Sample text for Papa bravo romeo : U.S. navy patrol boats at war in Vietnam / Wynn Goldsmith.
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PAPA BRAVO ROMEO
Prologue
This book is not intended to be a history of the U.S. Navy's PBR (patrol boat, river) river rats during the Vietnam War. It is a personal account of my experiences in an unusual combat environment over thirty years ago with those little fiberglass boats. It is an incomplete first-year record of a great U.S. Navy unit that existed for only twenty-two months. One unit of two dozen or so, formed in the cauldron of war, with no history and no future. A force assembled for a short-term mission to help stave off a communist victory in South Vietnam.
The mission was a short-term success, but ultimate failure. The boats and their sailors were not failures in any sense.
The boats were basically off-the-shelf commercial cabin cruiser/sport fishermen hulls, painted green, loaded down with machine guns and ammunition, and sent to war. The little boats got into combat in the spring of 1966, within ninety-days of the signing of the first production contract. The Uniflite Boat Company of Bellingham, Washington, delivered the first vessels of an initial 120-boat run within schedule and at slightly less than the estimated $100,000-per-copy cost. The whole production line of that small-boat company was dedicated to the Navy for three years. The $100,000 cost included engines, water pumps, all control systems, the radar system, acceptance trials, and even the green paint. The government furnished guns, ceramic armor, radios. The .50-caliber guns came from stock left over from World War II and the Korean conflict. Some of those venerable guns probably were going to war for the third time. They had been fired by 8th Air Force gunners on B-17s over Nazi Germany and by Army infantry or armed personnel in Korea. The additional cost to the government to fully equip a PBR for combat was probably less than $5,000 total per boat. Altogether, the cost of each of those boats delivered into combat was a slight fraction of the cost of a patrol plane of fighter bomber, which even in 1966, cost the tax-payers a couple of million dollars each.
The little fiberglass boats were first intended to replace Navy land-and-sea based patrol craft monitoring enemy movement on the waterways of the Mekong Delta. The Navy was using both Lockheed P-2 (land-based) and Martin PM-5 (seaplane) aircraft to patrol the waterways of Vietnam at low altitude, but the aircraft were expensive and ineffective on that mission; they had been designed to seek and destroy submarines.
Second, the boats were to identify and engage enemy watercraft using the waterways, something that fast-moving aircraft, even at low altitude, could not accomplish.
The PBRs did that more and more. They saved friendly outposts by the hundreds, medevacked wounded friendlies by the thousands, saved a couple of provincial cities during the Tet 1968, and were the main tools for sealing off the Cambodian border as sailor warriors face-to-face with the enemy on the water and in a platform suited for the mission. The PBR was a great example of how the United States government and industry can work together on an emergency basis to deliver an effective, cost-efficient weapons system.
The first combat patrols in 1966 showed that the little boats were vulnerable to concentrated enemy fire from fortified positions on the riverbanks. They needed reliable air cover, and reliable intelligence. The Seawolves (helicopter gunships) came first. The Navy gratefully accepted old UH-1B Army gunships, and combat-experienced Army gunship pilots provided training to Navy helicopter aviators trained to battle submarines. They provided reliable air cover.
The SEALS (sea, air, land), the U.S. Navy commandos, came second. They were to provide reliable intel.
It was the sailors on our boats who made them such an effective implement of war. Most of them were captained by first class petty officers or CPOs (chief petty officers), sometimes by second class petty officers, occasionally by a guy with only one vee stripe under his crow (a third class petty officer). When they engaged the enemy it was usually with a small tactical unit of two boats commanded by a first class, a CPO, or a junior officer (usually a lieutenant, j.g.). The little boats went to a war where there was no top-heavy command controlling their actions. Patrol, seek, engage—that loose doctrine was interpreted differently by each PBR commander.
A typical PBR unit performed a tough job exceptionally well. A first class or second class (E-6 or E-5) was the boat captain. Every river rat at the time probably knew that he was not in the real Navy and that the Vietnam War was not a real war. But it was combat. A lot of the guys really wanted that experience. They were, for the most part, young guys—middle-class Americans who wanted to support their country. Guys who proudly enlisted in the Navy and volunteered for PBR duty because they knew that they would be tested under fire. They were tested. About 50 percent of the nearly 6,000 PBR sailors who served in Vietnam got Purple Hearts. Three hundred or so gave their lives.
My story is typical of the stories hundreds of PBR junior officers who served in Vietnam could have written.
I was the son of the generation that had grown up and suffered during the Great Depression, had desperately fought in World War II, and had prospered ever since. I was like most of my generation.
In the spring of 1967, when I received my orders to PBRs, I was not a volunteer for the boats or, even, Vietnam. I had a regular Navy commission. I wanted a West Coast destroyer. I wanted a blue-water challenge. I wanted to be part of the ever-increasing high-tech Navy during a period in which the ships were at a high degree of readiness and often in danger zones off the Vietnamese coast. I wanted to be a part of a surface Navy that was not shortchanged because of the Vietnam War. The minesweep force on which I served out of Charleston was being stripped of men and material to wage the war in Vietnam. I wanted to go to sea with a full complement of trained sailors going in harm's way. I was tired of cumshawing men and spare parts?a cook here, an electrician here, a piston head there—just so my ship could get under way for local operations.
