By John R. Terry
“If you choose a fair fight, you chose the wrong fight.”
The most favorable outcome in combat is simple to state and hard to achieve: accomplish the mission and bring everyone home alive.
In the spring of 1971, I was responsible for planning and directing U.S. and allied naval forces in a lethal encounter with an enemy ship carrying weapons to Communist forces in Vietnam. By choosing what I came to call the right fight, we denied the enemy hundreds of tons of arms—without losing a single American sailor.
I have often wondered recalling that night. I don’t know how many American and Vietnamese soldiers were spared because that ship never reached shore. But I know some of them are alive because it didn’t.
Market Time and the Twelve-Mile Line
In 1971 I was the Operations and Plans Officer for Task Force 115—the U.S. Navy’s Coastal Surveillance Force. We called it Operation Market Time. Our job was to stop North Vietnamese ships from supplying their forces along more than a thousand miles of coastline.
In plain language, we were the seaborne border patrol—with an attitude.
Early in the war, most enemy supplies reached South Vietnam by sea. Our patrol boats, cutters, and aircraft searched for trawlers and merchant ships carrying weapons. But there was a problem built into our mission: the rules of engagement.
We could not attack ships outside South Vietnam’s twelve-mile territorial limit. If an enemy vessel stayed in international waters, it was safe. Our only deterrent was to deliberately make them aware we knew of their presence by engaging in Overt Surveillance. Patrol aircraft would repeatedly overfly them or a patrol ship would closely shadow them. Eventually the enemy ship would abandon their mission and safely return to North Vietnam with their undelivered cargo.
Tactical Success, Strategic Failure
The Communists shifted their supply routes inland. What became known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail carried weapons south through Laos and Cambodia. Having spent countless hours plowing furrows in the sea while on Market Time Patrol I had the time to contemplate the tactical success and strategic failure we had created. We delayed the arrival of armaments to the enemy but had not prevented their ultimate usage against U.S. and Allied forces. Our “Grunts” still had to face their lethality.
Grunt is a term we used in Vietnam, one which I view as a mark of personal valor. Most Grunts were Army and Marine Corps enlisted and junior officer front line combat troops. Many were draftees. They carried the heaviest burdens of warfare. I was privileged to serve as a Grunt when I engaged in combat mine sweeping. I was also honored to hold Command at Sea of Mine Division 33 which had the Grunt mission to clear the invasion beaches of mines using minesweeping launches prior to a Marine amphibious assault.
On the Long Tau River near Saigon and later on the Cua Viet River near the DMZ, we dragged chains through mined waterways, cutting detonator wires while under fire from the banks. Boats were sunk. Sailors were killed and wounded. You know things are dangerous when Navy SEAL Team One members considered us crazy in performing our minesweeping duties.
These experiences had prepared me for TF-115. I had faced no less danger delivering ammunition than the danger I was later to impose on the enemy doing the same thing. It was my time to go on the offensive.
Enhanced Enemy Capabilities
By early 1971, North Vietnam had introduced a new type of supply ship, the SL-8 trawler. It was a larger steel hulled vessel with the full range of unrestricted open ocean navigation and seaworthiness. It also had a cargo capacity of more than four times that of previous trawlers.
In late February and March, we detected SL-8s at sea, maneuvering and returning to port. These trips led me to question whether our covert surveillance was working or were they in fact deceived and training for a major incursion.
Then, in early April, I received a highly classified notification of a likely forthcoming infiltration attempt. It was believed that the ship was a SL-8 vessel configured, or wired, with a self-destruction capability to avoid capture.
Just a few days later on April 8th, one of our patrol aircraft detected and photographed the suspected target. The rules for covert operations called for it to proceed without deviation from its planned route as if it had missed the target. Photographic analysis confirmed it as a SL-8.
The third step in surveillance, after detection and classification is observation which needed be accomplished without our being detected. Undetected tracking is best conducted by a surface ship since it would provide preferable uninterrupted tracking by a less conspicuous means than harder to conceal intermittent aircraft surveillance.
Let Your Plans Be Dark
Sun Tzu wrote, “Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.”
He also wrote, “All warfare is based on deception.”
These concepts would guide my actions.
Our covert surveillance procedures were well defined for our field units, ships and aircraft. I detached the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter USCGC Morgenthau (WHEC-722) from its patrol duties and directed it to shadow the infiltrator stealthily. I also had the Patrol Gunboat USS Antelope (PG-86) proceed to more southerly patrol sectors in order to have it in position between the South Vietnam coastline and a likely target landfall.
The switch to covert surveillance increased the importance of Operational Security, and their demands fell heavily on me. The communications transmitted among our forces were likely being monitored by Chinese or Russian intelligence assets. An enemy analyst observing changes in our routine patterns and increases in the volume of our communications traffic could surmise that these changes were the result of having detected the infiltrator. I denied the enemy the ability to compare my ships operations to a baseline or routine.
I used random number tables to establish the durations for both communications features and operational assignments. These random times and locations were applied to communication frequencies, ship call signs, and codes as well as the duration and location of ship patrol areas. To an outside observer it must have appeared we were operating in a state of chaos.
