… there are lots of cases where “the narrative” — the method of organizing disparate facts for easy transmission and digestion — becomes The Narrative, all caps, the conspirazoid stuff. Al from da Nort brought up the POW/MIA thing from the Vietnam War, which is a great example. […] back in the 1980s The Narrative (note the capital letters) was that the Vietnamese government was still holding American prisoners of war for some reason.
It routinely showed up on the “news magazine” shows, and of course there were whole series of movies about it: The Missing in Action flicks with Chuck Norris, Rambo II, I’m sure I’m forgetting a few. And though the “firsthand testimony” for this thesis was always of the “somebody knew somebody who heard from somebody that Lt. Smith suddenly disappeared from a POW camp back in 1968,” there was one seemingly strong piece of archival evidence: The seemingly disproportionate number of soldiers and airmen officially listed as “missing in action”.
And yet … c’mon, man, as a guy who dodged that war probably said back when he could still remember what century he’s living in. Why would the Vietnamese do that? All the mooted explanations — slave labor, selling captured pilots to the Russians for training purposes — didn’t pass the smell test. So a historian started digging into it, and while I read MIA: Mythmaking in America 30 years ago in college, I remember the crux of his argument:
In the war’s early days, the military used a statistic called KIA/BNR — killed in action / body not recovered. Everyone knows Lt. Smith is dead, but since his aircraft was vaporized by a SAM over Haiphong, his remains can’t be returned to his people. As Al notes, though, when a pilot was killed in action, his wife and kids got a puny condolence check from the government and kicked out of base housing. Thus the surviving pilots, acting from noble motives, started fudging. “Well … maybe Lt. Smith’s plane wasn’t vaporized. I might’ve seen a chute. It’s all very confusing; remember I was going Mach 1 at the time, dodging flak …” Mrs. Smith and the little Smiths get to keep drawing a paycheck, keep living on base housing, etc. So the official MIA list grew.
Enter Richard Nixon and that sneaky rat fuck Kissinger. Needing a way to prolong the war while concluding “peace with honor” — that is, to weasel out without seeming too weaselly — they needed a sticking point at the treaty table. The MIA issue was perfect for that. What about Lt. Smith? Of course the Vietnamese government can’t account for him; he was blown to atoms over Haiphong; but there’s his name on the missing list. Perhaps he’s in double secret prison!
And thus “the narrative” — the perfectly understandable-in-context lie that changed KIA/BNR to MIA — became “The Narrative”, that the Vietnamese were, for some unfathomable reason, still hanging on to captured American servicemen. Who knows why those inscrutable Orientals do anything, and what kind of America-hating hippie scum are you to ask questions? Don’t you want to bring our boys back home?
Severian, “Kayfabe”, Rotten Chestnuts, 2021-07-04.
October 13, 2021
QotD: The POW/MIA theories from the post-Vietnam War era
July 29, 2021
MAT 49: Iconic SMG of Algeria and Indochina
Forgotten Weapons
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The MAT-49 was developed by France after World War Two to satisfy the need for a more modern submachine gun to replace the MAS-38. The military had come around to standardizing on the 9x19mm cartridge for its pistols and subguns, and the 7.65mm MAS-38 was not feasible to convert. All three state arsenals and the Hotchkiss company submitted designs, and the Tulle arsenal won out with a gun that borrows substantially from the American M3 “Grease Gun”.
About 700,000 MAT-49s were produced between 1949 and 1979, when it (along with the MAS 49/56 rifle) was replaced by the FAMAS bullpup rifle. During that time it saw substantial combat in France’s colonial wars, notable Algeria and Indochina. Despite being a relatively heavy weapon, it came to be well liked by all who used it for its durability and reliability.
Many thanks to the anonymous collector who let me take a look at this piece and bring you a video on it!
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May 28, 2021
Tank Chats #108 | M48 | The Tank Museum
The Tank Museum
Published 23 Oct 2020Tank Museum Historian David Fletcher discusses the M48 “Patton”, an American first generation Main Battle Tank introduced in 1952. Throughout its service life, the M48 has been very successful and has seen service with many countries including the Americans in Vietnam and the Israel Defense Forces.
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May 15, 2021
QotD: Military history
Victor Davis Hanson, Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise of Western Power, 2001.
