Proving its adaptability during the Vietnam War, the U.S. Navy created coastal and riverine forces from scratch that reduced communist infiltration from the sea, secured vital waterways, and pushed enemy forces into the hinterlands of the Mekong Delta.
Proving its
adaptability during the Vietnam War, the U.S. Navy created coastal and riverine
forces from scratch that reduced communist infiltration from the sea, secured
vital waterways, and pushed enemy forces into the hinterlands of the Mekong
Delta.
On the morning
of 3 March 1965, a UH-1B helicopter piloted by an Army lieutenant lifted off
the pad at Qui Nhon on the central coast of South Vietnam and headed south. On
his right, the lieutenant could see the mountains of the Chaine Annamatique,
their steep slopes covered with dark green carpets of jungle foliage, their
feet immersed in the blue of the South China Sea. Just before 1030, the pilot
rounded the promontory that flanked the northern side of a picturesque bay
known as Vung Ro.
Because they
sometimes fly in tight formations, Army helicopter pilots have a finely tuned
sense of relative motion, and as he surveyed the sapphire waters of the bay
below, the lieutenant sensed that something was not right. Focusing on a small,
vegetation-covered island he suddenly realized that it was moving!
Swooping down
for a closer look, he saw that the “island” was actually a trawler whose decks
and superstructure had been camouflaged with potted trees. The pilot reported
his discovery, and what would enter the history books as “the Vung Ro Incident”
was under way.
What this Army
lieutenant did not realize at the time was that he had triggered a sequence of
events that would take elements of the U.S. Navy away from their traditional
blue-water realm and send them into the green and brown waters of South Vietnam.
A combination
of U.S. air strikes and attacks by Vietnamese Navy (VNN) vessels disabled and
eventually captured the intruding ship at Vung Ro. On board were large amounts
of ammunition and other supplies—many bearing labels from an assortment of communist
countries—as well as numerous documents and objects that made it clear the
trawler had come from North Vietnam. The long-running debate about whether the
North was using the sea to supply communist forces in the South was over.
But there was
also concern that VNN forces had taken nearly five days to capture the ship,
and U.S. Navy advisers who participated in the operation reported many
significant problems with the effectiveness of their South Vietnamese
counterparts. U.S. planners concluded that this now-proven threat needed to be
countered by an active American effort that would transform the U.S. Navy’s
in-country role from nominally advisory to openly operational. This was a
momentous change that would eventually bring nearly 2 million U.S. sailors and
Coast Guardsmen to serve in-country over the course of the war.
The sailors
who left gray decks to serve in-country traded their white hats and combination
covers for black berets and helmets, their bell bottoms and khakis for green
utilities and various forms of camouflage. Five-inch guns were replaced by
machine guns and grenade launchers, rudders and screws gave way to Jacuzzi
pumps, and malaria and dysentery joined mal de mer as common afflictions.
Leaving
traditional career paths to serve in Vietnam sometimes proved less than
career-enhancing, and in-country life lacked some of the creature comforts
found in the blue-water Navy, but there have always been “swashbucklers” in the
service willing to trade a swab or a typewriter for a .50-caliber machine gun,
so there were many volunteers. The preferred ratings for these operations were
those with applicable skills, such as boatswains, gunner’s mates, and
enginemen, but many other ratings were represented, with eagerness making up
for the lack of vocational skills.
The transition
from advisory roles to operational ones began with the creation of the Coastal
Surveillance Force, designated as Task Force (TF) 115, whose primary
mission—code-named Operation Market Time—was to interdict the flow of supplies
to communist forces by conducting random searches among the throngs of junks
and sampans that travelled these waters on a daily basis.
Seventeen
existing 82-foot patrol boats (WPBs) were provided by the Coast Guard, but for
these shallow-water operations the Navy had to rely on modifying a 50-foot
aluminum craft that was being used in the Gulf of Mexico to transport crews to
and from offshore drilling rigs. Officially designated as PCFs (patrol craft,
fast), these converts were suitably armed with machine guns and naval mortars.
