The Brown Water War at 50: A Retrospective on the Coastal and Riverine Conflict in Vietnam

By Thomas J Cutler and Edward J. Marolda

The Brown Water War at 50 presents the work of renowned historians and Vietnam War veterans who  describe and interpret the U.S. Navy’s major combat operations in South Vietnam and on its coast. The scope of the book includes the river war in South Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, the coastal patrol, and the intelligence campaign. To complement text, the authors have added images and maps from the U.S. Navy archives, U.S. Naval Institute collection and from private collections. They also provide a s list of the most authoritative works on the subject.
 
In this retrospective, Cutler and Marolda describe not only the actions of the warships, aircraft, and river vessels involved in one of America’s longest wars but also the professional skill, dedication, and courage of the Navy men and women who went in “harm’s way” in Vietnam. The authors detail the development and combat experience of the Navy’s River Patrol Force and the Army-Navy Mobile Riverine Force as they fought the Viet Cong. They relate in  full the heroism of Medal of Honor recipients Boatswain’s Mate 1st Class James E. Williams and Lieutenant Thomas G. Kelley, and the leadership of Vice Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt Jr.
 
Intelligence which, until recently, was classified  tells the story of the Navy’s intelligence effort in South Vietnam, and describes the operations of SEAL and Naval Intelligence Officers at the tactical level. In short, this book takes an in depth look at the Navy’s major and essential role in a conflict that marked a milestone in modern American history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Naval Institute Press
• Release date: Oct 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9781557508010

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

Thomas J. Cutler and Edward J. Marolda

Fifty years have passed since the last American Sailor boarded a commercial airliner at Saigon’s Tan Son Nhut Air Base for a much-anticipated flight home to the world. How do we remember the naval war in Vietnam today? Or do we remember it at all? Americans are especially familiar with depictions of Army and Marine infantrymen humping through the mountains and rice paddies of South Vietnam and of Air Force and Navy air crews pummeling the enemy in North Vietnam and on the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Laos. Hollywood movies, as well as Ken Burns’ highly acclaimed documentary series, reinforce the perception of Vietnam as primarily a ground and air conflict. The bookshelves of the world groan under the weight of scholarly tomes focused on the involvement of presidents, national security advisors, generals and admirals, intelligence agencies, and the domestic resistance movement in America’s longest war of the twentieth century.

The fight for the coastal waters and inland waterways of South Vietnam, however, was equally important to the struggle for the defense of that country from attack by the People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN) and the People’s Liberation Armed Forces (PLAF), or Viet Cong. The decades-long naval campaign was truly a multinational and multiservice effort. From the 1950s on, the U.S. Navy partnered with the Republic of Vietnam Navy (VNN) in the development of oceangoing, coastal, and riverine forces. Those naval services, along with the U.S. Coast Guard, mounted the successful Market Time anti-infiltration patrol that severely limited the enemy’s ability to breach South Vietnam’s coastal perimeter. American and Vietnamese river patrol forces, along with Navy SEALs, enabled commercial activity to thrive on the country’s rivers. USN, VNN, and Royal Australian Navy warships pounded enemy forces all along South Vietnam’s twelve-hundred-mile coastline and proved critical in many cases to the survival of allied troops under attack ashore. U.S. naval forces took the lead, but allied air, ground, and naval forces helped fight and win bloody battles to secure the waterways of the Mekong Delta and the rivers to Saigon and Hue from enemy ambush and mining attacks. The naval defense of South Vietnam’s major ports enabled the U.S. Navy’s Military Sealift Command to maintain the flow of ammunition, fuel, and other vital war materials to the half-million-plus resource-hungry U.S. and allied expeditionary forces. Marines, both American and Vietnamese, took part with the Navy in coastal amphibious strikes, the penetration of enemy strongholds in the Ca Mau Peninsula of southern Vietnam, and the protection of shipping all along the Mekong River to Phnom Penh, Cambodia. In an operation not seen since the American Civil War, U.S. Navy and U.S. Army combat units of the Mobile Riverine Force decimated main force Viet Cong units and liberated the cities and towns they had overrun during the Tet Offensive of 1968. The Navy operated two squadrons of aircraft—Helicopter Attack (Light) Squadron (HAL) 3 and Light Attack Squadron (VAL) 4—that directly and ably supported naval operations in Vietnam. U.S. Air Force and Vietnam Air Force (VNAF) tactical aircraft also brought considerable firepower to bear against the common enemy.

