Night Fighter by Hamilton William H.; Sasser Charles W.;

Author:Hamilton, William H.; Sasser, Charles W.;
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Arcade Publishing
Published: 2016-09-26T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

CHINA BEACH WAS A twenty-mile stretch of white sand northeast of Da Nang extending into the blue waters of the South China Sea, only ninety miles from the DMZ. It was an idyllic setting out of a scene from James Michener’s Hawaii, certainly from appearances not the site of a secret CIA operation and base for deadly sabotage and espionage overtures against communism. Located at the foot of the dark and bare Monkey Mountain, OP-34’s cover name was innocent sounding—Naval Advisory Detachment.

At this point in 1963, Americans were strictly forbidden north of the 17th Parallel. The detachment from Commander Dave Del Guidice’s SEAL Team One limited itself to training Viet guerrilla fighters hidden away in secret little camps along a ten-mile stretch of beach between the two commanding promontories of Monkey Mountain on the north and Marble Mountain to the south. Each camp housed forty or fifty men, volunteers from the South Vietnamese Navy. Some were being trained as swimmers and behind-the-lines operators, others as shooters. Their boats, disguised as fishermen junks and trawlers, were harbored at finger piers and floating dry docks at the base of Monkey Mountain.

I was surprised to find the SEAL uniform of the day consisted of shorts, tennis shoes, and suntans. Hair was of varying unkempt length. Some men grew beards. They resembled beach bums from southern California.

“They blend in,” Del Guidice said. He was here on a short visit to check on his men. “As far as the local Viet Cong know, we’re ragtag ‘advisors’ to the South Vietnam Navy and have no connection to spooks or special operators.”

SEALs had the beach all to themselves and were living the life of Riley. They didn’t bother the local VC, the VC didn’t bother them. They seldom found it necessary to go armed when they jogged the beach, swam, or gathered at little beach bars near Da Nang to talk, drink, and watch moonlight sparkling off breakers rolling in from the sea.

“The VC aren’t interested in harassing us,” Del Guidice further explained. “That way they know where we are and what we’re doing. We suspect the boats and men we’re losing originate at an NVA naval base at Quang Khe, about thirty miles north of the DMZ. It’s a staging base for small boats smuggling arms and infiltrators south. The real danger is that it is also a base for Swatow gunboats.”

The Swatow was China-built, based on the Soviet P-6 class torpedo boat. It was steel-hulled and bristling with guns as its main armament rather than torpedoes. Slow, with a maximum speed of about ten knots, it was still faster than the junks and trawlers used by OP-34.

Christ! We were sending out matchboxes to take on warships.

More than two years previously, Admiral Arleigh Burke had pushed for greater efforts from the Navy to prepare for river and restricted water operations, to include the development of shallow-water craft and coastal-patrol craft. Captain Joseph Drachnik, chief of the Naval Sector for MAAG-Vietnam (Military Advisory Assistance Group-Vietnam), devised

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