In Navy lingo, cumshawing basically means "borrowing and bartering." Stealing, or "midnight requisitioning," was often used under the cover of cumshawing. The COs and XOs winked at such stuff, part of a long Navy tradition to get the job done, and to hell with procedures. The brown-water river rats I knew could out-cumshaw anybody.
I also wanted to visit exotic ports of call in the Pacific, and a home port different from Charleston. I had heard a lot of good things about "Dago," as San Diego was known in the fleet. A town where you never had to wear foul-weather gear, a town where you never felt as if you were being treated as second class by the locals because you wore a military uniform. In Charleston polite society, only the Citadel-gray and Confederate-gray uniforms got respect. "Yankee" sailors and dogs had to keep to the sidewalks. The rough-and-tumble North Charlestown municipality, with its plethora of bars, pawn shops, strip clubs, and gambling dens respected and loved the Navy. The Navy was a cash cow to those folks. The tourist-oriented, historic downtown Charleston community south of Broad Street (the SOBs) with all the fine dining places, fine homes, and fine young girls of the community, was virtually off limits to sailors in uniform. I dated a couple of those fine young SOB women, and I was warned never to show up in uniform. Even though I was a son of the South and descended from a long line of Confederate warriors on my father's side, my mother's grandfather (just off the boat from Germany) had fought for the Yankees. I never got comfortable with those ladies or their families.
I just wanted to be close to the action on a blue-water destroyer out of San Diego. A job as DCA (damage control assistant) and assistant engineering officer on a destroyer doing Yankee Station (South China Sea operations for U.S. Navy carrier attacks) would have been fine with me.
Eventually I got to spend a lot of time in San Diego.
The Vietnam War SEALs have received a lot of attention over the past decades. Many books about tough, brave, in-your-face, gritty, bloody SEALS have been published. PBRs are mentioned often in the personal accounts. Not often enough and not correctly though, so readers might think that PBRs were just transportation for SEALs.
Five PBR sailors were killed in action for every SEAL killed in action. Five Navy ships were named for PBR river rats killed in action, only one for a SEAL.
The Navy had an easy job of filling the billets of the enlisted PBR units. The boat captains were, for the most part, young petty officers in nontechnical ratings who had already determined to make the Navy a career, and who had a couple of years to go on their current (usually four-year) enlistments. They were proud of their chosen profession and wanted to make rank as fast as the technical ratings in the dawning of the age of computers were making their additional stripes. They were professionals, trained for war, and they wanted that combat experience. They also knew that a tour in Vietnam would accelerate their advancement. It was typical that Vietnam E-5 (petty officer second class) or E-6 (petty officer first class) PBR boat captains went on to retire as CPOs (chief petty officers) or as commissioned leadership. The sailors appreciated the respect they received once back on blue-water ships.
The young gunners (E-3s when they arrived in Vietnam) had a different collective experience. Some of the PBR sailors who served as gunners had almost their entire Navy experience on the little boats. A lot of them were eighteen-year-olds right out of boot camp or gunner's mates G-school ("G" for guns as opposed to missiles). A minority of gunners who survived one tour extended for another, then another, until they were rotated back to the fleet for their final year to make the Navy a career. A few of them stayed on in Special Warfare, the SEAL-dominated combat boat community. Many of them were surveyed from the Navy with disabling wounds even before they completed a year's service. Most simply left the service to resume their education, marry, and start successful civilian careers after their first experience with the realities of blue-water shipboard life. True to their often-heard declarations, they were not "lifers."
The commissioned PBR officers filling the two top spots of a river section (later designated "division") for the most part were regular Navy junior officers. Lieutenants with a couple of two-year sea tours and five or more years' experience were designated OinC (officers in charge). Lieutenants completing four years' experience were given the operations-officer billet. Most of the other PBR officers were lieutenants (j.g) with a two-year sea tour under their belts. Less than half were regular Navy. Most were college guys fulfilling a three-year obligation. When they left Vietnam, they separated from the Navy. Some, like me, were Naval Academy or regular NROTC guys with a four-year obligation. Whatever their source of commission, CPOs (experienced chief petty officers) usually were in charge of a typical two-boat 12- to 14- hour combat patrol.
The enemy was different. They were usually not professional warriors. Most of the ones we faced were conscripted locals under the tight rein of a minority of zealots operating on home territory. The dedicated enemy soldiers did have the advantage of fighting on home turf. They fought until they died or until the Americans and the Saigon forces were defeated. Mostly they just existed as ordinary folk until they were called to battle. They farmed, fished. They worked in secrecy. A quarter of them were full-time soldiers lilting in secret base camps. They had only a couple of combat assignments a month. For the most part we were just passing through on one-year tours; the Viet Cong were led by guys with twenty years fighting experience. They were supported by powerful forces off limits to us. We had the firepower, communications, and maneuverability. They had the staying power.