Equally vital to the naval war in Vietnam, and in no less danger from enemy attack in the war with no fronts, were the Navy’s logistic support commands. Naval Support Activity, Saigon, kept the combat units and the Sailors of Naval Forces, Vietnam (NAVFORV) in corps tactical zones (later military regions) II, III, and IV fully supplied with the beans, bullets, and black oil they needed to fight. Naval Support Activity, Danang, subordinate to the III Marine Amphibious Force, did the same for the Marines and Sailors in I Corps just south of the demilitarized Zone (DMZ). LSTs, dock landing ships, barracks ships and craft, and other logistic vessels often braved enemy fire to carry out their support mission. Six-hundred-man naval mobile construction battalions—the Seabees—weathered enemy fire and took casualties to build fortifications, airfields, port facilities, bridges, and bases throughout the country. Women of the Navy Nurse Corps at naval hospitals in Saigon and Danang and on board the hospital ships Repose (AH 16) and Sanctuary (AH 18) deployed off I Corps cared for Sailors and Marines wounded in combat. Doctors, dentists, chaplains, and especially Navy corpsmen not only braved the dangers of the battlefield to aid wounded Sailors and Marines but also ventured into remote villages and hamlets to bring medical and dental care to the Vietnamese people.

A select few American and Vietnamese sailors and marines displayed extraordinary courage, and in some cases sacrificed their lives, in the naval war for Vietnam. Boatswain’s Mate 1st Class James E. Williams, Seaman David G. Ouellet, and Lt. Thomas G. Kelley, serving with the River Patrol Force and the Mobile Riverine Force, were awarded Medals of Honor for their heroic actions. Construction Mechanic 3rd Class Marvin G. Shields, a Seabee, gave his life to save the lives of his fellow fighters. SEALs Lt. (jg) Joseph R. Kerrey, Lt. Thomas R. Norris, and Engineman 2nd Class Michael E. Thornton were also awarded the nation’s highest honor in recognition of their service above and beyond the call of duty. Capt. James E. Livingston and Capt. Jay R. Vargas, company commanders in the 2nd Battalion, 4th Marines, 9th Marine Amphibious Brigade, received Medals of Honor for their valor in the bloody fight to secure villages on the north bank of the Qua Viet River in the aftermath of the Tet Offensive.

The Navy Department awarded numerous Navy Crosses to Sailors and Marines connected with the naval war. Those mentioned below reflect not only the bravery and will to serve of the men who received the award but also the variety of Navy and Marine Corps responsibilities in the naval war in South Vietnam. Advisor Lt. Dale C. Meyerkord, the first American naval officer to die in the conflict, was honored for his combat service with the VNN’s River Assault Group 23. Lt. William C. Fitzgerald, an advisor to a South Vietnamese coastal patrol unit, called in artillery fire on his own bunker and paid with his life to enable his counterparts to escape an enemy assault on the base. Lt. (jg) Robert E. Baratko, the pilot of a HAL-3 Seawolves helicopter, braved enemy fire that had downed or damaged three other aircraft to help rescue the surviving crew. Despite being repeatedly wounded by enemy fire and losing blood, PO Joseph J. Ennis continued to man a .30-caliber machine gun on his MRF armored troop carrier and refused evacuation until he had cared for wounded shipmates. When an enemy ambush on the Bo De River seriously wounded Lt. Cdr. David B. Robinson, the commanding officer of the patrol gunboat Canon (PG 90), he instructed his men to strap him to a stretcher and hold it upright so he could continue to lead the fight. Marine Cpl. Warren H. Ralya Jr., the crew chief of an amphibious tractor, was engaged in an operation near the Cua Viet River with South Vietnamese coastal patrol forces. Wounded three times, he continued the fight to beat off an enemy attack until he succumbed to his injuries. Navy surgeon Capt. Harry H. Dinsmore removed a live mortar round from the chest cavity of a badly wounded South Vietnamese soldier. The Navy Department also honored non-naval personnel with Navy Crosses for their actions in support of the naval war, including 1st Lt. Kenneth Ledford Jr., the pilot of an Army medevac helicopter, who rescued the naval air crew of aircraft shot down in the Mekong Delta. The Navy likewise recognized the bravery of Vietnam Navy PO Nguyen Van Kiet, who with Lieutenant Norris rescued a downed Air Force aviator during the Easter Offensive of 1972.

