A Viet Cong cottage industry DPR/TV/404,410

Australian Army engineers serving in Vietnam this week took a close look at Communist Viet Cong weapons handed to them for disposal after they had been captured by troops of the 5th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment. The ammunition, which included home-made and Chinese manufactured grenades, improvised grenades, Viet Cong captured American artillery shells and grenades plus explosives and shrapnel carriers showed that weapons do not have to be sophisticated to be lethal. The Viet Cong "cottage industry" ordnance items were labelled and laid out at the bomb disposal experts bush camp in Vietnam. An improvised landmine, made from a piece of downpipe packed with TNT and fitted with a simple fuse, would have been capable of disabling an armoured vehicle. A tin of shrapnel, made up as a homemade Viet Cong bomb, could kill men over a wide area. Warrant Officer Don Phillips of Holsworthy, NSW, shows how a home-made hand grenade, fitted with a string-operated friction fucse works. Sapper Mick Keegan of Newcastle, NSW, examines gunpowder which is used in home-made Viet Cong munitions. Captain Paddy Martin of Yallourn, Victoria, leaves no doubt about Chinese support for the Viet Cong as he displays a tube of Chinese manufactured grenades. Two American 155 millimetre artillery shells - each containing more than 30lbs of TNT - which failed to explode during an attack on a Viet Cong position were taken from a Viet Cong cache for disposal in an open field by the Australian engineers. The Viet Cong use the captured shells to utilise as landmines and booby traps. Sapper Stewart Law of Singleton, NSW (right) and Sapper Geoff Guest of Biloela, Queensland, wrap detonation fuse around TNT and light the two minute fuse. The exploding shells sliced a huge crater in the ground, demonstrating the effect the explosion would have had if Viet Cong had used them to sabotage a road convoy.