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derivative filename/jpeg
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363-01394 to 363-01401.pdf
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Digital Object Identifier
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363-01394 to 363-01401
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Title
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Article on riverine warfare tactics and operations
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Description
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Original title: "River warfare." Keever's title: "U.S. Wages Biggest River Battle in a Century." Original caption: "This first article details the U.S. Navy's biggest river battle in a century." Article by Keever for the Christian Science Monitor on riverine warfare tactics and operations 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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(The U. S. Navy is again engaged in river warfare--for the first time
since the American Civil War. This three-part report examines
America's
Rice Paddy Navy in Vientx Vietnam. This first x article details the
U. S. Navy's biggest river battle in a century).
on SEPTEMBER 15 lost year
The Battle of Snoopy's Nose began at 7:30/as pink blushes
swirled into the dawnscape. Fifty miles from the sea, a caravan of 23
U. S. Navy riverboats trekked forward in double file, like giant
ironclad turtles. The caravan left the main channel of the tobacco-tinted
Mekong River and turned north into a small streamlet called Ba Rai.
America's Rice Paddy Navy was planning to land an Army infantry battalion
two miles upstream around the bulbous curve that to the sailors
resembled the snout of Charlie Brown's cartoon canine companion.
Suddenly it happened! "I'm sick and taking on water,"
Delta Taxi, the lead miniature minesweeper, radiced. For the next four
hours, the U. S. Navy fought a hectic melee--it's longest, bloddi
bloodiest river battle in a century. From the shore, khaki-clad
Viet Cong regulars with red neckerchiefs hid in mud-baked bunkers and
hurled bazooka-styled b B-40 rockets at the mini-Navy. The
bore
rockets' heat-tongues, of several thousand degrees Fahrenheit,
hole after hole, the size of micers, nickels, in the inch-thick
steel gun turrets and sprewed thimbles of molten metal over the
American gunners.
(More)
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Deepe
River page 2
Instantly, Naval guns spit out their projectiles--incendiary
TASSE
demi-cups and saucers. Fluffy puffballs erupted like white cotton
blossoms. Firing from ship to shore was so close--only twenty five yards
of the Enem
American troopers, from behind their armored cages, hurled hand grenades word
were
as though they are red-hot baseballs. The short distance prevented a
ARM
few Communist bazooka shells from having time to use and explode; they
careened harmlessly off the boats like iron confetti.
NAVY
turrets, the temperatures Dew so intense
Within the armored
one/gun-loader passed out from
One young
heat exhaustion. The firing was so furious one Navy gunner aimed his weapon
with his knees, while using his hands to grab more ammunition.
gunner fired three weapons simultaneously. As ammunition within the turrets
was expended, Army soldiers below passed forward more caseloads; one hand-
loaded 40 mm. cannon, the standard World War II anti-aircraft weapon, thus
belched out 500 rounds in an hour. "The rounds were flying so fast and
heavy you could walk on them," one sailor recalled. An incandescent
carpet of
smoke-heat rose above the battle scene and kissed the low-hanging
river-bottom fog. Three times the Naval commander ordered all his guns
to ceasefire "so I could see what was going on."
(More)
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Deepe
River page 3
within
at 7:30 tost mornings And Reconds
2.
tur.,
minube Delta Taxi and her sister-sweeper, Miss Carriage,
had been hit by eleven bazooka rounds; each of their eight-man crews was wounded
S
Rocket
The force of the bullets spun the boat around, like lazy tops, and they
floundered downriver. At 7:33, the next two vessels in the caravan, the
heavily armed baby battleships came under withering attack.
fire shattered the machinegun of Monitor River Rogue, knocked out the radio
Out
wounded the boat captain and three others. The vessel swerved wildly
of control and ran aground on the fiery beach. Nearby, command boat Vini
Vidi Vici was hit by such force the boat captain and crew were blasted
to the deck and the commander of the whole naval operation was momentarily
knocked unconscious. Soon, the veteran commander,
Lt. Cmdr. Francis E.
(Dusty) Rhodes, Jr., of Norkfolk, Va., was back on his exposed topside
position; once he saw the red neckerchiefs of two Viet Cong fleeing the
RIFLE
area, dropped his command radio mouthpiece, picked up -16 and killed
both of them.
(More)
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Deepe
River page 4
At 7:35, the second lead Monitor Why Not was hit directly in
Then
five
the engine and in the forward turret%;B one sailor was killed and
wounded. A Navy lieutenant rushed to the aid of the wounded. He was
killed by the third round. The wounded were wounded again. Within minutes,
the whole crew of eleven were casualities. Next in the caravan came the
troop
PLATOON
troop transport vesseld, each carrying a 40-man sqof Army soldiers.
The Gargantuan was splattered by two rockets. Her radio was knocked out.
But, alone she proceeded upriver, braving the mile-long gauntlet of
Communist shot and shell. Alone, she reached the objective area, named
PLATOON
W
Brought
Beach White 2, and unloaded the Army
Isolated, she was ordered to
Nosing
re-load the troops and return doonriver, again sing through the mile-long
Communist inferno. All but one of the crew was wounded; a young seaman the
boat back. The second troop carrier, Wild Angels, was hit near the fantail
where three of the seven-man crew were wounded. A small Army fiberglass
motorboat trailing behind was set afire like cellophane and flames spouted
fifteen feet skyward.