The great majority of the tens of thousands of Sailors, Marines, and Coastguardsmen who operated on the coast and rivers of South Vietnam, whether they received combat medals or not, served with distinction and honor. This work is dedicated to them.

1

REFLECTIONS OF A BROWN WATER SAILOR

Thomas J. Cutler

I spent only one of my seventy-plus years in Vietnam. I did not shed my blood, I did nothing heroic, and I have not suffered any debilitating effects such as PTSD. Yet that time, that place, that idea left an indelible mark on my soul. I often reflect on the effects that single year had on who I was and who I became.

Two things set me apart from many (but not all) of my fellow veterans: I have been fortunate to have my writings about the coastal and riverine forces of which I was a minor part published, and I have been able to inform others about the war through lecturing and teaching in the decades since I left the ’Nam and returned to the World. My book—Brown Water, Black Berets—remains a testament of that unique time when a relatively few U.S. Navy Sailors left the formidable blue-water Navy, with its powerful weapons and distant reach, and ventured into an exotic and inscrutable land where hamlets and villages and former colonial cities were caught in the crossfire of a Cold War gone hot.¹ We traded our blues and whites for camouflage greens, our 5-inch guns for .50-calibers, and our berthing compartments and staterooms for hooches; and together we wrote a unique but significant page in the history of our Navy.

Fifty years have passed, yet even today the thumping of helicopter rotors transports me back to that troubled corner of the world, triggering confusing feelings of nostalgia and a desire to be relevant again. Unlike most people who find the sound of rain soothing, it sends me back to a time when the staccato of monsoon rains made me shiver with cold and amplified my homesickness. Certain kinds of thunder can reignite the terror that came with a rocket barrage, but without the subsequent exhilaration of knowing I had survived. I can never shoot pool without thinking about Larry Potts, whose name is engraved on a long black wall on the Washington Mall. I sometimes reluctantly recall the Easter Invasion of 1972 and the look in the eyes of young men who had narrowly escaped death and of the hapless refugees who were fleeing the ravages of war carrying all that remained of their worldly possessions. I remember the smiling faces of my Vietnamese friends who trusted us to keep evil at bay, and I wonder what happened to them after we left them behind to face the evil we had failed to defeat; and I feel a deep sadness and a poignant sense of guilt.

Lt. (jg) Thomas J. Cutler, naval advisor and river warrior, armed with an M-16 rifle Courtesy Tom Cutler

But my recollections are not all bad. I remember mornings standing at the foot of towering green mountains, listening to the jungle come alive as I watched fingers of white mist slowly cascading down through the passes above. I still can recall the exhilaration of flying in helos at treetop level and the rush of excitement as we swooped low over the dunes along the shore. I am grateful that Master Chief Wilson—who had more time in the Navy than I had on the earth—worked for me in those early days of my tour, keeping me out of trouble as I acclimated to my new surroundings and challenges. I learned much about Vietnamese culture and made friendships that might have endured had things ended differently. I made use of the inevitable tedium that always accompanies war by completing many Navy correspondence courses, earning me the nickname sinh viên (student) among the women who waited on us in the on-base club. Few things brought me more happiness than talking to my wife via the MARS radio network (I love you, over). Not so funny at the time, I now laugh about the occasion when my canine companion, Jo-Jo, jumped into bed with me during a night rocket attack, entangling us both in mosquito netting as we flailed about in a most undignified adrenaline-fueled fashion. I remember how the camaraderie and humor I shared with other Americans served as antidotes to the negative feelings that inevitably crept in as I pined for my wife, whom I had left less than a month after our wedding and who would bear me a son alone and without complaint. I came home with many stories to tell, though I had to wait nearly a decade before anyone wanted to hear them.

