I had barely reported to my new ship, USS Union, when we sortied from Subic Bay and headed, once again, for the coast of Vietnam. But this trip was different. Previously we had just sailed back and forth I readiness to intervene if necessary. This trip we headed to Danang bay and prepared to land the marines and their equipment. The actual landing took place on 8 March, 1965. It wasn’t an opposed landing. The Vietnamese Army had taken control of the entire bay area and even had a welcoming committee waiting when the marines came ashore. The location where the landings took place was called Red Beach 2. It was a few miles from Danang city to the northwest. The location where the marines intended to establish a camp was at the airfield southwest of the city. There was a road from the beach area to the city. My ship was an attack cargo ship. We carried some trucks and a lot of packed equipment that could be sent ashore when the assault troops had secured a beachhead. Since the beach was already secure, we concentrated on putting as much of our cargo ashore as we could. This caused a few problems.
The marine supply officer was thoroughly upset. Things were coming ashore quickly, and he had no idea what was where. He complained that he was still operating under peacetime accountability and he was signed out for all the items that were now strewn all over the beach area. Also, during the morning a high surf had developed and our smaller boats could not beach safely. Fortunately for the supply officer that status would soon change. But in the meantime the few trucks that had been put ashore were being loaded with various supplies and driving down the lonesome single road to bring their cargo to the airbase. Our captain was also very aware of the problem of congestion on Red Beach. It would have been hard not to know about it. The subject was being raised all the time on the radio circuits, and in plain language, neither encrypted nor encoded. We pulled one of our smaller boats out of the rotation of delivering supplies to the beach and sent it off toward Danang city to determine if there was another location, close to airbase, that could be used. The head of the deck department rode the boat to see firsthand and determine what might be done. He returned with the information that there was a spot on the river, just south of the city, where our boats could deliver their cargoes. We quickly began re-routing the boats to that location. We called the new location “Red Beach”, just like the old one. That night we saw a lot of flares, shooting, and explosions at the site of the original Red Beach. We later learned that there had been a Viet Cong attack. A prisoner informed the South Vietnamese that the objective of the attack was to destroy the ammunition that was accumulating there. The Viet Cong had been listening to our radios and heard all the complaints about congestion.
The route from where our ships had anchored in the bay to the new beach was not as simple as the previous route had been. The area closer to the city was much shallower, even at high tide. It was also full of fish traps the local fishermen had set. A Vietnamese fish trap was made by placing 4 long poles upright and dug into the bottom of the bay. A net was suspended from the poles. Fish swam into the trap when the tide was in. As the tide went out the fish were caught in the net because there was not enough water for them to swim back out. The local fishermen then came out in a small boat to harvest the catch. We continued unloading the first day until well after it became dark. When unloading ceased we took stock of our boats. We carried 8 50 foot landing craft called LCMs. In addition, we had 12 36 foot craft called LCVPs. We knew them by the phonetic equivalent of the last letters of their designations as Mike boats and Papa boats. Boat radios were not installed in all the boats for two reasons. First, we did not have that many radios. Second, when the radios were used they were exposed to a salty environment that would cause them to become inoperable after a certain time. The electronic repair men on the ship always expected a long period of cleaning and refurbishing the boat radios after every landing exercise.
When the boats returned to the ship we sent all the weary boat crews below decks to get some sleep; all of them except for one. Papa eleven had not returned to the ship. No one knew where she was. We put one boat back into service and sent it to look for our missing Papa eleven. They went all the way in to the new Red Beach and came back again without sighting anything. In the morning the mystery was solved. Papa eleven had become entangled in one of those fish traps. The crew couldn’t free the boat. They also tried signaling with a small flashlight, but without success. We did rescue the boat crew, but Papa eleven ultimately was a total loss.
We almost lost one of the bigger boats. When a boat came alongside to be loaded from our cargo hods a line was thrown to the boat. The line was tied to the bow to hold her alongside and then the coxswain turned off the engine to save fuel. One of the boats was not yet tied up when the engines were cut. The boat began to drift aft into our slowly turning propeller, The screw cut three evenly spaced slashes into the engine compartment of the boat, She began to sink. One of the winch operators saw what was happening.He quickly had a deckhand put the slings that were used to load and offload the big boats on the end of the boom he controlled. The boom was moved over the boat and the slings bolted on in only a short while. The boat was lifted out of the water and survived to sail again after the holes in her engine compartment were repaired. As for the ship, well, we went to Yokusuka shipyard after the landing and went into dry dock so the propeller could be inspected for possible damage.
Wetherhorn 