Capable of 28 knots, they came to be known as “Swift Boats.”
Patrols were
marked by extreme contrasts. A Market Time sailor typically spent weeks
roasting in the Southeast Asian sun, then found himself battling pounding seas
and torrential rains during the monsoon season. While stopping and searching
vessels could earn him appreciative smiles from people who understood why he
was there, he more often saw the scowls of fisherman and farmers who resented
the delay in getting their products to market. Although he was there to help
the South Vietnamese people, he could never fully trust them, which meant that
despite the tedium of his mission, he could never let his guard down.
Mostly the
U.S. sailors’ mission was one of deterrence—like the cop on a beat—and it could
be frustrating as well as boring. Occasionally a North Vietnamese trawler
attempted a run into the shore, offering the opportunity to target a clearly
hostile vessel, but these were relatively rare. The business of routine
searching for contraband was sometimes interrupted by delivering fire support
to friendly units on shore, conducting occasional search-and-rescue missions to
recover downed aviators, or providing assistance to vessels in distress.
These sailors
were most vulnerable when their craft were tied up at bases ashore. The threat
of attack was a constant for virtually all Americans serving in South Vietnam.
They never knew when rockets or mortars might rain down, or when a sniper’s
bullet or a sapper’s explosive might send them home early in a zippered bag.
The task at
hand was enormous by any calculus. Different sources estimated the daily
coastal traffic of South Vietnam ranged from 4,000 to 60,000 vessels—the
discrepancy of these figures telling much about the difficulties of the
mission. Measuring success was challenging since the only measurable data
consisted of successful intercepts and captures, whereas the number of “misses”
was entirely unknown. But postwar studies suggest that TF 115 succeeded in extensively
altering the enemy’s logistics, substantially reducing his ability to resupply
guerrilla units by sea infiltration and forcing him to rely instead on much
less efficient overland supply through Laos and Cambodia.
The most
serious infiltration by land occurred in the southernmost part of South
Vietnam, in the region known as the Mekong Delta. Geographically this area
represented only one quarter of the country’s land area, but demographically it
comprised about half of the population. It consisted of a vast network of
waterways, with a spider’s web of streams and canals interconnecting four main
branches of the Mekong River.
Adjacent to
the Delta was the Rung Sat Special Zone (also known as the “Forest of
Assassins”), a foreboding maze of waterways, swamps, mangrove tangles, and
islands that the communist insurgents, or Viet Cong, had inherited from the
bandits and pirates who had long dominated the region. Between the Delta and
the Rung Sat was the meandering Long Tau River that provided the capital city
of Saigon access to the sea.
Despite the
Mekong Delta’s long-standing reputation as one of the great “rice bowls” of
Asia, the Viet Cong controlled much of the flow of rice to South Vietnamese
markets, and the VNN was having difficulty keeping the shipping channels to
Saigon open, which hampered needed commercial trade. Consequently, the U.S.
Navy was called on to fix these problems, and another task force (TF 116) was
created, officially called the River Patrol Force.
Once again,
the Navy’s blue-water parochialism left it unprepared for this new campaign,
known as Operation Game Warden. The needed vessels had to be created by
modifying an existing 31-foot fiberglass recreational craft. Designated PBRs
(patrol boats, river) these craft were powered by a pair of diesel engines
designed for a maximum speed of 30 knots (not quite realized after weapons and
ammunition were added). A pair of rotatable, stern-mounted jet pumps
manufactured by Jacuzzi Brothers served as both propulsion and steering,
obviating the need for screws and rudders. That made them less vulnerable to
the vegetation and debris that proliferated in the rivers and canals. A pair of
.50-caliber machine guns were mounted forward in an open mount, and a single
.50-caliber was mounted aft on a centerline pedestal and often accompanied by
grenade launchers or 7.62-mm M-60 machine guns on each side.