Yet these are not the things that matter much, as that consequential year slips further and further into the past and my memories inevitably fade. In the decades that followed my year in Vietnam, I studied the war in great depth, reading countless books and articles, participating in numerous seminars, discussing my experiences with fellow veterans, and watching many of the films—both documentary and fictional—that have attempted to portray the various aspects of that complicated misadventure. Questions naturally arise from an event that ended so tragically, and I have sought answers to some of them. Why did we do the things that we did? What could have been done differently? Could we have won? Who was to blame for our failure—Jane Fonda? Walter Cronkite? General Westmoreland? Lyndon Johnson? Henry Kissinger? And on and on …

The one inescapable question that haunts me the most is Why did we do it? Why did we fight a land war in Asia, against the conventional wisdom that endures today? Why did we follow the French into that quagmire? Why did we expend so much treasure and sacrifice so many of our youth to a cause that many have since judged as misguided or mishandled or even dishonorable? There are many answers to that essential why, and despite my efforts to come to a universal answer, I am left instead with the answer to the one question that after all matters most to me: Why did I go to Vietnam?

Reiterating my contention that I did nothing heroic, I am nonetheless proud that I volunteered to go to Vietnam at a time when many of my fellow countrymen made other choices. I would be less than candid if I did not admit that my motivations included those typical of many who have few years of life experience: a longing for adventure, the desire to prove myself, and the hope that members of the opposite sex might be impressed! But these youthful follies aside, the main reason that I volunteered to go to Vietnam was that I truly believed—and still do—that I was defending freedom against evil. Despite all the other complicating factors and counterarguments with varying degrees of validity, I believed then and do now that people deserve better than the life communism offers (or demands). While I have come to understand that realism often diminishes idealism, I refuse to surrender my idealism. The many shortcomings of our own and other democracies are often disheartening, but one need only remember the Berlin Wall or Tiananmen Square to know that even greater sorrows lie with the scourge of communism.

While I cannot speak for the motivations of other Sailors who went in-country to serve in the Brown Water Navy, I can report that many (I suspect most) of them were volunteers. I doubt that many chose to go in harm’s way for the meager combat pay we received ($75 a month, as I recall). And it’s not likely that they saw it as a means of career enhancement—many of the boat crews included seemingly incompatible ratings such as commissaryman and yeoman. I was certainly not the only junior officer who was told by my detailer that after Vietnam I would need to catch up with my contemporaries who had been serving in the blue-water Navy while I lost a year in Vietnam.

Whatever our motivations, it is fair to say that we Brown Water Sailors accomplished our various missions, combining innovation and adaptation with the requisite courage. American Sailors are no strangers to the latter, but the nature of brown-water operations demanded a great deal of ingenuity as we responded to the challenges posed by this new realm.

MARKET TIME

The relatively short history of the Navy in Vietnam was defined by reaction rather than by planning. It began when the U.S. Navy was called upon to help the Vietnam Navy (VNN) stop the infiltration of supplies from the North to the insurgents in the South. Destroyers and destroyer escorts could handle the relatively large trawlers that were engaged in these operations, but the junks and sampans smuggling contraband in shallow waters presented a different problem. The Navy’s blue-water ships were not well suited for the task because of their drafts, and in any case not enough of them could be spared from other missions. Since there was no time to build the small craft better suited for littoral operations, the Navy initially relied upon seventeen Coast Guard WPBs. These steel-hulled, 82-foot patrol boats had a draft of less than six feet and a reputation for seaworthiness. With a modified weapons package more appropriate to their wartime mission and a new paint job—trading Coast Guard white for a more appropriate deck gray—in July 1965 they began patrolling as part of the Coastal Surveillance Force (Task Force 115) in Operation Market Time.

