Truck convoys valiantly crossed streams, mountains and forests; drivers spent scores of sleepless nights, in defiance of difficulties and dangers, to bring food and ammunition to the front, to permit the army to annihilate the enemy.
Thousands of bicycles from the towns also carried food and munitions to the front.
Hundreds of sampans of all sizes, hundreds of thousands of bamboo rafts crossed rapids and cascades to supply the front.
Day and night, hundreds of thousands of porters and young volunteers crossed passes and forded rivers in spite of enemy planes and delayed-action bombs.
Near the firing line, supply operations had to be carried out in the shortest possible time. Cooking, medical work, transport, and the like were carried on right in the trenches, under enemy bombing and crossfire.
Such was the situation at Dien Bien Phu. . .
General Vo Nguyen Giap, People’s War, People’s Army.
Genesis of the U. S. Navy’s Role in the War
As the quotation from General Giap so well affirms, the importance of logistics in war has not changed very much since Napoleon’s famous dictum that an army travels on its stomach. The popular conception of the enemy in Vietnam is that he is an ephemeral figure who travels light, lives off the land, and at the moment of battle somehow always manages to supply himself with arms and munitions dug up from long-buried caches, or plucked magically from the hollow stumps of jungle trees. Such a conception is of course largely romantic. The Communist soldier in Vietnam travels and fights only to the extent permitted him by slender lines of supply connecting him to a secure rear area. Many of these lines of supply run through or across navigable water, and naval operations, dating back to the Indochina War, have endeavored to sever or disrupt them. Control of the waterways of Vietnam also implies control of a large part of that country's population. Vast numbers of people live on or near the rivers, canals, and seacoasts. Waterborne transportation is relied upon almost exclusively in the rural areas for the movement of goods and crops to market, and for inter-village communications. Fish from the rivers and seas are an important staple in the Vietnamese diet. Wet-rice farming, the principal agricultural activity, requires an intricate system of irrigation dikes and canals. It was inevitable that a significant phase of the counter-insurgency war in Vietnam would be fought on water.
The first permanent United States naval presence in Vietnam was established in August 1950, soon after the outbreak of the Korean War, when the Navy Section of Military Assistance Advisory Group, Indo china, was formed in Saigon with Commander James B. Cannon, U. S. Navy, and seven officers and men.
In the fall of that year a joint State-Defense Survey Mission visited Vietnam. The senior military officer on this Mission was Major General Graves B. Erskine, U. S. Marine Corps, and the naval officers attached were Captain Mervin Halstead and Commander Ralph J. Michels. They recommended that, since there was no apparent threat to the French in Indochina from the sea, the American naval aid program should be concentrated on a build-up of river and coastal forces of employment against the Viet Minh insurgents.
Specific recommendations included: (1) the provision of modern, radar-equipped patrol aircraft; (2) the supply of a variety of small ships and craft for extending the offshore patrol into coastal waters, and for broadening the scope of river operations; and (3) the establishment of adequate repair and logistic facilities to maintain the new equipment to be provided. With little modification, these early recommendations shaped the broad direction of our naval program in Vietnam for the next fourteen years.
The outbreak of the Korean War had brought with it a change in our assessment of the war in Indochina, and we began to view it in certain respects As an extension of the struggle in Korea. American aid to the French in Indochina burgeoned, and part of this aid took the form of naval ships and craft, mostly small amphibious types, but including one aircraft carrier (the ex-USS Belleau Wood). The Navy section of MAAG Indochina was thus intimately concerned with the training and logistic support required to use the material we were then furnishing the French. The Vietnamese Navy itself was not formally established until 1954, and our early advisors worked almost exclusively with French counterparts.
By 1954, the strength of the French Navy engaged in the Indochina War stood at more than 10,000 men, and the tiny Vietnamese Navy mustered an additional 1,500 officers and men. The two navies together operated more than 300 amphibious ships and craft, 75 patrol vessels and minesweepers, two cruisers, and two aircraft carriers.
Overall command of the navies was exercised by Commander French Naval Forces Far East, who was himself directly subordinate to the theater commander, Commander in Chief, Armed Forces Indochina. Under the senior naval commander was the officer actually responsible for naval operations in Indochina, Commander Naval Division Far East. His forces were divided into three area commands; North, Central, and South Vietnam. The area commands were in turn divided into river, coastal, and sea forces.
Despite an avowed intention late in the war to increase the combat role of the Vietnamese, particularly under the ill-starred Navarre Plan, the war ended with the Vietnamese Navy operating only one Infantry Landing Ship Large (LSIL), one LCU, and some thirty smaller amphibious craft. Further, the Vietnamese Navy was commanded by a French officer, and most other important posts and commands were held by Frenchmen.
The Indochina War lasted seven years, seven months, and two days, more than twice as long as the Korean War. French Union forces suffered more than 172,000 casualties, including 45,000 dead and 48,000 missing. After Dien Bien Phu there was simply no French stomach left to continue the struggle, and, on 20 July 1954, a cease-fire agreement was signed at Geneva.
Passage to Freedom
Under the terms of the Geneva agreement, a military demarcation line was established near the seventeenth parallel in Vietnam. A period of 300 days was set aside for the phased withdrawal of Viet Minh and French military forces to the north and south of that line respectively. During this same period, civilians residing in either zone were to be allowed complete freedom to move to the other zone.
In the North, warnings were scrawled on the walls of public buildings, urging the populace to flee in advance of the Viet Minh Army. The Roman Catholic Church advised its adherents to abandon ancestral homes and fields and seek sanctuary in the South. The streets of the two principal evacuation centers, Hanoi and Haiphong, were soon choked with masses of desperate people. Public services broke down in the crush. Personal possessions representing the savings of a lifetime were hawked fruitlessly from door to door.
The heaviest fighting of the war had occurred in the North, and consequently the bulk of the French Expeditionary Force and the great mass of its equipment were located there when the fighting ended. It was readily apparent that French transportation alone could never cope with the staggering demands placed upon it, and the assistance of the U. S. Government was requested. On 16 August 1954, the first U. S. Navy transport to be assigned to Operation Passage to Freedom loaded refugees in Haiphong.
Rear Admiral Lorenzo S. Sabin, U. S. Navy, Commander Amphibious Group Western Pacific, was assigned responsibility for aiding the exodus from the North. Operating initially with five APAs, two AKAs, two LSDs, two APDs, and four LSTs, his task force grew in the first three months of the operation to more than 100 Navy and MSTS ships and craft. When the operation ended on 18 May 1955, at the expiration of the 300-day regroupment period, more than 310,000 people, 8,000 vehicles, and 69,000 tons of cargo had been carried to the South by the U. S. Navy.
In all, more than 800,000 people are thought to have fled the North, while less than 100,000, including Viet Minh troops, opted to make the journey in the opposite direction. This "balloting by feet” was acutely embarrassing to the Communists, and during the latter part of the regroupment period the agreement on freedom of movement was openly violated and would-be refugees were prevented from leaving. The companion piece to this tragedy, often conveniently forgotten by later critics of the war and self-styled pacifists, was the liquidation of perhaps 50,000 "enemies of the people,” by the Communists’ own estimate, during the consolidation of Viet Minh rule in the North.
The Advisory Period
At Geneva, France pledged to remove its Expeditionary Force from all of Vietnam when and if requested to do so by "the Government of Vietnam.” The nominal Chief of State in the South at that time was the Emperor Bao Dai, then in exile on the French Riviera. His long-time associate and premier, Ngo Dinh Diem, announced on 7 July 1955 that a referendum would be held in October to permit the people to choose between Bao Dai and himself. Shortly before the referendum, Diem informed the U. S. Government that he had decided to ask the French to withdraw the Expeditionary Force by March 1956, explaining that he considered the continued presence of French troops in the south to be "one of the principal Communist assets.”
On 26 October 1955, Diem proclaimed the Republic of Vietnam with himself as President. The effects this development had on the U. S. Navy’s role in Vietnam were extremely important and resulted in the eventual substitution of American for French influence in the shaping of the young Vietnamese Navy.
At about this same time, a personal friend and confidant of Diem, Lieutenant Commander Le Quang My, was appointed to the important post of Naval Deputy to the Vietnamese Armed Forces General Staff. One of this officer’s very first acts was to remove French officers from the Vietnamese Navy and Marine Corps Headquarters.
For a time, U. S. and French naval advisors worked together in a combined training mission called TRIM, but for all practical purposes the U. S. Navy had assumed primary responsibility for advising the Vietnamese Navy in the fall of 1955. The last French naval advisors were those assigned to the Naval Academy at Nha Trang, and they left in May 1957.
At the beginning of the "American period,” the Vietnamese Navy had a fleet of over 100 modified landing craft, two LSMs, two PCEs, and three MSCs, almost all of which had originally been transferred to the French through the American naval aid program during the Indochina War. The strength of the Vietnamese Navy at this time was about 1,900 officers and men.
Until 1960 the Vietnamese Navy experienced a period of modest growth and modernization, assisted by a Navy Section of the U. S. Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG), which, in July of that year, had increased to 60 officers and men.
There were then two major operational commands—the River Forces and the Sea Forces. The former had six River Assault Groups (RAGs) which were patterned after the old French Division Naval D’Assaut, but with two significant differences. The RAG was not provided with a permanently assigned landing force, and, for all practical purposes, operational control had been surrendered to regional Army commanders who employed the river craft almost exclusively in logistic support of encamped ground forces. In numbers of ships and craft assigned, the River Forces had not appreciably changed since 1955. Certain small increases had been made in the Sea Forces, however, and overall strength had grown to about 3,500 officers and men.
The effect of the U. S. naval advisory effort on the relatively static insurgency of the preceding five years was minimal. The increase in Vietnamese naval manpower, a modest sign of change at best, is a typical example of the handicaps suffered by the program. While some additional men were absorbed by the training program and by the Sea Forces, many names simply appeared on a padded payroll, or belonged to a disproportionately growing shore establishment.
The insurgency problem in South Vietnam began to assume serious proportions late in 1959, when it became apparent to many observers that increased U. S. military aid would be required if the independence of the South was to be preserved. In following months additional equipment was transferred to the Vietnamese Navy, primarily patrol craft, and accelerated training of both officers and enlisted men began; some of it in schools in the United States. In May 1961, President Kennedy announced an expansion of the Military Assistance Program for Vietnam, including large increases in the paramilitary Junk Force, which had been operating some 80 sailing junks on patrols near the seventeenth parallel, since about I960.
In a series of graduated increases, the Junk Force was authorized an increase to 644 motorized junks less than two years later. All the older sailing junks were either converted to power, or discarded.
The Junk Force at this time was "paramilitary” rather than "military” because it was manned by civilian it" regulars, and was but nominally officered and led by the Vietnamese Navy, which was charged with its operation and support.
At the urging of American advisors the Junk Force was absorbed into the Vietnamese Navy in 1965. It was hoped that this move would increase the morale and the performance of the force.
In June, Admiral Arleigh Burke, Chief of Naval Operations, cited an urgent need for the U. S. Navy to prepare to assume naval responsibilities in restricted waters and rivers.
In spite of greatly increased levels of military assistance, the situation in South Vietnam continued to deteriorate. Naval advisors complained that their advice was frequently not taken, that new equipment and military supplies were not being used effectively.
The feeble political position of the Vietnamese Navy in the General Staff organization made it almost totally subservient to Army control, and to commanders who were often ignorant of how to exploit Navy capabilities. River Assault Groups seldom went on combat missions. There was a general reluctance within the Sea Forces to maintain active patrols. Morale flagged.
At this time the Government of Vietnam commanded little support within its own structure. A sense of frustration and lack of incentive was part of the dry rot that had set in as early as 1956, paralyzing effective action and inducing a curious numbness in the operating forces. Furthermore, a large percentage of the Vietnamese Navy was recruited from relatively well-to-do city populations who preferred the smaller risks of that service to those offered by the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN). The Vietnamese Navy was thus handicapped by poor leadership, its inferior status compared to the Army, corruption, the disastrous political situation, inertia, and a well-developed sense of caution among some of its members.
