps. And while this worked for Patton, at the same time both the tank and its means of communication failed those fellow commanders of his who traipsed the jungles of Southeast Asia, even while Patton was rolling along the roadways of Germany.

By the time of Vietnam the legacy of this approach to combat had not moved on significantly… that is, speed of maneuver and an ability to communicate were still a priority but their strategy for use was basically the same. What was different though was that the new horse on the block took to the air, and was called a Huey.

It was inevitable then that both Division and Brigade commanders would opt to mount this new steed to command their troops from the air… thus making both their units and themselves “Airborne.” Much as in Custer’s day when he left his unit behind and rode on by himself at breakneck speed along the edge of the Little Bighorn River to scout the enemy, the capacity for these new airborne commanders to outpace the communication systems available to them disrupted the means to command, and placed the burden of getting it back in synch on the guys with the signal flags on their shoulders.

In Custer’s case his signal boys sat around on their horses on the other side of the hill, waiting for instructions. That wasn’t the case in Vietnam though. In Vietnam in 1966–1967 the Signaleers got about devising new ways to build communications nets that would overcome the limitations of the equipment they had, and fight the heat, humidity and topography for supremacy.

Much like shouting from horse to horse as the Cavalry rode along, in Vietnam the problem wasn’t communicating from one chopper to another… it was helping the boys on the ground communicate back to HQ in the rear... to call in fire support or otherwise report and coordinate their activities. The introduction of the helicopter, and the propensity for commanders to use it as their airborne HQ, both made this problem more acute as well as provided a means to overcome it. With the HQ effectively split between rear echelon locations and a mobile spot somewhere in the air underneath the commander’s helicopter seat, the solution to providing everyone with communication was simple: move the commo hub from the ground up into the air too, and from that location then proceed to build an FM radio net able to act both as a mobile communication hub as well as an airborne relay for any ground communication unit unable to reach the rest of the units involved.

Airborne FM radio nets – such a simple solution to such a big problem… except of course that the TOE didn’t provide for any such thing.

No matter… the Signal Corps boys in Vietnam would build them anyway.

As these systems took shape the equipment brought together and how it was distributed across the battle area typically revolved around each combat commander’s personal approach to battle. Some wanted to be on the ground with their troops. Others liked to be above them, swooping in for clear views of the action and moving troops around as needed to control the battle space. Still others spent their time both in the air and on the ground, and depended on rear echelon HQ people to parse their commands to bring fire and troops to bear on the enemy. To suit their individual needs Signaleers built complex networks of distributed systems with some of the equipment in the air acting as a relay, while other parts of it were distributed both in the commander’s own helicopter as well as back at HQ. Most important, in doing all of this the Signal guys became adept at moving equipment around in real time to create new hubs, nodes, links, relays and shifting command posts… all while the battle was underway.

As the structure of these FM radio nets took shape one could expect to see each combat commander in a helicopter of his own, equipped with two AN/VRC-12 series radios with a radio operator stuck in for insurance. If he was a Division commander, he usually kept his radios on the Division and Brigade nets. Sometimes it was necessary for lower level commanders on the ground to have access to these nets too. If so, and if the jungle or terrain made it impossible to link to them, then another helicopter was employed to act as a relay for both the airborne and ground commanders.[2]

At the same time, usually with the help of the radio operator, an airborne Division commander would monitor the various maneuver Battalion nets involved in the campaign. To do this the Signal boys again had to come up with a field expedient solution. To solve this problem they disassembled the command helicopter console to make room for a third AN/VRC-12. This one was set up with push-button tuning for preselected channels, thus making it easy for the commander or his aide to shift between the various Brigades and Battalions. With a few quick clicks a commander could monitor or command his Brigade through the second radio, while at the same time giving maneuver commands to his Battalions through the third radio.

