The Hat Dich was no ordinary stretch of jungle. It served as a secret zone for the Viet Cong's 274th Regiment, a well-equipped main force unit that had recently absorbed large numbers of North Vietnamese replacements. Intelligence estimated the regiment's 3rd Battalion alone held between 250 and 300 men, dug into permanent base camps laced with trench systems, bunkers, and tunnels. The Australians entered with Centurion tanks, armored personnel carriers, and American artillery support from a firebase on the outskirts of Bien Hoa Province. The 1st Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment, deployed into Fire Support Base Dyke in the western Hat Dich, securing their position by mid-morning. Thai forces operated in adjacent sectors, and American infantry pushed through nearby. It was a multinational effort aimed at ripping apart the VC's logistical backbone.

What followed was a pattern that repeated itself for weeks. Australian companies would advance through the jungle, locate a bunker system, call in airstrikes or push forward with tanks, and arrive to find it abandoned. The VC knew the Hat Dich intimately and moved through it like water, slipping away before each assault only to reappear behind the advancing patrols. On 4 December, C Company encountered three small groups and launched a platoon attack to little effect. The next day they assaulted a camp at point-blank range with tank fire and grenades, only to find the enemy had vanished, leaving a single body behind. A napalm airstrike had fallen too far west to matter. Contacts were brief and violent: automatic weapons fire from concealed positions, RPG-2 rockets streaking through the undergrowth, then silence. The Australians adapted, rotating battalions to maintain pressure. The 4th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment/New Zealand, joined the operation, and later the 9th Battalion replaced the 1st. Nearly 2,000 bunkers were uncovered during the campaign, many of them destroyed by combat engineers and tanks.

The heaviest fighting erupted on 21 December when the Viet Cong finally chose to make a stand. That morning, lead elements from C Company 1 RAR walked into a carefully prepared ambush. Automatic weapons fire and rocket-propelled grenades tore through the lead platoon, and for hours the Australians fought at close quarters in jungle so thick that men could hear the enemy but struggled to see them. Tank support proved decisive, the Centurions crashing through vegetation to bring their main guns to bear on bunker positions. But such contacts always came at a price. Over the course of Operation Goodwood, 21 Australians and one New Zealander were killed. Ninety-one Australians and six New Zealanders were wounded. South Vietnamese forces alongside them suffered 31 killed and 81 wounded. The VC lost at least 245 killed, 39 possibly killed, 45 wounded, and 17 captured across 274 separate contacts.

Operation Goodwood concluded on 19 February 1969, and its effects rippled across the province. The Australians had destroyed the VC's permanent infrastructure in the Hat Dich: their bunkers, supply caches, weapons depots, and the base camps that had allowed them to stage operations throughout Phuoc Tuy. More than 280 rocket-propelled grenades, 70 anti-personnel mines, 490 grenades, and 450 pounds of explosives were captured. Critically, the bulk of the contacts had been initiated by the Australians rather than the enemy, a reversal of the American experience where more than two-thirds of engagements were typically started by the VC. The 274th Regiment was forced to abandon its strongholds, and VC activity in the Australian area of operations visibly declined. From 1969 onward, operations in the province tended to be smaller, conducted at platoon and company level rather than battalion strength.

There was no celebration when Operation Goodwood ended. The Australians redeployed almost immediately under Operation Federal, moving north to shield the major bases at Long Binh and Bien Hoa against an anticipated Tet offensive. The feared attacks never materialized with the ferocity of the previous year; the VC appeared demoralized after their earlier mauling at the battles of Coral and Balmoral. But even as the main force threat diminished, guerrilla activity surged in the populated southern areas of Phuoc Tuy, around Dat Do and Long Dien, where VC units moved freely at night. The Hat Dich campaign had broken the back of organized resistance in the jungle, yet the war's smaller, more intimate violence continued in the villages. Months later, in June 1969, the Australians would fight house-to-house through the village of Binh Ba in one of their fiercest engagements of the entire war, a reminder that even successful campaigns rarely deliver the clean endings that strategy demands.