The Battle of Long Tan

Transmission Films has produced a new movie highlighting Australian and New Zealand engagement in the Vietnam War.

Outnumbered. Outgunned. Never Out of Courage. 

Late afternoon August 18, 1966 South Vietnam – for three and a half hours, in the pouring rain, amid the mud and shattered trees of a rubber plantation called Long Tan, Major Harry Smith and his dispersed company of 108 young and mostly inexperienced Australian and New Zealand soldiers are fighting for their lives, holding off an overwhelming enemy force of 2,500 battle-hardened Viet Cong and North Vietnamese soldiers. 

With their ammunition running out, their casualties mounting and the enemy massing for a final assault, each man begins to search for the strength to triumph over an uncertain future with honour, decency and courage.  

Ed Timperlake, an A-4 Marine Corps pilot during the Vietnam War commented:

It is a brilliant movie of courage of an Army infantry unit being supported by Arty.

I have never seen combined arms shown as being  so continuously  important  to winning a battle ( happened a lot but not often depicted) and AmTracs courageously to the rescue.

Ours  often were called flaming coffins-so briefing was try and ride on the top!

F-4s tried to help but as accurately shown very nasty viz all around in that type of  Jungle in that part of Vietnam-much like our USMC F-4s  bombing in Cambodia.