March 16, 2021
QotD: Combat accounting
Enter the flexible and utilitarian morals and institutional larceny that allows the best-run military machines to cope with the insanity of war. Because a squadron, roughly comparable in size to an infantry battalion, is several hundred men, and even at 1960s prices, multiple millions of dollars worth of machines, tools, parts, equipment, and miscellany, from nuts and bolts to aircraft engines, and everything in between. Canteens, machine guns, flak jackets, toilet seats, high explosive ordnance, and everything else you can imagine, and a million things you cannot, in quantities normally only encountered at a Wal-Mart or Target store, or aboard a 100-car freight train.
And not to put the point too finely, 8000 miles away from home, in a war zone where things were destroyed daily by tons of bombs, rockets, mines, shells, bullets, and of course, the finest pilfering skills of one of the most thriving black market economies of all time. Anything not guarded 24/7 would disappear in minutes in Vietnam, up to and including entire aircraft and other major end-user items. (Think things like APCs, tanks, artillery pieces, jeeps, etc.)
And senior NCOs and junior officers are responsible for all that stuff, as well as every commanding officer having to personally sign for and accept responsibility for everything down to the last door knob and belt buckle. Which, amidst such widespread theft and combat destruction, was sheer insanity coupled with practical impossibility.
Until the helicopter went missing.
Because after a dutiful search for survivors yielded nothing whatsoever, a report had to be filed, and items accounted for. Whereupon some shifty but brilliant NCO or senior NCO pointed out to a junior officer that it would be rather convenient to cover for all the tons of things blown up, stolen, lost, pilfered, etc., to just include them on the manifest and equipment carried on that now gone-forever helicopter.
And so, in rapid order, every crew chief, maintenance shop, and officer from warrant to XO certified, in detail, the manifest of tools, spare parts, and military miscellany that had been aboard the doomed flight, and the CO signed off on it, immediately bringing the reality of property on hand into line with what was actually able to be found, touched, and wielded by that squadron.
This boon to military accounting had, of course, the obvious flaw.
Someone higher up in the hierarchy, presented with the dozens of pages of missing gear on the missing aircraft, did some napkin math, and observed deftly that the weight of the missing items would be roughly twenty times the maximum lifting capacity of the helicopter in question, and the only way a craft actually so burdened could have achieved aerial flight was if someone had detonated an explosive device under the skids in the mid-teen kiloton range. Otherwise, it would have been like trying to get an elephant off the ground using a pair of hummingbird wings.
But the military being the military, no one wanted to rock the boat, and so the obviously fraudulent work of fiction was funneled right back to the gaping maw of Pentagon reports, where it disappeared like the Ark of the Covenant at the end of Raiders Of The Lost Ark, and the cosmic scales were in balance.
Raconteur, “Squadron Property and Cultural Rubicons”, Raconteur Report, 2018-09-27.
March 14, 2021
China Lake 40mm Pump Action Grenade Launcher
Forgotten Weapons
Published 11 Dec 2020http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons
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Possibly the coolest small arm used by the United States in the Vietnam War was the China Lake 40mm pump action grenade launcher. Only 24 of these were made, each fitted by hand. Of those, 2 went to MACVSOG, 2 to Army Force Recon, and the remaining 20 the the Navy SEALS. They were used as an ambush initiation weapon, with 4 rounds of rapid-fire 40mm HE grenades available.
Only five original examples survive today; four in US museums and military institutions and one in a museum in Saigon. An effort was made in 2004 to build reproductions, it is one of those used in this video. This project was not ultimately successful, but did lead to a very interesting series of events with the Airtronic company and the US Marine Corps, which will be detailed in a following video. Special thanks to Dutch Hillenburg and Kevin Dockery for making this video possible!
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March 8, 2021
M79: The Iconic “Bloop Tube” 40mm Grenade Launcher
Forgotten Weapons
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Combat experience with the bazooka rocket launcher in World War Two and its larger versions in the Korean War convinced the US military that a better weapon was needed to give front-line troops a direct-fire way to attack enemy strong points. The bazooka was bulky, not particularly accurate, and created a lot of backblast signature when fired. This led to a multi-part development effort involving design of a small grenade body, reliable but cheap fusing system, and a cartridge design that could launch it.
