Author: Guy Gugliotta
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780811719599
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"A history of swift boats in Vietnam."--Provided by publisher.

Author: John E. O'Neill
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1596981105
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
"What sort of combination of hypocrite and paradox is John Kerry?" asks this heated critique of the Democratic presidential candidate’s Vietnam–era military service and antiwar activism. O’Neill, a lawyer and swift boat veteran, and Corsi, an expert on Vietnam antiwar movements, show how Kerry misrepresented his wartime exploits and is therefore incompetent to serve as commander in chief. Buttressed by interviews with Navy veterans who patrolled Vietnam’s waters, some along with Kerry, readers will discover how he exaggerated minor injuries, self-inflicted others, wrote fictitious diary entries and filed "phony" reports of his heroism under fire—all in a calculated quest to secure career-enhancing combat medals.

Author: Guy Gugliotta
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0811765652
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 331

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Book Description
You-are-there stories of ambushes and patrols on the Mekong in the Vietnam War Developed specifically for the Vietnam War (and made famous by the 2004 presidential campaign), Swift Boats were versatile craft “big enough to outrun anything they couldn’t outfight” but too small to handle even a moderate ocean chop, too loud to sneak up on anyone, and too flimsy to withstand the mildest of rocket attacks. This made more difficult an already tough mission: navigating coastal waters for ships and sampans smuggling contraband to the Viet Cong, disrupting enemy supply lines on the rivers and canals of the Mekong Delta, and inserting SEALs behind enemy lines. The stories in this book cover the Swift Boats’ early years, which saw search-and-inspect operations in Vietnam’s coastal waters, and their later years, when the Swift Boats’ mission shifted to the Mekong Delta’s labyrinth of 3,000 miles of rivers, streams, and canals. This is an intimate, exciting oral history of Swift Boats at war in Vietnam.

Author: Dan Daly
Publisher: Casemate
ISBN: 1612004792
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 433

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Book Description
A memoir of heroism, comradeship, danger, and laughter aboard a Vietnam patrol craft, as a small crew grew into a seasoned combat team. Includes photos. During the Vietnam War, 3500 officers and men served in the Swift Boat program in a fleet of 130 boats with no armor plating. The boats patrolled the coast and rivers of South Vietnam, facing deadly combat, intense lightning firefights, storms, and many hidden dangers. This action-packed account by the Officer in Charge of PCF 76 makes you part of the Swift Boat crew. The six-man crew of PCF 76 was made up of volunteers from all over the United States, eager to serve their country in a unique type of duty not seen since the PT boats of WWII. This inexperienced and disparate group of men would meld into a team that formed an unbreakable lifelong bond. After training, they were plunged into a twelve-month tour of duty. Combat took place in the closest confines imaginable, where the enemy could be hidden behind a passing sand dune or a single sniper could be concealed in an onshore bunker. In many cases, the rivers became so narrow there was barely room to maneuver or turn around. The only way out might be into a deadly ambush. This is not a Vietnam memoir filled with political discussions or apologies. It simply tells the stories of these young, valiant sailors with humor and heartfelt emotion—in a suspenseful, surprising book that pays tribute to these sailors who, upon returning home, asked little of their country and received less.

Author: Edward J. Marolda
Publisher: Government Printing Office
ISBN: 9780945274735
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 86

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Book Description
This work describes riverine combat during the Vietnam War, emphasizing the operations of the U.S. Navy’s River Patrol Force, which conducted Operation Game Warden; the U.S. Army-Navy Mobile Riverine Force, the formation that General William Westmoreland said “saved the Mekong Delta” during the Tet Offensive of 1968; and the Vietnam Navy. An important section details the SEALORDS combined campaign, a determined effort by U.S. Navy, South Vietnamese Navy, and allied ground forces to cut enemy supply lines from Cambodia and disrupt operations at base areas deep in the delta. The author also covers details on the combat vessels, helicopters, weapons, and equipment employed in the Mekong Delta as well as the Vietnamese combatants (on both sides) and American troops who fought to secure Vietnam’s waterways. Special features focus on the ubiquitous river patrol boats (PBRs) and the Swift boats (PCFs), river warfare training, Vice Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt Jr., the Black Ponies aircraft squadron, and Navy SEALs. This publication may be of interest to history scholars, veterans, students in advanced placement history classes, and military enthusiasts given the continuing impact of riverine warfare on U.S. naval and military operations in the 21st century. Special Publicity Tie-In: Commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War (Commemoration dates: 28 May 2012 - 11 November 2025). This is the fifth book in the series, "The U.S. Navy and the Vietnam War." TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction The First Indochina War The Vietnam Navy River Force and American Advisors The U.S. Navy and the Rivers of Vietnam SEALORDS The End of the Line for U.S. and Vietnamese River Forces Sidebars: The PBR Riverine Warfare Training Battle Fleet of the Mekong Delta High Drama in the Delta Vice Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt Jr. Black Ponies The Swift Boat Warriors with Green Faces Suggested Reading

Author: Douglas Brinkley
Publisher: Harper Collins
ISBN: 0061861855
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 592

