Veit Cong pictures..

I doubt if the Viet Cong (Communist South Vietnamese) operated the SA-2. What you want are North Vietnamese regulars. I'm sure there are pictures from that era. I think Osprey has something on NVA/VC uniforms in their "Men-At-Arms" series.

Bill: I don't think there were ever any SA-2s in South Vietnam or any of the areas the Viet Cong operated. These would all be North Vietnamese Army troops. I have two shirts that were taken from North Vietnamese troops in 1967 and

They are both shades of medium olive drab with a slightly yellowish-tan cast to them. I've seen some others (that I did not liberate) that were almost a khaki tan with a slightly olive drab cast to them)

The point is that I don't think I'd get all that worried about an exact color shade. These uniforms were almost always well weathered and the color dye lots weren't all that carefully regulated either. I've seen all sorts of color variations from almost a greenish-chocolate color to almost khaki due to different dye lots and the effects of sun, rain, end washing. By the way, all the "T" shirts I've seen had an odd rather rectangular neckline that would appear to be rather straight across the neck opening of the front of the shirt and all of them were shades of khaki.

Try the link below. When it opens, scroll down to the third picture and you'll see a pic of one of the shirts - WARNING: It isn't the prettiest of pictures but it is a color shor of an NVA weraing a shirt and a pair of black undershorts.

"The world would be a much simpler place if every one could pick and choose their obligations, but we can't and we shouldn't." Major Charles W. Whittlesey

Is this the boxed figure set, with artwork by Ron Volstad?

If so, use his artwork as your guide, as he is very accurate.

BTW, don't worry about using the V.C. set with the SA-2 model. Modelling and dioramas in particular are about making a general picture and story, not always about getting things %100 technically correct. Who's to say that some V.C. never went North and had a visit at an SA-2 site?

Hmm, work in Hollywood do you?

I doubt if the VC would be wearing their black PJs while visiting the site. If VC were visitng, it was probably a formal visit. The daily ground war was on VC territory and I'm not sure they had many chances to take vacations up north. I can see them being invited to some official thing, maybe like Uncle Ho awarding them something.

There was also some friction between the VC and NVA. The NVA were like bossy Big Brothers telling the VC how to do things.

Like using an M-47 or M-48 to represent a German Tiger? Yep, thats what they do in hollywood.

So your saying don't bother doing the research before you build a diorama. Just build what you like and the facts be damned? THAT sounds like hollywood thinking. But again, if you have pictures, that would be nice.

Why would that be plausable? Or probable? For the most part the VC were local villagers conscripted by the NVA, a large number of them by force. Not the type the NVA would allow around a SAM site. Unless they were guarding it.

Why? The North Koreans were allies of NV. They were and are exporters of SAM's and rockets in general to anyone with the cash. That would be more probable than a VC. No I don't know if they were there. Never thought of it before. But I would check before I spent a lot of time and effort building a diorama depicting it.

Point. You said that it was not implausable. What do you base that on?

The Viet Cong I observed, both dead and alive, wore a assortment of 'uniforms' from the classic black pajamas to plain ordinary clothes. Some even wore captured ARVN or US fatigue shirts. This was the period of the conflict between 1966 to 67 before NVA regulars began to appear in strength in the south. Mike IPMS

... we deal with the 'plausibility' thing all the time in historical re-enactmen/ re-creation. There are those who will contend that if you cannot prove their pet theory false it is, therefore, true, no matter how silly their pet theory is. You can tell them til you're blue in the face that there is no evidence to support their theory and they will reply "Absence of Evidence is not Evidence of Absence" and go on their merry way promoting their particular brand of silliness.

I'm not saying that's happening here, but it bears a striking resemblance.

Dean

On RMS that's known as the "Flyby theory". No one can prove that an injection molded 1/72 scale Lockheed C-5 with working landing gear didn't exist. Therefore it existed. As did the hobby shop in the middle of the river. :-)

Tom

That's why I like 1/48th. It is just so unambiguous, just like the level of detail . There is no chance that a 1/48th C-5 exists or will exist!

As for the hobby shop in the river, it wasn't precisely in the middle, but I knew a guy, who had a friend, whose brother had a sister, that knew another guy...

WmB

To reply, get the HECK out of there snipped-for-privacy@earthlink.net

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And after 1968, there were very few VC commanders left. Tet wiped out almost their entire infrastructure. The NVA came in with cadres and took over virtually the entire organization and rebuilt it. There were still plenty of VC grunts, but very few officers. The NVA never did let go of the oganization after that. Net result: post-1968, there would not have been very many VC high-ranking enough to rate a visit to a SAM site, even assuming such things happened.

One thing you should consider, though, if you're doing a AAA machine cannon installation, is that most of the crews of those were women. Not so for the SAMs.

Mark Schynert

Do a search on Jane Fonda -- you can get a good picture of a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft crew.

................ sorry, had to br>I just bought a DML kit of the Veit Cong. I was wondering does anyone have

And of course in the DML #3304 Viet Cong set there is a female with a bicycle. Unarmed, she would be perfectly logical posed as a "local" observing an SA-2 site in passing.

Now where the intrepid NVA crew would be is problematic.

Kevin