River Assault Groups seldom went on combat missions. The training programs at logistic support bases would, of necessity, be much longer and would proceed at a much slower pace. On 16 August 1954, the first U. S. Navy transport to be assigned to Operation Passage to Freedom loaded refugees in Haiphong. The Nam Can district of An Xuyen Province is located on the southernmost tip of the Ca Mau peninsula, some 150 miles southwest of Saigon. These messages have been further broken down by subject (i.e., Coastal Patrol, River Patrol, Intelligence, etc.). The ships and barges that made up the floating support assets were also to a great extent pulled from our aging mothball fleet. These trawlers were believed to originate in North Vietnam and Communist China. The year 1964 was one of rapid change in the posture of U. S. Navy activity in Vietnam. 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. Teachers were found and hired. Contact with a generally elusive enemy was established on seven occasions. Ultimately, only the rivers and memories will remain. [3]:37, MACV was reorganized on 15 May 1964, and absorbed MAAG Vietnam within it, when combat unit deployment became too large for advisory group control. Under the original concept, the LSD and LST were to anchor off the mouths of the major rivers in the Delta and serve as operational bases, each supporting 30 PBRs. There was a need for "an accelerated progress in improving Vietnamese capabilities in order that U. S. forces could, in fact, be withdrawn in significant numbers. In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, the Secretary was further quoted as saying that "our orientation seems to have been more on operations than on assisting the South Vietnamese to acquire the means to defend themselves. While this may not have been intended as criticism of the past conduct of the war, it was unmistakable direction as to where future priorities were to be placed. It recommended the development of a mobile patrol force along the Cambodian and Laotian borders. The second task was to wrest the initiative from the enemy in the Rung Sat Special Zone through aggressive military and psychological campaigns in order to secure the vital Long Tau shipping channel to Saigon. 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. Naval Advisory Group Naval Forces Vietnam Naval Intelligence Liaison Officer National Police Field Force North Vietnamese Army Patrol Boat, River vii . The old city was declared a free fire zone and became in effect a dumping ground for bombs and other air ordnance that could not be conveniently expended elsewhere in the Delta. Some of the unsung heroes of this war are the captains who guided low-powered and frequently age-weakened ships and craft through the treacherous white water of the Cua Viet inlet, and other equally hazardous channels in northern I Corps. Enemy trawlers operated with virtual impunity along the coasts of the Ca Mau peninsula and in the mouths of its rivers. There was a general reluctance within the Sea Forces to maintain active patrols. In the North, warnings were scrawled on the walls of public buildings, urging the populace to flee in advance of the Viet Minh Army. During the first five days of the Sea Float operation, an average of 102 sampans per day was sighted on the Cua Lon. Many came from the enemy controlled region of the Nam Can. On 25 September 1967 the 23rd Infantry (Americal) Division) was activated to control the blocking force, replacing the provisional task force HQ. Unquestionably, the Navys ACTOV program was in the van of the general movement to Vietnamize the war. Heavier timbers are sawed into short lengths, split, and sold to the charcoal makers. To carry out the politically necessary task of Vietnamizing the naval war, it was estimated that the Vietnamese Navy would require an additional ten thousand men on top of the seventeen and a half thousand it then had. A new task organization, TF 194, was created for Sea Lords, and assets were chopped to "First Sea Lord" for Specific operations by the commanders of Market Time, Game Warden, and the Mobile Riverine Force. Because of this expansion, the commanding general, General Joseph Warren Stilwell Jr. late in 1963 proposed that the name of the support group be changed to U.S. Army Support Command, Vietnam. The Vietnamese Navy would assign liaison personnel to the PBRs and LCPLs.5. A rumor, the authenticity of which could not be determined, circulated on Sea Float that "Hanoi Hannah" herself had taken note of the new operation and she had warned that the MATSB would be "at the bottom of Song Cua Lon by 17 July." . Lieutenant Bowers promptly notified the Second Coastal Zone Senior Advisor, Lieutenant Commander Harvey P. Rodgers, U. S. Navy, in Nha Trang. In December, an operation called Silver Mace, involving the first open sea transit of heavy riverine assault craft, struck at these barricades and in three days removed them. Under the senior naval commander was the officer actually responsible for naval operations in Indochina, Commander Naval Division Far East. General Vo Nguyen Giap, Peoples War, Peoples Army. The RAG was not provided with a permanently assigned landing force, and, for all practical purposes, operational control had been surrendered to regional Army commanders who employed the river craft almost exclusively in logistic support of encamped ground forces. The war destroyed the old French cisterns and what few wells there were in the area. Two months later, the 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile), recently reorganized from an infantry formation, reported in country, and the rest of the 1st Infantry Division arrived in October. Training activities ashore suffered from a lack of facilities and a lack of instructors. Vice Admiral Zumwalt and the New Strategy. Advisors reported that even these statistics did not reflect the true situation, since units were frequently only "administratively employed. Second, there was (and to a degree there continues to be) a profound reluctance on the part of Vietnamese ground force commanders to