Condition I-A on the boat deck. Off the mouth of South Vietnam’s Tra Bong River at 0640 on 23 April 1965, the high speed transport Cook (APD-130) began lowering three of her 36-foot landing craft. At 0718, the trio—a steel-hulled LCP(R) Mk. 4; a plywood-hulled LCPL Mk. 1; and a steel-hulled LCP(L) Mk. 4—headed shoreward for “beach and hinterland reconnaissance.” On two previous days in the Baie de Dung Quat area, sniping had vexed the Cook’s reconnoitering work, but the enemy had proved elusive.
At 0735 the underwater demolition team (UDT) in the LCPL, noting “suspicious movements” near their landing point, remained embarked and radioed a warning. Apparently seeing no cause for apprehension in his assigned landing area, the LCP(R) skipper landed Marine Sergeant Herman P. Vialpando’s seven-man reconnaissance team on the east bank of the river, while the LCP(L) went 50 yards upriver on the right flank to provide cover. Suddenly, almost two dozen Viet Cong (VC) “concentrated in a 200 yard horseshoe perimeter” ambushed Vialpando’s party, pinning down four Leathernecks on the beach and three who had advanced about 50 yards into the brush. The Americans returned fire on the well-concealed enemy as best they could.
Ensign George O. Wilson, in command of the LCP(L), quickly took control of the situation, laying down covering fire with a .45-caliber Thompson submachine gun. The Cook’s boat officer, Wilson had only 15 months of naval service and never been in combat. The 24-year-old officer’s act of courage impressed Seaman Charles R. Wilson, the control boat’s bow hook, who later reported: “Mr. Wilson was standing up . . . with about one-fourth of his body showing . . . [he] didn’t give any verbal orders to start firing . . . it seemed to me that we all knew what he was thinking”—the Marines had to be rescued from the beach.
Twenty-three years earlier, on 18 August 1942, extricating fellow Marines from a contested shore undoubtedly concerned 21-year-old Sergeant Dallas H. Cook, 2d Marine Raider Battalion, when he volunteered to take a line through rough surf during the raid on Makin. He perished in the attempt and posthumously received the Navy Cross. Less than three months later, his brother, 22-year-old Second Lieutenant Andrew F. Cook Jr., 1st Battalion, 7th Marines, was killed in action on Guadalcanal charging a Japanese machine-gun nest. He also was awarded the Navy Cross posthumously. After being informed that his name was assigned to a destroyer escort, DE-719, Mrs. Andrew F. Cook, the Marines’ grieving mother, asked the Navy to amend the name source to honor Andrew’s younger brother as well. Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox approved the change on 20 April 1944.
The Defoe Shipbuilding Company laid down the Cook (DE-719) at Bay City, Michigan, on 7 May 1944. During construction, however, the need for high speed transports to replace the first generation of conversions from World War I emergency-program “flush-deckers,” resulted in DE-719 being reclassified as APD-130 on 17 July. Launched on 26 August and christened by Mrs. Cook, the ship was fitted out at the Naval Frontier Base at Burrwood, Louisiana, where on 25 April 1945, she was commissioned with Lieutenant Commander Drayton N. Hamilton, USNR, in command.
Before reporting to the San Diego Group, 19th Fleet, for inactivation in the spring of 1946, the Cook, her commanding officer reported, had a “short but active sea-going career.” Arriving in the Pacific at war’s end, she participated in the occupation of Japan and then transported sailors to San Pedro, California, for separation. “Making her high-speed runs once a week,” one observer wrote, “except for her guns and war paint [she] looked more like a cruise liner than a man-of-war.” The ship was decommissioned on 31 May 1946.
Recommissioned on 6 October 1953, the Cook, under the command of Lieutenant Commander Wendell C. Mackey, sailed for her first deployment to the western Pacific from her home port of San Diego. Except for shifting to the Caribbean for contingency operations during tension over Cuba in late 1962, the ship would operate in the Pacific for the rest of her career. Her 1955 Operation Passage to Freedom work, transporting refugees from North Vietnam to South Vietnam, set the tone for this period. It was the ship’s first exposure to the turmoil in Indochina but would not be her last.
As the situation appeared to deteriorate rapidly that April day in 1965, Sergeant Vialpando covered his Marines’ withdrawal, but not before Corporal Lowell H. Merrell fell wounded. Soon, more VC in dense vegetation 50 yards inland from the river and on the opposite bank of the Tra Bong subjected the LCP(L) and LPC(R) to a withering crossfire; nevertheless, the latter craft succeeded in retrieving the Marines.
On board the Cook, her skipper, Lieutenant Commander James C. Hayes Jr., was monitoring the unfolding events but unable to intervene with his ship’s guns because of the proximity of friendly forces. Instead he ordered the LCPL to maintain a position at the mouth of the Tra Bong to cover the two embattled boats.
Shortly afterward, on board the LCP(L), VC bullets killed Engineman Second Class Richard H. Langford as he returned fire. Torpedoman’s Mate Third Class William R. Fuhrman, who had been maintaining a brisk fire from the bow with his .30-caliber machine gun, also fell mortally wounded.
Three minutes later, the Cook’s boats finally escaped the galling VC fire and sped back to the Cook. Despite the best efforts of the ship’s hospitalman first class and a UDT corpsman, 21-year-old Marine Lowell Merrell died within five minutes of the Cook’s getting under way at 0805.
Lieutenant Commander Hayes credited the automatic weapons’ fire employed by the landing-craft crews, the UDT, and embarked Marines in “quite possibly [saving] the entire group and both boats from complete destruction.” He lauded Ensign Wilson, whose “performance under these extreme circumstances” was “greatly above that expected of an officer of comparable grade and experience.” Fuhrman and Langford received posthumous awards for gallantry, Fuhrman a Silver Star and Langford a Bronze Star.
The Cook made four more deployments to Vietnam, ultimately being awarded two Meritorious Unit Commendations and five engagement stars for her service there, and on 1 January 1969, before her final Southeast Asian tour of duty, was reclassified as an amphibious transport (small), LPR-130. Deemed “inadequate to meet future Amphibious Warfare requirements” and with the expense of her modernization and repairs judged as “prohibitively costly,” the Cook returned to San Diego on 24 September 1969; she was decommissioned on 15 November.
Stricken from the Naval Vessel Register simultaneously, the ship was moved to the Inactive Ship Facility, San Diego, where, on the afternoon of 24 July 1970, the tug Pacific Genie took the veteran of Cold War and hot-conflict operations in tow for her final voyage, to the National Metal and Steel Corporation.
Crosley-class High Speed Transport
Displacement: 1,650 tons (trial)
Length: 306 feet
Beam: 37 feet
Draft: 12 feet, 7 inches (mean)
Complement: 204 officers and men (ship’s company), 162 troops
Armament: 1 5-inch gun, 6 40-mm guns, 6 20-mm guns, 2 depth-charge tracks