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derivative filename/jpeg
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363-01427 to 363-01432.pdf
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Digital Object Identifier
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363-01427 to 363-01432
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Title
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Article on US patrol boats
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Description
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Original title: "Sun." The end of an article on US Patrol Boats and riverine warfare in Vietnam
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AI Usage Disclosure
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Draft transcripts were automatically generated via Google Document AI and are currently under review. Please report significant errors to Archives & Special Collections at archives@unl.edu.
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Transcript
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/page10
Sev.
By April, 1966, the Navy had solved part of the delta problem-
the problem of Viet Cong tax collection and free movement of men,
weapons and xx rice across the major fingers of the Mekong River.
The 31-foot fiberglass
The answer was the PBR--patrol boat, river.
boat is a carbon copy of a $16,000 cabin cruiser used by water skiing
enthusiasts in Pudget Sound or Miama Bay. With a zoomzed up 220-hp
special water jet pumps (a propeller
diesel engine, special armament,
would get stuck in the mud or tangle in debris),
the vessel is worth
$85,000 to the Navy. As the Monitor and Merrimac revolutionzed
naval warfare with the iron hull, the PBR has revolutionized the new
navy with two common 20th century household products:
styrofoam.
fiberglass and
The fiberglass makes the boat lig half as
heavy
is used for ballast and flotation;
both
and expensive as steel--and the sailors are delighted they don't havet
to scrape off rust. The honeycombed styrofoam, commonly used for
Christmas decorations,
ingredients mean the boat can not be sunk. A Viet Cong recoiless rifle
round will go straight through the styrofoam-in one side and out the other,
leaving a 18 inch tunnel--but the material is so soft the shell will not
blast off.
"Here's the world's most powerful navy fighting a war with 31-foot
fiberglass boats," one sailor mused, as though the fact astonished even
him. "But, I love this boat. It's a giant ping pong ball. No matter
what happens, it won't sink. The Viet Cong can shoot it to shreds, but
the pieces will still float." (One inquisiitive sailor, in fact, thought
he would experiment by replacing styrofoam in the boats with ping pong
balls. He ordered the balls and they arrived in Saigon-one million of
them but the experiment was never carried out..
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g/wpage 11
Like Indians on a cloverleaf warpath, the Navy launched 150 of these
fast, heavily armed boats for 24-hour patrolling along 250 miles of h
the main Mekong channels. The Operation, called Game Warden, was planned
to stablize the four major fingers of the Mekgo Mekong, to erase the
Viet Cong tax scollection and smuggling of troops and war goods and to
re-establish the Vietnamese government control. Navy officials believe
they have succeeded, and plan to increase soon the number of patrol
boats to 200.
insert statistics.
At first the Vietnamese river population was terrified of the boats,
calling them the "Little Green Monsters," or the "River Dragon."
Intelligenceinformation from the people was scrace. The Navy was using
old French charts and Army maps--and they soon learned a sandbar could
mysteriously appear in the middle of the main channel one day, but be
gone the next. (One officer grounded his boat on a sandbar--"there was
enough sand on all sides of the boat to play football"--one enlisted man
laughed. The boat waited ten hours for the tide to carry it out again).
Many of the smaller streams off the Mekong had never been charted, or even
or else named with titales the sailors couldn't pronounce.
the Juliet Canal, Route 66, Highway 101, Purple Heart Alley abd Meiss's
named
Mire were plotton plotted on official charts,
after major firefights, humorous incidents,
patrol officer to transit the stream.
SO,
nicknamedxnxmebadmm named
codecalls or the first
(More)
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8/a-page 12
The 1500 sailors in Operation Game Warden, who proudly wear the
black beretis, have been taught two weeks of Vietnamese language
before leaving the U. S. They struck up "how's the fishging"
conversations with the river people. "We started handing out little
plastic buckets painted in the yellow and red Vietnamese government
colors," EN2 Charles Cox, Sr., of Los Angles recalled. "Each bucket
contained soap, towels, fish hooks, meedles, thread and aspirins.
same pans came running up and down the river swarming all over to get the
buckets."
Soon the
EN2 Cox, a 42-year-old veteran of World War II and Korea, continued:
"Boon, we were making friends on the river. I could pick the day the
old grey-bearded farmer would be going to market. In four months we
knew most of the water taxi drivers on the river. I remember one day we kept
asking if he had seen any Viet Cong; we knew his neighborhood was loaded
with them, but he'd say nothing. Then one day he took his wife to the
hospital with grenade fragments all over her thighs. The Viet Cong
had stored a hand grenade in their garden and as his wife was hoeing
the grenade exploded. No only did it injury his wife---but the V. Cl
wanted to charge him 700 piastres ($7) for the grenade. After that, he
started to tell us alot."
As the PBR's were often the only contact with the outside world for
many of the river villages people, the sailors began taking flares, grenandes
and ammo to isolated outposts and to rush to its resuce when i undere
theV. C. attack. (A afvor favorite V. C. act was only to stomp the
overrun outpost into the ground, but to add insult to injury by digging up
the outposts and dumping the dirt into the canal, thus leaving only a
water-filled crater. Sometomes they would string dead government soldiers
the barbed wire perimeter of the post).
