Catachans in 'Nam

[Srelex]

Catachans are meant to be the ultimate jungle combatants in 40K, but how they hold up in a historical scenario? As such, Q, wishing to test them, grabs a regiment of Catachan Jungle fighters and commits them to the following two scenarios--

*Defending Khe Sanh
*Placing them under the command of MACV-SOG at the start of the Tet Offensive.

In either scenario, we can have them with their 40k weaponry, or just armed with US gear of the time. How do they hold up in these various conditions?

[Alkaloid]

They have better equipment and training than the US forces, more jungle savvy and knowledge gained in a far more hostile environment than the VC, and a history of disregarding authority and not staying in one place to fight a fight they can't win. In either case they are likely to just disappear into the jungle and occasionally attack whoever we declare their enemies to be an commit some atrocity or another on the survivors. (Honestly, they are modeled on US forces in Vietnam if every US soldier was Rambo, but better and from space. It would be a massacre)

[Gunhead]

Here's what will happen: They discover they are in holy terra and form a massive circle jerk where copious amounts of spunk is sprayed around while "4 t3h Emprah!" Is shouted a lot. This is spotted by the U.S forces which bomb the area because jerking off is a sin causing all that spewed spunk to mutate into naughty GAY seeds that infect all males in the country thus ending the conflict by replacing communism with man love.

I mean fucking really. Just dropping some 3000 guys with magic pewpew guns into a conflict zone and then asking "WHAT WILL HAPPEN?!?!" is just fucking stupid. But if you propose that they replace the sum total of U.S forces in Khe Sanh for example, they're gonna get creamed. If they are added to the U.S total at Khe Sanh, they just increase the total number of troops on the U.S side by a whopping 5%.. whoop de doo.

-Gunhead

[madd0ct0r]

well lasguns don't have the logistical problems American guns did, but the catachans will die just as easily to snipers and bangs.

Depends not on the quality of the individual soldiers, but on if they can find better tactics.
Being the baby ogryn they are, they're going to have trouble with the tunnel complexes anyway.

[Srelex]

well lasguns don't have the logistical problems American guns did, but the catachans will die just as easily to snipers and bangs.

Depends not on the quality of the individual soldiers, but on if they can find better tactics.

Yeah, that was sort of what my point was--I've seen real military vets and experts tear into IG tactics and doctrine before, so I was curious to see how their techniques and tactics would fare against real jungle guerillas, if we go with the scenario where the Catachans are just armed with contemporary US gear and lose the advantage of 40k weaponry.

[Gunhead]

What super duper tactics might those be? I mean even if they are mega awesome jungle fighters, it doesn't grant them some magical ability to sniff out the VC from the general populace or make them experts at asymmetrical warfare. Catachans are basically formed in a similar fashion to a U.S infantry platoons were back in Vietnam. If you replace their shiny toys with U.S issued equipment, you have a regiment worth of light infantry with jungle survival slapped on. Might have some utility as a deep strike force against NVA / VC targets, but this isn't really all that special compared to what U.S already had.
At the core, Catachans are still stand up fight troops, they have their special stand up fight niche but you cannot expect them to go out and win hearts and minds any better than you could expect from a U.S grunt. On top of that, the U.S had some 500 000 troops in Vietnam by -68 so I really fail to see how a few thousand more would have made any difference either way. The problem the U.S army faced in Vietnam wasn't how to win fights when confronted, you could say U.S forces categorically trounced NVA and VC forces throughout the war. The problem was the North would not engage the U.S in a major all out war and the U.S was not allowed to invade the North to force a major battle where they could destroy their armies. So not matter how much Catachans would kick ass, they can do little to solve the overall situation the U.S forces faced.
Which brings us to the whole issue of how well the Catachans would fare being totally moot since their presence would have little or no impact in the grand scheme of things. On the face of it you could say they'd probably do as well you'd expect from trained and experienced troops in a fight, with the added plus factor of having the needed adaptability to operate in a foreign environment, provided they can be adequately supported.

-Gunhead

[Alkaloid]

The problem here though is that putting Catachans in vietnam and saying 'they support the US, what changes' is a bit like taking Thermopylae and saying 'the Argonauts arrive to support the Greeks, what changes?' Well, everything, frankly, because they are the Argonauts and normal rules don't to apply to them.

Even in the context of 40k, the Catachans just do not make sense because every single one is essentially and action movie hero in his own movie. The fluff brings it up all the time. Going hand to hand with orcs and winning, deliberately because they like it, fighting guerrilla wars against the tyranids for years and winning, even though they were one regiment alone on a occupied planet. It's consistent through the fluff, and means you may as well say 'all the US troops are replaced with Captain America' and will have as much chance of getting a sane discussion or outcome.

[Sea Skimmer]

If they die from land mines the communists are going to win no matter how badly they loose doing everything else. Let them invade the north, and china and anything else and attrition in a war on that scale would do them in. Defending Khe Sanh would just be bad, the entire force would be required to man the perimeter no matter how good they are, historically it was held with five infantry battalions and thousands of support troops. If they lack the historical air and artillery support defeat is certain. The North had 50,000 men to throw against the base, multiple regiments of heavy artillery, at least one regiment of tanks and all infantry units well supported with heavy weapons. They'll just chew the place up in detail. If they do have US air and artillery support then the battle would go as historical, the North Vietnamese could never establish large enough units close enough to the perimeter to be a serious threat. They did not anticipate the ability of all arms of the US military to maintain effective support in bad weather.

[Black Admiral]

While Catachan Jungle Fighters are skilled light infantry (with a particular gift for fieldcraft; as would be expected when the jungles they're used to aren't merely dangerous to the incautious but actively trying to kill them (leaving aside the actual enemy)), the emphasis here is on light; the absolute heaviest weapons they'll bring to things themselves are HMGs/light cannon, missile launchers and man-packed mortars. All their armour and medium or heavy artillery support comes from other regiments, which means that if they're stuck defending Khe Sanh alone they're eleven different kinds of fucked.

Plus, Catachan regiments tend to be on the small side, by Guard standards anyway, so there's not going to be all that many of them.

[jollyreaper]

Even in the context of 40k, the Catachans just do not make sense because every single one is essentially and action movie hero in his own movie. The fluff brings it up all the time. Going hand to hand with orcs and winning, deliberately because they like it, fighting guerrilla wars against the tyranids for years and winning, even though they were one regiment alone on a occupied planet. It's consistent through the fluff, and means you may as well say 'all the US troops are replaced with Captain America' and will have as much chance of getting a sane discussion or outcome.

What if they follow the inverse Alien Inverse Threat rule, where the danger represented by the alien increases as the population count drops? One alien in Alien, almost everyone wiped out, one human survivor and one dead alien. Hundreds of aliens in Aliens, three human and one android survivor, hundreds of dead bugs. Alien3, back to one crappy alien and lots of dead humans. The fewer there are, the more dangerous they become.

So a regiment of Catachans are deadly like standard action heroes but if you kill them down to one now you're facing Rambo.

So the opponent facing them has to fight hard enough to achieve his objectives but not so effectively that he makes them stronger.