commit their troops to the aggressive river bank patrols essential to the effectiveness and safety of naval operations on narrow and restricted waterways. The river hamlets, for all their bogs and sloughs of mud, were alive with activity and sparkled with the laughter of children. In October 1968, a program was initiated to gradually rotate all Cua Viet personnel back to Da Nang or Tan My, to ensure that no one would be required to spend more than six months at the advanced base. Harkins became the senior U.S. military commander in South Vietnam and responsible for U.S. military policy, operations and assistance there. I was part of a two-man team that consisted of a LCDR and me. [4]:3301 The deployment of a division-sized U.S. Army force would allow the 1st Marine Division to move north, to provide greater support for the 3rd Marine Division in the northern portion of the I Corps Tactical Zone. In the fall of that year a joint State-Defense Survey Mission visited Vietnam. Language links are at the top of the page across from the title. By 1960, the date on Vietnam's Campaign Medal, a state of armed conflict existed between the two Vietnams and their allies Naval Bases and Support Activities South Vietnam was divided into four Corps areas: I Corps was in the North, II Corps was the central highlands, III was the area around the capital city of Saigon , and IV Corps extended from the Mekong River Delta to the tip of the Ca Mau Peninsula. At this time Admiral Ward was both CNAG and CTF 115. It was the only uncut supply line of any consequence for allied military forces there. In most cases, the original organization of the records in Saigon was lost during the transshipment process. The swampy Rung Sat controls the waterways connecting Saigon with the sea. The U. S. Joint Chiefs of Staff approved the proposed operating concept on 16 March, and on that very day the first U. S. Navy ships reported for duty, the destroyers Higbee (DD-806) and Black (DD-666). On 27 April 1967, just as the Mobile Riverine Force was getting started, Rear Admiral Ward was relieved as ComNavForV (and as CNAG) by Rear Admiral Kenneth L. Veth. They agreed that a study should be conducted on the subject. Genesis of the U. S. Navys Role in the War. 6 APB self-propelled barracks ship, ARL Landing Craft Repair Ship, LCM Landing Craft Mechanized, ATC Armored Troop Carrier, MON Monitor, CCB Command and Control Boat, ASPB Assault Support Patrol Boat, LST Tank Landing Ship. MACV replaced MAAG and the former MAAG personnel were absorbed by MACV. Access: Open but with some access limitations. Each man assigned had to pull his share of the load. United States. In attempting to restore the records to their original arrangement, they first were divided into those of Chief, Naval Advisory Group and Commander, Naval Forces Vietnam. 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. 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. 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.. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam - Wikipedia Additional naval forces, U. S. and Vietnamese, were committed to the operation. 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. At the end of 1963, the Junk Force consisted of 632 junks, 400 VNN officers and men, and 3,700 civilian irregulars. The results of these early patrols, which might be considered precursors of later Market Time operations, did not seem to indicate the existence of large-scale infiltration from the sea. Advisors were assigned to the Sea, River, and Junk Forces, to the Naval Shipyard in Saigon, and to the Vietnamese Navy Headquarters. The Trn Hng o site subsequently became the headquarters of Republic of Korea armed forces in Vietnam. Join now and never hit a limit. Shortly before 0600 on 20 February, therefore, both companies were again landed. Wet-rice farming, the principal agricultural activity, requires an intricate system of irrigation dikes and canals. The Archives Branch originally filed the records in the order in which they arrived. As the U.S. military presence in South Vietnam grew, MACV quickly outgrew the Pasteur Street quarters and expanded into a proliferating number of buildings throughout downtown Saigon. The daily average employment of those Sea Force and River Force units available for work at sea (and many were unavailable) was roughly 50 per cent. 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. At the conclusion of their meeting, recommendations were made to increase the number of off-shore patrol ships from 9 to 14, to double the patrol aircraft coverage, to increase the number of PCPs available for inshore work from 54 to 84 and the number of WPBs from 17 to 26. The enormity of this undertaking could not be measured solely in terms of the numbers of the Vietnamese naval personnel it would be necessary to recruit and train. In 1955 after the French defeat in Indochina the Navy Section became part of the Military Assistance Advisory Group, Vietnam. On 26 April 1966, Captain Tran Van Phan, the former Chief of Staff to Admiral Cang, was designated Acting Commander-in-Chief, and in May all of the mutineers, with the exception of the River Force Commander, who was replaced, were returned to their original posts. Part of the increase in the number of attacks on shipping could be attributed to the longer range weapons then coming into use. 220th Aviation Company "Catkillers" Web Page In late April 1966, with the Saigon regime locked in a tense confrontation with Buddhist and ARVN rebels in I Corps, Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. and Westmoreland reopened the effort to acquire the Tan Son Nhut soccer field. Power saws and modern lumbering techniques have not yet been introduced in the Nam Can. Training afloat depended almost entirely on the whims of individual commanding officers, because there was no effective system to ensure that standards set by higher authority were met. The June attacks in the Long Tau made it imperative that effective and decisive action be taken against Doan-10.
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