The result was the 40x46mm grenade. It uses a “high-low” system (originally developed by Rheinmetall during World War Two) in which a powder charge is fired in a small compartment within the cartridge case. The initial pressure in this compartment is some 35,000 psi, which is plenty high to ensure complete and repeatable powder burn. At peak pressure, the internal compartment ruptures, allowing the propellant gasses to expand into the full case volume, which lowers the pressure to about 3,000 psi. This lower pressure is safe to use with an aluminum barrel, and propels the grenade at about 250 fps, giving it a range of about 400 yards without generating excessive recoil.
The M79 proved to be very accurate and reliable. Its downside was the need for the grenadier to carry a backup sidearm, as the M79 could not be used at close range. Almost as soon as it was introduced, work began on developing a launcher which could be attached to the M16 service rifle. This would first be the XM-148, and then ultimately the M203 that would replace the M79 in service. M79 launchers can still be found all over the world, however, as they are robust and reliable.
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February 28, 2021
Cultural appropriation foods around the world
J.J. McCullough
Published 14 Dec 2019Baguettes in Vietnam! Curry in Japan! Tea in India! Let’s look at the practice of eating food from other countries, which is more widespread than you might think, thanks to imperialism and immigration.
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January 22, 2021
Shooting the M3A1 Grease Gun
Forgotten Weapons
Published 9 Mar 2018The M3 (and its followup improved M3A1 model) was the United States’ answer to the high cost and manufacturing complexity of the Thompson submachine gun. The M3 “Grease Gun” (because really, that is what it looks like) was a very inexpensive weapon with a stamped and welded receiver and only a few milled parts. It also had the slowest rate of fire of any World War 2 submachine gun at about 450 rounds/minute. Its weight, compactness, and controllability made it almost universally preferred over the Thompson, at least by soldiers who had to carry and fight with either of them.
The Grease Gun is reputedly extremely controllable because of its low rate of fire, but this is my first time to actually try shooting one. Will it live up to that reputation?
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January 19, 2021
M3 and M3A1 Grease Gun SMGs
Forgotten Weapons
Published 14 Apr 2017The US began looking for a cost-effective replacement for the Thompson submachine gun in 1942, and the “Grease Gun” was the result. Designed by George Hyde (a noted firearms designer at the time) and Frederick Sampson (GM/Inland chief engineer), it was a very simple and almost entirely stamped firearm. Chambered for the .45ACP cartridge, it is notable for its very low rate of fire — 350-400 rpm, which made it quite controllable and easy to shoot for relatively inexperienced troops.
The M3 was a quite reliable gun (and what problems it did have were mostly due to its single-feed magazine and not the gun itself), but a revision program was begun in April 1944. This would produce the M3A1, which further simplified the design by removing the charging handle (which had been the one mechanical trouble point of the M3 anyway) and replacing it simply with a notch in the bolt to cock the gun with a finger.
While the M3 and M3A1 were replaced in front-line service in 1957, they would remain in military inventory as armament for tank crews and truck drivers until 1992 — quite the legacy for such a crude looking weapon!
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January 16, 2021
M2 Carbine: Assault Rifle or Submachine Gun?
Forgotten Weapons
Published 23 Mar 2017The M2 Carbine was a mechanically simple modification of the M1 Carbine to allow fully automatic fire. The fire prototypes of the M1 Carbine had actually been selective-fire guns, but that requirement had been dropped by the time the Winchester design was officially adopted as the M1. It was a feature quickly requested by troops once the Carbine entered active service, though.
In 1944 the US Army acknowledged this, and introduced the M2. A total of 217,000 were manufactured at the end of WW2, and did see limited service on Okinawa — and then extensive use in the Korean War and Vietnam War.
The M1 Carbine has long generated controversy among those attempting to rigidly define its role, as it falls awkwardly between the notion of submachine gun and assault rifle, firing a cartridge that is clearly more powerful than a pistol round but equally clearly less powerful than an intermediate rifle round. Its originally intended role was as a personal defense weapon more effective than the 1911 pistol, and in service it always scored high marks for handiness and poor marks for combat effectiveness. The opinion of soldiers using the Carbine in either its M1 or M2 form was very much dependent on what role they expected it to serve.
In my opinion, its light weight and stock design make it a sub-optimal submachine gun, and its light cartridge makes it a sub-optimal assault rifle. But if you need a light and handy carbine to carry a lot and only use in emergencies, it is hard to beat for its time.
