South Vietnam, 24/12/67 to 24/12/39

Lots of things.

Better tech would trickle to the Allies


Someone would know about the Manstein plan - no victory in France for Germany.

Us gets a huge start in technology and becomes a basically undefeatable monster.

The M16, A-4s, and F-5s would dominate everything that the IJA has to offer. What USN warships that were in the region can sink the IJN. This makes me curious on how the uptime navy would need to return to the United States. They would have to make a stop at Subic in the Philippines. The appearance of advanced warships and fighter jets would confuse both Eisenhower, MacArthur, and Manuel Quezon. The uptime USN and USAF could teach the U.S. about the upcoming Pearl Harbor attacks and the invasion of the Philippines which would take place in December 1941.

That is an interesting question. 

But let us look at what is actually present in the OP.

The VC and NVA are at that stage of the war, light infantry and guerillas. They have few heavy weapons and now no logistics. There is an intact American army in RVN.  The Americans have armor forces, which can be barely reverse engineered by their own country. They have a complete forward logistics footprint we must consider and trained techs and engineers who know the 1950-1960 era technology that is also somewhat engineer reversible. Computers and printed circuit- based technology may be beyond the 1939 allies but the vacuum tube stuff (a surprisingly large amount of 1950s avionics and naval systems ashore, especially the radars.), is available and understandable. There are tech manuals and repair manuals, and operator manuals and tactics manuals and just about any procedure one could imagine based on WWII and Korea and the Arab Israeli conflicts up history and learned procedures until before the blip event; will hve a manual and will be disseminated, because that was the bureaucratic American army for you at the time.  
     
Right next door only a short flight away is the ragtag American army bossed by MacArthur in the Philippine Islands. Are those Americans going to be surprised; when MACV sends them a radio call.  

As for the ARVN, it will be interesting to see how they will react, when they have been told that they are now a "commonwealth".  

I can see the RVN suddenly becoming a major Pacific rim state based on what they have left, if the MACV evacuates to the Philippine Islands, as the man, Westmoreland, would probably do.   

But would the MACV do that if Roosevelt told them to just stay put until he figured things out?


 

That is a difficult question to answer. I have to go with OP conditions. There are no French present in the RVN of 1966. There are a lot of Americans,



Before 1965, the PRVN army had "limited" presence and only started fighting in regimental strength in the Drang Na valley of that year. They would ramp up rapidly, but at the time of the "blip" we can estimate the NVA to be about 55,000 regulars. The Vietcong were about 250,000.

I think "Commonwealth" depends on how the political authorities north of the DMZ (Hanoi) and Paris and Washington answer the question among themselves. There will be Saigon input of course. I cannot precisely answer that question for you. There is no guidance in the OP to provide anything but an answer that the French would have very little say as far as the RVN were concerned. The Americans would have "some" input, but a lot depends on how they manage their own considerable problems in the ISOT.



They have no native tech base and no-replacement capability. The NVA, as I note in country, hardly amount to more than a rump corps. Their soviet era gear is basically WWII grade weaponry that the Russians have not even created yet. The AKs, the artillery and the mishmash of salvaged French and Japanese WWII weapons they have is not going to be of much help or use without the developed ammunition. At least with the AR-15, the Winchester 0.22 ammunition is near enough to figure out the 5.56 And... how are they supposed to resupply through Japan, who will want to annihilate them, and Nationalist China, who will want to annihilate them even more-so? Their field medicine, by US standards, of 1939, was fairly good, but by 1960s standards was "unacceptable". I might think the soviet radios would be applicable though since the Russians developed their 1960s era sets out of LL they got from the UK and US. That is a good point. It would be easier to use captured soviet electronics for the 1939 Americans to reverse engineer. It is closer to what they know than their own 1950s/1960s stuff.



The staying power is right across the South China Sea in the Philippine Archipelago. Their supply situation is not as bad as the PRVN forces or the Vietcong. An M60 machine gun can be replaced with a .30 Browning. The AR-15 can be made out of steel. It will be heavy, but in 1939, one goes with analogs. It is the electronics that might be a problem and the captured soviet stuff in the RVN can help with that problem.


Hmmm. Without a PRVN, and a Ho Chi Minh Trail or supply lines stretching back across the sea to Russia, how long can the NVA/Vietcong in country last against an ARVN, who now have a real genuine reason and hope to go after them? Six months? It is the Americans who have to sort their own situation out, not the ARVN.


Not in the political situation of 1968, as I read it. Now the ISOT RVN can see themselves as the only 'legitimate' Vietnam as the North has evaporated. I think the French in Hanoi are still in big trouble. I do not see a happy ending as the 1939 great powers scramble in reaction to this time gift. A great deal depends on the local Americans and I do not mean the MACV. I mean that "gentleman", MacArthur, who rightly or wrongly will assume he has authority to command the MACV, which in 1939 is at least as large as the US army of 1939.


Note what I wrote about the RVN political input? France is not going to be too happy with 300,000+ American invaders in their colony. Roosevelt has his own domestic political troubles. He still has the America Firsters, and other worrisome domestic opposition. The economy is still a mess. His own army has an incompetent set of branch chiefs who argue over the role of the horse on the modern battlefield. Ellsworth Bunker is capable, but what about Westmoreland?

If Roosevelt wants to profit by the MACV, he needs to extract every possible core usable knowledge and bring it back to the United States. He has exactly 1 year to harvest it. Meanwhile, he has to support and sustain the MACV with the base tech he has and not move it, because there is this little thing called PEARL HARBOR in his future. For once, I see an ISOT that makes the Singapore Defense Plan viable. Not even the British in Malaya can screw this one up. (Westmoreland could, but I think he is gone if Roosevelt gets a whiff of the man's incompetence. I think Abrams gets the nod right away. M.)

