5 Brutal Booby Traps Used By The Viet Cong

If this has already been posted sorry.
The first one makes me cringe so much. I have to give them credit for the ingenuity and I feel bad for anybody caught in one these. Interesting video to say the least.

a reply to: AMERICANCER

I hate to repeat what everyone else on here says, but a brief summary would be nice.

a reply to: pfishy

Don't piss off the Viet Cong and then go walking around their jungle.

Is that Ali G's voice?

a reply to: AMERICANCER

I cannot watch the video.

Any description you could offer?

originally posted by: pfishy
a reply to: AMERICANCER

I hate to repeat what everyone else on here says, but a brief summary would be nice.

5) a pit with sharpened stakes in it that when tripped, the stakes would spring toward the middle of the pit

4) a cross with sharpened stakes on it that, when tripped, would slam down into a doorway, impaling whoever was in the doorway

3) what amounts to a mace in a tree that, when tripped, would swing down and slam into whoever had tripped it

2) grenade booby traps (pretty simple, not sure why it's #2)

1) punji stake pits, where the bottom of a pit was filled with sharpened stakes and then hidden; when a person stepped on the camouflage they fell on to the stakes, impaling feet and legs

Bear in mind that the VC really liked to cover the tips of their stakes with human feces, which all but insured a massive infection should the victim survive the wound itself.

Gruesome, highly effective traps all around.

a reply to: Shamrock6

This OP brings back bad memories. Our guys eventually discovered the VC's method of mark their booby traps and we had the upper hand then. They would mark the trails by chopping notches in the trees. Each notch was ten paces to the trap...we just added one or two.

We did some booby traps ourselves. If we found cashes, we would take their grenades and replace the fuses with smoke grenade fuses...worked great! Also, salting their ammo with hot loads. That was 46 years ago!

originally posted by: buddah6
a reply to: Shamrock6

Also Salting their ammo with hot loads.

Can someone somewhere please explain what a GI would have to do to "salt" Charlies ammo with his "hot loads"...in the jungle.

a reply to: andy1972

On my camp, there were several special forces teams and they would routinely doctor 7.62mm ammo with extra propellant. When a VCs weapons cashe was found they would replace some the ammo with the doctored ammo and grenades. This would cause a breach explosion in the VCs Ak-47s, SKSs and belt-fed RPDs. The grenades would explode immediately rather than the normal delay. This would generally cause some concern with the VC when they used their ammo.

I was a heavy weapons platoon leader and rarely left my hill top! My next tour in RVN was more exciting two years later.

originally posted by: buddah6
a reply to: andy1972

On my camp, there were several special forces teams and they would routinely doctor 7.62mm ammo with extra propellant. When a VCs weapons cashe was found they would replace some the ammo with the doctored ammo and grenades. This would cause a breach explosion in the VCs Ak-47s, SKSs and belt-fed RPDs. The grenades would explode immediately rather than the normal delay. This would generally cause some concern with the VC when they used their ammo.

I was a heavy weapons platoon leader and rarely left my hill top! My next tour in RVN was more exciting two years later.

We used to do the exact same thing with the IRA.

a reply to: sg1642

I learned a lot talking to the SF guys. They had a bunch of war stories and I hope that they were just stories...lol.

I guess that counter insurgency warfare is pretty much the same regardless of where it is.

originally posted by: Psynic
Is that Ali G's voice?

Big ups mate!

The navy seals used detonators and C4 in AK ammo.

A round of this doctored ammo would drive the bolt on the AK through the arm of the person firing the weapon.

One of the other fun ways to get the VC was when the VC set up to fire mortars at bases.

The VC mortar crews had extra base plates and would set up them around the US bases.
This let the VC only have to carry the mortar tube and stand between shots.

The VC would fire 3 rounds from there tube and grab it and run before counter battery fire could be returned on them.

The navy seals would hunt down these base plates and carefully lift them and put a anti tank mine under the base plate.

You can guess what happened when the VC next dropped a round down the tube setting on that base plate.

we would take their grenades and replace the fuses with smoke grenade fuses...worked great!

A smoke grenade fuse does not have a detonator on it only a flash charge and would not set off a explosive.

a reply to: AMERICANCER

When somebody attacks you you fight with what you've got

originally posted by: buddah6
a reply to: sg1642

I learned a lot talking to the SF guys. They had a bunch of war stories and I hope that they were just stories...lol.