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G/-page 13
Tutomatically, the reiver peopled began to ask the PBR d for
medical evacatuations (one baby was born on one boat) and the sailors began
to transport and organize and transport a medical corpsman to the river
villages. They supplied blackboards, books, cement for schools that had
fallen into disrepair. Some "adopted" children in outposts and gave them
dolls sent by their families in America; children when hairlips were to
American plastic surgeons and mended; C-rations (called Sea Rats)
liberally distributed to mal-nourished fishermen.
were
The combat sailors began search for Viet Cong contraband and smuggled
war materials. Under the false floor boards of sampans,
they found
weapons and large higden quantities of rice (one sailor also found as
shark). Under the U-shaped, palm-leaf roofs of a sampan they found rifles.
One woman was found steering a barge with 1000 clay jжxxx nyoo man jars;
975 were filled with the evil smelling fish sauce; 25 contained assorted
antibotics. Other medicines were found in babies diapers or loaves of
bread. Hand grenades in waterproofed sacks were found attached to the
underside of barges; the sailors began using effective metal detectors
and they requested a Vietnamese policewoman (instead of man)
them to search the female passengers. Viet Cong tax receipts,
Receipts of Viet Cong taxes, reading $50 for a barge of sugar, reading
"Your money is helping kill Americans" were found in youngster's
coloring books.
to accompany
The sailors destroyed Viet Cong signs along the
river banks, reading, for example, "The Viet Cong cross the river here
and the patrol baots can not stop us."
the Commi
But, after eacy bloody firefight with the Viet Cong,
Communist taxes were reduced. Along one river, within one mile, the V. C.
the first one took 60 per cent of the
had set up two tax collection points;
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deepe-page 14 g/w
produce, the second also took 60 per cent of the remainder.
Along the
Ham Lon river, the river people no longer had to pay 1000 100,000
piastres ($10,000) in Viet Cong taxes, but as one sailor oberve,d, "We
had a firefight every day for four months to stop that." In appreciation,
the river people began to stop the PBR's and give the sailors bananas,
pineapples and other tropical fruit the Americans had never seen before.
The sailors had their frustrations too. One intelligence report
indicated a junkload of pumpkins was carrying enough plastic explosie
to blow up the leading delta city of Can Tho.
action detained the junk and steered it into the regional Vietnamese
politice headquarters. The Vietnames police unloaded the cargos-pumpking
All boats went into
by pumpking. The task took them 5 days--not one ounce of explosive
was found.
Firefights between PBR's and Viet Cong he on the river banks were
often, initially, one occured every hour. During an 18-month
one sailor was in 289 firefights. Last year,
common;
period,
suffered 23 per cent casualties;
the boat crews
some sailors were wounded three times,
but refused their third Purple Heart to avoid being ordered out of the
in the trees
war zone. The Viet Cong hung claymore mines--which belch
One recoiless
pellets like a shotgun--which splattered the boat crews.
rifle round squarely hit a boat engine, killing two of the crew and
flipping the remaining two into the air.
ashore and were captured b the Viet Cong,
through remote villages.
The two landed in the water, swam
who paraded them barbarically
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8/2-page 15
EN2 Cox,
who had extended in Vietnam to 18 months, explained
the increasing measure of succes of the black beret sailors.
"Then our patrols first started in 1966, the Viet Cong had
wide open control of the main rivers and could move across en mass in
15 or 20 sampans. They would fight us from the sampans, but they soon
found the PBR's could run and shoot faster. Then they started to signal
across the river with lights when the PBR's weren't around--but we
picked them up on our radar. After that, they moved in a security
company to protect the crossing and to divert the PBR's attention.
That failed too; now the just sneak across in 12-1-2 sampans,
and move like the underground railroad in the Civil War.
That's the
stage things are now. We're just patrolmen on a highway now.
they're
"This isn't much like the American Civil War, where you had stand-off
batles. The Viet Cong aren't standing and fighting now;
firing and running."
During 18 months, the boat captained by EN2 Cox, a husky Negro
from Los Angels took 60 hits---a near-record in the Delta. He captained
PBR 109.
mrf
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Date
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1967, approximate
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Subject
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Vietnam War, 1961-1975; Shore patrol; Riverine operations; Strategy; United States. Navy; Boats and boating
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Location
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South Vietnam
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Coordinates
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10.8231; 106.6297
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Size
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21 x 27 cm
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Container
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B37, F8
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Format
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dispatches
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Collection Number
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MS 363
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Collection Title
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Beverly Deepe Keever, Journalism Papers
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Creator
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Keever, Beverly Deepe
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Collector
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Keever, Beverly Deepe
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Copyright Information
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These images are for educational use only. To inquire about usage or publication, please contact Archives & Special Collections.
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Publisher
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Archives & Special Collections
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Language
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English
