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. Size: 3 1/2" x 4 1/4" SKU# P303. A brigade of the 25th Infantry Division arrived in late 1965, with the 4th Infantry Division deploying between August and November 1966. The task force was activated on 24 February with headquarters at Tan My, under the operational control of Commanding General, III MAF. Ships and patrol craft would be manned by the U. S. Navy, and the U. S. Army would furnish helicopters and pilots. Shortly before 0600 on 20 February, therefore, both companies were again landed. It appears to be sparsely populated in comparison with the rest of the Delta, but an accurate census has never been taken. 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 terrain of the Rung Sat is ideally suited to guerrilla warfare. On the basis of the evidencethe 17 infiltrators identified in two yearsthere was little to support the claim of large-scale sea infiltration. As these records were no longer needed in Saigon they were shipped to the Operation Archives Branch of the Naval History Division (the NHHC Navy Archives). 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. It spread its roots through virtually every sector of Vietnamese society. 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.. In microcosm this was the sanctuary tactic employed by the enemy along the national borders with Cambodia, Laos, and North Vietnam. 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. 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. Under the senior naval commander was the officer actually responsible for naval operations in Indochina, Commander Naval Division Far East. 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 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. and 122 mm. Thus, a truly international conglomerate of soldiers and sailors launched the combined operation against Doan-10 on 22 June 1969. The individual shelter units were by no means grand, but they were a vast improvement over the pitifully few shelters that had existed before. U. S. Navy DEs were withdrawn from the Gulf of Thailand on 26 May 1962, and the MSO patrol was suspended on 1 August. At peak strength in 1968, the American naval advisory . Simple medical treatment was also provided, and the scope of this expanded rapidly with the arrival of a Vietnamese hospital ship (LSM-H). 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). As is true for much of the Delta, waterways are vital routes to and from markets, and roads are virtually non-existent. The group included ATCs, Monitors, and ASPBs. Armored river assault craft were assigned to the Cai Nhap patrol and were joined by Coastal Group junks and a Vietnamese Navy reaction force. Throughout 1963 the duties of the U.S. Army Support Group steadily increased, particularly regarding to combat support activities and logistics. 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. 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. 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. The addition of 17 more craft in October brought the force very close to its authorized allowance of 182 boats. In the North, warnings were scrawled on the walls of public buildings, urging the populace to flee in advance of the Viet Minh Army. [3]:41 That year the U.S. strength in Vietnam grew from about 16,000 men (10,716 Army) to about 23,300 (16,000 Army) in 1964. In September 1965, Rear Admiral Ward raised the question of naval command relationships in Vietnam with CNO and with General Westmoreland. [3]:45 In May 1965, the Army's 173d Airborne Brigade from Okinawa arrived. A joint organization, it contained an Army, Navy, and Air Force section, each responsible for advising its counterpart in the Vietnamese armed forces and for assisting the chief of the advisory group in administering the Military Assistance Program. The area commands were in turn divided into river, coastal, and sea forces. 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. 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 May 1962 it moved to 137 Pasteur Street (.mw-parser-output .geo-default,.mw-parser-output .geo-dms,.mw-parser-output .geo-dec{display:inline}.mw-parser-output .geo-nondefault,.mw-parser-output .geo-multi-punct{display:none}.mw-parser-output .longitude,.mw-parser-output .latitude{white-space:nowrap}104658.25N 1064135.94E / 10.7828472N 106.6933167E / 10.7828472; 106.6933167 (pre-1967 MACV, Saigon)) in central Saigon. 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. PRICE At this time a message was received, its origin unclear, which postponed the scheduled landing. "Application of Doctrine; Victory at Van Tuong Village, by Brigadier General O. F. Peatross, U. S. Marine Corps, in Naval Review 1967. "The Case for Inshore Warfare, by Commander W. F. Searle, Jr., U. S. Navy, in Naval Review 1966. Though the number of Vietnamese Navy ships available for coastal patrol increased to 28 during the year, detection remained low. "River Patrol Relearned, by Commander S. A. Swarztrauber, U. S. Navy, in Naval Review 1970. It is probably correct to state that few, if any, of those recruited desired to serve in the Junk Force. At this time the Government of Vietnam commanded little support within its own structure. He initially tried to obtain a site between the ARVN Joint General Staff compound and Tan Son Nhut Airport, desirable from the standpoint of removing Americans from central Saigon and placing MACV conveniently close to its Vietnamese counterpart. On their return from market they brought potable water, rice, cloth, beer, and other staples. In the early months of 1969, pressure was increasingly applied on the enemy in the Nam Can. 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. What could not be moved in was often manufactured in concealed munitions factories by using scrap and dud rounds which were in plentiful supply. Logistic support operations were highly fragmented. If more time should become available, the acceleration could be slowed and the training cycles could be lengthened. 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. By the middle of October 1969, it was estimated that more than 3000 people were living under Vietnamese control in the Nam Can. A cyclone fence, topped with barbed wire and with watch towers at intervals, provided close-in protection. SEALS were used on special warfare and intelligence missions. 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. The new complex soon earned the nickname "Pentagon East. 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. 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. 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. 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. Young trees are cut into long, straight poles, stripped of their bark, and sold for construction purposes. (4) That all Navy commands, unless otherwise specified, be under the operational control of ComNavForV. 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. The new designation went into effect on 1 March 1964. He could have been a SEAL or Riverine, some something in between. 