Originally Posted By lew:

Awesome. Many thanks for the pictures. I've been reading more into that conflict as it's tangential to my interest in the French occupation of North Africa.

In 1968, the Army leased two of these vehicles from the LeTourneau company and quickly sent them off to Southeast Asia. After American troops began flooding into South Vietnam, the Pentagon quickly realized it was unprepared to deal with Viet Cong deception and camouflage.

"U.S. Military leaders had recognized early the tremendous advantage the jungle offered the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army in terms of limiting the movement  modern military equipment  and in protecting their bases, their lines of communication, and their arsenals," US Army Maj. Gen. Robert Ploger wrote in Vietnam Studies: U.S. Army Engineers, 1965-1970. "As early as November of 1965 General Westmoreland put his staff to work looking for means of jungle clearing."

At the time, Army Gen. William Westmoreland was in charge of the top American headquarters in the country, Military Assistance Command  Vietnam, or MACV. In the end, while fearsome looking, the commercial machines just weren't suited to combat.

Even before the tree crushers had arrived, MACV's land clearance project was in full swing. US Air Force planes and Army helicopters sprayed herbicides and dropped fire bombs to clear away the foliage.

On the ground, specialized engineer companies used bulldozers with huge blades called Rome Plowsthe Rome Company of Rome, Georgia made the equipmentto uproot trees and other ground cover. With chainsaws, hand tools and even gas-powered lawnmowers, individual troops did their best to deny the communist guerrillas any hiding spots.

Founded in 1929, LeTourneau was already an established name in construction, logging and other heavy duty-vehicles. Despite interest from Army engineers back in the States, MACV initially balked at sending the company's Transphibian Tree Crushers into a war zone, according to Ploger.

Designed for civilian logging firms, the 60-ton vehicles had three five-bladed "wheels," two right in front of the driver's cab and one at the rear to steer. As the Tree Crusher drove forward, a large push bar would use the brute strength of the engines to knock trees over. The sharp wheels would break up the logs as the machine plodded along.

MACV was worried the weight and generally ungainly nature of the vehicles would make them ill-equipped to handle the hazards of Vietnam's junglesespecially with rebels possibly shooting at the operators. "Flotation characteristics were appealing, but it was only marginally effective in the water," Ploger noted.