Both American and Vietnamese personnel jointly staffed my Operations Center. I had no reason to question the loyalties of the South Vietnamese but I could not ignore the possibility of someone with an enemy allegiance. To mask the reason for changing unit operational assignments I took advantage of the Vietnamese lack of knowledge of American Football. I used football jargon to announce ship movements. For example: Blitz zone 4 or try a “Hail Mary” in zone 3, This served to mask my reasons for repositioning forces.
Meanwhile, the SL-8 took a long, circuitous route—through the Palawan Passage and the busy shipping lanes near Hong Kong and Singapore. This was the route where we were most likely to lose contact or be discovered.
We made the transit successfully.
Spring The Trap
The fourth step in the surveillance process is confrontation and the last is capture or destruction. Our shift to covert surveillance had established the means to trap the enemy into believing it was undetected.
By early April 11, I had assembled a net of lethality around the ship. I consolidated my forces and issued a Rule of Engagement, directed by higher authority, to attempt to capture the enemy ship. The USCGC Rush (WHEC 723) joined the group as did an Allied Vietnamese Gun Boat. I now had four surface vessels in place: two Coast Guard Cutters to seaward and two Gun Boats between the target and the coast. I also obtained the commitment of Navy OV-10 Bronco light attack aircraft and and I had a patrol aircraft available to provide night illumination with parachuted flares if needed.
All that was needed now was for the enemy to spring the trap by entering Vietnamese territorial waters.
Confrontation
Just before midnight the SL-8 crossed the 12 mile limit and was confronted by the Antelope.
It did not respond.
A shot was fired across its bow-the universal signal to comply.
That action was the initial contact with an enemy and required that I release a Flash priority message informing higher level authorities of the confrontation. Flash priority messages are rare and often trigger “wake up calls” at the top of the Chain of Command.
Capture Efforts
The SL-8 responded to our attempts to capture it with fire from its 23 millimeter cannon and heavy machine gun. We returned fire but avoided sinking it hoping for its capture.
The South Vietnamese patrol boat reported rudder trouble and withdrew. Now it was an exclusive U.S. action.
For nearly two hours the ship fought back. Fires burned aboard it but it refused to surrender.
Then I received a report that the Antelope had been hit.
Terminal ClosureThat action was the initial contact with an enemy and required that I release a informing higher level authorities of the contact. Flash priority messages are rare and often trigger “wake up calls” at the top of the Chain of Command.
Contact
The SL-8 fired a 23-millimeter cannon and heavy machine guns. We returned fire but avoided sinking it, hoping for capture.
The South Vietnamese patrol boat reported rudder trouble and withdrew. Now it was largely up to us.
For two hours, the SL-8 fought back. Fires burned aboard it. It refused to surrender.
Then the report came: Antelope had been hit.
Terminal Closure
That information caused me to experience a flashback to a time years earlier during the battle for Con Thien when I had just finished delivering ammunition and sweeping mines on the Cua Viet river. I witnessed the return of some of our combatants who did not make it. I reacted reflexively to avoid the same fate for our warriors engaged in the combat at hand.
In a matter of seconds, in checkoff list like fashion I thought”
• The ship had violated territorial waters
• It had fired on our forces
• We had attempted capture
• Intelligence indicated it might self-destruct
• I could not risk one of our ships going “John Wayne” and attempt to board a bomb
Sun Tsu wrote “If orders are not clear and distinct the general is to blame.”
I gave an order no one could misunderstand.
“Close and kill.”
The Fireball
Within minutes the SL-8 erupted in a massive explosion. Rockets from the OV-10s and three inch shells from the gunboat struck home. Or perhaps the ship self-destructed. The truth may never be known.
The fireball climbed thousands of feet into the night sky. The shock wave nearly knocked our aircraft out of the sky. Between 300 and 400 tons of enemy weapons disappeared in that explosion.
Our next task, because that is what American warriors do, was to search for survivors.
There were none.
Aftermath
We never saw another enemy infiltration attempt during my tour.
The action made the U.S. press. I received medals from both the United States and South Vietnam. But what mattered most to me were the simple heartfelt thanks from fellow Grunts who understood what it meant to keep weapons out of enemy hands.
From Combat to Bureaucracy
Vietnam ended my involvement with kinetic combat but not my concerns for military personnel. My weapons were no longer rockets and gun boats but experience, research and persuasion.
One legislative success-the Variable Housing Allowance-still shapes military pay today. I consider that victory as real as sinking the trawler.
Echoes Across Centuries
Two centuries before Vietnam British troops marched on Lexington and Concord to seize American gunpowder. Farmers and merchants-the first American grunts- stood in their way. They lost the open-field fight but won by ambush from the forests on the British return to Boston.
They found the right fight.
I like to think I did the same.
“Would You Do It Again”
Years later one of my sons asked me what I did in Vietnam. I told him about delivering ammunition and sweeping mines in a contested river during ongoing combat and about the SL-8 operation.
He asked, “Knowing what you know now, would you do it again?”
“Yes”
“Why?”
“Because that’s what warriors do”
You don’t get rich in the military. Medals are nice but not necessary. What matters is the support we give each other when it counts.
On that night in April 1971 I created the Right Fight and was rewarded with the precious result that some grunts came home because of it.
