 Recent scholarship indicates other leaders had played more prominent roles, with former subordinates and now rivals Văn Tiến Dũng and Hoàng Văn Thái assuming a more direct military responsibility than Giáp.Nevertheless, he played a pivotal role in the second transformation of the PAVN into "one of the largest, most formidable" mechanised and combined-arms fighting force capable of delivering a knockout blow to an increasingly more powerful rival Army of the Republic of Vietnam in conventional warfare.Võ Nguyên Giáp was born on 25 August 1911 (or 1912 according to some sources) in Quảng Bình Province, French Indochina.