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December 9, 2020
Historical Models Summarized: The Military Expedition
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 18 Feb 2016Today, Blue discusses recurring themes in history! This one’s the Military Expedition, aka what happens when a powerful military juggernaut gets too big for its britches and starts saying stuff like “too big to fail” unironically.
Blue: If you’re curious about the weird chart/graph thing blue showed during the Napoleon segment, look up Charles Joseph Minard [mentioned here and here], the guy who made it. It’s a really cool chart that shows the size of the army as it traveled across Russia (tan) and back (black). You can see how perilous the journey was based on how narrow the line gets. Graphs are cool.
November 25, 2020
The Coolest Gun You Will See All Day: China’s Type 64 Silenced Pistol
Forgotten Weapons
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The Type 64 is a dedicated suppressed pistol first introduced in 1965 and used in the Vietnam War. It uses a rimless version of the .32 ACP cartridge (7.65x17mm) in a 9-round Makarov-like magazine. Despite outward similarity to the Makarov (especially the grip), the design is wholly unique internally. It uses basically a miniaturized AK bolt to allow the shooter to select between blowback semiauto functioning and single shot manual operation. The bolt’s rotating locking lugs prevent it from cycling when locked, in a very clever alternative use of the rotating bolt system. The suppressor has two chambers, using a combination of baffles and wire mesh as suppressor elements. In addition to standard ammunition, a plastic-sabot frangible load was also developed for use in situations like airline hijackings, and this loading is why some sources reference a maximum effective range of 15 meters.
For all its technical cleverness, the Type 64 is a rather heavy pistol, at 1.8kg / 4 pounds. It was replaced in 1967 by the substantially lighter and simpler Type 67, which weighed only 1.05kg / 2.3 pounds. This particular Type 64 was originally owned by Mitch Werbell III, giving it an even more interesting history …
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September 15, 2020
France’s Super-Light 50mm Modele 37 Grenade Launcher
Forgotten Weapons
Published 1 Sep 2018Sold for $1,725
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A new very light and portable mortar to replace the V-B rifle grenade was one of the facets of the French plan for rearmament and modernization after World War I. The concept for the weapons that would become the L.Gr. Mle 37 was first requested in 1924 — but like so almost all the other parts of that arms program, it was crippled by delays through the 1920s and 1930s. Only in the late 1930s when war was looking imminent did the program finally move forward.
The design, created by Captain Nahan of the Chatellerault arsenal, was adopted in 1937 and a whopping 21,950 were ordered in January of 1938 — and the order was quickly revised up to 50,000. However, only 2900 had been produced by the time of the armistice in June 1940. Production resumed in 1944, and the launcher did see use in Indochina. In addition, its 50mm grenade was the basis for the postwar French rifle grenades, as used on the MAS-36 LG 48, the MAS-44, and MAS-49 rifles. As fired from the mortar, the projectile weighed about one pound (0.4kg) and had a range of 80 to 460 meters, with an effective rate of fire up to 20 rounds per minute.
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August 8, 2020
The Cold War & Decolonization — History Summarized
Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published 7 Aug 2020Keep safe and stylish with a Red-And-Blue facemask from Volante Design, or DONATE to help students in public schools receive high-quality masks for free — https://bit.ly/2DwE9O7
August of 2020 marks the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. So I wanted to make a video about that. That was a bad idea…
What do you get when a Classically-Minded historian ventures about 2,000 years outside of their comfort zone? A mess. A well-intentioned mess is what you get. BUT a mess that we can learn from! So join me as we dig into the aftermath of the Second World War to analyze the origins of the Cold War and the decolonization of European Empires.
SOURCES & Further Reading: The Cold War by Gaddis, The Wars of French Decolonization by Clayton, British decolonization, 1946-1997 by McIntyre, The Cold War’s Killing Fields by Chamberlin, The Cold War: A Very Short Introduction by McMahon, and “Crash Course European History [Parts 42-47]” by Green.
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From the comments:
Overly Sarcastic Productions
1 hour ago (edited)
Some clarifications:
North Africa did of course see conflict, the Pacific did get occupied — even the places that didn’t (eg: India) still paid for the war. Damn double-negatives.That weird Romania-Hungary-Russia border is a holdover from WWII. The border lasted until 1946 and was changed in 1947. Later in the video you’ll see the more familiar borders.
Indonesia declared Independence in 1945 (Like Vietnam), but the Netherlands didn’t withdraw until 1949, hence my mention of ’49.