In December 1961, U. S. air, sea, and ground forces began to play a limited operational role in Vietnam. In that month U. S. Navy Oceangoing Minesweepers (MSOs) joined Vietnamese Navy ships in barrier patrols near the seventeenth parallel. The MSOs were not themselves permitted to intercept suspect shipping, but used their radar to vector Vietnamese naval units to suspicious contacts. Late in February 1962, similar operations began in the Gulf of Thailand, between Phu Quoc Island and the Ca Mau Peninsula, with U. S. Navy destroyer escorts participating. The results of these early patrols, which might be considered precursors of later Market Time operations, did not seem to indicate the existence of large-scale infiltration from the sea. U. S. Navy DEs were withdrawn from the Gulf of Thailand on 26 May 1962, and the MSO patrol was suspended on 1 August.
The advisory effort, meanwhile, grew rapidly. Advisors were assigned to the Sea, River, and Junk Forces, to the Naval Shipyard in Saigon, and to the Vietnamese Navy Headquarters. In recognition of the expanding U. S. role, Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV) was established in February 1962, and the Headquarters Support Activity was commissioned on 1 July.
In October 1962, the President's Special Military Advisor, General Maxwell Taylor, arrived in Vietnam to assess the situation. As a result of his visit, Project Beef-up was launched, which, in addition to more men, money, and supplies for the Vietnamese military, called for increased U. S. operational participation in the war. Despite Project Beef-up, 1963 did not bring a dramatic reversal of the situation, and South Vietnam continued to plunge into political chaos, culminating in the overthrow and murder of President Diem in November of that year.
As 1963 drew to a close there were 742 U. S. Navy officers and men in Vietnam. The Vietnamese Navy had grown to a force of 6,200 officers and men who operated 50 patrol ships and minecraft, and 208 amphibious and riverine craft.
Given the seriousness of the military situation, the performance of the Vietnamese Navy was far from satisfactory. The daily average employment of those Sea Force and River Force units available for work at sea (and many were unavailable) was roughly 50 per cent. The Junk Force put only an average of 40 per cent of its available boats to sea on any given day. Advisors reported that even these statistics did not reflect the true situation, since units were frequently only "administratively” employed. "Combat patrols” often consisted of short trips to and from anchorages. The Junk Force was notorious for "gun-decking” its operational reports.
The Commander-in-Chief of the Vietnamese Navy in the last years of the Diem regime was Captain Ho Tan Quyen. When President Diem was overthrown, Captain Quyen, who was closely associated with the fallen President, and who had been instrumental in defeating several previously attempted coups, was himself murdered by a subordinate officer sympathetic to the incoming regime. This ushered in nearly three years of turmoil in the senior Vietnamese Navy leadership.
The Bucklew Report
The shift to "stage three” of the insurgency, with its attendant pitched battles involving large units, forced Hanoi to make an important decision concerning the continued supply of Communist forces in the South. Until 1964 the Viet Cong were not equipped with standardized weapons and fought with a large variety of French, Russian, Chinese, and captured American arms. The battlefield supply of ammunition for all of these assorted weapons was a difficult and vexing problem. It was decided, therefore, to shift to a standard family of small arms, using the same caliber of ammunition, and provide more modern supporting weapons. This in turn committed Hanoi to a sharp expansion of its infiltration effort.
The most economical and direct routes for supplying the Viet Cong were sea routes. Though the number of Vietnamese Navy ships available for coastal patrol increased to 28 during the year, detection remained low.
The Junk Force was seriously undermanned, with some Coastal Groups reduced to little more than 50 per cent of authorized strength. At the end of 1963, the Junk Force consisted of 632 junks, 400 VNN officers and men, and 3,700 civilian irregulars. The causes of the under-manning in the Junk Force centered upon poor pay and living conditions, widespread desertion, and to an extent, the pay list manipulations referred to above.
The irregulars were ordinarily recruited from the population in the vicinity of each coastal group. Frequently, these were individuals who by reason of age or infirmity were ineligible for service in the Uniformed Services. It is probably correct to state that few, if any, of those recruited desired to serve in the Junk Force. Some were levied through direct or indirect pressures on families or villages, others had very little but starvation as an alternative when the war ruined their farms or turned their traditional fishing grounds into restricted areas.
The Junk Force was officered by the Vietnamese Navy, but it was a frequent complaint of U. S. Navy advisors that seldom, if ever, did a Vietnamese naval officer actually accompany the junks on patrol.
In January 1964, a team of eight naval officers, headed by Captain Phillip H. Bucklew, met in Saigon to study the infiltration problem. Its conclusions were that infiltration from the North existed on a scale sufficient to support the expanded level of operations by the enemy in South Vietnam, and that only nominal resistance to that infiltration was being made.
The Bucklew Report was critical of the sea patrol then in effect, and recommended augmenting it with U. S. forces. It pointed out, however, the essential futility of a sea quarantine in the absence of an accompanying effort to block inland infiltration routes. It recommended the development of a mobile patrol force along the Cambodian and Laotian borders. Finally, the Report indicated that U. S. Navy forces might have to ' be deployed in the Delta rivers to stop Communist infiltration, thus anticipating later Game Warden operations.
The year 1964 was one of rapid change in the posture of U. S. Navy activity in Vietnam. In May, Military Assistance Advisory Group Vietnam was absorbed by Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV), and Navy Section MAAG became the Naval Advisory Group, MACV. Tests were completed on a 36-foot river patrol craft (RPC), and 34 of them were ordered. Huge construction projects were started at Cam Ranh Bay, Da Nang, and elsewhere.
The attack on the U. S. destroyer Maddox in the Tonkin Gulf in early August signaled a new and dramatically different phase of the war in Vietnam. On 7 August, a Joint Resolution of the Congress affirmed that the United States would continue to support the Republic of Vietnam and "take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States.” By the end of the year, the U. S. military strength in Vietnam numbered about 23,000 officers and men.
The Vung Ro Incident
At 1030 on 16 February 1965, Lieutenant James S- Bowers, U. S. Army, while piloting a UH-1B helicopter on a medical rescue mission from Qui Nhon, sighted a camouflaged ship lying in Vung Ro Bay on South Vietnam’s central coast. Lieutenant Bowers promptly notified the Second Coastal Zone Senior Advisor, Lieutenant Commander Harvey P. Rodgers, U. S. Navy, in Nha Trang. The "Vung Ro Incident," as it came to be called, led directly to Market Time, the U. S. Navy's first large-scale operational participation in the Vietnam War.
Lieutenant Commander Rodgers reported the sighting his counterpart, Lieutenant Commander Thoai, Vietnamese Navy, the Second Coastal Zone Commander, and arranged for an aircraft to investigate. The ship was observed to be of the trawler type, about 130 feet long and displacing perhaps 100 tons. Air strikes were called in, and after the third strike the ship was awash in shallow water, resting on her port side. A fourth strike was directed at a nearby area on the beach where crates were stacked and from which small arms fire had been received.
Lieutenant Commander Thoai then arranged for a company of Vietnamese troops from the 23rd Division at nearby Tuy Hoa to be lifted into the area by the Vietnamese Navy's Landing Ship, LSM 405. Units from Vietnamese Naval Coastal Group 24 were also ordered to assist, and requests were sent out for a Vietnamese Navy SEAL Team (LDNN) to provide divers for an attempted salvage of the sunken trawler.
That night (16-17 February) the requested air strikes and illumination failed to materialize. An observation plane reported lights and activity near the stricken ship, and on the adjacent beach.
The following morning LSM 405 arrived at Tuy Hoa to embark the company of troops, but the Province Chief refused to provide them, asserting that the area surrounding Vung Ro Bay and the Cap Varella peninsula was too strongly held by the Viet Cong. At 1430 on the 17th, LSM 405 arrived off Vung Ro without troops preceded by air strikes, two attempts were made to enter the harbor, but both were stopped in the face of small arms and automatic weapons fire. The LSM anchored offshore for the night, and the requested air services again mysteriously failed to appear.
The next day, 18 February, a conference was held in Nha Trang with Brigadier General William E. Depuy, U. S. Army, of the Military Assistance Command Vietnam J-3 staff; presiding. Also attending were representatives from the Vietnamese Army's 23rd Division, the Vietnamese Special Forces, the Vietnamese Navy, and the U. S. Navy. An action plan was devised which called for a two-battalion blocking force to take position inland along Route 1, while one company advanced along the coast from the nearby Deo Ca outpost. A company of Vietnamese Special Forces, meanwhile, would be lifted by helicopter to Dai Lanh, south of Vung Ro, where they would board LSM 405 for an amphibious landing near the sunken trawler:
While the conference was progressing, ism 405 was joined at Vung Ro by the Vietnamese PCE 08. Lieutenant Commander Thoai, apparently to effect the further destruction of the trawler, ordered both units to proceed into the harbor. No opposing fire was experienced and after extensively shooting up the area, the ships withdrew. LSM 405 then departed for Dai Lanh, returning in the early evening with the company of Special Forces. At this time a message was received, its origin unclear, which postponed the scheduled landing.
The same night the Vietnamese PC 04 with 15 LDNN and the U. S. SEAL Advisor, Lieutenant Franklin W. Anderson, aboard, arrived to join the growing forces at Vung Ro. In the morning, shortly after 0800, all three ships moved into Vung Ro Bay, preceded by heavy air strikes and naval gunfire support. PC 04 and LSM 405 immediately began a run to the beach, but at a range of about 500 yards encountered small arms and automatic weapons fire. Engines were backed just before beaching and the landing was aborted. A second attempt was made several hours later, moderate opposition was again experienced, and the ships once more withdrew. Finally, at 1100, on the third attempt, the Special Forces company was put ashore. Light sniper fire was taken, but by mid-afternoon the immediate area near the sunken trawler was secured and the LDNN began salvage operations.
Not far from the landing area, the Special Forces uncovered a large cache of about 4,000 assorted rifles, submachine guns, BAR type weapons, several thousand cases of ammunition, and very large quantities of medical supplies. LSM 405 landed a company of Vietnamese Army troops at 1830 to assist with the handling of this material, but an hour later, in spite of heated argument by the American advisors, both companies were embarked in LSM 405, although large quantities of arms and munitions remained on the beach. The Special Forces company commander reported that he couldn’t hold the beachhead overnight and that with "very little arms and ammunition remaining,” it was not worthwhile to land again. Lieutenant Commander Thoai, supported by Lieutenant Commander Sang from the office of the Vietnamese Navy Chief of Staff, refused to order the troops back ashore. At 0215 the next morning, however, message orders were received to do so immediately.
Shortly before 0600 on 20 February, therefore, both companies were again landed. The Special Forces company commander displayed great reluctance to use his men to assist in moving the remaining cache material to the beach and refused to order an end to the looting of medical supplies, which took place on a large scale.
That afternoon, additional caches were uncovered. Area clearance and mopping-up operations continued until 24 February, plagued as before by continued foot dragging and intransigence. On the last full day of the operation a particularly large ammunition cache was destroyed.
The Vung Ro Incident confirmed what had long been suspected, but for which there had been no previous evidence.1 The large amount of material discovered indicated that more than just a few shipments had been made. The simultaneous appearance in other coastal areas of the new 7.62 family of enemy weapons strongly suggested that other sites were being used to receive shipments by sea. Further, the disappointing performance of the Vietnamese armed forces at Vung Ro cast renewed doubt on the capacity and the willingness of the Vietnamese to stop such infiltration on their own.
On 21 February 1965, the Commander of the U. S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam requested the Commander-in-Chief Pacific and the Commander-in-Chief Pacific Fleet to send representatives to Saigon to plan a combined U. S.-Vietnamese Navy patrol effort.