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Book Description
One of our most acclaimed historians explores the decorated military service of one of America’s most intriguing politicians—the leading Democratic presidential candidate for 2004—and its profound effects on his career and life In Tour of Duty, Brinkley explores Senator John Kerry’s career and deftly deals with such explosive issues as U.S. atrocities in Vietnam and the bombing of Cambodia. Using new information acquired from the recently released Nixon tapes, Brinkley reveals how White House aides Charles Colson and H.R. Haldeman tried to discredit Kerry. Refusing to be intimidated, Kerry started running for public office, eventually becoming a U.S. Senator from Massachusetts. Covering more than four decades, this is the first full-scale definitive account of Kerry’s journey from war to peace. In writing this riveting, action-packed narrative, Brinkley has drawn on extensive interviews with virtually everyone who knew Kerry well in Vietnam. Kerry also relegated to Brinkley his letters home from Vietnam and his voluminous “war notes” journals, notebooks, and personal reminiscences written during and shortly after the war. This material was provided without restriction, to be used at Brinkley’s discretion, and has never before been published.

Author: James Steffes
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781599266138
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 160

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Book Description
Steffes tells the "real" story of the incident off the coast of North Vietnam on June 16, 1968 that sunk PCF-19. The deaths of five crewmen were reportedly blamed on "friendly fire", but research and witnesses show that "hostile fire" took down the swift boat that day.

Author: Virgil Erwin
Publisher: Dog Ear Publishing
ISBN: 1598589857
Category : Iraq War, 2003-2011
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
Cat Lo, a memoir of invincible youth Cat Lo is a story of young men who volunteer for Swift Boats in Vietnam and about war's indelible lesson for those who survive: life is too precious to waste. Thirty-six years after Vietnam, Virg Erwin sits with a disfigured marine convalescing from Iraq and asks, "Do you want to talk about it?" It is a question no one has ever asked Erwin. "It was hard to know who were civilians- who were bad guys," the marine says as he describes being caught in a violent ambush. For Erwin, the marine's story resurrects memories of sailors patrolling narrow rivers and canals, their naive sense of invincibility shattered by Viet Cong patiently waiting in bunkers with rockets. Cat Lois about conflict of compassion for the South Vietnamese who are caught in the middle of war without option of neutrality, and confusion by the question: Who is the enemy and who is not? Virgil Erwin enlisted in the Naval Reserve in 1963, received his Bachelors Degree from Western State College in Colorado and commissioned an ensign in 1966 after graduating from the Naval Officer Candidate School in Newport, Rhode Island. He served his first two years of active duty aboard a destroyer, the USS Berry (DD 858). After his tour in Vietnam as skipper of Patrol Craft Fast 67, Erwin joined Dow Corning, but interrupted his career to sail to the South Pacific. With his wife Pam as first mate and their yearling Christopher as crew, they sailed for eighteen months, a tenthousand mile round trip. Erwin retired after thirty-six years of corporate life as Vice President of Sales at Entegris Corp. Erwin is a Board Member of the Swift Boat Sailors Association, the Vietnam Unit Memorial Monument Fund and the Admiral Hoffmann Foundation, which provides financial aid to wounded men and women returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Erwin was chairman of the 2007 Swift Boat Reunion held in San Diego, attended by 500 men and women including Congressman Bilbray, Four Star Admiral Gehman, Vice Admiral Rectanus and Rear Admiral Hoffmann. Erwin resides in San Diego with his wife Jacqueline and their two Siberian Huskies. Cruising World, Pacific Skipper and Latitude 38 published his stories of sailing to the South Pacific."

Author: Gordon L. Rottman
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1782000607
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 92

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Book Description
In 1965 the military situation in the Mekong River Delta of southern Vietnam had deteriorated to such a degree that the decision was made to commit a joint US Army and Navy Mobile Riverine Force to the area. This force was unique in its composition, mission, and the means by which it operated – riverine craft. Comprising the Army's 2d Brigade, 9th Infantry Division, and the Navy's River Assault Flotilla One, it used a variety of watercraft, including heavily modified landing craft, purpose-built patrol boats, and a whole host of auxiliary and support craft. This book explores those craft, and also gives an account of Task Force Clearwater, a much smaller operation in the extreme northern part of South Vietnam.

Author: Thomas J Cutler
Publisher: Naval Institute Press
ISBN: 1612511848
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 563

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Book Description
The men of the U.S. Navy's brown-water force played a vital but often overlooked role in the Vietnam War. Known for their black berets and limitless courage, they maneuvered their aging, makeshift craft along shallow coastal waters and twisting inland waterways to search out the enemy. In this moving tribute to their contributions and sacrifices, Tom Cutler records their dramatic story as only a participant could. His own Vietnam experience enables him to add a striking human dimension to the account. The terror of firefights along the jungle-lined rivers, the rigors of camp life, and the sudden perils of guerrilla warfare are conveyed with authenticity. At the same time, the author's training as a historian allows him to objectively describe the scope of the navy's operations and evaluate their effectiveness. Winner of the Navy League's Alfred Thayer Mahan Award for Literary Achievement in 1988 when the book was first published, Cutler is credited with having written the definitive history of the brown-water sailors, an effort that has helped readers better understand the nature of U.S. involvement in the war.