Chapter 365
14th June 1943
The Allied landing beaches had been selected because they were the least bad of a set of bad choices. Any farther north, and they would have run straight into the mountains, any farther south, and they would have landed in the middle of the Mekong Delta. But in the end one thing had decided for the Allies, and that was the close proximity to Saigon. From the landing area, which was in terrain almost all commanders present tried their best not to think about, to the centre of the biggest city in southern Vietnam and the rest of French-Indochina it was less than sixty miles on god-awful but at least present roads and footpaths. It was terrain where the Marines with their Light Infantry ways would come into their own, but it still favoured the defence.
Nominally, five Divisions were defending the area of southern Vietnam and parts of modern-day Cambodia, but only two were Japanese, the 1st Guards and the 15th Infantry Divisions. The other three were Chinese and only nominally Divisions. Not because the Chinese Government was unwilling to send it's unreliable troops to where they could do little damage, but rather more because the Japanese wanted to ensure that they could overpower and disarm them if they had to.
But all those plans would soon be for naught, because the Allies had managed to achieve strategic as well as tactical surprise. The Japanese knew that the Marine Divisions and 'reinforcements' had been embarked, but Japanese Naval Intelligence and it's Army counterpart had convinced themselves that Borneo was the target. While there were several good reasons to believe so, Allied planners had long before the Siamese defection decided that removing the enemy from the South-East Asian mainland was to be the priority.
The first Allied troops ashore that night were a party of British Marines landed by a submarine, and even as it disappeared back into the night and under the waves, Operation Teardrop was well and truly under way. It was one of a dozen such groups, all belonging to the Special Boat Service, and their task was not, as usual, to prepare the area for actual landings, but rather to make the Japanese believe it and force them to deploy their reserves and generally make them look away from the real landing beaches.
The first landings took place at 03:32 hours local time, with the first shots fired four minutes later when a group of twelve SBS soldiers ran into a Japanese bicycle patrol. By four in the morning, sporadic gunfire could be heard along a sixty mile stretch of the coast, and over time it became louder and louder, as the Japanese began to deploy first sections, then platoons, and then companies to battle the unseen invaders, while on the other side the local resistance, which had lain low at a very politely formulated British request, sprang forth, even as their leaders gave the orders to do so, having been informed that special forces would be landed a few days before.
In spite of the hap-hazard nature of this part of 'Teardrop', friendly fire incidents were rare.
Elsewhere, the Allies acted in a more direct manner. Force Z had drawn up in line formation little more than two miles from the coast. Cunningham had decided to run this risk, because he assumed, correctly as it would turn out, that for one, the Allies had tactical as well as strategic surprise, and between the SBS, the nationalist resistance, called the Viet Minh, and by that time, around 06:00 hours, also the allied aircraft racing in over the gulf, Japanese attentions would be diverted.
Aboard HMS
Hood, third in line behind
Repulse and
Dunkerque, Rear Admiral Murray glanced at his wristwatch in the low glimmer of the hooded lamp of the chart room and looked at the moon. Perfect landing weather, but too little moon-light for his liking. Still, at least the Japanese would have a hard time spotting any of his ships, at least for another few seconds. All the guns were turned on the beach.
He glanced at the ship's Captain and only nodded.
The Officer turned. “Sparks, send to all ships: Open fire in turn.”
Twenty seconds later the darkness was torn to shreds as one after another the first six 15'' guns fired. In spite of the gathering morning light, the gun flashes still blinded him, but he didn't need night-vision to know that even as the shells raced overhead the landing boats of the leading Regiments head towards the beach.
Landing boat and troops belonging to the 2nd wave landing shortly after sunrise. This section of beach was not shelled. No pictures of the first wave are known to exist.
In some ways he wished that the rest of the Allied Line was here, but they had another task today. Covered by
Implacable,
Vimy Ridge and
Bonaventure, they would attack and destroy what was left of the Japanese base and Cham Rahn Bay. It had been bombed several times before, and it was considered unlikely that there was much of a fleet presence, but Admiral Cunningham was willing to risk his bigger ships now rather than have a bleeding ulcer in the future. Six Dreadnoughts would be enough to permanently end any Japanese activities at the base.
That this would draw as vigorous a response as the Japanese could manage was something Murray was certain Cunningham knew and had considered, but with three Carriers in attendance, air-bases on Borneo and in Vietnam itself under air attack already, whatever planes managed to get off the ground would hopefully shatter their teeth against that force and not interfere with Force Z.
On shore, the Royal Saskatchewan Marine Regiment and it's counterpart from the British 9th Royal Marine Light Infantry Regiment had formed the vanguard of the allied attack, and especially the British Marines were going close to the plan. The Regiment was one of three Regiments that had recently been given one of the old titles and was about to prove itself worthy of that honour. With the 2nd Royal Marine (India) Division and the ANZAC Brigade being conserved in the Theatre Reserve for the invasion of Borneo after the next monsoon, it fell to them and the Canadians to take Saigon so that the bulk of the Chinese reinforcements could be landed.
And since it was almost fifty miles from the beach to Saigon, a flank guard was needed. Since most of the units in the Central highlands were Japanese, though none larger than Brigade size were any closer than Da Nang, the 2nd Chinese Division was supposed to land hot on the heels of the Allied Marines as soon as their Divisions were fully ashore. Until then the British 2nd Brigade would act as flank guard while the Canadians had taken Ba Ria, the closest large settlement, only a few miles from the shore.
Japanese coastal defences, where they had existed in the first place had not lasted long against the tried combination of crack infantry and naval gunfire, but the farther in the Marines moved in, the more resistance stiffened. The two lead Regiments which were then, about an hour after landing, had not yet been joined by the remainder of their respective Brigades which were still in the process of landing, thus they were outnumbered by the Japanese Brigade, the 2nd Brigade of the 15th Infantry that was stationed to the east of Saigon.