Market Time
The conference requested by General Westmoreland met on 3 March 1965, and in the following week the basic concepts of the combined patrol operation were worked out. It was assumed that infiltration into South Vietnam by sea fell into two categories: (1) coastwise junk traffic mingling with the more than 50,000 registered civilian craft which plied the coastal waters of South Vietnam; and (2) vessels of trawler size or larger which approached the coast on a generally perpendicular line. These trawlers were believed to originate in North Vietnam and Communist China.
It was the opinion of the conference that "the best tactic to interdict coastal traffic infiltration would be to assist and inspire the Vietnamese Navy to increase the quality and quantity of its searches.”
With regard to the second category of infiltration, it was recommended that a conventional patrol be established by U. S. Navy ships and aircraft. A defensive sea area was proposed which would extend 40 miles from the coast, and it was recommended that the Republic of Vietnam authorize U. S. Naval forces to "stop, board, search, and, if necessary, capture and/or destroy any hostile suspicious craft or vessel found within South Vietnam’s territorial and contiguous zone waters.”
The U. S. Joint Chiefs of Staff approved the proposed operating concept on 16 March, and on that very day the first U. S. Navy ships reported for duty, the destroyers Higbee (DD-806) and Black (DD-666). Daily coastal surveillance flights by SP-2 aircraft, operating from Tan Son Nhut, had begun shortly after the conference of 3 March 1965. The code name Market Time was assigned to the operation on 24 March.
In April the operation expanded rapidly. By the first week of the month, 28 U. S. Navy ships were participating, under the operational control of CTF 71 in the USS Canberra (CAG-2). In a departure from the planning conference recommendation of the preceding month, the decision was taken to introduce U.S. PCFS (Swifts) for close inshore patrolling. On 29 April it was announced that Coast Guard Squadron One, with seventeen 82-foot cutters (WPBS), would be lifted to Vietnam for Market Time operations.
On 30 April, Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara approved the eventual transfer of the operational control of Market Time to the Chief, Naval Advisory Group (CNAG), as the agent for Com USMACV. Significantly, this marked the formal recognition of the Naval Advisory Group's new role as an operational as well as an advisory command. Concurrent with this announcement, Rear Admiral Norvell G. Ward, the first Navy flag officer to be assigned to Vietnam, was ordered to relieve Captain William H. Hardcastle, Jr., U. S. Navy, as Chief, Naval Advisory Group. The change of command took place on 10 May 1965.
On 11 May the Government of South Vietnam granted formal authorization for U. S. Navy Market Time units to stop, search, and seize vessels not clearly engaged in innocent passage, inside the three mile limit of the Republic of Vietnam's territorial waters. Vessels in the contiguous zone, extending 12 miles from the coast, suspected as infiltrators were also made subject to search and seizure. Beyond the contiguous zone, vessels thought to be of South Vietnamese registry, could be searched. Compensation would be paid by the Government of South Vietnam if they proved to be foreign ships. The first capture of infiltrators by a U. S. Navy ship occurred late in May, when the USS Back (DD-761) boarded a junk near the seventeenth parallel.
On 1 August 1965, operational responsibility for Market Time passed from the Commander-in-Chief, Pacific Fleet to General Westmoreland, and operational control from Commander Task Force 71, who had held this duty as a collateral function, to Commander Task Force 115, which was the new designation of the Commander of the Coastal Surveillance Force. At this time Admiral Ward was both CNAG and CTF 115.
Task Force 115 consisted of seven DERs, two MSOs, two LSTs originally used to provide radar coverage of the Mekong River entrances, five SP-2H patrol aircraft based at Tan Son Nhut Airfield at Saigon, and Coast Guard Squadron One with nine WPBs based at An Thoi and eight at Da Nang. Additional patrol aircraft were provided by the Commander of the Seventh Fleet.
Lockheed P3A Orions from Sangley Point in the Philippines patrolled north of Vung Tau to the seventeenth parallel. Martin P5 Marlin seaplanes, operating from tenders, and Lockheed P2V Neptunes flying from Tan Son Nhut and later from Cam Ranh Bay, carried out patrol missions across the river entrances south from Vung Tau to An Thoi. The Marlins were phased out of service by 1967.
Market Time operations were then already in their twentieth week.
Almost no tangible results had been achieved to measure the effectiveness of the operation. In some respects, of course, the effectiveness of such an operation was probably not measurable, for like the tariff in international trade, Market Time may have discouraged certain Communist arms shipments from ever being attempted. Statistical studies, however, showed that detection probabilities at the level of forces then assigned were still quite low.
As a result of recommendations made to the Secretary of Defense during his July 1965 visit to Vietnam, additional Swift boats were ordered, bringing the approved total to 54 from the 36 originally planned. It Was decided the boats would be based at Qui Nhon, Cain Ranh Bay, and Vung Tau. In the same month the Vietnamese Navy was finally persuaded to absorb the Junk Force into the regular Navy, a move long urged by advisors as one which might lead to increasing the effectiveness of coastal patrols.
The Junk Force was viewed by many Vietnamese naval officers with something akin to disdain. With few exceptions, the Coastal Groups (the Junk bases) are located in areas considered undesirable for duty.
There was, in addition, opposition within the Joint General Staff of the Vietnamese Armed Forces for any aggrandizement of the Vietnamese Navy, which has always been the political inferior of the ARVN. It took a great deal of persuasion and strong representations at the highest level, before the shotgun wedding was brought off.
While the Junk Force was concerned with inshore and Delta river traffic, the Vietnamese Navy Sea force ships assigned to Market Time patrol were ordinarily placed under the operational control of the Coastal Zone commanders. These in turn were tied in with the U. S. Task Force 115 operations through the various Coastal Surveillance Centers. It was the function of these centers to coordinate patrols of the two navies, but in practice some duplication occurred. This undoubtedly irritated those Vietnamese officers who felt their functions were being usurped by the Americans.
Task Force 115 operations at this time were divided into nine patrol areas, 30 to 40 miles deep and 80 to 120 miles long, stretching from the seventeenth parallel in the north along the coast to the Brevie Line2 in the Gulf of Thailand. Normally, each patrol area was the responsibility of a DER or, if sufficient DERs were not available, an MSO. Coast Guard Squadron One provided WPBs for barrier patrols along the seventeenth parallel and in the Gulf of Thailand. Five Coastal Surveillance Centers (Da Nang, Qui Nhon, Nha Trang, Vung Tau, and An Thoi) were responsible for coordinating U. S. Navy and Vietnamese Navy patrol units. Though there were five Coastal Surveillance Centers, there were only four Coastal Zones, Qui Nhon and Nha Trang sharing responsibility for the Second Coastal Zone. Overall Market Time operations were controlled from the Surveillance Operations Center located at the Naval Advisory Group Headquarters in Saigon. Ships were loaned to CFF 115 by the Seventh Fleet. The Commander-in-Chief Pacific Fleet, common superior of Commander Seventh Fleet and Chief, Naval Advisory Group, determined which units would be assigned.
The primary mission of Market Time at this period was "to conduct surveillance, gunfire support, visit and search, and other operations as directed along the coast of the Republic of Vietnam in order to assist the Republic of Vietnam in detection and prevention of Communist infiltration from the sea." An additional mission was "to improve the Vietnamese Navy's counter-insurgency capabilities and assist Vietnamese and U. S. Forces to secure the coastal regions and major rivers in order to defeat the Communist insurgency in Vietnam."
The chief naval advisor, Admiral Ward, foresaw the necessity for eventually returning responsibility for all naval operations in Vietnam to the Vietnamese Navy. His command and control decisions were shaped by the following principles: (1) U. S. Navy operations in Vietnam would be coordinated with Vietnamese Operations, allowing integrated operations to be instituted as soon as practicable; (2) facilities required for U. S. naval operations would be located with Vietnamese naval installations so that support operations could be integrated, and later turnover of the facilities more practically achieved.
Late in September 1965, representatives of CNO, CinCPac, CinCPacFlt, ComUSMACV, and CNAG met in Saigon to review the progress of Market Time operations to that date.
There was a tendency on our part, based largely upon the observations of our naval advisors, to discount the effectiveness of VNN patrols, but force levels were not determined on the supposition that we would be doing the job alone. The military decisions that were taken at this time were not, nor could they be, based solely on our operational experience in the war. The situation inside South Vietnam was becoming critical, and a rapid buildup of our military strength seemed imperative to keep the Government from going under. The force levels decided upon in September 1965 were later increased, and thus it may be assumed they were not in themselves sufficient. At the conclusion of their meeting, recommendations were made to increase the number of off-shore patrol ships from 9 to 14, to double the patrol aircraft coverage, to increase the number of PCPs available for inshore work from 54 to 84 and the number of WPBs from 17 to 26. An additional LST was recommended for providing radar coverage of the mouths of the Mekong (three were already providing this service, but the normal needs of rest and maintenance meant that that number was insufficient to provide constant cover).
Finally, it was recommended that an extensive river patrol be established, with 120 river patrol craft operating from LSTs anchored off the mouths of the major rivers. It was proposed that these patrols extend upriver for a distance of 25 miles, the range thought practical for appropriate logistic support and for the objective of controlling the river mouths. The concept of the proposed river patrol operations was that they would not be a part of Market Time, but would be directed by the same officer, the Chief, Naval Advisory Group.
Naval Forces, Vietnam
By the fall of 1965, U. S. Navy units in Vietnam included: (1) the Marines in I Corps; (2) Navy support personnel under ComPhibPac’s command at Da Nang and Chu Lai (on 1 October Naval Support Activity, Da Nang, was established under ComUSMACV’s operational control and PhibPac support terminated); (3) Construction Battalions in I Corps and Seabee Teams throughout the country who also worked under the Military Assistance Command Vietnam; (4) the Officer in Charge of Construction and his organization; (5) the Naval Advisory Group; (6) the Headquarters Support Activity, Saigon (whose responsibilities were being phased out and taken over by the U. S. Army); (7) the Military Sea Transportation Service Office, Vietnam; and (8) numerous smaller activities. With Navy strength burgeoning and diversifying, the need for a formal Navy command structure was evident.
Although the Chief, Naval Advisory Group was the senior naval officer in Vietnam, he was not in actuality a commander. The Naval Advisory Group was a division of the MACV staff organization and Chief, Naval Advisory Group was therefore without command authority, including disciplinary authority, over any naval personnel in-country. All Navy personnel then being ordered to Vietnam reported to Military Assistance Command Vietnam for further assignment to the Naval Advisory Group, and Westmoreland delegated operational control of assigned naval forces to the Chief, Naval Advisory Group.
In September 1965, Rear Admiral Ward raised the question of naval command relationships in Vietnam with CNO and with General Westmoreland. They agreed that a study should be conducted on the subject. What had been conceived and organized as an adviser’s job, no longer fit the changing nature of growing operational command. The advisory role was taking second priority and receiving less command attention than the growing direct involvement of U. S. fighting units. On 1 January 1966, the following recommendations were submitted:
(1) That a Naval Force, Vietnam (NavForV), Command be established as the Naval Component Command in Vietnam under the operational command of CinCPacFlt,3 and operational control of ComUSMACV.4
(2) That NavForV be commanded by a naval officer, and that this naval officer have additional duty as Chief, Naval Advisory Group.
(3) That NavForV not include III MAF, which would continue under the operational command of CinCPacFlt and operational control of ComUSMACV.
(4) That all Navy commands, unless otherwise specified, be under the operational control of ComNavForV.
(5) That ComNavForV be responsible to ComUSMACV for logistic support of all naval forces, including III MAF in I Corps.
(6) That ComNavForV administer all naval construction in Vietnam.
