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derivative filename/jpeg
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363-06404 to 363-06415.pdf
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Digital Object Identifier
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363-06404 to 363-06415
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Title
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Article about river warfare
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Description
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Original title: "Mobile", Keever's title: "South Vietnamese Sailors Advise U.S. Navy in Mekong Delta", Article draft about the U.S. Mobile Riverine Force, for the Christian Science Monitor
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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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- Page 1
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Beverly Ann Deepe
38. Vo Tanh
Saigon, Vietnam
January 30, 1968
Mobile-page 1
(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 Vietnam.
This second article discusses the miniaturized
amphibious operations conducted by the U.S. Mobile Riverine Force, including its
Monitors of the Mekong Delta.)
ABOARD THE USS BENEWAH, SOUTH VIETNAM.
The upcoming American buildup of forces in the Mekong Delta is
considered a matter of controversy in Washington; here it is considered a
matter of fact.
Part of this American buildup
the strength of funct
the details of which are still highly
classified
is known to include increasing the once-experimental U.S. Mobile
Riverine Force the first American river force since the defeat of the Confederacy.
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(More)
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Deepe
Mobile page 2.
Commissioned in September, 1966, this riverine force, itself notable
for its once-in-a-century uniqueness, constitutes the first joint Army-Navy river
campaign since the American Civil War. The Mobile Riverine Force has two separate,
but coordinated components: to "floating" battalions of the U.S. 9th Infantry
Division (2000 soldiers) and the Navy's River Assault Flotilla One (1800 men),
the mini-armada which taxis the Army troops into their amphibious assaults.
The USS Benewah is the flagship for the Navy and Army command and staff
sections, the "floating home" for 1,100 of the officers and enlisted men, and a
mobile berth for more than a dozen of the river assault boats. Besides the Benewal,
the Navy has also provided four other ships, two to serve as floating barracks, one
for repair work and one as a floating supply warehouse. One of the barracks ships,
for example, is APL-26, an auxiliary personnel lighter without self-propulsion,
which is affectionately named by its 800 residents as "the Green Apple." These ships,
the only ones in the U.S. Navy painted "marine green" instead of "haze gray", are
praised for keeping the American troops "out of the hair" of the Vietnamese
civilians and for preventing economic dislocation, inflation and political unrest
that has worried land-based commanders. This self-contained complex of ships is a
mobile base area and moves from river to river depending on where amphibious troop
operations are being conducted.
(More)
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Deepe
Mobile page 3.
The future expansion of the Mobile Riverine Force has been assured by
This 10 to 1
the effectiveness of the unit in its past six-month experimental period of systematic
operations in both the Mekong Delta and the Rung Sat Special Zone, which lines the
ocean-going shipping channel into Saigon. In this six-month period, 1847 Viet Cong
have been killed compared to 184 American sailors and Army infantrymen.
kill-ratio is higher than any other large-scale American unit in Vietnam. During
this period, the Navy's mobile base moved and dropped anchor in seven different
places from which the Army sprang off for its classical search-and-destroy raids.
Fifteen major contacts with the Viet Cong were made; more than 2000 enemy bunkers and
fortifications were destroyed. Captured items include 450 weapons, 80,000 rounds of
ammunition and 43 tons of supplies. Captured enemy documents indicate some battered
Viet Cong battalions, once 700-men strong, have been rendered 45 per cent effective.
With supplies and morale running low, Viet Cong commanders have ordered their units
to avoid contact with the Mobile Riverine Force. American officials, from, Secretary
KNOWN
of Defense Robert McNamara down to Vietnam commanders, are pleased with the results
of the Mobile Riverine Force.
(More)
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Deepe
Mobile
page 4.
The tactical purpose of the Mobile Riverine Force is to conduct a river-
borne, yet classical search-and-destroy infantry operation, of three or four days
duration, in an attempt to crush the 37,000 Viet Cong organized in "Hard Hat" main-
force battalions in the Mekong Delta. These Viet Cong units, now being replenished
and beefed-up with North Vietnamese troopers, hibernate in fort-like base areas,
generally the low, wet ground of remote mangrove swamps or along isolated rivers.
They maintain training centers for new recruits, recreation parks for battle-weary
ones, combat hospitals built under dense foliage, sewing factories for making uniforms
and even PX's filled with hair tonic and candy. Well-armed and overpowering for the
meagre Vietnamese government units, the Viet Cong caused military commanders to
seek an elite American aqua-borne strike force to carry the war to the Communist's
flodded backyard. If these Viet Cong hard-hat units could be smashed, the Vietnamese
government troops could weed out the remaining guerrillas infesting the villages.
Then, the recently-elected government in Saigon could pacify the xa villages,
bringing the people peace and a new standard of living by building schools, bridges,
irrigation projects and dispensaries.
