Revealed: The Super Epic Battle Where 100 Australian Soldiers Defeated 2,500 Viet Cong

Michael Peck

Security,

A forgotten chapter in Vietnam War history.

America didn’t fight the Vietnam War alone. Though we tend to think that the United States did all the fighting, there were other nations as well.

Australia was one of them. Some sixty thousand Australians served in Vietnam, in what the Australian government—though not Australian antiwar protesters—saw as a necessary struggle to keep Communism from invading the Land Down Under.

The epic battle of Battle of Long Tan, where one hundred Australians defeated as many as 2,500 Viet Cong, is to Australia what Khe Sanh and Ia Drang are to America. The story began in the spring of 1966, when the First Australian Task Force, composed of Australian and New Zealand troops, set up a base at Nui Dat, southeast of Saigon. After the Viet Cong mortared the base on August 17, 1966, the First ATF dispatched a force to locate the weapons. The 105 soldiers of D Company, Sixth Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment, backed by a three-man New Zealand forward observer team to call in artillery, were dismayed to learn that they would be missing a concert at the base. What they didn’t know was that Australian signals intelligence had been intercepting radio signals from a Viet Cong regiment that appeared to be headed toward their patrol area.

Music would soon be the least of the Australians’ worries. On the afternoon of August 18, as they arrived at the Long Tan rubber plantation, D Company was hit by the entire Viet Cong 275th Regiment. The attackers were no ragged band of part-time insurgents: the 275th was a Viet Cong Main Force unit of well-armed, full-time guerrillas in uniform. These VC knew their business: pouncing on an exposed and outnumbered enemy column was a tactic they excelled at.

It was just after 4 p.m. when one of D Company’s platoons was ambushed, killing or wounding one third of its men. D Company commander Maj. Harry Smith and his soldiers soon realized this wasn’t a hit-and-run guerrilla attack, but an all-out assault by regular soldiers. As if being outnumbered twenty-five to one wasn’t bad enough, monsoon weather grounded any air support.

According to one account of the battle,

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