I guess that counter insurgency warfare is pretty much the same regardless of where it is.

The weapons and technology change and so with it the tactics change too. But in essence guerilla and insurgency warfare is always going to be the same thing, a lethal game of cat and mouse.

originally posted by: ANNED
The navy seals used detonators and C4 in AK ammo.

A round of this doctored ammo would drive the bolt on the AK through the arm of the person firing the weapon.

One of the other fun ways to get the VC was when the VC set up to fire mortars at bases.

The VC mortar crews had extra base plates and would set up them around the US bases.
This let the VC only have to carry the mortar tube and stand between shots.

The VC would fire 3 rounds from there tube and grab it and run before counter battery fire could be returned on them.

The navy seals would hunt down these base plates and carefully lift them and put a anti tank mine under the base plate.

You can guess what happened when the VC next dropped a round down the tube setting on that base plate.

we would take their grenades and replace the fuses with smoke grenade fuses...worked great!

A smoke grenade fuse does not have a detonator on it only a flash charge and would not set off a explosive.

There was an intelligence/special forces led operation where they set out to specifically supply the enemy with defective ammunition I'm pretty sure it's what you are talking about. Mortar rounds were set to detonate in the tube, Belts of ammunition were carried on patrol to dump on dead enemy soldiers with defective rounds in them. Don't even ask me what it was called because I don't know project elders or something like that. Pretty clever and nasty stuff. When we started putting tracking devices in IRA weapons, they went out and got themselves scanners and they would scan their weapons before moving them from a cache. If they found one they would abandon the cache because they knew there were OPs set up watching them.

originally posted by: ANNED
The navy seals used detonators and C4 in AK ammo.

A round of this doctored ammo would drive the bolt on the AK through the arm of the person firing the weapon.

One of the other fun ways to get the VC was when the VC set up to fire mortars at bases.

The VC mortar crews had extra base plates and would set up them around the US bases.
This let the VC only have to carry the mortar tube and stand between shots.

The VC would fire 3 rounds from there tube and grab it and run before counter battery fire could be returned on them.

The navy seals would hunt down these base plates and carefully lift them and put a anti tank mine under the base plate.

You can guess what happened when the VC next dropped a round down the tube setting on that base plate.

we would take their grenades and replace the fuses with smoke grenade fuses...worked great!

A smoke grenade fuse does not have a detonator on it only a flash charge and would not set off a explosive. [/quote

The smoke grenade fuse was what I was told by the weapons sergeant on one of the SF teams...I took him at his word!

As far as firing counter-battery, I have a lot of experience in that area. The VC shot at us a couple times a week. We found that firing a sheath pattern at known trails worked but I don't know how well. We did get a few secondaries when we fired counter-mortar using this method. We had to learn how to read the round "fall." The fall always point toward the tube's azimuth. You just need to determine the range. We did this by marking trails on our maps to give us the range.

I wish I knew about the base plates positioning 46 years ago! It would have made it easier for a young 2Lt that I know... it was a long year!

a reply to: sg1642

We never knew what the SF guys did when they were out of the camp. We did get some intel from them time to time that I use to plot RPs on our maps. I know that it must have pissed off Charlie/NVA with the frequency they hit us. Sometimes we would get fire-missions from the SF guys at all times of the day or night. The best thing that I liked hearing was"fire for effect!"

All in all, I think I did OK while this was my first assignment after coming out of training and it was a combat tour. The rest of my time in the Army was down hill from there.


ANNED, are you EOD being from China Lake?

originally posted by: Shamrock6

originally posted by: pfishy
a reply to: AMERICANCER

I hate to repeat what everyone else on here says, but a brief summary would be nice.

5) a pit with sharpened stakes in it that when tripped, the stakes would spring toward the middle of the pit

That is the description given by the commentator; he mentions "big rubber bands" even, but that is NOT the mechanism of the device illustrated.

What is shown is a pair of rollers, like an old fashioned wringer washer, but set a foot or so apart and 9" spikes protruding from them. The spinning, spiked rollers would perforate and shred a body falling between them.

No idea where the Ali G commentator based his narrative on, but it wasn't what we saw.

a reply to: TokiTheDestroyer

Haha! That is indeed a good summary.