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The Mobile Riverine Force is a joint Army-Navy force designed to launch amphibious assaults in the Mekong Delta and lowland areas of South Vietnam in order to deny these areas to the Viet Cong. An infantry brigade, numbering some 3,000 men, forms the Army component of the force. Navy participation includes a squadron of support vessels, known collectively as the Mobile Riverine Base, and a flotilla of about 100 assault boats. The Mobile Riverine Base, seen at right, provides the force with afloat living quarters, logistics support, and boat repair facilities. Ships in the force include (left to right) the USS Askari (ARL-30), a repair ship; the USS Vernon County (LST-1161), which provides storage space and living facilities; the USS Benewah {APB-35), a self-propelled barracks ship and the flagship for the force; the APL-26, a barracks barge; and the USS Colleton (APB-36), another barracks ship. Additional barracks ships have more recently joined the squadron, replacing the APL-26, tvhich had to be towed into each new area of operations. In the photo below, approximately one-quarter of the force’s assault craft are moored to pontoons alongside the flagship Benewah. Converted from an LST while still under construction during World War II, the Benewah has air-conditioned living accommodations for about 800 officers and men, and contains a command center and extensive communications facilities.
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En route to a landing, below, three assault support patrol boats (ASPBs) lead a column of heavier craft up one of the Mekong Delta’s numberless canals. Designed expressly for riverine operations, the 50-foot, 16-knot ASPBs carry minesweeping gear and a variety of weapons, including a 20-mm. cannon, twin .50-caliber machine guns, and an 81-mm. mortar. Looming behind the ASPBs in the photo is one of the “battleships” of the delta, a 60-foot, 75-ton monitor. Converted from standard Navy LCM(6)s, the monitors provide the heavy firepower for the force, each mounting a 20-mm and a 1+0-mm. cannon, .30 and .50-caliber machine guns, and an 81-mm. mortar. Although slower and unable to operate in as shallow water as the ASPBs, the monitors are more heavily armored and less vulnerable to Viet Cong attack. Further along the column is a siring of armored troop carriers (ATCs), each carrying a platoon of J+0 infantrymen. Like the monitors, the ATCs are converted LCM(6)s. However, they have retained the familiar LCM bow ramps and do not have the mortar or iO-mm. cannon that the monitors carry. A battalion-sized landing usually requires the support of one assault boat division, numbering eight assault support patrol boats, three monitors, and 13 armored troop carriers.
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As the Army troops disembark in the landing area, right, the assault craft take up blocking stations on the surrounding waterways to prevent Viet Cong withdrawals. A crewman on one of the ASPBs, below, questions riders of a passing water taxi. Other boats in the force may penetrate nearby streams and canals to keep the landing force within range of their weapons, in the event fire support is required. Heavier artillery support is often provided by the infantry brigade’s 105-mm. howitzers, fired from barges which can be towed into the area as needed.
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ft this operation the riverine force’s commanders have chosen to coordinate the landing from the vantage point of an Army C&C (command and communications) helicopter. Below, armored troop carriers and a monitor line the river banks, awaiting requests for fenfire or mortar support for the disembarked troops. At each end of the flotilla, assault Support patrol boats block the waterways, while near the center of the formation an ATC equipped with a helicopter platform provides the helo with a ready landing spot alongside the command and communications boat (a monitor equipped with extensive radio facilities). Smoke from an air strike rises at upper right. Numerous water-filled craters Xndicate that Viet Cong resistance has been encountered here in the past.
An assault support patrol boat, right, has been hit by a Viet Cong ambush, and as part of the crew attempts to plug a large rocket hole in the boat’s transom, others return the enemy fire. Although the ASPB is sinking, the engines have continued to operate, and the coxswain has run the boat into the bank in an attempt to ground her. In the photo below, crewmen in the mortar pit of a monitor stand by to give covering fire as their craft moves in to assist the damaged boat.
Two crewmen on the ambushed patrol boat have been wounded, and are transferred to °ne of the landing force’s flight-deck-equipped armored troop carriers {right). One such ATC{H) in each river assault division is fitted out as an aid station and staffed by medical personnel. From there the wounded men are airlifted by helicopter to hospital facilities in the Colleton at the Mobile Riverine Base. Equipping several armored troop carriers with the 20-foot-square aluminum flight decks (below) has also enabled the helicopters to provide the landing force with emergency supplies and additional troops, i of the Mobile Riverine Force’s ATC(H)s are equipped with bladders of aviation gasolin6 in their well decks, permitting the helicopters to refuel without leaving the combat area.
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Each landing operation generally lasts for several days, during which time the crews live in their boats (left), using such free time as may exist in performing maintenance on their craft. Then, with the area cleared, the landing force returns to the Mobile Riverine Base, to strike again in another Viet Cong area a few days later. Now in its third year of operations, the Mobile Riverine Force has developed into a highly effective means of attacking the enemy in the Mekong Delta.