The Navy found a suitable craft to augment the WPBs in the 50-foot aluminum boats that were being used in the Gulf of Mexico to transport crews to and from offshore oil rigs. Despite the Navy’s Bureau of Ships requiring more than fifty military modifications, the Louisiana builder Sewart Seacraft produced a combat version of the snub-nosed boat in forty days. The new combat craft were designated patrol craft, fast (PCF) but were more often called Swift Boats for their 28-knot maximum speed. Fifty feet long with a draft of only three and a half feet, PCFs were equipped with a twin .50-caliber machine-gun mount above the pilothouse. The same piggyback arrangement of an 81-mm naval mortar with a .50-caliber machine gun mounted over it that had been added to the WPBs was fixed to the fantail of the Swifts.

U.S. Coast Guard 82-foot WPB cutters proved to be valuable assets for the Operation Market Time coastal patrol effort. NHHC VN Collection

These small craft were supplemented by Navy patrol aircraft that could spot and report suspicious activity and by ocean minesweepers (MSOs) and radar picket destroyers (DERs) that could conduct their own surveillance and search operations and could serve as remote bases for the small craft, enabling them to operate at greater distances from their actual land bases. These larger vessels could also provide additional support when munitions-laden trawlers came down from the North. Several Coast Guard high-endurance cutters (WHECs) provided similar support. Complementing these U.S. patrol assets were the oceangoing ships and Yabuta junks of the VNN.

Operation Stable Door was a derivative of Market Time that focused on anti-swimmer/sapper patrols to protect the large commercial ships loading and unloading vital military cargoes in South Vietnam’s major ports. Some of these swimmer/sappers were equipped with sophisticated Soviet SCUBA gear, while others used hollow reeds as makeshift snorkels while they attempted to plant limpet mines on the hulls of the cargo ships at the piers or in the anchorages.

My first experience as a brown-water Sailor was a Stable Door patrol in the port of Danang in the I Corps Tactical Zone (later Military Region I). Under way as darkness shrouded the scene, with cases of anti-sapper grenades piled on deck, we randomly patrolled the harbor sowing grenades. We likely killed many more fish than sappers, but the occasional body that washed up on the beach was testament to the effectiveness of these inglorious but necessary operations.

I must confess that at the time I felt a kind of satisfied exhilaration at believing that I was engaging the enemy. I still have a pair of grenade pins from that first patrol and a small piece of shrapnel from a near miss from another time. I now view them differently from when I was young and had not yet seen death up close. Upon reflection, those souvenirs have become sobering reminders of the gravity of what we were doing. I do not regret my actions—I remain steadfastly convinced that war is necessary so long as there is evil in the world—but I now see those actions as much more consequential than I did then. I now better understand why warriors are often the greatest pacifists.

While I was not formally assigned to offshore Market Time patrols, I managed to wangle a trip on one as an observer. I spent most of the time terribly seasick (kindly remember that Lord Nelson, Horatio Hornblower, and Alfred Thayer Mahan suffered the same affliction) and longing for the relative placidity of harbors and rivers.

An analysis of the effectiveness of Task Force 115 is difficult because we could reliably measure only the successful interceptions and did not know how many successful infiltrations the enemy achieved. Most of the military assessments were biased and therefore not entirely reliable. But one independent study by the BDM Corporation concluded that Operation Market Time … produced significant results and is credited with forcing the enemy to change his logistic operations extensively. Gen. William C. Westmoreland, Commander Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, concluded that Task Force 115 forced the enemy to use the long, tortuous Ho Chi Minh Trail … affecting significantly his ability to properly sustain his forces in the South. The enemy was also compelled to move supplies by sea through Sihanoukville in neutral Cambodia. Whether these assessments are accurate or not does not take away the credit due the Sailors who conducted these operations under less-than-ideal circumstances, facing what I described in my book as both tedium and terror.