These recommendations were approved by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and on 1 April 1966 in ceremonies at Saigon, Rear Admiral Ward established Naval Forces, Vietnam and became the first Commander. On 16 April he relinquished his duties as CTF 115 to Captain Clifford L. Stewart, U. S. Navy, the new Commander of the Coastal Surveillance Force.
Game Warden
In the meantime, TF 116, Game Warden, had been established (on 18 December 1965) with an assigned mission "to assist the Government of South Vietnam in denying the enemy the use of the major rivers of the Delta and the Rung Sat Special Zone.” Rear Admiral Ward was assigned additional duty as CTF 116. In keeping with the recommendations of the September conference, it was planned that the task force would initially consist of 120 specially designed river patrol boats (PBRs), 20 LCPLs, an LSD, an LST, and 8 UH-1B helicopters. Ships and patrol craft would be manned by the U. S. Navy, and the U. S. Army would furnish helicopters and pilots. The Vietnamese Navy would assign liaison personnel to the PBRs and LCPLs.5
Under the original concept, the LSD and LST were to anchor off the mouths of the major rivers in the Delta and serve as operational bases, each supporting 30 PBRs. Four specially outfitted LSTs, scheduled to arrive by September 1966, would replace the original support ships.
In February 1966, the first Game Warden sailors reported for duty, and in March the first PBRs arrived. Interim Game Warden bases were established at Nha Be and at Cat Lo. In April, as the first Game Warden PBRs became operational, patrols were begun in the Rung Sat Special Zone, and in the following month operations were expanded into the Delta. On 18 May 1966, Captain B. B. Witham, U. S. Navy, relieved Rear Admiral Ward as CTF 116.
Meanwhile, to the despair of U. S. Navy advisors, the Vietnamese River Assault Groups frequently found themselves involved in logistic support and static defense roles assigned them by ARVN ground commanders. Attempts were made to coordinate their operations with TF 116 and TF 117 units with widely varying success depending upon the areas and personalities concerned.
In June the first operational test of the offshore support ship concept was initiated when the USS Tortuga (BD-26), which had arrived in May, anchored near the mouths of the Co Chien and Bassac Rivers. Embarked were 10 PBRS, a helicopter fire team, and two Patrol Air Cushion Vehicles (PACVs). Almost from the very beginning, the weather was an inhibiting factor. Monsoon winds and the long fetch over shallow water combined to produce frequent periods of unfavorable sea conditions for small boat operations. On 15 July the Commander of River Patrol Section 512 reported that heavy seas and high winds were restricting PBR operations almost 50 per cent of the time. Similar conditions were experienced when the LSTs especially re-configured for Game Warden arrived in Vietnam, and so gradually the offshore support concept was abandoned in favor of afloat and shore support bases in the rivers themselves.
Growing Pains in the Vietnamese Navy
The large build-up of U. S. Navy forces in Vietnam was accompanied by a rapid expansion of the Vietnamese Navy. American-furnished material doubled and redoubled the Vietnamese Navy inventory. By the fall of 1968, on the eve of the introduction of the U. S. naval command's Accelerated Turnover (ACTOV) Program, the personnel strength of the Vietnamese Navy was more than 17,500. This "hot-house" growth was the more notable because it was accomplished in conditions of near constant crisis in the senior Vietnamese Navy leadership.
The successor to the murdered Captain Quyen as Commander-in-Chief of the Vietnamese Navy was Captain Chung Tan Cang. He found himself the victim of a mutiny on 8 April 1965, when his Force Commanders and other senior officers rose against him, charging him with graft in the operation of a fleet of coastal freighters, which had been seized by the Government at the time of the 1963 coup. Cang, who had been promoted to the rank of Rear Admiral in the interim, was relieved of his command, as were the mutineers pending completion of an investigation of the affair. Stripped of its top leadership, and its remaining officers in a state of high excitement and confusion, the Vietnamese Navy careened along an uncertain path. The Naval Advisory Group reported that "there were cases of failures to carry out orders and missed commitments, but not as many as might have been predicted.”
On 26 April 1966, Captain Tran Van Phan, the former Chief of Staff to Admiral Cang, was designated Acting Commander-in-Chief, and in May all of the mutineers, with the exception of the River Force Commander, who was replaced, were returned to their original posts.
Captain Phan’s command was marred by extreme factionalism within his navy, the exiling of many senior naval officers, and inept leadership. By the summer of 1966, nearly 50 per cent of the senior officers of the Navy were either out of the country or assigned to non-Navy duties in the country. The consequences of this bitter infighting for the operational effectiveness of the Vietnamese Navy, in this period, may well be imagined. It should be considered by those who criticize the U. S. Navy for "usurping” responsibilities rightfully belonging to the Vietnamese Navy at that particular stage of the war. In fact, many of those responsibilities fell on the U. S. Navy by default and, as has been shown, it was our policy at the highest levels to return responsibility for operations to the Vietnamese Navy as soon as that Navy was prepared to accept it.
In September 1966, Captain Phan was removed from his post, and command of the Navy passed to Lieutenant General Cao Van Vien of the Vietnamese Army. Most Navy officers interpreted this as a serious loss of face for the Vietnamese Navy, but a few actually thought that it might be a blessing in disguise, since the Navy would at last have a voice at meetings of the Joint General Staff.
This peculiar command structure was not destined to last, however. Captain (now Commodore) Tran Van Chon was named to the top Navy post on 31 October 1966, a move that took the Naval Advisory Group completely by surprise, since he had been "exiled” for so long (five years).
Captain Chon had served a previous tour as Commander-in-Chief in the period 1957-1959. In 1959-1960 he attended the U. S. Naval War College, and his most recent assignment prior to re-assuming command of the Vietnamese Navy was that of Commander, Regional Force Boat Group, a command which did not fall under the operational control of the Navy, and which obviously and providentially had afforded the new Commander-in-Chief some relief from the necessity of having to choose sides in the recent political machinations of the naval officer corps.
Captain Chon brought dynamic leadership, a new sense of purpose, and, perhaps most important, a period of much needed command stability to the Vietnamese Navy. He practiced and preached the need for his officers to avoid the political involvements which had crippled the Navy for so long. Many long-standing deficiencies were corrected and the worst of the factionalism rapidly disappeared. Without the reforms introduced and enforced by this officer, the later "Vietnamization” of the naval war would have been virtually impossible.
The Mobile Riverine Force
In the summer and fall of 1966, the establishment of a "Mekong Delta Mobile Afloat Force” (MDMAF) was the subject of discussions between ComUSMACV and ComNavForV. In essence, the early planning envisioned a highly mobile force of river assault craft and embarked troops capable of sustained search and destroy missions in the Delta. The proposed force would have been quite similar, in fact, to the old French Division Naval d’assaut generally known as Dinassaut. As planning progressed, the concept gradually evolved to provide a floating base, with accommodations for a full Army brigade and associated Navy support elements. U. S. Marines, traditionally the force trained and equipped for amphibious assault operations, were not available, already having been committed in maximum strength to the I Corps Tactical Zone.
Original plans called for four APBs, two ARLs, two LSTs, and two River Assault Squadrons (RAS) each consisting of 34 converted LCM-6 craft (26 ATCs, 5 Monitors, 2 CCBs, 1 Refueler), and 16 ASPBs which would be newly constructed.6
On 1 September 1966, the first administrative unit of the future Mobile Riverine Force, River Assault Flotilla One, was commissioned at the Naval Amphibious Base, Coronado, California, with Captain W. C. Wells, U. S. Navy, as its Commander. The first units of the new force arrived at Vung Tau on board the USS Whitfield County (LST-1169) on 7 January 1967 and began training with elements of the U. S. 9th Infantry Division. On 12 January the Commander-in-Chief, Pacific assigned the task force designator 117 and the descriptive title "Riverine Assault Force.” On 28 February, TF 117 was officially activated under the operational control of ComNavForV and the administrative control of ComPhibPac.
Initial operations were confined to the Rung Sat Special Zone, where increased Viet Cong attacks on shipping and minesweepers were then being experienced.
The swampy Rung Sat controls the waterways connecting Saigon with the sea. Vigorous efforts had been made, beginning in 1966, to clear the area of the enemy to prevent the ambushing and mining of the ships in transit. This had been largely accomplished with river patrols, drastic defoliation, mine sweeping, and by hunting the enemy on land.
Early effort notwithstanding, the Viet Cong successfully mined one ship each in 1965 and 1966 (the SS Eastern Mariner and the SS Baton Rouge Victory respectively). In 1964 an enemy mine sank an aircraft transport which was later raised at her berth in Saigon. However, no further successes were achieved by the enemy until the mining of the Panamanian freighter Welfare in July 1969. The military impact of harassing attacks on Long Tau shipping was virtually nil, but the Viet Cong derived great propaganda value from their efforts.
The arrival in March of elements of the second River Assault Squadron, RAS 11, permitted the deployment of the first units of RAS 9 to other parts of the Delta. These units at first operated from the Army base at Dong Tam on the My Tho River.
On 14 April 1967, the first of the permanent Riverine Assault Force support ships, the USS Kemper County (LST-854), arrived at Vung Tau. Later in the month the USS Benewah (APB-35) reported. With the arrival of the second APB, the USS Colleton (APB-36), in early May, plans were made to move all these units of the Mobile Riverine Base to Dong Tam. On 1 June the transit was made.
By the middle of June, Task Force 117 had received all 68 of its programmed converted LCMs. Now fully operational, the Riverine Assault Force began a long series of actions with the 9th Infantry Division embarked. River assault craft not only landed and extracted troops, but also provided close and accurate gunfire support, medical evacuation of the wounded, and the supply of ammunition.
The Mobile Riverine Force had its own floating artillery in the guns of the support ships, and the barge-mounted 105 mm howitzers of the 9th Division. The howitzers were towed along with the base, or positioned in advance of operations.
Helicopters and fixed wing aircraft supported the Mobile Riverine Force. More than 5000 landings were recorded in the first year of operations from the single-spot helo deck of the USS Benewah alone.
There was literally nowhere in the Delta, given navigable water, that the Riverine Assault Force could not go. An extremely interesting and ingenious operation occurred on 22 February 1968, in the Phung Hiep district of the Delta. A span of the Phung Hiep bridge was raised early in the morning with the assistance of the Army Engineers, and two River Assault Divisions with troops embarked passed 14 miles up the supposedly "inaccessible" Cai Con Canal for an assault on Viet Cong positions. The Commander of the task force could say with obvious pride that "Commanders involved in this unique operation felt that they had succeeded in gaining the most difficult of all military advantages in this war—surprise.”
On 27 April 1967, just as the Mobile Riverine Force was getting started, Rear Admiral Ward was relieved as ComNavForV (and as CNAG) by Rear Admiral Kenneth L. Veth.
Tet—1968. The savage communist assault on the cities of South Vietnam during the great Tet Offensive of 1968 called forth the finest in performance from both the U. S. and the Vietnamese Navies, and at the same time it underscored the prevailing strategic weakness of the overall interdiction effort to that time. It was unmistakably evident that great amounts of supplies for the Communists had been brought into Vietnam to support and fuel the offensive. Beyond question, much of that material had entered and traversed South Vietnam on navigable water, despite Market Time, Game Warden, and the Mobile Riverine Force. The best evidence seemed to point to the fact that what the Bucklew Report had warned would happen, had happened. As Market Time throttled infiltration from the sea, the communists simply shifted their principal supply lines to inland routes, which crossed the borders from supposedly "neutral” Cambodia and Laos. The interdiction effort that had been directed against these routes was concentrated on the major rivers, and might be likened to an attempt to stem the flow of water through a sieve by the tactic of inserting a limited number of needles in selected openings in the sieve, effective locally, but virtually useless overall. The Communists merely moved to smaller waterways when they were forced off the large rivers.
