Reply To: The reorganised Royal Australian Navy at war in Vietnam

[Frank Scott]

Worth mentioning that the RAN had operated with the USN before Vietnam. Most notably, in the Second World War HMAS Canberra was damaged beyond repair & sunk at the Battle of Savo Island in August 1942 while operating with the USN, and a new American cruiser was named USS Canberra in her honour. Indeed until the end of the war RAN cruisers were integrated into the USN task group structure in the Pacific.

By the 1960s in NATO the ships of the USN Atlantic & Mediterranean Fleets were well used to operating with warships of other nations, and vice versa, even with aircraft-carriers. Tankers could and did refuel any warship, but lack of standardisation meant that spares and ammunition supply tended to remain national, so the other blue water navies had to have their own fleet train.

Frank Scott