By Mike Cecil
Head of Military Heraldry and Technology
Australian War Memorial

Technical intelligence is one of those subjects that conjures up images of sleuths, clandestine operations and men in dark coats.  Of course, the reality more often has a strong element of good luck, hard negotiation and meticulous work. Knowledge of an enemy or potential enemy’s capability through an understanding of his training and equipment is the prize. So it was with the acquisition of a Chinese manufactured armoured personnel carrier, a YW531, in September 1972. The vehicle type had only been seen in newspaper reports from an Eastern Bloc country up to that time, so the chance to acquire a complete, running example from a battlefield in South Vietnam was quite a coup.

Assigned to the Combined Materiel Exploration Center (CMEC), a South Vietnamese-American unit working from Tan Son Nhut airport, for his second tour in South Vietnam was Major Jim Ellis, an Australian officer tasked with procuring objects of interest for analysis in Australia. Jim was very successful, obtaining many smaller items of enemy equipment that had fallen into the hands of the South Vietnamese forces. In August 1972, Jim was able, through a mixture of good luck, initiative and close cooperation with the South Vietnamese, to secure two Chinese manufactured vehicles, a Type 59 tank, and the YW531 APC. Shipped to Australia aboard the Army Ship John Monash, the vehicles were taken to the Engineering Design Establishment at Maribyrnong, Victoria, for their initial assessment, before being transported to the Trial and Proving Wing located at Monegeeta, north west of Melbourne, for a grueling series of automotive and performance trials. Further functionality trials were undertaken at the Puckapunyal Military Training Area.

The YW531 APC was subjected to comparative trials against an M113A1 APC then in service with the Australian Army.  The vehicles are of a like size and are used for similar purposes, so a comparison of their performance would speak volumes about an enemy’s capability when equipped with this vehicle type. The YW531 was considered to be robust but basic and unsophisticated in design, making it very suitable for use by armies where technical capability and support might be lacking. The vehicle also had a number of design features that would not be acceptable in Western armies, such as brake calipers housed within the hull which smoked and discharged brake grit into the air within the crew compartment. The basic crew was four, consisting of a driver, crew commander, gunner manning the machine gun on the roof, and a radio operator. It could also carry 10 fully equipped troops, though the passenger compartment was quite small, with much of the internal space taken up by the mid-mounted engine.

The acquisition, analysis and trials allowed the vehicle capability to be assessed, and identification of weak points to be identified. From that, it was possible to determine the most effective method of defeating the vehicle if it was encountered in combat. This was technical intelligence at its best. It is interesting to note that the YW531 APC and other derivative vehicle types were encountered by Western Forces nearly 20 years later during the first Gulf War, as the type had been supplied in quantity to Iraq. What happened to the YW531 APC?  It was transferred to the Australian War Memorial collection, and is currently on loan to the RAAC Memorial and Army Tank Museum at Puckapunyal, where it can be seen on display with several other Eastern Bloc armoured vehicles.