Why had not the Bucklew Report’s recommendations concerning a mobile patrol force along the Cambodian border been implemented? There were really two reasons. First, until late 1968 the operational and logistic capability to mount such a naval patrol did not exist. Second, there was (and to a degree there continues to be) a profound reluctance on the part of Vietnamese ground force commanders to commit their troops to the aggressive river bank patrols essential to the effectiveness and safety of naval operations on narrow and restricted waterways. Such patrols were considered tiresome, time consuming, and virtually devoid of the tangible results obtainable from "search and destroy” operations.
The fallacy of "the numbers game,” the seeming preoccupation with body count, Communist "structures” destroyed, and even, in some quarters, with bomb and ammunition expenditure reports was driven home with a vengeance when the communists unleashed their Tet offensive, for while it was true that the "cream" of the enemy's forces was destroyed in that offensive, it was also undeniable that the South Vietnamese people and the credibility of the U. S. and the Government of Vietnam's political and military effort in the war had suffered grievous setbacks, from which they were a long time recovering.
In the IV Corps Tactical Zone, the Mobile Riverine Force was the only friendly force that retained the ability to mount sustained and effective counter-offensive operations. It literally rebounded from battle to battle and was later credited by General Westmoreland with having "saved the Delta." The River Patrol Force and the Vietnamese Navy outdid themselves as they brought their highly mobile fire power and unquestioned courage to the defense of the besieged cities.
The Coastal Surveillance Force enjoyed its finest hour as it thwarted a desperate attempt by the Communists to resupply the offensive by the simultaneous infiltration of four steel-hulled vessels of the fishing trawler type laden with arms. Three were destroyed, and the fourth was forced to turn back before she entered the "contiguous" zone.
Task Force Clearwater. In the North, the intense and tragic struggle for Hue made it absolutely essential that water communication by way of the Perfume River remain open. It was the only uncut supply line of any consequence for allied military forces there. On 20 February 1968, Deputy ComUSMACV (Forward) requested that ComNavForV designate a senior naval officer to act as a task force Commander whose mission would be "to coordinate overall activities concerning the movement and protection of LCUs and LCMs through inland waterways to Hue ramps." In response, ComNavForV designated Captain Gerald W. Smith, U. S. Navy, as Commander Task Force Clearwater. The task force was activated on 24 February with headquarters at Tan My, under the operational control of Commanding General, III MAF. On 25 February, an additional responsibility was assigned to maintain the lines of communication on the Cua Viet River, just south of the Demilitarized Zone.
Forces initially at the disposal of the Clearwater task force commander included TF 116 PBRs, helicopter gunships, attack aircraft, artillery, and ground security troops. The task force was organized into two groups, the Hue River Security Group and the Dong Ha River Security Group. On 2 March 1968, in recognition of the increasing importance the northern group was assuming, the commander of the Clearwater task force moved his headquarters to Cua Viet.
The facilities at Cua Viet were almost constantly subject to enemy artillery and rocket attack, and the pressures and rigors of life at this exposed forward base were extreme. During the long months of the northeast monsoon the climate is probably the country’s worst, with cold, grey and rainy days following each other in seemingly endless succession. Outside the river mouth, there are restless shoals and a pounding surf. Some of the unsung heroes of this war are the captains who guided low-powered and frequently age-weakened ships and craft through the treacherous white water of the Cua Viet inlet, and other equally hazardous channels in northern I Corps. The LCUs usually had chiefs or first class petty officers as captains. The LSTs has lieutenants or lieutenant commanders.
The men at Cua Viet lived little better than moles in heavily bunkered huts burrowed down among the sand dunes. When the rain stopped falling, the sand, finegrained and gritty, began to blow, accumulating in drifts before the huts, sifting through screens and under doors, finding its way into lockers and between sheets and even into the food the men ate.
In October 1968, a program was initiated to gradually rotate all Cua Viet personnel back to Da Nang or Tan My, to ensure that no one would be required to spend more than six months at the advanced base. It is a tribute to the splendid morale of our sailors, and their sense of sharing in what was in many ways a unique drama, that many volunteered to stay on and finish their tours at Cua Viet.
Vice Admiral Zumwalt and the New Strategy
There were only seven officers and men in Commander Cannon’s first Navy Section of the Military Advisory Assistance Group, Indochina. However, on 30 September 1968, when Vice Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt, Jr., the first naval officer of three-star rank to be assigned to Vietnam, relieved Rear Admiral Kenneth L. Veth as Commander Naval Forces, Vietnam, the personnel strength of the Navy command stood at 38,386.
There were four flag officers either on hand or with orders to Vietnam at the time of Vice Admiral Zumwalt’s assumption of command—ComNavForV, Deputy ComNavForV, Commander U. S. Naval Support Activity, Da Nang, and the Officer in Charge of Construction.
The Naval Support Activity, Da Nang had grown to become the Navy’s largest overseas shore command. The Naval Support Activity, Saigon, which was commissioned when the Headquarters Support Activity was disestablished in May 1966, supported naval operations in II, III, and IV Corps Tactical Zones through its many scattered detachments. The operational forces had undergone many changes in organization and strength. The Vietnamese Navy and the advisory effort had expanded sharply.
The Riverine Assault Force with its 3717 officers and men operated 161 specialized river craft, and these included 103 ATCs, 31 ASPBs, 6 CCBs, 17 Monitors and 4 Refuelers. The addition of 17 more craft in October brought the force very close to its authorized allowance of 182 boats. The River Patrol Force had 2032 men assigned and 197 of its authorized 250 PBRs. In October the number of PBRs attached to the task force increased to 220. The Coastal Surveillance Force (it had moved its headquarters to Cam Ranh Bay in July 1967) employed 1051 officers and men, exclusive of those attached to Seventh Fleet units temporarily assigned to the task force. In September 1968, it had 81 of its authorized 85 PCFs and 24 of an allowed 26 WPBs. There were 39 smaller craft assigned to support the harbor defense operation, which was code-named Stable Door, under CTF 115.
Vice Admiral Zumwalt decided to concentrate his efforts on three principal tasks. The first of these was to bring the naval forces under his command together in coordinated operations to stop enemy infiltration into the Delta and to further the cause of pacification. The second task was to wrest the initiative from the enemy in the Rung Sat Special Zone through aggressive military and psychological campaigns in order to secure the vital Long Tau shipping channel to Saigon.
The Rung Sat was the one area where the Navy had, so to speak, a piece of the ground war (responsibility for military operations there rested with the Vietnamese Navy), and as Senior Advisor to the Vietnamese Navy the Admiral considered his position to be somewhat analogous to that of a Senior Advisor to one of the Combat Tactical Zones.
The third and perhaps most important task was to develop and recommend a plan which, if approved, would make it possible to accelerate the scheduled turnover of U. S. Navy equipment to the Vietnamese.
Sea Lords
The Southeast Asia Lake, Ocean, River, and Delta Strategy (Sea Lords) brought to fruition the long-considered plan to complement the Market Time blockade of the coast of South Vietnam by an inland naval patrol along the Cambodian border from the Gulf of Thailand to an area northeast of the "Parrot's Beak." Hard intelligence had repeatedly confirmed that the bulk of enemy war material for the III and IV Corps areas entered Cambodia from the sea, in Communist Chinese and Eastern Bloc ships, primarily through the port of Sihanoukville. It was transported overland to various staging areas just north of the border, and was then brought into South Vietnam by the enemy's well-organized network of Commo-Liaison and transportation people. Well documented infiltration routes had been traced, and it was one of the three aims of Sea Lords to bar these where they crossed or followed navigable water. The second aim was to "pacify" certain vital trans-Delta waterways,7 and the third was "to stir up the enemy and keep him off-balance" by Market Time raider incursions into the rivers of the Ca Mau peninsula.
A new task organization, TF 194, was created for Sea Lords, and assets were chopped to "First Sea Lord" for Specific operations by the commanders of Market Time, Game Warden, and the Mobile Riverine Force. Captain R. S. Salzer, U. S. Navy, was the first officer to function as "First Sea Lord," and upon his detachment the post was assumed by Rear Admiral W. H. House, Deputy ComNavForV. In concept, it was planned that a Brown Water Navy Task Fleet would be formed from the heavy, armored riverine assault craft, and the speedy and highly maneuverable PCFs and PBRs. The Navy helicopter gunships, Seawolves, would provide support for Sea Lords in much the same way that they were supporting Game Warden and Mobile Riverine Force operations. The Navy's fixed wing OV-10 light attack aircraft (Black Ponies) would not arrive in Vietnam until the following April.
The Interdiction Barriers. Operation Search Turn was launched on 2 November 1968 and succeeded in establishing the first of the interdiction barriers, on the Rach Gia Long Xuyen and Ca San Canals in the upper Mekong Delta. Search Turn was followed, on 16 November, by Operation Foul Deck (later renamed Tran Hung Dao), which placed naval patrols on the Rach Giang Thanh and Vinh Te Canal at the Cambodian border itself, and by Operation Giant Slingshot on 6 December, which extended the barrier patrols to the Vam Co Dong and Vam Co Tay Rivers on either side of the notorious Parrot’s Beak. The final link in the chain of barriers was forged on 2 January 1969 when Operation Barrier Reef was established on the La Grange-Ong Lon Canal.
The impact these naval patrols had on the enemy infiltration effort was soon measured in terms of heavy fire fight activity, the seizure of large arms caches, and reports of enemy war material backing up in the north. The long-term effects the interdiction barriers seemed to have on the infiltration problem were these:
- Where in the past large shipments8 had moved with virtual impunity across the border, shipments henceforth were made in two or three sampan lots and at great risk;
- The enemy was unable to infiltrate and stockpile sufficient material in the Delta to sustain any significant offensive action, much less repeat the violence unleashed in the 1968 Tet offensive;
- Enemy forces in the Delta were gradually starved for supplies and ammunition, and hard pressed to maintain themselves; and
- Huge stockpiles accumulated just north of the border in Cambodia as the enemy waited for more propitious times to move them into South Vietnam.
The border interdiction barriers brought to the war, which the French had called la guerre sans fronts, a front of sorts. Properly supported by vigorous and aggressive bank patrols, it is possible that the barriers might have succeeded in virtually shutting off what they could only curtail in the absence of the required level of ground support. The problem of attracting adequate ground forces has already been addressed. In IV Corps Tactical Zone, this situation would plague Sea Lords operations from beginning to end.
Operation Sea Float. The pacification of vital trans-Delta waterways was the second of the Sea Lords objectives. Combined operations in November and December 1968 cleared the important Cho Gao Canal and swept through the Can Tho Crossing corridor and the Dung Island complex in the Bassac River. The most significant Navy pacification effort, however, grew out of the Market Time raider incursions into the Cua Lon and Bo De Rivers in the Ca Mau peninsula.
The Nam Can district of An Xuyen Province is located on the southernmost tip of the Ca Mau peninsula, some 150 miles southwest of Saigon. A region of ragged forests, thick mangrove swamps, barren mud flats, and interlacing rivers and canals whose waters churn to vicious tidal currents, it is not readily apparent why anyone would choose to live there. It appears to be sparsely populated in comparison with the rest of the Delta, but an accurate census has never been taken. Estimates of the area’s population have varied from 5,000 to 13,000.
Historically, woodcutting has been the principal economic activity of the Nam Can, with fishing ranking a distant second. As is true for much of the Delta, waterways are vital routes to and from markets, and roads are virtually non-existent. Route 12, which once connected Old Nam Can City with Ca Mau City, has long since fallen into disuse, and has all but vanished in the swampy terrain. The war destroyed the old French cisterns and what few wells there were in the area. Until quite recently all fresh water had to be brought in by sampan from settlements in the north. The rivers of the Nam Can, being tidal, are heavily salted.