In February
1966, Game Warden officially commenced. FT 116’s missions were to interdict
enemy infiltration, enforce curfews, prevent taxation of water traffic by the
Viet Cong, and keep the main shipping channel into Saigon open.
Seven
operating bases were set up in both the Delta and Rung Sat and were
supplemented by four old LSTs (landing ships, tank) that were brought out of
mothballs to be fitted as mobile floating bases. A minesweeping contingent was
added that consisted of 57-foot wooden MSBs (minesweeping boats) and regularly
patrolled the meandering Long Tau. “Sea Wolf” helicopters (Army hand-me-down
UH-1 “Hueys” flown by Navy crews) were added and later supplemented by “Black
Ponies” (Army OV-10 Bronco turboprop aircraft also flown by Navy pilots) to
provide air support.
Established
fleet doctrine was of little use, so these brown-water sailors had to “write
the book” as they went. While trial and error is rarely preferable to reliance
on established procedures (because of the “error” part, which can be costly),
these neophytes learned quickly and enjoyed the autonomy and flexibility that
Americans often prefer at the tactical level.
Tactics
evolved that included the pairing of PBRs for most operations, with a “patrol
officer” (a junior officer or senior petty officer) in charge of both boats.
This allowed mutual support and permitted one boat to conduct inspections while
the other “hovered” nearby watching for other dangers (such as ambushes from
ashore). Searches were conducted as near as possible to midstream, with one PBR
maintaining clear lines of fire to both banks, while the other conducted the
inspection with weapons ready, engines running, and the inspected vessels
brought alongside but never moored to the inspecting PBR. (Virtually all of
these procedures were violated in the famous movie Apocalypse Now , as a single
PBR moors to a sampan, shuts down its engines, and ultimately fails to employ
weapons discipline.)
In addition to
search operations, PBRs conducted nighttime ambushes, aided units under attack
on shore, and supported a number of SEAL counter-guerrilla operations. Tactical
innovations included such things as “acoustical detection devices” (Coke cans
filled with pebbles strung across a canal at night), an M-60 machine gun
mounted on top of the boat’s canopy (to allow firing over elevated canal banks
when the tide was low), and a “flamethrower” (a hunter’s bow used to shoot
flaming arrows).
The enemy too
developed his own tactics by taking advantage of low tides to restrict the
maneuverable battle space for the PBRs, faking a medical emergency on one
sampan to distract U.S. sailors from countering the movements of another, and
timing ambushes to occur when the Americans were returning from a long patrol
and consequently fatigued.
The early
frequency of ambushes by the enemy served as credible evidence that these
operations were having the desired effects. Eventually the Viet Cong were
driven from the major waterways. Gone were the VC tax-collecting stations;
shipping flowed through the Long Tau, and enemy contact gradually fell off
until tedium replaced terror as a major morale problem.
Even though
Game Warden operations were solving problems on the major waterways, the land
areas of the Delta remained in jeopardy. Well-ensconced enemy forces operated with
too much freedom in this vital geographic area, and sending in ground forces
seemed the logical solution. But the U.S. Army traveled largely on wheels and
treads, and there were few roads in this region. With waterways as the
highways, some sort of amphibious capability was required. The U.S. Marines
would have been the logical choice, but by this time they were fully occupied
in “I Corps,” the northernmost quarter of South Vietnam.
The solution
was to designate yet another Navy task force (TF 117)—dubbed the Riverine
Assault Force—that would be combined with the Army’s 2nd Brigade of the 9th
Infantry Division to form the Mobile Riverine Force (MRF). Mobility was
provided by a large fleet of existing landing craft that were converted into
various configurations and clustered around a flotilla of larger vessels,
including several LSTs that were resurrected and reconfigured for the new
purpose. This “jungle green” flotilla could move about the main rivers,
positioning themselves where needed to root out enemy concentrations. The
soldiers lived in barracks ships during transits, then embarked in modified
LCM-6s (landing craft, mechanized) for assault operations.
