Riverine operations

[Colonel Kilgore]

I realise that MOCB doesn't deal with brown water actions, but as Peter Pig does make a very nice little PBR, folks might be interested in this publication:

"Combat at Close Quarters: Warfare on the Rivers and Canals of Vietnam". You can buy it in paperback or electronic format from Amazon, or you can download it for free from here (which I am hoping is legitimate):

https://www.history.navy.mil/content/dam/nhhc/research/publications/publication-508-pdf/978-0-945274-74-2.pdf

It's published by the Naval Historical Foundation and includes a wealth of detail and photos.

[Nick]

Just had a look. That seems a really interesting book - lots of useful photos too (I do like a book with pictures!)

Nick

[Colonel Kilgore]

I very much like pictures too - much easier on the little grey cells 

[Antioch (Bob)]

Fascinating part of the war. Had been familiar with some of the river craft...just not where they operated or in the quantities of boats.

Good find....and now thinking about the period.

[Leslie BT]

In the play testing we did play a couple of games with the road changed to a river and then used boats instead of vehicles. It worked well.

[mellis1644]

Got the book and love the idea of boats and rivers vs. road... Would it be a good article for the 15mill mag to give us some idea's etc?

[Colonel Kilgore]

That sounds fun, mellis1644.

Without bridges, the river would cut the board in a way that a road doesn't - how did you get over that in play-testing, Les?

Simon

[mellis1644]

Yeah this would be a great little article for the 15mill and make us all want to buy more PP boats as well

Mark

[Leslie BT]

I think we placed it to one long edge and then you landed from the river bank and used you gun boats for the off table stuff.
We did do one with a couple of crossing points, but we found that both sides used boats, just of very differing types with the Viet Cong having extra so that the White forces had to search to find the enemy.