An industrious woodcutter and his family can earn a very decent living by Vietnamese standards from their labors in the forests of Nam Can. The wood they cut is called cay go or simply "tree wood.” It is extremely hard and dense, and if dropped in the water it will ordinarily sink. Young trees are cut into long, straight poles, stripped of their bark, and sold for construction purposes. Heavier timbers are sawed into short lengths, split, and sold to the charcoal makers. It is hard and demanding work. Power saws and modern lumbering techniques have not yet been introduced in the Nam Can.
The fishermen in the Nam Can harvest several varieties of shrimp and small fish. These are netted in cleverly designed fish traps which are located strategically in the waterways to make best use of the currents and backwaters. The catch is salted and dried in the sun prior to shipment to market.
At one time charcoal preparation was an important source of the area’s meager wealth. In the summer of 1969 a few charcoal kilns were still standing in the midst of the ruins of Old Nam Can. The city, a pathetic oasis of nominal Saigon control, in a region which had been a Communist sanctuary for many years, was finally overrun during the 1968 Tet offensive and later abandoned by the Government of Vietnam. Most of its people were removed to a site roughly ten miles to the north which was named "New Nam Can” to distinguish it from the old district capital. The old city was declared a free fire zone and became in effect a dumping ground for bombs and other air ordnance that could not be conveniently expended elsewhere in the Delta. Within a short time of its capture by the Viet Cong, Old Nam Can presented a scene of the utmost devastation, and it was literally true that scarcely two stones were left piled one upon the other, save for the brick heaps of the ruined charcoal kilns.
Prior to the establishment of Market Time operations, the Nam Can provided a terminus for many Communist arms shipments arriving from the sea. Enemy trawlers operated with virtual impunity along the coasts of the Ca Mau peninsula and in the mouths of its rivers. From Nam Can the Communist supply chain ran northward into the remainder of the Delta and into III Corps. After Market Time broke the sea end of this chain, the logistics flow reversed itself and the local Viet Cong were supplied with necessary munitions infiltrated from the north. What could not be moved in was often manufactured in concealed munitions factories by using scrap and dud rounds which were in plentiful supply. Food, clothing, and other necessities were of course obtainable locally through the levying of Viet Cong "taxes” on the region’s inhabitants. These were normally collected by armed sampans which took up stations on the heavily traveled water routes. In addition to taxes in kind, it was estimated that the Viet Cong were able to extort several million piasters each year from this region to fuel their war effort in the lower Delta.
In October 1968, U. S. Navy Swift boats began regular raids into the rivers of the Nam Can, threatening the enemy's "sovereignty" in an area he had come to call his own. The objective of the raiders was "to stir up the enemy and keep him off-balance," but other dividends were soon realized in terms of enemy equipment destroyed, and in the increased commitments he was forced to make in defense of his well entrenched position in the Nam Can. Numerous bunkers and fortifications were thrown up, and solidly constructed barricades appeared across the more important waterways in an all-out Viet Cong effort to end the Swift boat raids.
In December, an operation called Silver Mace, involving the first open sea transit of heavy riverine assault craft, struck at these barricades and in three days removed them.
Elements of Task Group 117.2, Captain J. G. Now commanding, made the transit from Rach Gia to the Song Cua Lon on 19 December 1968. The group included ATCs, Monitors, and ASPBs. They were accompanied by the USS Mercer (APB-39) and the USS Satyr (ARL-23). After the operation they returned to Rach Gia by the same coastal route. A great deal of attention was of course paid to weather forecasting, and the transit was accomplished in the Gulf of Thailand's "good weather" part of the year.
In the early months of 1969, pressure was increasingly applied on the enemy in the Nam Can. In addition to the Market Time raiders, the following forces were employed: SEALS, UDT/EOD teams, Mobile Strike Force and RF/PF troops, Coastal Group junks, tactical strike aircraft supplied as needed by the U. S. Army, Navy, or Air Force, and helicopter gunships. In April, Operation Silver Mace II was launched with combined U. S. Navy, U. S. Air Force, Vietnamese Army, Navy, and Marine Corps units. The mission of the two-week operation was "to seek and destroy all enemy units and their logistic support in the AO (area of operations)." Contact with a generally elusive enemy was established on seven occasions. The enemy suffered 21 casualties and the loss of 380 weapons.
These and subsequent operations in the Nam Can during the first half of 1969 relied heavily on offshore support ships (primarily LSTs and ARLs), which, because of very shallow water, had to anchor about five miles off the Ca Mau peninsula. The disadvantages of this support concept for continuing boat operations were the same as noted earlier for the offshore support of PBRs during early Game Warden operations. It was obvious that from an operational standpoint the establishment of a permanent base on the Cua Lon or Bo De Rivers, capable of supporting PCFs, junks, and river assault craft, was highly desirable. There were other reasons as well which argued strongly in that direction. It was not proposed that "Vietnamization" of the naval war would include the transfer of the large units which made offshore support of the Nam Can operations feasible, if less than desirable for the U. S. Navy. If the Vietnamese Navy were to continue effective operations in the area after the withdrawal of the U. S. Navy, some sort of an operational and support base would be required. A location on one of the two rivers mentioned above was considered ideal, since it would permit egress to the South China Sea in the east and to the Gulf of Thailand in the west. This was a factor of no small importance in an area affected by monsoon winds and seas. Further, it seemed important that in the wake of effective search and destroy operations a permanent Vietnamese Government presence be established in the Nam Can. Effective pacification would deny the enemy a strategic haven and source of material and financial support. Under Vietnamese protection this war-ravaged region might be coaxed back to life. A concerted and innovative psychological operation might succeed in winning the people to active support of the government of Vietnam, the majority of whom were judged to be apolitical.
The proposal to establish a permanent base in the Nam Can met with little enthusiasm in IV Corps Headquarters. Vietnamese ground commanders, and some of their American advisors, thought that such a base would be virtually indefensible. Looking at it from the north, across many miles of difficult and enemy controlled terrain, their view was quite naturally a different one from that enjoyed by the Navy, which eyed the proposal from the vantage point of the sea. Furthermore, ground commanders generally tended to discount the economic and strategic importance of the Nam Can. Efforts at population and resources control should concentrate, they argued, in areas where the population was heavier and the resources greater than they were in the uninviting barrens of the Nam Can. This, so it seemed to the Navy, ignored the potential of the region and the history of its use by the Viet Cong.
On 15 May 1969, therefore, CTF 115 proposed that a PCF Mobile Advance Tactical Support Base (MATSB) be built and positioned in the middle of the Cua Lon River near Old Nam Can. By drawing upon the lessons learned in the deployment of the Advance Tactical Support Bases (ATSBs) in the Giant Slingshot operation, such a base, using an array of Ammi pontoon barges, was considered both feasible and defensible.
The proposal was thoroughly discussed at ComNavForV headquarters. Eventually a plan was approved which called for a complex of nine Ammis (later increased to 13), including a helicopter landing platform. It was the Admiral’s view at the time that "Vietnamese Navy participation is the key to the success of this operation.” To underscore the importance of the cooperative aspects of the venture, a Vietnamese naval officer was assigned as second in command of the MATSB.
The Ammis were fitted out at Nha Be. The roofs of huts were strengthened for defense against mortar attack, and the sides were heavily sand-bagged to afford protection from small arms fire. Numerous automatic weapons and mortars were emplaced, though the primary defense of the MATSB was considered to be the mobile firepower provided by the naval craft and the helicopter fire teams that would be supported there. When the work at Nha Be was completed, the Ammis were carried to the mouth of the Cua Lon River by Seventh Fleet LSDs.
The combined operation, called Sea Float by the U. S. Navy and Tran Hung Dao III by the Vietnamese, began with the towing of the first Ammis up the river to the vicinity of Old Nam Can on 25 June 1969 by U. S. Navy YFUs. The mooring of this large complex of Ammi barges in tidal currents, which frequently reached velocities of six to eight knots, proved to be a considerable feat in itself. A six-point fore and aft moor with 9000-pound anchors and heavy concrete clumps was selected. The holding ground was good and the moor was successful.
The roaring current provided the best defenses from swimmer attack, and on nearby shore areas an array of electronic sensors was emplaced to provide early warning of enemy movement.
Enemy reaction to this unwanted presence in his midst took the form of increased mining and ambush of Swiftboat patrols, and a vigorous psychological warfare operation of his own. Viet Cong banners were raised along the waterways which read "Americans and Vietnamese Soldiers Who Come Here Will Die," and "We Kill Americans." English language leaflets were floated to the MATSB on tiny wooden rafts. They urged an end to the "U. S. aggressive war" and threatened to "blow the American Navy out of the water." A rumor, the authenticity of which could not be determined, circulated on Sea Float that "Hanoi Hannah" herself had taken note of the new operation and she had warned that the MATSB would be "at the bottom of Song Cua Lon by 17 July." An old Vietnamese woodcutter, captured and abused by the Viet Cong, escaped to tell Vietnamese interrogators that his captors had boasted that they would "visit" Sea Float someday.
The people of the Nam Can were warned by the Viet Cong to stay away from Sea Float. Gradually, however, as it became evident that the campaign was not going to be of short duration, visitors to the MATSB came in ever increasing numbers. They were given hot meals, small gifts, and services which ran the gamut from sampan motor repair to the grinding of woodcutters axes on a wheel specially acquired for that purpose in Nha Trang, and shipped to Sea Float by CTF 115. Simple medical treatment was also provided, and the scope of this expanded rapidly with the arrival of a Vietnamese hospital ship (LSM-H).
On 24 July, a Sea Float "Annex" began operation near the intersection of the Cua Lon River and the Cai Nhap Canal. This was an important communications artery some six miles east of Sea Float, through which passed virtually all north-south commercial traffic. At first, the Annex was composed of two PCFs, and LSIL, and the Vietnamese hospital ship. The PCFs and the ISIL inspected traffic on the river, and provided protection for the hospital ship while it conducted its civil action program. These units got underway each morning from Sea Float and returned each night. Almost immediately the Annex began to outstrip the main complex itself in the number of visitors it attracted. In time a new hamlet was established at the site.
With the eviction of Viet Cong "tax collectors" from the principal water routes, civilian traffic on the rivers noticeably increased. During the first five days of the Sea Float operation, an average of 102 sampans per day was sighted on the Cua Lon. By the middle of August the number had increased to 159 per day and the average size of the sampans was larger as heavier cargoes, mostly of wood, were moved to market. The markets were towns to the north, New Nam Can and Ca Mau primarily. By September the Nam Can population figures were growing at a rapid rate, doubling the number of people in the Sea Float area of operations every 25 days. By the middle of October 1969, it was estimated that more than 3000 people were living under Vietnamese control in the Nam Can. The people came from all over the Delta to harvest the wood and fish of the area. Many came from the enemy controlled region of the Nam Can.
Additional naval forces, U. S. and Vietnamese, were committed to the operation. Armored river assault craft were assigned to the Cai Nhap patrol and were joined by Coastal Group junks and a Vietnamese Navy reaction force. Maximum use was made of SEAL, EOD, and UDT men. The EOD and UDT teams were often used interchangeably to destroy the enemy's fortifications. SEALS were used on special warfare and intelligence missions. Most importantly, a favorable decision was taken on the establishment of a permanent Vietnamese naval base on the site of Old Nam Can. The nickname Solid Anchor was given this project on 24 October 1969. It was described as a combined U. S. and Vietnamese naval operation to construct a Coastal Group junk and PCF base at Old Nam Can.
The economy of the Nam Can grew dramatically, the population mushroomed, and the pace of the pacification effort was quickened to keep in step. Long lines of motorized cargo sampans moved north through the Cai Nhap9 laden with wood and fish products. On their return from market they brought potable water, rice, cloth, beer, and other staples. In the newly settled hamlets of Tran Hung Dao One and Tran Hung Dao Two, lying along the north bank of the Cua Lon, between Sea Float and the Cai Nhap, small stores appeared and a restaurant opened its doors for business. New fishtraps were hammered into the river beds and wired into place. Broad areas of the banks were soon taken over by the drying catch. Seemingly from nowhere, skilled masons appeared and began the painstaking reconstruction of the area’s once ubiquitous beehive charcoal kilns. In December the first baby, a little girl, was born on Sea Float to the obvious delight of every sailor on board. The number of people then living under Vietnamese control in the area was estimated to be about 9,000.