The LCM-6s had
been significantly modified for the various needs of the assault force. The
most numerous were the armored troop carriers (ATCs), also known as “Tango
Boats.” Of the various conversions, these 56-foot craft looked most like the
original landing craft, retaining the large bow doors that could be lowered
onto river or canal banks to allow rapid egress of embarked troops. They were
heavily armed with an array of machine guns and grenade launchers and one 20-mm
cannon. Bar armor pre-detonated enemy recoilless-rifle rounds and
rocket-propelled grenades before they could penetrate the troop-filled well
deck. A canvas awning over the top of the well deck protected the soldiers from
the sun and light grenades. With a seven-man crew, one ATC could transport and
land an Army platoon (approximately 40 men) and provide close-in fire support.
The craft carried spare ammunition, food, and other supplies for the initial
assault and could ferry more during extended operations.
Some ATCs were
modified to accommodate a steel flight deck, in place of the canvas awning,
where helicopters could actually land to evacuate wounded or perform other
support duties, making them the world’s smallest aircraft carriers. Others,
equipped with medical-aid stations, served as diminutive hospital ships, and
still others with large fuel bladders functioned as counterparts to the fleet
oiler.
The most
formidable craft were the monitors, which functioned as the battleships of the
flotilla. Although they too were once LCM-6s, their bow doors had been removed
and replaced by a rounded bow. A cluster of weapons similar to those of the
ATCs was complemented by a potent 81-mm naval mortar amidships and a 40-mm
cannon in a forward turret. Later versions came to Vietnam with 105-mm
howitzers replacing the forward cannon. Some monitors were also equipped with
flamethrowers (useful for burning away heavy vegetation as well as terrorizing
enemy soldiers) and dubbed “Zippos” in recognition of the cigarette lighter
that many GIs carried in those days.
The CCB
(command communications boat) was similar to the monitor but carried a
command-and-control console amidships in place of the mortar. These functioned
as a kind of flagship, their banks of HF, VHF, and UHF radios providing
commanders the means to coordinate operations.
In late 1967,
assault patrol support boats (ASPB) were added to the force. The only riverine
craft built from scratch for service in Vietnam, they were designed to function
as a hybrid destroyer-minesweeper. At 50 feet and 28 tons, these relative
latecomers were crewed by seven sailors and could provide a lot of firepower
from an array of machine guns and grenade launchers as well as a stern-mounted
mortar and a bow-mounted 20-mm cannon. Their reinforced hulls and chain-drag
mine-countermeasures rig could clear the way for an assault, and an innovative
underwater exhaust system significantly reduced engine noise (but created
maintenance headaches because of their complexity).
Tactics
evolved as experience begat innovation. Troops began carrying lines with
snaphooks to aid in water crossing and detonating booby traps; truck tires and
sandbags were placed beneath mortar baseplates to absorb the shock of firing;
underwear was left behind in the barracks ships because it did not dry as
rapidly as fatigues.
Periodically
shifting its location, the Mobile Riverine Force anchored in various rivers and
conducted a wide variety of operations in both the Delta and the Rung Sat that
varied in size and complexity, many large enough to warrant special operational
names such as Great Bend, Concordia, and Hop Tac.
In the early
hours of the Tet Offensive in early 1968, the MRF moved around the Delta,
engaging enemy forces in a series of intense battles. One took place along a
three-mile stretch of the Rach Ruong tributary, where the waterway narrowed to
a mere 30 yards wide. Enemy forces opened up with heavy machine guns, rockets,
and recoilless-rifles, and the prepared Americans retaliated with a heavy
barrage, using leveled howitzers to fire deadly “Beehive” antipersonnel rounds
with devastating effect, begging comparisons to broadsides exchanged in close-quarters
battles during the Age of Sail. The half-hour battle left a large number of
enemy dead along the banks as the MRF forces continued down the waterway to
their next engagement, a 21-hour pitched battle at My Tho.
