Great pictures! Thanks for the help.

We used to have the Seabees do things for us on occassion, and they would fly out this little bulldozer under a helecopter. It was about the size of a VW. That's the basic dozer I saw more than anyother up north. All the big stuff was used for road construction, and we didn't have any roads. But I did walk upon a rusting Jap steamroller just setting in the weeds.
gary

Andy -

My observations were from the Da Nang area in 1969 and 1970.

The Navy vehicles I remember seeing were painted haze grey, for the most part. Many of the Navy "jeeps" were M-38's rather than M-151's. I recall they also used many civilian-type vehicles - carryalls, school buses, tractor-trailer rigs, etc. If you can find any stateside pics from a Naval Base from that era, you can get a pretty good idea as to what types of vehicles were in use.

They did a lot of road construction around Da Nang, primarily using what appeared to be civilian-type heavy equipment - paving machines, graders, rollers, etc. I think they used 5-ton dump trucks to move gravel, sand and other materials.

The Sea-Bees uniforms were basically old-style Marine Corps utilities (Stateside type, not jungle utilities), with the sleeves cut off the jackets to make short-cleeved uniforms. (They called them "greens".) They wore Marine Corps style utility covers (hats). As I recall, the Sea Bees worked mostly at night "under the lights" so they would not disrupt traffic during the day-time. Obviously they were working in very secure areas with almost no chance of contact with the VC or NVA. Because of that, they did not wear flack-jackets or helmets, but I am sure they had them handy.

Outside of Da Nang, I am sure they were a bit more "tactical". I just never saw them out where we lived. The combat engineering, including building bunkers and hooches, was done by the Marine Engineers.

If I remember more or can find some pics, I'll add later.

Semper fi,
Dave

Dave/Gary,

Thanks for the information. I always like to get the information first hand if possible, especially about the vehicles and uniforms. Navy reference information is way to hard to come by if it is not a ship a plane or SEALs. And most of the stuff I have found contridicts each other so this is really helpful.

Does anyone know if there basic vehicles (trucks, Jeeps) were ever armed and armored the way the Army did? Also, did the have any armored vehicles for security like the Airforce did with the M706 and M113?

Thanks again,

Andy

Andy -

I don't recall seeing any armor add-ons on the Navy vehicles. I am sure they had M-60's, but I recall seeing only small arms. By the way, the Marine vehicles that I saw were all soft-skins as well. The only semi-hardened gun trucks that I saw were Army 5 tons with messed up M-113's in their beds. These were on convoys going through the Hai Van Pass from Da Nang to Hue City.

Marines usually just through a couple of sand bags on the floor of the vehicle for protection from mines (if that) and hit the road. I was in artillery and we ran ammo trucks for resupply almost every day. They were all soft-skin M-35's.

I did see a beast that we called an "armored husky" in the villages a couple of times. They were tracked vehicles that had some armor welded to their sides. I am not sure what the base vehicle was for these and I have found no references to them online. I think I have a pic somewhere in my stuff. If I can find it, I'll post it.

Semper Fi,
Dave

Hi Dave
I think they were M733 carriers. There's a small dark picture in Jim Mesko's Armor in Vietnam book. They were based on the M116 amphibious carrier chassis. They were fitted with armor panels on the sides, the rear and the front that gave the vehicle hull a rather jagged look. The one on the book picture is armed with 2 M60 MGs, one .50 cal MG and an automatic grenade launcher.
I haven't found any M733 picture online yet, but here's a M116 Husky :


HTH
Frenchy

Here it is (from www.jedsite.info) !



HTh
Frenchy

That is something different. I am sure that there are no kits of that around.

Thanks for the additional information Dave.

For those who are interested, there's a few more M733 and other M116-based prototypes pictures HERE

Frenchy

Frenchy -

That's it!!!! Thank you!

It shows that I wasn't simply halucinating!!! I'll still try to locate my pics.......if they weren't among those stolen when i was on the Santuary (hospital ship).

Thanks again.
Dave

You're welcome Dave !
Just came across more interesting Vietnam M116s and XM733s pics :
Husky Platoon

HTH
Frenchy