Sea Float sailors constructed schools in each of the two newly settled hamlets. The children’s desks were fashioned from ammunition boxes, as were the floors of the classrooms. Notebooks and pencils were secured and distributed. Teachers were found and hired.
Vietnamese flags fluttered from the tops of tall cay go poles in each hamlet, and from crude flagstaffs on virtually all water craft, and from the fronts of most of the people’s hootches or shelters. To what degree this public display reflected allegiance to the government in Saigon was difficult to determine, but that the people enjoyed a measure of safety and prosperity long denied them was indisputable. The river hamlets, for all their bogs and sloughs of mud, were alive with activity and sparkled with the laughter of children.
The Rung Sat. Drawn carefully on a map, the Rung Sat Special Zone looks curiously like a human brain, its convolutions etched by numberless rivers and streams. There is little good land in the area and it has value, as mentioned earlier, only because of the vital Long Tau shipping channel, and because of its nearness to the capital. The terrain of the Rung Sat is ideally suited to guerrilla warfare. Dense foliage and thick swamps make detection of soldiers from the air and pursuit on the ground extremely difficult.
Though broad strips on either side of the Long Tau had been defoliated and cleared, attacks on merchant ships proceeding to and from Saigon began to increase significantly in the first half of 1969- By the end of June, 51 such attacks had occurred, compared to 44 in all of 1968.
Minings in the Long Tau, with relatively few exceptions, involved either limpet mines attached to ships at anchor by swimmers or mines detonated under passing ships from observation points on the river bank. When the Navy became involved in port security (basically an Army responsibility), the incidence of minings at anchor fell off. Drastic defoliation of the banks of the Long Tau made the planting and the firing of command-detonated mines extremely hazardous for the enemy. He could no longer approach or withdraw from the river with his old assurance. Naturally, stand-off weapons, frequently command-fired from concealed positions well inland, became more attractive to the enemy.
Few of these attacks managed to score hits, much less cause serious damage, but the enemy probably reaped considerable propaganda benefit from them and in the world press was credited with more strength than he actually possessed. There was always the danger that one of his attacks might succeed in sinking a large ship in the deep water channel, thereby disrupting the flow of supplies to Saigon.
Part of the increase in the number of attacks on shipping could be attributed to the longer range weapons then coming into use. They permitted the enemy to fire from relatively safe positions, well back from the river bank. The Rocket Propelled Grenade (RPG-7), for example, had an effective range nearly three times that of the older RPG-2. Allied sweeps along the Long Tau in this period were also occasionally uncovering 107 mm. and 122 mm. rockets, some of which were wired for command firing from camouflaged spider holes many meters away from the banks.
The structure of the enemy force responsible for the attacks on Long Tau shipping was rather well known. A sapper group, Doan-10, had been identified. It was believed to consist of either nine or ten elements (Doi) of between 30 and 55 men each. Complicating the task of engaging and destroying Doan-10 was the fact that the unit enjoyed a relatively safe and untouched base camp area just north of the Rung Sat area of operations in the Nhon Trach District of Bien Hoa Province. Attacks on the Long Tau were ordinarily carried out by small groups of five or fewer men who, after firing their weapons, simply faded back into their haven in the north. In microcosm this was the sanctuary tactic employed by the enemy along the national borders with Cambodia, Laos, and North Vietnam. In this instance, however, the sanctuary lay wholly within the territory of South Vietnam and scarcely 15 miles from the capital- This situation, spawned and tolerated by the fractured and at times intransigent Vietnamese command structure, had existed for a number of years.
The June attacks in the Long Tau made it imperative that effective and decisive action be taken against Doan-10. The Senior Advisor in the RSSZ at this time was Commander C. J. Wages, U. S. Navy, and in concert with his Vietnamese Navy counterpart, Commander Nguyen Van Tan, he proposed that the RSSZ area of operations be enlarged temporarily to permit sweeps against the enemy’s "sanctuary” in the Nhon Trach. This proposal received strong backing from ComNavForV and from Commanding General, II Field Force Vietnam. Permission to conduct these operations was granted.
A battalion of either Vietnamese Marines, or the Mobile Strike Force was requested to augment the Rung Sat Commander’s ground troops. Neither was available. Assistance was provided, however, by the First Australian Task Force and by the Royal Thai Army Volunteers. Thus, a truly international conglomerate of soldiers and sailors launched the combined operation against Doan-10 on 22 June 1969.
The operation achieved immediate and striking success in its objective of easing pressure on the Long Tau shipping channel. Whereas 19 attacks on merchant shipping occurred in June prior to the start of the operation, a high for the war, none at all occurred during the remainder of the month, and only two occurred in July.
As was proven time and time again in Brown Water Nan operations in Vietnam, cooperation with trained and aggressive ground forces was the real key to success. Without that cooperation a measure of initiative always remained with the enemy, who had the choice of when and where to dispute the control and ownership of a particular stretch of navigable water. In the absence of ground forces, the enemy could employ a further application of the strategy of sanctuary, for our boats could pursue" only to the maximum effective range of their installed weapons. Air power, to be sure, could further that pursuit and proved invaluable in support of our boats when they were caught up in a fire fight, but a lesson that was learned in the Indochina War and which was re-learned in the Vietnam War, is that air power has only limited effectiveness in a counterinsurgency war and in the interdiction of enemy lines of communication through difficult and largely trackless terrain.
In August new combined operations were launched against the base camp areas in the Nhon Trach "sanctuary" area outside of the Rung Sat, which was a much harder area for the Viet Cong to hide in. These were given the nicknames Friendship and Platypus. In September, Operation Chuong Duong struck at the same area, and in October the first of a series of operations called Wolf Pack lashed out at Doan-10. All of these operations used U. S. Navy and Vietnamese Navy forces as a blocking force while a combination of Australian, Thai, and Vietnamese troops methodically swept the area around the guerrilla group's base camp.
The tactic of keeping the enemy constantly on the move, never surrendering the initiative, and denying him a secure base area completely changed the complexion of the war in the "Forest of Assassins." Pacification programs took hold, abandoned hamlets were resettled, and the economy improved. "Vietnamization" proceeded at a steady pace. By early February 1970 the Vietnamese Navy operated more than 50 per cent of the boats in the Rung Sat.
From an operation which at one time was thought to have been assigned to the Vietnamese Navy because no Vietnamese Army officer in his right mind could be found to accept it, the Rung Sat Special Zone by early 1970 had become a model for what could be made of a seemingly hopeless situation, given leadership, singleness of purpose, and a spark of imagination.
Accelerated Turnover Plan (ACTOV)
By the fall of 1968, "Vietnamization" of the war (although the term itself was not to be coined until the President-elect's speech on 31 December) had become a matter of the greatest political urgency and it seemed clear that it would remain so, regardless of the outcome of the November elections in the United States. In October, ComUSMACV directed that a program be developed for an accelerated turnover of U. S. equipment, while the war continued, in order to make the Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces (RVNAF) as self-sufficient as possible. This requirement was strongly re-emphasized later in the month when General Abrams returned from a visit to the United States. The decision had been made in Washington that Vietnamization was vital to continued home support of the war. Over all hung the specter of the French defeat, "in the streets of Paris rather than on the battlefields of Indochina.”
At about this same time public statements by Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford signaled the changing U. S. policy on the war. There was a need for "an accelerated progress in improving Vietnamese capabilities in order that U. S. forces could, in fact, be withdrawn in significant numbers.” In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, the Secretary was further quoted as saying that "our orientation seems to have been more on operations than on assisting the South Vietnamese to acquire the means to defend themselves.” While this may not have been intended as criticism of the past conduct of the war, it was unmistakable direction as to where future priorities were to be placed. In the light of these events, ComNavForV’s Accelerated Turnover Plan (ACTOV) was approved.
Prior to his departure, Rear Admiral Veth had recommended to General Abrams and to the Chief of Naval Operations a plan to turn over two River Assault Squadrons (roughly the equivalent of six Vietnamese Navy River Assault Groups) by the end of the fiscal year 1969- Vice Admiral Zumwalt proposed to expand that plan so that virtually all U. S. Navy operational responsibilities in Vietnam with the equipment necessary for meeting them, would be turned over by 30 June 1970. He further proposed that all support functions and bases be transferred by the end of the fiscal year 1972.
The enormity of this undertaking could not be measured solely in terms of the numbers of the Vietnamese naval personnel it would be necessary to recruit and train. Significant improvement in the existing structure and performance of the Vietnamese Navy would also be required. The Vietnamese leadership, on which the ultimate success of the plan rested, was already heavily burdened.
The Vietnamese supply system seemingly could not or would not work, though many studies had demonstrated its theoretical excellence. The Naval Shipyard struggled along with barely sixty per cent of its authorized work force, and skilled labor could not be attracted or held because of wage scales that were chronically below the market level. Training activities ashore suffered from a lack of facilities and a lack of instructors. Training afloat depended almost entirely on the whims of individual commanding officers, because there was no effective system to ensure that standards set by higher authority were met. Administrative procedures were antiquated and incredibly complex. A most significant factor was the deplorable care, housing, and security of dependent families.
In the fall of 1968 our naval advisory effort in Vietnam was entering its nineteenth year. Over the years the finest officers and men our Navy could muster were sent to live, to work, and some, eventually, to die alongside their Vietnamese counterparts. Particularly in the years following 1964, enormous sums of money and huge quantities of material and equipment were transferred. It is a fair question to ask ourselves why, after such a great and prolonged effort, we had not succeeded in accomplishing more.
The heart of the problem was, of course, political and not peculiar to the Vietnamese Navy, nor for that matter to the Vietnamese armed forces as a whole. It spread its roots through virtually every sector of Vietnamese society. It is a bitter pill for a whole generation of American "nation builders” to swallow, but the brutal fact is that no Vietnamese Government until possibly the present one inspired in its people the loyalty, the unhesitating support, the patriotism and spirit of self-sacrifice essential to the welding of an effective defense force.
The situation, in the fall of 1968 was not one for faint hearts. To carry out the politically necessary task of Vietnamizing the naval war, it was estimated that the Vietnamese Navy would require an additional ten thousand men on top of the seventeen and a half thousand it then had. Minimum training requirements for the buildup were estimated to be: (1) Recruit training increased by a factor of four; (2) The Vietnam Navy’s advanced school capacity tripled; (3) A four-fold increase in offshore training; and (4) English language training expanded by almost thirty times.
Assistance, advice, and expertise in the formulation and implementation of the accelerated turnover program could be expected, within budgetary limitations, from the other Pacific commands and from the Navy in Washington. It was obvious, however, that what Naval Forces Vietnam and the Vietnamese Navy actually faced was a gigantic boot-strap operation which had to be carried out concurrently with the prosecution of the war.
The concept of sequential turnover was the keystone of the Navy’s ACTOV plan, and it called for a gradual phasing in of Vietnamese personnel in all U. S. craft and facilities to be turned over. By "sequential” it was meant, for example, that a VNN sailor would be placed in the crew of one of our boats and trained in the duties of his American counterpart. When he was considered ready to take over, the American would leave and a second VNN sailor would be assigned to train in the duties of another American crew member until eventually the entire crew became Vietnamese. The American boat captain would be the last to leave, and control and ownership of the boat would remain with the U. S. as long as he was aboard.
Our operational boats would be the first to complete turnover. The training programs at logistic support bases would, of necessity, be much longer and would proceed at a much slower pace. As a final step in the ACTOV program, the advisory effort would be phased out.