In the weeks
that followed, the soldiers and sailors of the MRF fought with little rest to
preserve South Vietnam’s vital “rice bowl,” moving around the Delta, driving
enemy forces out of and away from the critical cities, inflicting heavy
casualties on the Viet Cong, who had at last come out of the proverbial
woodwork and into the crosshairs of American guns.
The MRF
continued operations after the Tet Offensive and, as time went on, the enemy
ceded control of much of the Delta territory. But it was also clear that he was
not defeated. Withdrawing deeper inland and relying on the smaller waterways in
those areas, he continued to infiltrate from the nearby Cambodian sanctuary
that had been allowed as a result of American concerns about widening the war.
When Vice
Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt Jr. arrived in South Vietnam in the fall of 1968 to
take command of the in-country naval forces, he found that the three task
forces had successfully carried out their missions. But he also faced two
problems that begged solutions. One was the existence of the Cambodian
sanctuary, and the other was that morale was suffering because declining
contact with the enemy meant that patrols were becoming mind-numbingly routine.
The old strategic concept of a “fleet in being” has always suffered from this
problem—existence playing an important strategic role, but inactivity breeding
discontent.
It was clear
that it was time for a strategic adjustment, and Zumwalt responded by creating
a whole new task force—TF 194—and dubbed it SEALORDS, for Southeast Asia Lake,
Ocean, River, and Delta Strategy. The idea behind this new strategy was to
carry the fight to the enemy by restructuring the forces available and
redefining their missions.
Swift Boats
were drawn from the coasts to operate in the rivers and canals, PBRs were tasked
with deeper penetrations into the smaller waterways, and various elements of
the MRF were reassigned to support new penetrating and blocking missions. These
newly configured forces probed deeper into the Delta hinterlands to interdict
enemy movements, but more important, they were tasked with establishing a
barrier near the Cambodian border to cauterize the arterial bleeding that had
been suffered as a result of the existing sanctuary.
Initially this
new force conducted four aggressive campaigns—Operations Search Turn, Foul
Deck, Giant Slingshot, and Barrier Reef—that established an effective barrier
and greatly reduced the amount of infiltration.
Engagements
were so common during the Giant Slingshot operation that an acronymic shorthand
was developed to speed up the reporting process: ENIFFs were enemy-initiated
firefights, FRIFFs were friendly-initiated firefights, while an ENENG
represented contact with the enemy in which fire had been initiated by him but
not returned, and a FRENG was the converse.
ENIFFS along
the Vam Co Dong were so frequent that a particular stretch of the river was
called “Blood Alley.” In a strange but logical twist, friendly casualties
increased significantly, but so did morale among those who preferred the
adrenaline-fed activity to the tedium of routine patrols.
Subsequent
operations with different names but similar purposes increased the pressure on
the enemy and neutralized his effectiveness in various parts of the Delta. New
tactics were developed that included the employment of “waterborne guard
posts”—a euphemism for ambushes—and the use of giant pontoons to establish
small “advanced tactical base camps” (ATSB) in remote waterways. These were
eventually extrapolated into larger, more permanent, floating bases designed to
maintain control of regions previously belonging to the enemy.
The Americans
and their South Vietnamese allies conducted “randomized pressure” operations in
the area that took various forms, including organized sorties, emergency
response operations, and routine patrols. Early resistance diminished, and
gradually local villagers began to provide warnings of enemy movements and
plans. It was clear that Zumwalt’s strategy was succeeding.
While
Zumwalt’s aggressive approach injected new life into the U.S. Navy’s in-country
operations, the progress was made less relevant by a major change in American
policy. The unpopularity of the war resulted in U.S. extrication becoming the
primary strategic goal. Washington directed American military commanders in
Vietnam to turn the war back over to their South Vietnamese allies under a new
policy called “Vietnamization.” And it was clear that “sooner” outranked
“later.”