Back in the first part of this article (posted in Part I) we looked closely at Major General William E. DePuy's combat operations during the battle of EL PASO II, in which he used an airborne communication platform to control his troops. If one looks at the extent of the combat area DePuy’s 1st Infantry Division was responsible for, one can see that even with an airborne steed there was more territory to cover than his Division was capable of managing from a logistics and support standpoint. This meant that not only did DePuy have to be maneuverable, but so did his communication system(s). Because of the large region he and his horse covered, the communication systems set up to support him had to be dependable beyond measure. Or, in other words, the FM net built had to be able to maneuver as he did, galloping from one place to another as DePuy faced the Indians... much like Custer did.

In the case of FM nets, central to the concept of reliability is the creation of a relay or retransmission station able to cover as much of the territory involved as possible. In DePuy’s case the choice was either to create an airborne version, or find a mountain somewhere where its height, line of sight and ability to be secured made it more optimal than a constantly hovering chopper. Fortunately, Nui Ba Den presented itself for this purpose, and the Signaleers picked it.

On this forsaken rock pile they built an automatic retransmission station able to act unattended to keep the net functioning. To make sure Charlie wasn’t tempted to come over and unplug the equipment, the position was fortified. More than just being a nice added touch, fortifying Nui Ba Den was a necessity as except for the postage stamp area where the signal site sat the enemy controlled the rest of the hill. Strangely, as was to prove the case with many other mountain top signal sites in Vietnam, for some reason Charlie was willing to share these precipices with the U.S. Army’s Signaleers. Only on rare occasions were combat operations mounted against these easy target signal sites, it seeming that the rest of the time both the NVA and V.C. were satisfied to leave things as they were, and share the surrounding ground. In the case of Nui Ba Den, the height of this absurdity even carried over to both sides sharing a common waterhole.

Clever as the Signaleers were that scrambled to come up with solutions to support expanded airborne combat operations, they deserved only part of the credit. The rest of the credit belonged to commanders like General DePuy, who understood not just the need for reliable communications but the extra time and authority his Signaleers needed to assure that it was there when he needed to depend on it. Without good, solid communications to support Division level, constantly shifting, highly mobile ops, the whole system of command and control would have broken down. If that happened, then no matter how quickly DePuy’s steed got him and his Big Red One to the place of action, the result would more often than not have turned out like that of Custer.

Instead, being aware of the need for planning as well as command and control, whenever intelligence indicated an enemy buildup that seemed valuable enough to go after, General DePuy would assemble a real-time, on-demand conference—without regard for the hour of the day—and lay out for his key staff officers his intentions. Among these advisors DePuy always included the Division Signal Officer. More importantly, under instructions from  DePuy the final selection of the forward command post location for each engagement of the enemy was made by G-3 and the signal officer… together. DePuy then gave his approval, but only after assuring that the selection would have the capacity for the communications needed to support the operation. An astute commander, DePuy made sure everything at his disposal was ready before taking his Fighting First into combat… including assuring that sufficient helicopter support had been assigned to the commo guys, to make sure they were able to get their required equipment to where it was needed.

Thus, with the combined effort of a group of local Signaleers hell bent on coming up with field solutions to meet their Division commander’s need, and a commander who gave high priority to his signal Battalion’s requests, the 1st Infantry Division was always able to get the communication it needed where it was needed, when it was needed, for as long as it was needed. 

 

             

Footnotes

[1] Nathaniel Philbrick, The Last Stand, Viking Press, pages 213 - 217. - To return to your place in the text click here:  

[2] The AN/VRC-12 (and later the AN/VRC-43 through VRC-49) is a combat-proven vehicular radio set used in Vietnam both in ground vehicles (from Jeeps to armor) and helicopters. Its strength came in its ability to support multiple tactical deployment roles because of its facility to be assembled into different configurations for different uses. The radio transmitter-receiver provided 920 VHF/FM voice channels in the 30-76 MHz range and consisted of three major units: Receiver-Transmitter RT-246A/VRC with a channel-presetting capability (10 pushbuttons), Manual Receiver-Transmitter RT-524A/VRC with built-in loudspeaker, and an Auxiliary Receiver R-442A/VRC.  - To return to your place in the text click here:

Sources

U.S.  Army in WWII, The War In The Pacific, Victory In Papua, Samuel Milner.

Want to read Part I to this story? Click here:

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