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. As 1963 drew to a close there were 742 U. S. Navy officers and men in Vietnam. [9]:18, The advance echelon of USSAG/7AF moved from Tan Son Nhut Air Base to Nakhon Phanom on 29 January 1973. "Combat patrols often consisted of short trips to and from anchorages. With the elapse of five months, all the three same brigades remained in the new division, but the brigade at Chu Lai was now named the 3rd Brigade, 4th Infantry Division, after a responsibility swap that had occurred in August. LSM 405 then departed for Dai Lanh, returning in the early evening with the company of Special Forces. . Naval Forces, Vietnam Monthly Historical Summary for July 1969 Accession Number: ADA953992 Title: U.S. The Bucklew Report was critical of the sea patrol then in effect, and recommended augmenting it with U. S. forces. As the quotation from General Giap so well affirms, the importance of logistics in war has not changed very much since Napoleons famous dictum that an army travels on its stomach. 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. 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. English language leaflets were floated to the MATSB on tiny wooden rafts. 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. 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. Construction of a block plant at Cam Ranh Bay. NSA Danang was under the operational control of Commander III Marine Amphibious Force. Creation of a NavForV dependent shelter project team to coordinate allocation of materials and technical assistance. As provided for in the organization of the task force headquarters in the contingency plans, MACV's commander was also his own Army component commander. That headquarters also reported operational and military intelligence through military channels to DOD authorities. This headquarters became the Defense Attach Office, Saigon. The rivers of the Nam Can, being tidal, are heavily salted. A second attempt was made several hours later, moderate opposition was again experienced, and the ships once more withdrew. By the fall of 1965, U. S. Navy units in Vietnam included: (1) the Marines in I Corps; (2) Navy support personnel under ComPhibPacs command at Da Nang and Chu Lai (on 1 October Naval Support Activity, Da Nang, was established under ComUSMACVs 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. 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. 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. Ultimately, only the rivers and memories will remain. [11]:52 The DAO was activated on 28 January 1973 with United States Army Major General John E. Murray, formerly MACV director of logistics, as the Defense Attach and United States Air Force Brigadier General Ralph J. Maglione, formerly the MACV J-1 (Director for Manpower and Personnel), as deputy Defense Attach. Lieutenant Commander Thoai, apparently to effect the further destruction of the trawler, ordered both units to proceed into the harbor. 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. 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. 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 peoples hootches or shelters. 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. [2]:59, General Paul D. Harkins was the first commanding general of MACV (COMUSMACV), and was previously the commander of MAAG Vietnam. When the Navy became involved in port security (basically an Army responsibility), the incidence of minings at anchor fell off. [3]:601 It supported the combat signal battalions of the divisions and field forces in each corps area. 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. During the long months of the northeast monsoon the climate is probably the countrys worst, with cold, grey and rainy days following each other in seemingly endless succession. 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 warsurprise.. 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. The DAO performed many of the same roles of MACV within the restrictions imposed by the Paris Peace Accords until the Fall of Saigon. Thanks VetFriends. Transfer of the main body, drawn largely from the operations and intelligence sections of MACV and Seventh Air Force, began on 10 February. The original MACV Headquarters were colocated with MAAG at 606 Trn Hng o, Cholon. On 14 April 1967, the first of the permanent Riverine Assault Force support ships, the USS Kemper County (LST-854), arrived at Vung Tau. His forces were divided into three area commands; North, Central, and South Vietnam. The situation, in the fall of 1968 was not one for faint hearts. 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. [9]:189, By 29 March, the only American military personnel left in South Vietnam were the U.S. delegates to the Four-Party Joint Military Commission established under the Paris Peace Accords to oversee the ceasefire, themselves in the process of winding up work and departing; the fifty man DAO military contingent; and a 143-man Marine Security Guard. 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 military impact of harassing attacks on Long Tau shipping was virtually nil, but the Viet Cong derived great propaganda value from their efforts. 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 proposal to establish a permanent base in the Nam Can met with little enthusiasm in IV Corps Headquarters. 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 Vietnamese leadership, on which the ultimate success of the plan rested, was already heavily burdened. Estimates of the areas population have varied from 5,000 to 13,000. [2]: 59 The latter unit formed the naval component of the joint Army-Navy Mobile Riverine Force. It was inevitable that a significant phase of the counter-insurgency war in Vietnam would be fought on water. 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. 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. 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. They were accompanied by the USS Mercer (APB-39) and the USS Satyr (ARL-23). By 1 April 1970, 242 craft, worth more than $68 million, had been turned over under the ACTOV program. (2) That NavForV be commanded by a naval officer, and that this naval officer have additional duty as Chief, Naval Advisory Group. 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 enemys "sanctuary in the Nhon Trach. 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. There were really two reasons. 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. Drawn carefully on a map, the Rung Sat Special Zone looks curiously like a human brain, its convolutions etched by numberless rivers and streams. 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 streets of the two principal evacuation centers, Hanoi and Haiphong, were soon choked with masses of desperate people. Naturally, stand-off weapons, frequently command-fired from concealed positions well inland, became more attractive to the enemy. Language links are at the top of the page across from the title. 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 Vietnams territorial and contiguous zone waters.. 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. Drastic defoliation of the banks of the Long Tau made the planting and the firing of command-detonated mines extremely hazardous for the enemy. 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. With relatively few exceptions, our sailors, Amend and Vietnamese, accepted the challenge and perform well in the months following the implementation the plan. 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. 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. On 18 May 1966, Captain B. The childrens desks were fashioned from ammunition boxes, as were the floors of the classrooms. The consequences of this bitter infighting for the operational effectiveness of the Vietnamese Navy, in this period, may well be imagined. The old Navy section of MAAG became the Naval Advisory Group, Vietnam, and by the end of 1964 there were 235 naval . 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. 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