For the Navy’s
part, Admiral Zumwalt responded to this new directive by creating a graduated,
on-the-job training program that he dubbed ACTOV (Accelerated Turnover to the
Vietnamese). ACTOV got under way in late 1968 and proceeded at a steady rate
thereafter, putting the Navy out ahead of the other services for its part in
Vietnamization. The whole process took less than a year.
It had been a
strange cycle that had begun with U.S. Navy personnel arriving in South Vietnam
to serve as advisers to the VNN, then shifting to full combat operations in the
middle years, only to be later returned to the role of advisers at the end.
Preparing for
war with the Soviet Union during the Cold War had required the building of a
powerful blue-water navy in a classic blend of the traditional strategic
concepts of deterrence, sea control, and forward presence. And when it came
time for power projection in Vietnam, the blue-water giants were more than
capable of launching strikes against the communist North. But the Navy was
ill-prepared for the green- and brown-water operations needed in the South.
Consequently, appropriate vessels had to be created by conversions, tactical
doctrine had to be developed in the crucible of combat, and many of the sailors
who went in-country had to learn skills well outside their ratings. The
in-country Navy had been an aberration, a jury-rig of sorts, and ultimately it
was for naught.
But it was
also a triumph of American adaptability and of the Navy’s traditional “can-do”
spirit. Despite numerous handicaps, the needed forces not only coalesced in
relatively short order but were effective in turning the tide of battle in
several specific areas. Infiltration from the sea was significantly reduced by
Operation Market Time, vital waterways were kept open by Operation Game Warden,
and enemy forces were pushed back into the hinterlands of the Mekong Delta and
the Rung Sat Special Zone by the Mobile Riverine Force. And Operation SEALORDS
combined the Navy’s in-country assets into an aggressive assault on those
forces that continued to infiltrate from the Cambodian sanctuary.
Most of the
2,663 Navy and 7 Coast Guard personnel who died in Vietnam—and thousands more
who were wounded—were casualties of these anomalous operations, but for most of
the in-country sailors who survived, our service was (and remains) a source of
pride. And, as the years have passed, the in-country experience has lingered as
an assortment of surreal memories, occasionally resurrected by the sound of a
passing helicopter, or the sight of a dripping palm frond, or the ominous
rumble of distant thunder.
About The Author:
Lieutenant Commander Thomas J. Cutler, U.S.
Navy (Retired) is a former gunner’s mate second class who served in patrol
craft, cruisers, destroyers, and aircraft carriers. His published works include
A Sailor’s History of the U.S. Navy (Naval Institute Press, 2005); The Battle
of Leyte Gulf (HarperCollins, 1994); and Brown Water, Black Berets: Coastal
& Riverine Warfare in Vietnam (Naval Institute Press, 1988). He most
recently received the Naval Historical Foundation’s Commodore Dudley W. Knox
Naval History Lifetime Achievement Award.
Publication Details:
Naval History
Magazine – December 2015, Volume 29, Number 6 - Link
This work is
licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0International License by the Original Publisher The U.S Naval Institute.
Sources:
Thomas J.
Cutler, Brown Water, Black Berets: Coastal and Riverine Warfare, Vietnam
(Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1988).
Edward J.
Marolda, By Sea, Air, and Land: An Illustrated History of the United States
Navy and the War in Southeast Asia (Washington DC: Government Printing Office,
1994).
Richard L.
Schreadley, “The Naval War in Vietnam 1950–1970,” U.S. Naval Institute
Proceedings , vol. 97, no. 5 (May 1971).
Richard L.
Schreadley, “SEA LORDS.” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings , vol. 96, no. 8
(August, 1970).
S. A.
Swarztrauber, “River Patrol Relearned.” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings , vol.
96, no. 5 (May 1970).
.jpg)
