The Australian War Memorial Collection. Test site
Australian Army 3rd Field Troop Engineers facing dangerous searches of Viet Cong tunnel complexes in Viet Nam are undergoing intensive specialist training with rescue breathing equipment. Guided by Warrant Officer Andrew Lambert, Sappers learn the "do's" and "dont's" of operating the modern breathing apparatus. Using a captured Viet Cong bicycle, Sapper Bill Unmeopa, from Thursday Island, Queensland, is taught to breathe rythmically while undergoing heavy exertion. The 60 Engineers training with the equipment accompany Australian infantry on operations to delouse Viert Cong booby traps and search tunnels that have been flushed out with tear gas beforehand. The sappers are being taught to use two types of breathing apparatus; one a compressed air unit with a breathing life of 30 minutes for shallow tunnels, and proto re-breathing oxygen gear for deeper complexes. A technique for dealing with the tunnels, in which the Viet Cong hide weapons, food, medical supplies, ammunition, themselves, and even their women and children, has been worked out. First the sappers lob tear gas grenades into the entrances, then use a fumigation compressor to pump the gas through the labyrynth of tunnels which could be occupied by Viet Cong. The entrances are covered with cloth to prevent gas escaping. After the gas has been through, the engineers, torches and pistols in hand and wearing the breathing equipment, enter them for a through search. Because of the small stature of the Vietnamese who use the tunnels, the shafts are often a tight fit for the broad-shouldered Australians. Several have been almost trapped in narrow passages, and one engineer who was trapped in a dead-end died from lack of air. The five day course undertaken by the sappers minimises the danger of fatalities. The course covers practical and theoretical aspects of entering the tunnels so throughly that infantrymen worrying about the dangers threatening in the Viet Cong's dark tunnels can breathe easily when the swift-working, competent sappers get to work.
Two sappers from 2 Troop, 1 Field Squadron, Royal Australian Engineers (RAE), have donned gas masks for use as breathing apparatus as they prepare to investigate a Viet Cong tunnel complex. In the for
Australian Army engineers moved into the first operation, Operation Enoggera, carried out by the Sixth Battalion, The Royal Australian Regiment, in Phuoc Tuy Province, South Vietnam, in the fourth wee
Two sappers from 1 Field Squadron, Royal Australian Engineers (RAE), don gas masks for use as breathing apparatus in a search they are about to make of a Viet Cong bunker during Operation Atherton. Th
Australian troops in Vietnam are again using a special technique to deny the Viet Cong bunker complexes after they have been discovered. Each bunker is seeded with CS2 Crystals which makes them uninha
Australian troops this week used a special detector to find more than thirty Viet Cong tunnels and underground hides in an area about two miles south of their Task Force base at Nui Dat in Phuoc Tuy P
While another sapper looks on, an unidentified member of 1 Field Squadron, Royal Australian Engineers (RAE), dons a gas mask for use as breathing apparatus in a search he is about to make of a Viet Co
