Flying Black Ponies by Kit Lavell

Author:Kit Lavell [Lavell, Kit]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781612515656
Publisher: Naval Institute Press

16

The Trawler

But screw your courage to the sticking-place, and we’ll not fail.

—William Shakespeare, Macbeth

Rear Adm. (later Vice Adm.) S. Robert Salzer became ComNavForV in April 1971, serving until April 1972. In assessing Sea Lords the former commander of River Assault Force said that “despite SEA LORDS’ successes, the sporadic and frequently inadequate nature of ground force participation in the interdiction effort precluded full realization of its potential. . . . Significantly, after Vietnamization of the barriers, ground force participation in these operations virtually ceased.”1 And as it ceased, by mid-1971, for all intents and purposes VAL-4 no longer was performing its original mission.

Market Time forces had detected during the war at least twelve North Vietnamese steel-hulled trawlers trying to infiltrate arms, ammunition, and supplies into South Vietnam. One managed to escape, but the others were destroyed, usually by being run aground and blown up, either by the trawler’s crew or by allied naval or aerial gunfire. The third such trawler intercepted and destroyed, on 19 June 1966, yielded 250 tons of captured arms, as well as documents that painted an ominous picture. Some of the Russian, Chinese, and North Korean arms and ammunition had been manufactured less than one month before being captured. Navigator’s log, charts, and the engineer’s “bell book” revealed the trawler’s infiltration route from Haiphong to South Vietnam to be the same route taken by previous infiltrators.2

Shortly after Rear Admiral Salzer assumed command of Naval Forces Vietnam, the allies detected renewed enemy attempts at infiltration by sea. According to Salzer, “Infiltration was the first threat that we participated in back in ’65 and it became a very pressing consideration in 1971 and 72. . . . First of all, it was unmistakably clear that the North Vietnamese were trying major infiltration by 150- to 200-ton trawlers, loaded with ammunition.”3

A navy P-3 Orion patrol aircraft spotted a North Vietnamese SL-8 infiltration trawler in the South China Sea, north of Borneo and east of Vietnam, at 1742 local time on Wednesday, 8 April 1971. The P-3 tracked the 168-foot trawler, the largest detected during the war, as it headed south. The P-3, whose call sign was “Back Door 06,” handed off covert surveillance to the Coast Guard cutter Morganthau at 1845 on 9 April.4

Lt. Cdr. Bob White, VAL-4 operations officer, spent many hours over the next three days at CTF-116 operations center across the road at Navy Binh Thuy following the Secret “secured” message traffic concerning the trawler. Lt. (jg) Charlie Moore was the squadron’s classified material control officer, but VAL-4 did not have a safe secure enough for Secret material, so the messages had to be read and remain across the road. White briefed the skipper about the efforts to track the trawler. Intelligence sources predicted its course as leading to the Mekong Delta.

Word spread among Black Pony pilots that the trawler might attempt a landfall sometime in the following seventy-two hours. Anticipation and excitement at the possibility of bagging such a trophy was tempered only by the

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