In the plan, great reliance was placed on "on-the-job" training, and it was hoped that by living with, and operating with, our Brown Water sailors the VNN sailors would learn much by example. Prior to reporting to our boats Vietnamese sailors would be given at least a minimal English language training, but even so it was recognized that to a greater extent than perhaps desirable, "show and tell" instruction would really be "show and do." The motivation of the men concerned was expected to be high. There were no "spare" people on our boat crews. Each man assigned had to pull his share of the load. Thus, the American sailors who realized that a member of their "team" was going to be replaced in a short time could be expected to see to it that the new replacement really did know how to operate, for example, the after machine gun. Conversely, the Vietnamese sailors, seeing that the boats and the responsibility for operating them were soon going to be theirs, would be expected to redouble their efforts to prepare themselves.
There was a great deal of flexibility built into ACTOV. If the war, or domestic political considerations, made it necessary to turn over less American equipment fractional Vietnamese crews could be collected from our boats and brought together to form crews for a lesser number of boats. If more time should become available, the acceleration could be slowed and the training cycles could be lengthened.
With relatively few exceptions, our sailors, Amend and Vietnamese, accepted the challenge and perform well in the months following the implementation the plan.
The Fight for Dependents' Welfare
The deep seated economic ills of the Republic of Vietnam, exemplified by a roaring inflation, drove the Vietnamese serviceman up against the wall. In mid-1970 cyclo drivers in Saigon were earning more than Vietnamese Navy Lieutenants, and it was not at all uncommon to encounter beggars in uniform on the streets of the capital city.
The struggle to improve the living standards of the Vietnamese sailor proved to be one of the most critical tasks associated with the ACTOV program, for as the turnover progressed, and the day approached when sizable Vietnamese Navy populations would take up duties at scattered bases throughout the Republic, it was clear that the already intolerable situation of dependents' care and housing would grow immeasurably worse, unless firm action were taken at once.
ComNavForV directed all commands to make a maximum effort to mobilize local construction equipment and to obtain excess materials in support of the Self-Help shelter program. The minimum requirement established was that pilot programs be underway and materials stockpiled to complete construction with the arrival of the first dependents at the ACTOV bases. Specific activities which were initiated included:
- Development of plans for several standard shelters constructed from concrete block, some of which would use ferro-cement dome roofs.
- Creation of a NavForV dependent shelter project team to coordinate allocation of materials and technical assistance.
- Establishment of Seabee teams which were made available to instruct and provide technical assistance in construction of shelters.
- Provision for systematic screening of materials declared excess by all military commands.
- Construction of a block plant at Cam Ranh Bay.
- The issuance of a personal appeal to the Navy League for donations of construction materials, which could be transported to Vietnam on deploying Navy ships.
- Having the Naval Ships Systems Command provide bunks and mattresses, which might be available from Navy ships being decommissioned.
In all, it was estimated that the growing Vietnamese Navy would require 14,000 housing units. By the spring of 1970 it was believed that appropriated funds could be found to finance 10,500 of these. The remainder would have to be sought elsewhere.
As Vietnamese sailors replaced American sailors on the rivers, and as other American sailors became available from the gradual phasing out of Navy responsibilities in I Corps, Naval Construction Action Teams (NAVCATS) were formed and young and sometimes bewildered U. S. Navy sailors, under Seabee supervision, became laborers, hod carriers, masons and carpenters in the dependents’ shelter project. These sailors brought a high level of enthusiasm and dedication to their unconventional assignment, and as a result of their labors dozens of austere "Levittowns” sprang up at remote base sites throughout the country. The individual shelter units were by no means grand, but they were a vast improvement over the pitifully few shelters that had existed before.
The NavForV program did not stop with the construction of shelters. "Pigs and chickens” programs were initiated at most bases to provide the necessary protein that was often lacking in the diet of the Vietnamese dependents. If it seemed unusual for the U. S. Navy to go into the pigs and chickens business halfway around the world, it was. But it was a necessary business and the Brown Water sailor attacked the job of getting it done with the same enthusiasm he had shown in seeking out the enemy on the rivers and canals of the Delta. Other parts of the U. S. Navy family came to his assistance. The Fleet Reserve Association pledged to raise $75,000 to support "Project Pay Dirt”—an expansion of the animal husbandry program. On 31 March 1970 a group of American businessmen in Saigon, including several ex-naval officers, established the "Operation Helping Hand Foundation” for the purpose of soliciting and accepting personal contributions to the Vietnamese Navy’s welfare programs. In the United States, "Project Buddy Base” was launched to encourage U. S. Navy bases to provide equipment, material, encouragement and advice to Vietnamese Navy bases in the overall effort to raise the standard of living of VNN personnel and their dependents.
All of these programs hoped to bring about permanent and self-sustaining projects, which would survive the eventual conclusion of the Vietnamization process.
The Road to Turnover
Unquestionably, the Navy’s ACTOV program was in the van of the general movement to Vietnamize the war. The first turnover of U. S. Navy boats and equipment occurred on schedule on 1 February 1969, when River Assault Division 91 of the Riverine Assault Force was dissolved and VNN River Assault and Interdiction Divisions 70 and 71 were formed.
The two Vietnamese RAIDS promptly began operations on the Giant Slingshot barrier. A year later there were virtually no U. S. Navy combat craft in Vietnam With wholly American crews. By 1 April 1970, 242 craft, worth more than $68 million, had been turned over under the ACTOV program.
With the craft, went the responsibility for operations. The American sailors were gradually being sent home. By the spring of 1970, the personnel strength of Naval Forces, Vietnam had declined by almost 25 per cent since the start of the ACTOV program, and it was projected that by the following August another 25 per cent or more would possibly go home. In spite of changes in the turnover plans, which required the recruiting and training of nearly 10,000 additional Vietnamese Navymen and the transfer of a proportionately larger number of craft, five-sixths of all operational craft would be turned over by June 1970, and the rest by December of that year. Under the combined leadership of Vice Admiral Zumwalt and Commodore Chon a tremendous momentum had been built up. The men of both navies had adopted the Admiral's daily watchword and admonition to all concerned: "Go faster."
Conclusions
A rare application of sea power developed on the rivers and canals of the Delta, the waterways of I Corps, and along the length of the Vietnamese coast. A new family of fighting craft appeared, newly built or adapted from older boats in our inventory. New basing and support concepts were created. New tactics were devised; new strategies tested. New task forces were put together to help fight a war that was in many respects a completely alien experience for the modern American sailor.
In the Vietnam War, sea power made possible one of history's longest supply lines. Though we live in what has frequently been termed the "air age" or even the "space age," the fact remains that fully 96 per cent of the immense quantities of material delivered to Vietnam to support the war came in ships. Many of those ships were tired relics of our great merchant fleet of World War II, soon to be consigned to the scrap heap. Our Navy itself was old and afflicted with bloc obsolescence. One of the hidden, but nevertheless real costs of the war lies in the Fleet ships that, because our resources were diverted elsewhere, were not built as replacements for those long overdue for honorable retirement.
The river assault craft of the Brown Water Navy, with few exceptions, notably the ASPB, were modifications of World War II landing craft. The ships and barges that made up the floating support assets were also to a great extent pulled from our aging mothball fleet. They performed valuable service but, like our Victory and Liberty merchant ships, it is doubtful how much additional service life is left in them. Many of these vessels, of course, have been, and are being, transferred from our inventory to that of the Vietnamese Navy through the ACTOV program.
While many of our ships were old, and much of our equipment was, too, the Brown Water sailor exemplified youth. Young officers and petty officers were assigned staggering responsibilities in this war and they shouldered them well. The leadership of our Navy for many years to come will be drawn largely from the ranks of those whose courage and sense of responsibility were fire-hardened on the rivers of Vietnam.
The Great Green Fleet of the Delta, the brave PBRs, the Swift boats, and the Brown Water sailor himself will one day soon belong to the past. Ultimately, only the rivers and memories will remain.
1 The patrols along the seventeenth parallel, and near the Brevie Line in the Gulf of Thailand in late 1961 and 1962, in which U. S. Navy MSOs and des participated in a very limited way (using their radars to vector VNN ships to suspicious contacts), did not indicate large scale infiltration from the sea. In 1963, Vietnamese patrols searched a reported 135,911 junks and 388,725 people, of whom only 6 were determined to be infiltrators. In 1964, VNN Coastal patrols searched 211,121 junks and 880,335 people. Only 11 were confirmed Viet Cong. These statistics could of course be interpreted two ways; either there was little sea infiltration, or the counter-infiltration effort was remarkably ineffective. On the basis of the evidence—the 17 infiltrators identified in two years—there was little to support the claim of large-scale sea infiltration.
2 The Stevie Line is the geographic division in the Gulf of Thailand between Vietnam and Cambodia. Islands and territorial waters to the north of that line are Cambodian and, to the south, Vietnamese.
3 Operational Command is the authority to assign missions or forces.
4 Operational Control is the authority to direct forces assigned.
5 See "River Patrol Relearned” by Commander Sayre A. Swarztrauber, U. S. Navy, in Naval Review 1970.
6 APB self-propelled barracks ship, ARL Landing Craft Repair Ship, LCM Landing Craft Mechanized, ATC Armored Troop Carrier, MON Monitor, CCB Command and Control Boat, ASPB Assault Support Patrol Boat, LST Tank Landing Ship.
7 In this sense "pacify" means: establishing control over the people who live on the banks, ending Viet Cong tax extortion, denying the waterways to enemy use, while at the same time, restoring the use of the waterways to friendly civilian and military use.
8 A large shipment was considered to be 15-20 sampan lots.
9 This canal is 50 to 100 feet wide, 15-20 feet deep, and 10 to 12 miles long. The author estimates the sampans travel at about six to eight knots depending on the tide.
EDITOR’S NOTE:
Individual aspects of the U. S. Navy involvement in the war in Vietnam are discussed in previous Naval Review essays listed below as well as those in this edition.
"The Case for Inshore Warfare,” by Commander W. F. Searle, Jr., U. S. Navy, in Naval Review 1966.
"Application of Doctrine; Victory at Van Tuong Village,” by Brigadier General O. F. Peatross, U. S. Marine Corps, in Naval Review 1967.
"Fighting Boats of the United States,” by Captain Richards T. Miller, U. S. Navy, in Naval Review 1968.
"Market Time in the Gulf of Thailand,” by Captain James A. Hodgman, U. S. Coast Guard, in Naval Review 1968.
"Marine Corps Operations in Vietnam 1965-1968,” by Brigadier General Edwin H. Simmons, U. S. Marine Corps, in Naval Reviews 1968, 1969, 1970.
"Jackstay: New Dimensions in Amphibious Warfare,” by Lieutenant Commander Robert E. Mumford, Jr., U. S. Navy, in Naval Review 1968.
"Building the Advanced Base at Da Nang,” by Captain K. P. Huff, U. S. Naval Reserve, in Naval Review 1968.
"The Service Force, Pacific Fleet in Action,” by Rear Admiral Edwin B. Hooper, U. S. Navy, in Naval Review 1968.
"U. S. Merchant Shipping and Vietnam,” by Lane C. Kendall in Naval Review 1968.
"The Riverine Force In Action, 1966-1967,” by Captain W. C. Wells U. S. Navy, in Naval Review 1969.
Naval Logistic Support, Qui Nhon to Phu Quoc,” by Captain Herbert T. King, U. S. Navy, in Naval Review 1969.
"River Patrol Relearned,” by Commander S. A. Swarztrauber, U. S. Navy, in Naval Review 1970.
"Civil Engineers, Seabees, and Bases in Vietnam,” by Captain Charles J. Merdinger, Civil Engineer Corps, U. S. Navy, in Naval Review 1970.
"Doctors and Dentists, Nurses and Corpsmen in Vietnam,” by Commander F. O. McClendon, Jr., Medical Service Corps, U. S. Navy, in Naval Review 1970.