For the 50th Anniversary Vietnam War Group Build I have decided to finally dust off a build I have had on the shelf for some time.  I had always wanted to do a tribute to the Anzac participation in Vietnam, and this group build offered the perfect opportunity.  Today the group build kicked off, so the fun has now begun.  I hope to not only to chronicle the build, but pepper this thread with tidbits of Anzac history in the war as well as equipment use.  So first things first:

A brief history of Anzac participation.

With WW2 over and done, the Aussies and Kiwis were left with the realization that Great Britain was a world away, and that they were in essence on their own in the world of regional politics.  They may walk, talk and act (well, mostly ) like Englishmen, the fact was England was dealing with Germans, French and the great Western Powers while Australia and New Zealand were knee deep in Asian politics.  It was this realization that lead the two countries to sign the ANZUS treaty with the U.S. on September 1st, 1951.  It would be this treaty that would begin the basis for Aussie/Kiwi participation in the Asian wars to come.

The Aussies and Kiwi's would begin to garner valuable experience on jungle fighting while participating with the British in the Malayan Emergency campaign of 1948-1960.  In 1962 the Aussies would send to Vietnam 30 advisers to assist in training anti-communist forces in jungle fighting techniques.  Like the American's, 1965 would formally turn military advising to actual military participation.  The Aussies would, over the course of the war, send about 61,000 soldiers to Vietnam (incurring 521 KIA's and about 3000 wounded) and New Zealand would send 3,890 (incurring 37 KIA's and 187 wounded....bear in mind New Zealand's Army was/is a small one, so numbers are only half the story).  Both countries would formally end their participation in Vietnam by December 1972 with the last troops withdrawn by 1973 (though the Aussies would temporarily send troops back in 1975 to assist in evacuations during the Fall of Saigon).

The Kit:

I will be building the AFV club Centurion Mk5/1 in 1/35 scale.  Additional goodies are their mantlet cover and styrene workable tracks.

Reference Material:

Besides the internet, the books I will be using for reference material is:

Mud and Dust by Michael K Cecil

The Australian Army by Jefferey Grey

Squadron's Centurion In Action

Other than that, a fairly small start on for tonight.  Bucking the trend of starting with the lower hull I decided to start on the turret because....well, because I can.   Already the turret proved annoying.  It is basically molded so that you have a turret bottom, 2 sides and a top.  It makes for awkward seams that will need blending and fiddling to get the top to set right all around.  But Tamiya thin and some Zap-A-Gap seems to be working.

So that's about it for the moment.  I don't know how long this will take, and I do plan on trying a few new ideas as well as possibly building in an order (like, for instance, building the turret before the hull )

'Till next update.

Brian