The Navy, instead of supporting a traditional Iwo Jima-styled operation with
titanic battleships and destroyers, initiated in the Mekong Delta amphibious warfare
whittled down to a Tom Thumb scale.
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Deepe
Mobile page 5.
"Our amphibious operations are a miniature in time and scale, "
one officer explained. "The Navy carries in a strike force which assaults and
searches for several days and then leaves. The force doesn't stay to occupy
territory as was done in Iwo Jima."
The Army troops in the Delta use the same classical infantry tactics
on land, whether they are positioned there by boats, helicopters or trucks; with
troops and boats they construct a box around a pocket of Viet Cong and then
attempt to shrink the sides of the box until the enemy is caught.
Helicop
However, without roads in the Delta, trucks were impractical. From the
Army standpoint, assault boats ane more useful than helicptoers in the swampy
terrain, first because helicopters cannot land troops in some of the mangrove
swamps, second because the boats remain with the infantry troops throughout the
operation and provide minute-to-minute fire support, even at night, close-in
horizontally near the ground troops, instead of vertically from overhead helicopters.
(more)
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Deepe
Mobile - page 6.
To conduct its first 20th Century river operation, the Navy designed a
new mini-armada. However, the Navy did not have to consult its Civil War history
books to re-learn river doctrine and to revamp its equipment; it simply consulted
the Vietnamese Navy. By a quirk of history, the Vietnamese sailors became
a dvisors to the world's most powerful Navy. Shortly after World War II, America
left in France a number of naval landing craft amongst other war surplus goods.
The French modified and armored them, then shipped them to Vietnam during the
French Indo-China war nearly two decades ago. These armored vessels, some called
Monitors, were organized into Naval Assault Divisions, similar to the American
organization now. They were the only tactical innovation the French made in
conducting the unconventional war. When the French lost the war, the flotilla
was turned over to the fledgling Vietnamese Navy, which kept them running for years
more by ingenuity than an adequacy of spare parts. When the American advisory effort
began in earnest in 1962, the American sailors started to learn the secrets of
inland water war from the Vietnamese.
(More)
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Deepe
Mobile
page 7.
Copying the Vietnamese reiver gunboats, American naval experts
designed their "vest pocket navy". Their task force in miniature consisted
One World
of bantam battleships, dwarfed destroyers, baby flagships and the armored troop
transports. Most of the vessels were modifications of LCM's (Landing Craft,
Mechanized), the workhorse of World War II invasions, which makes the vessels
older than the majority of the sailors and soldiers who ride ix them.
War II veteran sailor explained, "You remember the pictures of Iwo Jima with
the big boats steaming in the distance and the little boats carrying troops
from the big boats to the beaches. Well, in the Delta we're fighting with only
those little boats."
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The gunfire of the boats in River Flotilla One quadruples the organic,
minute-to-minute firepower of the two infantry battalions they carry into battle.
The heavy gunboat of the flotilla is called the Monitor. The Civil War Monitor
the "cheesebox on a raft" would hardly compare with its smaller latter-day
The original flat-decked iron-clad xxx weighed 900 tons, was 172
version.
feet long and carried a crew of 58.) The 20th-century version whighs 85 tons,
Spect
is 60 feet, 6 inches long and carries a crew of 11 The famed turret a century
ago revolutionized warfare by turning its two ex eleven-inch guns, rather than
having the entire boat maneuvered; the 20th-century version has four turrets,
containing a .40 mm forward cannon, a 20 mm cannon, a twin .50 and one .30 calibre
An .81 mm mortar is housed in the bowels of the boat.
machine guns.
(More)
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Deepe
Mobile
page 8.
In the 20th-century version,
A communications module replaces the Monitor's mortar pit in the
baby flagship. For the armored troop carriers, a 40-man troop compartment replaces
the mortar pit and the forward gun turret. Several troop carriers have added a
small helicopter pad, the size of two ping-pong tables, above the troop level;
sailors refer to this craft as the smallest aircraft carrier in the world.
newest boat in the flotilla
The
built especially for Vietnam is the Assault
Support Patrol Boat (ASPB), a 50-foot dwarfed destroyer designed to escort the
slower troop-carriers and to provide counter-measures against enemy mines.
Unlike the Vietnamese gunboats, the American versions have a grating
of trigger armor - like bars on a jail window -over the vulnerable portions of
the boat. This causes the Viet Cong recoilless rifle rounds to point-detonate
harmlessly on the outside of the vessel rather than piercing the armor and
throwing pellets over the troops inside. A four-inch ring of styrofoam was also
added along the waterline to absorb the heat and pellets of Viet Cong weaponry.
Other innovations for the Mobile Riverine Force includes the only waterborne
artillery battalion in the world, which the Army invented when it has yet to find
any solid river bank on which to drive its two six-gun batteries of truck-towed
105 mm howitzers.
(More)
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Deepe
Mobile
page 9.