Rather than move outfits like the 1st Cav to France, (The 1939 America lacks the sea lift to physically move it.) maybe it is more likely that hurry ups like giving the Norwegians and British "historical warnings" that will allow them to make better political and military dispositions themselves will happen. As for France, how strong politically is Reynaud and will he take the advice of a nation who occupies one of his rebellious colonies? Will he replace commanders, he has every reason to believe are competent, just on the USGs say-so? And will the French do any better anyway? They have serious operational and technical problems that a year of 'fixes' is not likely to solve, because they actually tried after Poland to solve them. They were not stupid. The 'fixes' like the DCMs and DCRs and the importation of additional aircraft to bolster the AdA would have worked in two years, but not one. Any shift of forces and assets existent, would have seen the Germans shift their own efforts and did.

With France, because of the disastrous technical choices and doctrine, there is not enough time to tweak the machine.

The British, on the other hand, with their current tech and doctrine, do have a chance in a year to make a difference. Changing over from the useless Matilda I to the A-9/A-10 cruisers helps. Giving the British a heads-up on why the Diel Plan is a bad idea and what it will take to bomb the Meuse bridges (A-20s not Blenheims) will be a help. Even getting the British onto the continent earlier with a better set of generals will help... if Chamberlain can be sacked early and if Churchill gets nominated and if anybody in London can be convinced that hitting the Germans in their huge traffic jam on 10 May in the Ardennes with every bomber the RAF has that can reach them is worth the game.

Then there is the technology angle. It will take anywhere from 2 to 5 years to harvest the hardware and reverse engineer it. It is more practical to go with what can be manufactured and sent to France out of the US tech tree right now. The obvious thing is the nearest thing in 1939 America to an A-6 Skyraider. Radar of course, unless the American military argues it should be a state secret. Steel automatic rifles could start off the assembly line, but that would have to get past Army Ordnance. The lead time is just too short.



That is not the way the Republic works. We swear an oath to the Constitution. We decided that by 1866. If Roosevelt is the one who commands at the top of the chain of responsibility, MACV will obey. Bunker as an ambassador is as bound by it as the military, maybe more so, since he is allegedly "state department".



They handled it in 1967 and 1968. Not well, I mind you, but they handled it. And once the Vietcong are spent and with no PRVN replacement forces to fill the void, "Tet" will be the genuine permanent disaster it only temporarily was. US resupply would be "interesting" in the 1939-1940 context.



Usable knowledge will not be lost. Hardware might have to be salvaged and repaired as best as one can with 1939 resources and tech, but then 1939 America has lots of incentive to:
a. reclaim it and the MACV.
b. utilize the fungible knowledge to avert a history that will otherwise be most unpleasant. For one thing, Marines using hovercraft might make some of those coral reef beach assaults interesting in a very negative way to the Japanese.



As mentioned before the evacuation to the Philippine Islands is problematic. How does one move a Patton tank? Or an M113? Heavy sealift is yet to be built. Best to stay in place and establish a SLOC to CONUS and figure out supply analogs.

We can try. What we have to understand is that the French have operational, technical, doctrinal, demographic and political difficulties that came together to make a perfect storm of "insurmountables".

Let me refer to the OP as to what we have.
Poland is gone. WWII is 104 days old in Europe. I am trying to fix WWII.
Treaties not in existence and laws not in existence in the time in which they reside do not have any legal binding. There is a no-ex post facto law clause in the American constitution. This would be the first legal problem the military and international law lawyers of the MACV would find in their administrative rulings. Next is that they do have a chain of responsibility. It may not be Johnson at the apex or Nixon, but it is there and Roosevelt is their commander in chief, not Westmoreland. MacArthur may be or not be inside that chain, but if FDR says he is, then he is and MacArthur has seniority over Westmoreland. 

As for the neutrality laws and situations then existent... How did FDR handle these laws when they were 'inconvenient' to real facts in evidence? He may declare the USG recognizes RVN and accepts the current MACV mission to it as legitimate until as such time as he can figure out a different solution. What can he physically really do about it? He cannot let some "foreign power" have access to US tech and forces from the future. And if he cannot move them, he can send them help. MacArthur is "help". It may look funny to us, but I can see a situation where a regiment of Filipino Scouts lands at Cam Ranh Bay and a training camp is assembled and "boots" processed through it to learn how the American army of 1968 does things. It would make for a better FEAF when the bad guys come calling. Who knows? Maybe MacArthur will learn how not to screw up in the Philippine Islands?        He is deputy MACV. I figure he is in Saigon.

Who are the first Vietnamese politicians to try use “future history” as propaganda tool against the downtime French Indochina authorities and for political point scoring with the South Vietnamese population? Viet Cong radio? Or RVN President Thieu?

I could just imagine them telling the French. “Your time is up in Vietnam. You are doomed to be driven from here. You should give the country back to its people. You have much bigger problems at home. The Germans are going to kick your asses and run through Paris in a few months! Watch your back!”

Actually could news of the future get the French to try to peace out of WWII before they lose to the Germans?

The Philippine Commonwealth Army wasn't organized yet until July 1941. What few units there are at this period in P-40 Warhawks and P-26 Peashooters. I think there were some B-17s based out in Clark Field or in Nicholas Field. However, Vietnam had tons of WWII surplus as well so resupplying their ammunition isn't that of an issue.