Brown Water Runs Red: My Year as an Advisor to the Vietnamese Navy Junk Force by Bob Andretta

Author:Bob Andretta [Andretta, Bob]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-09-09T21:00:00+00:00

As it turned out, Americal could hear the battleship just fine on the gunfire support frequencies, but New Jersey could not hear them. I could hear both and both could hear me now that the ship was closer in the offing. I was asked to relay the gunfire information and was, of course, all too happy to do so. I was also asked about the depth of water off the coast. I can’t tell you how much I wanted to say, “Oh, plenty of water for a junk, and mind the sea snakes,” but as I said, this grand old ship was not indulging in our local informal ways. I will never forget the first shot from the battleship’s mighty 16-inch guns. I had expected a broadside by all nine of her sixteen-inch guns, but luckily she only fired one at a time, right over our heads. There was a sudden huge eruption of smoke, with a fireball in the center that masked half the ship. Then, I heard the projectile pass over head; nearly a ton being shot fifteen miles or so. Have you ever stood near the end of a runway with commercial jets coming in to land? After they pass, there is a secondary sound, like heavy wind. That’s what the passing projectile sounded like. It was followed quickly by the shock wave from the gun, although I might have this backwards, which rattled the roof of the tower and could be felt in the chest and ears. Boom again; and again, at least fifty times, until she was finished.

The next morning, there was that beautiful ship again. She wanted me to give her some local targets. The best I could do was just to the south on Barrier Island, like I always did with aircraft that checked in to get rid of their bomb loads before landing in Danang. There was a FAC available, and between the two of us, we guided the battleship’s guns. For that second day, I guess they were too close in to use the big guns, so they fired their secondary battery of five-inch guns. Surely the 16-inch guns against sandy bunkers would have been overkill. Maybe they just wanted some practice for the smaller guns. Who knows? After expending a few hundred rounds of five-inch ammunition, the ship thanked us and said it was finished. Down I jumped from the tower and rushed off in Yang, the fastest junk we had. As Yang’s enthusiastic crew and I rounded the point of the sand spit and started to hit the ocean rollers, we had the old Chinese diesel engine red-lined and the sails drawing full on a starboard tack. Old Yang must have been making ten knots, but it wasn’t enough. I really didn’t have in mind to commit piracy this time so much as to just set my feet upon the golden decks. But I soon saw that there would be no catching my huge new friend. New Jersey sank down below the horizon and never returned.

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