Reader Report: Swift Boat’s visit to Newport stirs memories of a rough and perilous past
The Navy’s legendary Swift Boats were indeed swift.
Powered by twin 12-cylinder diesel engines and bristling with weapons, the 51-foot boats could hit 30 mph as they sped along the coasts, rivers, deltas and bays of South Vietnam to engage the North Vietnamese enemy and intercept its supply routes during the Vietnam War.
About 130 of the 22-ton boats, called PCFs, or Patrol Craft Fast in naval terminology, served during the war, and only a handful remain operational.
One of them, PCF-816, is scheduled to arrive in Newport Beach on Thursday, where it will be open to visitors free of charge until Saturday afternoon at the American Legion Yacht Club at the corner of East 15th Street and Bay Avenue on the Balboa Peninsula.
Hours are 1 to 5 p.m. Thursday and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Friday and Saturday. Former Swift Boat sailors who served aboard PCFs during the Vietnam War will guide visitors through the boat at the open house.
The 48-year-old PCF-816, owned by the Maritime Museum of San Diego, is on a tour of several Southern California ports, beginning in Oceanside, where this writer went aboard to meet crew members and hear some of their wartime combat experiences.
“Many of the PCF sailors nicknamed our boats ‘floating coffins.’ Although the boats were armed with three 50-caliber machine guns, a mortar, grenade launchers, rifles, a riot gun, pistols and hand grenades, the boats’ outer aluminum skin was only one-quarter of an inch thick, and a 22-caliber bullet could go through it easily,” said Dave Hansen, 71, who joined the Navy at 18 and served three years on PCFs.
“The boats had six crewmen — the skipper, who was a junior officer, and five enlisted men who manned the guns, navigated the boat and ran its engines. Sometimes we’d also have a South Vietnamese sailor onboard who acted as a translator.
“Life was not easy on the boats. We had only four bunks and a bucket for the toilet. Our kitchen or galley consisted of an electric hot plate and a tiny refrigerator. The weather was always terribly hot and humid and we had no air conditioning.
“Sometimes we were able to tie up to a larger ship such as a destroyer or LST and take hot showers and have a decent meal. Boy, that was real luxury,” said Hansen, who sports an elegant white beard.
“Often we were in firefights with North Vietnamese soldiers who shot at us from the shore. We could hardly see them ... they were hiding in the jungles and swamps along the shoreline. Sometimes they were only a few yards away from us. We had to go slow along narrow rivers and we were sitting ducks for the enemy. I lost some of my best friends during the war.
“Luckily, I was never injured, but I’m on full disability. I have constant ringing in my ears caused by the loud shell blasts, neuropathy in my feet, which causes pain and weakness when I walk, heart trouble, diabetes, and I suffer from Agent Orange and PTSD, which means post-traumatic stress disorder. The doctors say all this was caused by my combat experiences,” said Hansen, who served as an engineman and held the rank of petty officer second class when he left the Navy after four years of service.
David Bradley, a former lieutenant commander who served on Swift Boats in 1967 and 1968, said the vessels’ draft of only four feet enabled them to navigate the shallow, narrow waterways and rivers of Vietnam with comparative ease during their missions of inhibiting the enemy’s transportation of troops, weapons, ammunition and other contraband from North Vietnam into South Vietnam.
The North Vietnamese tried to infiltrate the south with their soldiers and equipment by sneaking them in on fishing boats, sampans and other civilian craft, “but our Swift Boats often were able to interdict them,” said Bradley, who like PCF-816’s other crewmen — all unpaid volunteers — are members of the national Swift Boat Sailors Assn.
The boats’ missions also included inserting Navy SEAL teams and South Vietnamese special operations troops into North Vietnam, and pitched battles between the two sides often resulted, Bradley said.
“Enemy rocket attacks and underwater mines were constant dangers,” he said. “Crewmen on deck and in the cabin and pilothouse were killed or wounded by rocket-propelled grenades and shrapnel.”
At the Vietnam War’s end, PCF-816, which served as a training vessel during the war, was declared surplus, as were the Navy’s other Swift Boats.
But PCF-816 and a sister boat, PCF-813, were saved from the scrap heap and transferred in 1971 to the navy of Malta, an island nation in the central Mediterranean. There they were used to interdict smugglers, patrol the coasts and rescue refugees from North Africa who were fleeing to Europe on small, overloaded boats that often sank, with many lives lost.
In late 1984, illegal fireworks being transported by PCF-813 to an intended dumping spot off the Maltese coast exploded, killing seven Maltese sailors and two police officers. Only one crew member escaped death.
In 2012, after serving in the Maltese navy for some 40 years, PCF-816 was declared obsolete and it was acquired by the San Diego nautical museum, which carried it aboard a large civilian cargo ship to Norfolk, Va. Then it was sent on a long flatbed truck to the museum, where volunteers restored it to its original condition.
Duty aboard the PCFs was rough, said Bob Bolger, 71, who served aboard the boats in Vietnam for two years. The men had little or no sleep for days on end. The accommodations were cramped and uncomfortable.
Worst of all, the crew constantly feared attacks from the shore and North Vietnamese forces hiding aboard civilian craft, Bolger said.
“But we wouldn’t have had it any other way,” he said. “None of us regret our service on the Swift Boats.”
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DAVID C. HENLEY, a Newport Beach resident and former foreign correspondent, is a member of the board of trustees of Chapman University.