(More)
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Deepe
River page 5
FORCE
After fifty minutes of fighting, the Mobile Riverinense
returned downstrizm to re-organize, evacuate their wounded, re-man the
then, moving upstream,
boats and replace their damaged vessels. Again, the caravan came under
withering Communist fire and another touch-and-go battle began. Again,
four
the lead minesweepers, Green Grabber and Delta Dragon, were hit; or troop
carriers took eleven rocket and recoiless rifle rounds. Again, another
Army fibreglass putt-putt spouted flamesfifteen feet high. One Communist shape
charge hi
at tarpaulin canopy above the Army's troop pit on Big
Boy Pete; the canopy fountained into flames. One soldier and one sailor
But
were killed; seventeen--or nearly half the soldier aboard--were wounded.
soldier
Naval gunmanship again found its mark. Army soldiers from their armored
compartments fired machineguns, grenade launchers and rifles from the
side of their gunboats as though they were shooting from the
gunboats as though they were shooting from Old West wagon trains. The
fury of gunfire again riveted ship-to-shore carpeting along the walls
Continued to
When the smoke
of the river bottom. But, the ironclads/sped forward, surging through
the brown waters and flaming gunfire. At 10:48 all boats reached their
objective and landed the Army troops at Beach White 2.
had cleared, 18 of the 23 vessels had been hit; some suffered eight major
holes and countless niches, but all were in operating order a day later.
More sailors suffered casualities than soldiers: 3 N Navy killed, 70 wounded;
12 Army killed and 58 wounded. More significant, more Viet Cong than
Americans were killed--213 confirmed, by bodycount, plus, villagers reported,
hundred of others sampaned out later. /Fourteen Viet Cong had been
S
confirmed killed for every American that died in action.
HAD BEEN
Communist bunkers
captured.
Six hundred
destroyed and large quantities of war munitions
(More)
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Deepe
River - page 6
thes Ended the d
4. S
Novis.
Most decisiva Victory in Verona The ended
The September 15th vistory praised by american commanders throughout the
in
in
Pacific area was the Navy's most decisive river vistory since the fall of
the navys Bitterest ever battle Some the foll of
Vicksburg on July 4, 1863, which opened the Mississippi River and scissored
"
the Confederacy so that, as President Abraham Lincoln wrote, "The Father of
Waters again goes unvexed to the sea. As the Mississippi River Monitors under
Rear Admiral David D. Porter successfully carried the war into the heart of
HAD
Dixieland, so the Mekong River Monitors 104 years later, in the Battle of
Snoopy's Nose, successfully carried the war into the Viet Cong's backyard.
20th-century Navy, famed for ocean-to-ocean supremacy)
America's
was again fighting an"ocean-river" conflict as it had done in the American
WAR Between the States
"America's salt water Navy has been expanded to fight a muddy water war
eighty miles inland," one senior officer explained. "Naval warfare used to be
impersonal we I never saw our enemy except with aver
un radar or
from airplanes. Now we are fighting nose-to-nose with them as well."
(more)
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Deepe
River
page 7
wavel bombardment &
its
aerie
While the bombing of North Vietnam has gained the focus of worldwrds
headlines and controversy, the Navy's role in and around South Vietnam
has followed the broad strategy of the American Civil War. First, to
blockade the infiltration of war materials from the sea. Second,
iR
internally, to tie an x aqua-knot around the enemy's free movement of
the Communists
Third, to destroy hac fort-like bases and
food, weapons and manpower.
main force units.
During 1865, 450 Union vessels, including ferryboats and
commercial steamers, imposed an iron blockade around the 3,000-mile
Confederate coastline, concentrating on principal seaports. A century
later, 55 U. S. Navy and Coast Guard ships, reinforcing 200 Vietnamese
patrol junks, have established a 900-mile sea blockade around South
Vietnam, concentrating mostly on the wilderness swamp and jungled areas
the Viet Cong are forced to use. This Vietnamese operation, aided by
onveying 9/11,
patrols of aircraft carrying sensitive detection equipment, has in the
past two years netted six iron-hulled trawlers, mostly of North Vietnam
origin, and chased two others back to Chinese Communist waters.
(More)
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Deepe
River
Page 8
Implementing the famed Anaconda Plan during the American Civil
War, the Union Navy knocked out Confederate river forts and installations,
thus sealing the Mississippi River, to constrict the flow into the Confederacy
of valuable foodstuffs and raw materials from the West, particularly Texas.
Today, in Vietnam, the Navy strategy is similar to knock out the Viet Cong
ified bases, such as at Snoopy's Nose, and to interdict the flow of Viet
Cong materials across the major branches of the Mekong River.
fortifie
this Correspondente
At the tactical level, America's inland water war in Vietnam is
conducted in much the same way Rear Admiral Porter fought along the Mississippi.
"River warfare can't change that much," one naval commander in Vietnam told me
"As in the battle of the Mississippi, we try to force and flank sterg
strongpoints along the Mekong channels. 'The difference is in the enemy strategy
not in ours. The Viet Cong hasn't engaged us in ship-to-ship battles, which
dramatized the Civil War. And the Viet Cong strongpoints are not permanent
strongpoints. We put pressure on the Viet Cong and they fade away to set up a
Position
bunkered on meint in a new place. They have mobile Vicksburgs.
1
(more)
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Date
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1968, Jan. 29
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Subject
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Vietnam War, 1961-1975; Riverine operations; Strategy
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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 32 cm
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Container
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B9, F5
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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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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