As soon as the PBRs were introduced in early 1966, they denied the Viet Cong use of the waterways during the day. The boats became targets from the riverbanks. In the beginning, the enemy fire was usually ineffective sniper fire, but the enemy learned to deal with PBRs. They created diversions like sniper attacks on one stretch of water to direct attention from crossing points. They used English-language propaganda and fake messages on our radio frequencies. They mounted elaborate ambushes with evading sampans the bait. For the most part, the PBR sailors were too smart to take the bait. Even when the little boats ran down some small canal to catch a skunk, only to be met with rockets and machine guns, the boats usually came out whole with no major casualties unless a rocket hit the fuel tanks. PBRs were agile and packed a lot of punch.
Most of our duty was spent as foreign policemen in a civil war. We were not trained or inclined to be diplomats. We had to adapt. We did. But sometimes we were "ugly Americans." Usually we were the only reliable American forces in the Mekong Delta that could and would safely medevac wounded civilians regardless of their political persuasion. PBR sailors often saw the same people twice a day, every day. In the morning, peasants went to market towns in motorized sampans, and in the evening the same peasants went home, many of them to enemy-controlled villages. PBR sailors got more familiar with the Vietnamese peasants than most Vietnam GIs so the PBR sailors had a much different experience than most of the other American combat troops during the Vietnam War.
We just hoped that we could wear down the enemy. We did our best. We learned from mistakes. We outwitted our enemies more often than they outwitted us.
We did know that the Navy appreciated what we did, and that kept us motivated.
This book describes a typical tour of a junior officer on PBRs during 1967-1968 in the Mekong Delta. I have attempted to make it as truthful as possible by using real names, dates, and places taken from old monthly combat-action summaries, oral interviews with old shipmates, and even photocopies of their war-time diaries. Mostly it comes from my own memories. I have a lot of memories, but my story could be written by most of the PBR sailors who served in the Vietnam War. Each has a story to tell. Some of their stories would definitely be more exciting than mine.
PBR enlisted sailors in Vietnam were for the most part typical sailors of the time in their ratings. Those ratings were primarily the ones on the low side of the technical scale—the boatswain's mates, the gunner's mates, the signalmen, the quartermasters. But at the E-4 or higher level, their ratings required both seamanship and leadership in an age where naval warfare was becoming increasingly electronic. Those ratings were becoming obsolete in the mid-1960s. World War II cruisers—with teak decks, a full array of 8-inch, 5-inch, and 40mm guns, and all their manpower requirements—were being superceded by smaller ships armed with missiles. The same goes for a lot of destroyers with batteries of 5" guns being replaced by helicopters and ASROC antisubmarine weapons.
The new ships operated as units of small task groups rather than as part of massive armadas of surface vessels as in World War II. Those were relegated to screening aircraft carriers, the Navy's "big stick." The Navy was adjusting to the nuclear age. A massive global communications and radar network of both fixed bases and patrol aircraft kept the ships in close contact with the Pentagon. Communications with reliable and encrypted modern FM systems replaced the old flag hoist. The sextant was being replaced by sophisticated radar charts, radio beacons, and even satellite signals. The days of surface-ship captains setting sail independently to seek and destroy the enemy were long gone. That mission was even being taken away from the submarine force attack submarines. The silent service had by then been mission-oriented toward other kinds of submarines.
I saw a lot of those regular Navy guys coming to the boats. Every one was first a volunteer in time of war. The Navy always made its manpower quotas with volunteers during that time. Most, but not all, of the seasoned petty officers on the boats had volunteered for small-boat duty. The E-4 through E-6 enlisted sent to the boats had requested small-boat combat duty to further their advancement in the ranks. They wanted to prove to themselves and the Navy that they were still relevant.
My combat experiences were far less than those of some enlisted sailors I knew. Some of my old shipmates' stories, related to me, are included. I hope the book is read by a lot of people because our story needs to be remembered. I hope other long-in-the-tooth river rats write their stories. The SEALs have gotten a lot of black ink from their Vietnam experiences. Those Vietnam SEALS stayed together. A lot of them stayed on in Special Warfare and spent enough time in the service to retire with their SEAL designators. Most of the young SEALs during the Vietnam War are probably like me and the PBR river rats: they got out of Vietnam and got out of the Navy. Unlike the river rats, they stayed in touch. The SEALs are bonded better than the PBR river rats and it is only natural?the SEALs operated in small teams and went out on specific missions. PBR sailors never knew from day to day what lay ahead or who was going to be their leader for the day.
Library of Congress subject headings for this publication: Vietnamese Conflict, 1961-1975 Riverine operations, American, Vietnamese Conflict, 1961-1975 Personal narratives, American, Goldsmith, Wynn