Running head-first into them checked their advance, because even though the Japanese Commander of Southern Vietnam was at the time 'unavailable for personal reasons' and wouldn't arrive at his command post until three hours after the initial landings, the Brigade's commander was a professional of the highest order. Thus, he had raised the alarm both towards his superiors and his subordinate units the moment he was woken by the shellfire he heard in the distance and the explosion of the bombs from the air.
Their new position was some fifteen miles inshore, with their backs to the town, and the Marines slammed right into it. Japanese expectations had been that any attack on Saigon would come from the west or the south, so no pre-prepared positions existed, but the Japanese made up for that by an immediate counter-attack that over-ran one of the platoons of the 9th RMLI's 2nd Battalion with all the unfortunate consequences for the men involved. Then however the greater firepower of comparable British units told. By now armament production was so increased that any British rifle section, Marine or not, had a Bren gun of it's own on establishment (though not all of them had drawn them from stores yet), and so the platoons and companies that were scrambling to defend the road and the footpaths of the area against the unexpected and fierce Japanese attack could put up a hailstorm of .303.
Heavy fighting would continue for almost an hour even as more of the Marines and even some of the advance units of the Chinese 2nd Division landed, but it was clear that taking Saigon by storm was not going to happen.
As down broke fully, Allied superiority in the air and at Sea began to tell. Unlike in the Mekong Delta farther south or in the Highlands farther north, there was little to cover the Japanese defenders in the fields and countryside of this part of Vietnam. The Allies had good reasons for trying to bring the Japanese to battle before they retreated to the hills in the distance, and the Japanese had to try and keep the town as from it the enemy would be able to command the entrance of the bay. Of course the Japanese didn't know that the British wouldn't try a direct assault on Saigon, but they had to consider it.
Over the next few hours the Japanese position grew increasingly precarious and the Brigadier requested the Division's ace, the 95th Independent Tank Company. At this point Japanese and Chinese factories were beginning to disgorge increasing numbers of the Type 3 Chi-Nu tanks, so units like the 95th had more and better tanks available, in this case thirteen Type 95 Ha-Go.
However, the light worked in both ways, as the column was caught in the open by a roving flight of bomb-armed Barracuda Mk.Vs. The new versions of both branches of the Barracuda family had one feature that made them more suited to ground attack: two forward-firing 20mm cannons. The two Barracudas approached in the same ground-attack manoeuvre that the Fleet Air Arm had shamelessly poached from it's land-based counterparts, and a furious whirlwind of shells and bombs left six of the thirteen tank burning or torn to shreds. The seven remaining ones continued on into the explosions and the gunfire ahead of them. Up forward allied superiority in naval Artillery began to tell as the light allowed the ships and forward observes to spot for fall of shot and easily correct their fire.
By this time also the combat elements of the respective Canadian and British brigades had landed and the Japanese were slowly being pushed back into the town. With their momentum checked and their rear areas being a frightful mess, the Allied troops did not immediately follow, and for the next half-hour, most fighting ceased. The Japanese almost immediately ejected the civilians from the town and herded them towards the allied lines. Several civilian casualties were caused when Marines running on adrenaline after hours of sustained combat mistook them for attacking Japanese, but almost all of the civilians were led through the lines and then told to stay out of the way as best they could, with the logistical units, such as were ashore at this point, being far too busy trying to untie the knots the divergence from the battleplan had caused.
It did, however, remove any remorse that may have existed within the allied chain of command, and so Lieutenant General Gordon McKay, CG Allied Amphibious Corps, wasted no time in requesting help from Force Z.
tbc
Basically, TTL the Viet Minh is nationalist first and communist a distant second. Like a lot of the far-left movements all over the world, the Vietnamese communists were left adrift. The Soviets are busy elsewhere and wouldn't fund them even if they could because it would indirectly help the British, and the Americans have zero interest in mainland Asia at that time of the war. The Brits on the other hand were rather more eager to help, under the proviso that they at least try and talk with the French once the war is over. Of course, this is oversimplifies things, but it gives you a rough idea of what's going on. Immediate-post-war Vietnam will be chinese-interesting, but for the French far more than the British, as I hear the Vietnamese have long memories. The Helicopter will need to find a different conflict to grow up in though.
My descriptions of the Vietnamese countryside are based on Satellite pictures in Google Earth, pics on the Net and of course various examples of that form of entertainment that uses moving pictures.
I think I also need to say a few personal words. One reason, if not the biggest one in the first place, why I had blockage on this was because it was getting too damn formulaic. Now as a trekkie, I don't really mind predictable episodes and so on, but if you do it alone, writing those over and over is incredibly tedious. Now, I have decided to cull some plotlines, bring others back and basically shift focus somewhat. It'll still be about this war, but you will see more cases where it's relayed in things like newspaper headlines or some such a character reads, and you may not even see the front for a considerable number of chapters. Another problem was I had far too many plotlines, and it was getting harder and harder to keep them even half interesting.
Things I will definitely keep:
1) Ian, Felix and Paperclip, along with the character development stuff I had last running before the break. I like those two and they provide good PoV characters.
2) The members of a certain northern police force will appear again, though probably not in the form you know them. I have plans for Hunt.
3) The resistance on the Philippines. I like the idea of Guerillia Cavalry. Also maybe occasional appearances of LtC. Drake.
4) Major General Quelch and the Commonwealth Technology Board.
5) The 2nd Royal Scots Hussars. They will remain my PoV characters for the main event, as it were.
Consider everything else on hiatus until further notice.