"60mm mortar" Topic

I thought there was a discussion on this already, but if there is, I can't find it. How widely were 60mm mortars used by US troops?

For my father it was mission dependent. Recoilless rifles were left in their packing crates at base. M60s and mortars went out with the company any time he thought he'd need it. He was in the 199th based in Song Be, III Corps

The US Army had long done away with the 60mm by the Vietnam War. The US Marines still had it in their TO&Es. However, I have heard of a number of cases where the Army units worked with the Marines and swapped out their 81mm for the Marines 60mm. The 81mm was more useful to the USMC as they tended to work more in the Lowlands near the bases, while the 60mm were more useful to the Army units operating in the Highlands.

Cheers. That's what I thought, but wanted a bit of confirmation.

FABET01 +1

For the Marines, the 60s saw a lot of use. On operations, usually the 81s were left back at the base due to their weight
and load. The little 60 was fondly called the company artillery. They were often sent out along on platoon sized operations. I cannot speak for the entire war, but only '68.

I laughed at Mark's comment about the 106s. Some things stayed the same in different branches of service. On a fire support base or larger, they did come in handy.

I'd love to see some 28mm USMC 60s available!

Sorry I missed the 60mm bit.

He took the 81mm. The 60mm was really long gone.

Yes, when I started Army ROTC in '75, no 60mms. Just 81s and 4.2s …

Most of out CAP units had one for self support. That's if they had a compound. Got pretty good with it (no sights).

CAP?

Combined Action Platoon. IIRC these were similar or the same as the RUFF PUFFS – regional popular forces. A few US MARINES plus some locals armed by the US.

Cheers Skarper.

Yes, just another of the plethora of types of US units that tried to help out SVN. Some more effective than others. But as so often said some of the SVN forces just were not up to the task. Which in turn cost the US more and more blood & treasure.

When we stood down in 72 there was an "amnesty truck" parked on the company street, the idea being that all the weapons, etc, that we had collected but couldn't take home would go in the back of the truck with no questions asked.

Engineer Company (Provisional)/196th Infantry Brigade was much larger that the standard engineer company; we had 12 platoons, one of them armored. We were also blessed with a larger than standard number of troops whose thought processes were … well, unusual … ; this being the case, the single truck ended up being one of three.

Among the souvenirs nobody was going to get past the MPs: three 3.5" bazookas (no ammunition), one M17 flamethrower (empty tanks), two 55-gallon drums filled with handguns from every country on the planet (none safe to fire), enough AK47s to equip NVA infantry platoon, an RPD light machinegun, a 90mm recoilless rifle, a disturbingly large collection of grenades, and four 60mm mortars with 12 rounds of HE.

Of all this stuff, we couldn't figure out where the mortars came from; I suspect our Kit Carson scout was the gun-runner but he had already traded his ARVN uniform for a set of black pajamas, so there was no way to find out.

LT

It was common for army units to trade with ARVN form 60mm mortars. 81mm mortars mostly left at the base camp but some units would have one sent out to units in the field at dusk along with the resupply to provide illumination if attacked during the night. They were then picked up again the next morning.

Another reason the Marines liked the 60mm was that you could have each grunt carry 1-2 rounds. They were quick to set up and could direct fire (gunner observes the target) effectively. The WP round was especially effective.

With a 10% range estimation error it was no problem bracketing with 25m adjustments between rounds and pinning down a target at up to 750m with a 5 round barrage and then correct on target for the next barrage. You could be dropping a round down the tube every 2 seconds if you needed to.

Most games do not use them correctly. If they did most small skirmish games would be over pretty quickly.

Wolfhag

Good intel guys !