GAME WARDEN

The next challenge faced by the Navy was rooted in the Mekong Delta. The region is a series of blended deltas formed as the Mekong River fans out into four different branches, each depositing fertile soil in its floodplain. The entire delta made up about one-quarter of the total land area of what was then the Republic of Vietnam, or South Vietnam. My first impression of the delta was one rice paddy after another, broken only by an occasional village and myriad waterways ranging in width and depth from tiny canals to broad rivers. By the time the Americans had ventured into this agriculturally vital region—often referred to as the rice basket of the South—it had become dominated by the Viet Cong (VC), the communist insurgent forces who were preventing the rice harvests from getting to market through the maze of waterways. Although it was aptly considered a naval problem, the Navy was ill-equipped for this brown water mission of taking back the delta and once again had to resort to innovation. Initially relying on existing small craft such as landing craft, personnel, light (LCPLs), the Navy searched for something that could be adapted to the mission and produced quickly in sufficient numbers.

Ultimately, a 31-foot fiberglass hull in use for recreational purposes was fitted with twin diesel engines and water-jet pumps that provided both propulsion and steering. A twin .50-caliber machine gun was placed in an open turret forward, and mountings for machine guns and grenade launchers were installed aft. Designated patrol boat, river (PBR), these diminutive craft had a crew of four enlisted men. The boat captain was usually a first-class petty officer but sometimes a chief or second class.

In Operation Game Warden, the PBRs of the River Patrol Force (Task Force 116) operated in pairs (despite what is portrayed in the movie Apocalypse Now) that covered one another as they patrolled the major waterways of the delta in search of enemy forces and supplies. A chief petty officer or a junior officer (warrant through lieutenant) usually served as patrol officer in charge of the two boats.

River patrol boats (PBRs), originally conceived for civilian use, were mainstays of river interdiction operations in Vietnam. NHHC VN Collection

At first operating from afloat bases provided by tank landing ships (LSTs) resurrected from the mothballed fleet, the PBRs eventually moved to shore bases scattered about the delta. They were supported by Seawolf helicopters (hand-me-down Army UH-1B Hueys) and later by Black Ponies (OV-10A Broncos, also on loan from the Army) flown by Navy crews. The VNN’s River Force also operated in the delta with river combat craft of many types and capabilities.

Game Warden missions included routine patrols, stopping and searching junks and sampans in the busy river traffic, enforcing curfews, and providing direct support to combat operations. Game Warden Sailors received many awards for valor, including two Medals of Honor. In researching my book, I was privileged to interview a number of these heroes, including the legendary James Elliott Williams, who, when I asked what possessed him to attack a huge enemy force with only his two PBRs, replied in his engaging southern drawl, Well, there weren’t no exit ramp, so we just kept on a-comin.

Born in an atmosphere of urgency and tested under actual combat conditions, the PBR could have been a disaster. Instead, it proved to be a fierce little combatant that accomplished its mission. Along with some minesweeping boats (MSBs) operating on the Long Tau River southeast of Saigon, the PBRs secured the major waterways, allowing both commercial and military traffic to flow relatively unimpeded by the enemy. This was accomplished, once again, by a combination of deterrence (the tedium of routine patrols and inspections) and engagements (the terror of combat). I cannot detail the many examples of the latter in this brief essay, but a review of them in Brown Water, Black Berets and other sources will likely evoke a sense of awe and justifiable pride in these Sailors who went into harm’s way in some of the tiniest warships ever used by the U.S. Navy. John Paul Jones would have approved!

THE MRF

Although Game Warden succeeded in driving the enemy off the main waterways of the Mekong Delta, the Viet Cong still presented a serious threat to the South Vietnamese government’s control in this vital region. With the U.S. Marines heavily involved in operations in I Corps up north, the job of clearing the delta fell to the U.S. Army and U.S. Navy. Because there was little land available for basing and few roads to support infantry operations with wheeled and tracked vehicles, getting the Army into the delta required more innovation.

The Army’s 9th Infantry Division was activated on 1 February 1966 with its 2nd Brigade and later 3rd Brigade assigned as the combat troop components of the Army-Navy Mobile Riverine Force (MRF). The Navy component of the MRF was the Riverine Assault Force (Task Force 117). The Navy provided the joint force with a flotilla of barracks and repair ships, some tugs,