The Navy relied heavily on Vietnamese experience, not only in
boat design, but also in river tactics and lessons learned. In the United States,
a Vietnamese lecturer taught the sailors about the expected problems of the
fresh water war. Before the American boats arrived in Vietnam, the Vietnamese
loaned the U.S. Navy their own vessels - a sort of lend-lease in reverse. In
Vietnam, American sailors fought, lived and worked with Vietnamese river crews
for two weeks, before starting to operate separately.
"I get a world of information from the Vietnamese commander I
accompanied," one American officer explained. "He told me how the Viet Cong
ambush and where they ambush; how and where they may mine you. I learned that
sometimes the Viet Cong let you pass by three or four times on the river, but
they zap you the fifth time. I learned to expect the unexpected. everywhere."
Another senior Naval commander explained, "The American sailors, who
never sailed rivers in wartime, learned from the Vietnamese how to make the rivers
work for them, not against them, how to handle the boats, learned the seamanship
of tides and currents, the ways of the waterways and the lore of the rivers."
(More)
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Deepe
Mobile
page 10.
in V.ETNAM
The Mobile Riverine Force is as coordinated as during the American
Civil War when the Army and Navy were working together "like two blades of a
pair of shears."
with
"Everything we do the Army is coordinated and enmeshed," one senior
Naval officer explained.
"The Army wouldn't exist here without the Navy and the
Navy would have no purpose without the Army."
Or, in the more earthy language of a young seaman, xxx kakot
whom the soldiers call "swabbies": "The doggies (Army) are happy with the good
food, clean sheets and hot showers the Navy supplies. And we sailors watch the
Army marching up to its neck in mud and think, "Thank God, we're in the Navy.'
Yet, the Mobile Riverine Force breaks one cardinal 20th-century
military principle
the operations.
unit of command. No one commander calls the shots throughout
There's no
One
"The unity of command principle is completely violated," one senior
Army officer explained. "There are two commands in this force.
operational control ex for the whole force. The Army plans the scheme of
maneuver for the operation and then we ask the Navy if they will support us.
So far, the Navy has always said yes. I don't know what will happen if it ever
then something has to give."
says no
(More)
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Deepe
Mobile page 11.
This 20th-century Army-Navy marriage produced some of the zaniest mad-
ventures in recent military history. While all American sailors and soldiers
spoke English, they spoke different technical dialects. Ship signs had to be
re-painted in both vocabularies and terminologies defined: bow (front of ship),
passageway (hall), galley (mess hall), scuttlebutt (water fountain), overhead
(ceiling), kikket bulkhead (wall). Incoming Army officers were given
orientation briefings on Naval wardroom etiquette: no discussion of women or
politics and don't sit down before the ship's captain. Considering itself a
"gentlemen's service", the Navy quietly persuaded the infantrymen to "hose down"
the mud from their fatigues and boots before boarding the ships. This was
gradually extended to include an Army officer searching the infantrymen for live
ammunition before boarding the floating barracks ships, a necessity dramatized
when a shook-up startled sailor found an Army grenade in the ship's washing machine.
A common complaint among the Army troopers was they could not drink beer on
the Navy ships a traditional regulation on commissioned vessels.
service compromise, however, led to a monthly beer party on the off-ship, non-
commissioned Navy pontoons with the Army soldiers being issued Army beer and
the sailors, in a separate line, receiving Navy-issued beer.
An inter-
(More)
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Deepe
Mobile page 12.
Humorous incidents and surprises were often the order of the day.
One Naval vessel was thrown into a turmoil when the crew discovered a cobra
aboard and it survived for two days as the Navy attempted to freeze it, gas
it and smoke it out with a fire extinguisher. At least one Army ground
commander was heard to request over the radio: "Request permission to kill
a V.C. crocodile."
"Permission granted if you can determine it's
The reply:
V.C." (It wasn't killed.) Soldiers began to respect skin-piercing red ants,
which they reported to be "Viet Cong indoctrinated."
The Army troopers started
carrying cigarettes, pipes, Bibles and maps in their helmets in order to keep them
dry as they forged swamps and streams. Some soldiers, when rivertops covered
their helmets, learned to hold their breath and walk along the river bottom until
they rose on the other side.
Non-swimmers blew up their rubber air mattresses
and paddled themselves across the river, along with the squad's ammunition.
Frequently, soldiers had to use ropes or sticks to pull their buddies out of
the chest-deep rice paddies; one G.I. had to be retrieved by grabbing hold of a
helicopter skid.
-30-
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Date
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1968, Jan. 30
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Subject
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Vietnam War, 1961-1975; United States. Navy; Mekong River Delta (Vietnam and Cambodia); Riverine operations
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Location
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Aboard the USS Benewah, Mekong Delta, South Vietnam
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Coordinates
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10.0634; 105.5943
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Size
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20 x 26 cm
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Container
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B9, F6
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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, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries
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Language
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English
