North Vietnamese Army Topographic Map 1:100,000 Nha Trang 1970

This rare North Vietnamese Army map is captioned NHA TRANG which is the capital of and located in Khanh Hoa Province.

It is marked SECRET (MAT) in Vietnamese along the upper right.

Nha Trang was home to the 5th Special  Forces Group, a very large US Air Force Base, and US Navy base.

As you can see from the topography, the base was located adjacent to mountains and the ocean. Many North Vietnamese Army and Viet Cong units operated in the vicinity of this base.

Old military maps do not exist in Vietnam anymore as they would have been discarded in favor of updated maps published by the PAVN as the years passed and changes to the land occurred, such as new roads, canals and the growth of villages.

They all have the universal elements you will find on military maps from around the world including a legend, identification of adjacent maps, grid to magnetic declination, scale, latitude and longitude etc.

Finding NVA maps in the collecting world is a difficult task.  Like all items of any intelligence value, they were supposed to be turned over to S-2 (Intelligence) for exploitation.  This map shows no exploitable intelligence information such as defensive positions, AAA positions, routes of travel etc.  Because they had no such value, this map  was allowed to be kept as a souvenir after a brief in-field review.

The name of this map is printed in the top center of the map. This is the most prominent feature shown on the map such as a village, a river, a mountain, a river etc.

NVA maps  show the province and district in the upper left corner.

Latitude and Longitude are also shown at the corner of each map.

Maps were carried only by those who had a need to know, such as: officers, senior NCOs, engineers, mortarmen, rocket troops and those who crewed indirect fire weapons, snipers, transportation personnel etc.  Maps would be carried in mapcases, folded up in pockets and small pouches. They were to be safeguarded at all times and were not supposed to be marked up, lest they be captured.

No Vietnam collection is complete without at least one captured map so make sure you pick up at least one today!