Operation Sealords: A Front In A Frontless War, An Analysis Of The Brown-Water Navy In Vietnam PDF Download

Author: LCDR William C. McQuilkin USN
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
ISBN: 1786250128
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 133

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Book Description
This study examines Operation SEALORDS, the capstone campaign conducted by the brown-water Navy in Vietnam. Specifically, this paper addresses the primary question: Was the SEALORDS campaign successful, and if so, what lessons can be learned from SEALORDS and how might the Navy employ brown-water forces in the future? This thesis breaks down the SEALORDS campaign into three areas of study. First, the study examines the barrier interdiction portion of the campaign designed to stem the flow of enemy infiltration of men and material from Cambodia into the Mekong Delta. Second, this study analyzes the Denial of Sanctuary Operations and Pacification portion of the SEALORDS operations. Last, the Accelerated Turnover to the Vietnamese Program (ACTOV) is examined to determine its effectiveness. The findings of this study suggest that by concentrating naval forces athwart the major infiltration routes along the Cambodian border, SEALORDS effectively cut enemy lines of communication into South Vietnam and severely restricted enemy attempts at infiltration. Additionally, the findings suggest that SEALORDS contributed significantly to pacification efforts in the southern part of III Corps and all of the IV Corps Tactical Zone. Finally, the ACTOV Program is evaluated as successful and put the Navy out ahead of the other services with respect to Vietnamization of the war effort.

Author: U.s. Army Command and General Staff College
Publisher: CreateSpace
ISBN: 9781497447899
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 66

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Book Description
This book examines Operation SEALORDS, the capstone campaign conducted by the Brown-Water Navy in Vietnam. Specifically, this paper addresses the primary question: Was the SEALORDS campaign successful, and if so, what lessons, can be learned from SEALORDS and how might we employ brown-water forces in the future? This book breaks down the SEALORDS campaign into three areas of study. First, the study examines the barrier interdiction portion of the campaign designed to stem the flow of enemy infiltration of men and material from Cambodia into the Mekong Delta. Second, this study analyzes the Denial of Sanctuary Operations and Pacification portion of the SEALORDS operations. Lastly, the Accelerated Turnover to the Vietnamese Program known as "ACTOV" is examined to determine its effectiveness. The Findings of this book suggest that by concentrating naval forces athwart the major infiltration routes along the Cambodian border, SEALORDS effectively cut enemy lines of communication into South Vietnam and severly restricted enemy attempts at infiltration. Additionally, the findings suggest that SEALORDS contributed significantly to pacification efforts in the southern part of III Corps and all of the TV Corps Tactical Zone. Finally, the ACTOV Program is evaluated as successful and put the navy out ahead of the other services with respect to Vietnamization of the war effort.

Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 96

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Book Description
This study examines Operation SEALORDS, the capstone campaign conducted by the Brown-Water Navy in Vietnam. Specifically, this paper addresses the primary question: Was the SEALORDS campaign successful, and if so, what lessons, can be learned from SEALORDS and how might we employ brown-water forces in the future? This thesis breaks down the SEALORDS campaign into three areas of study. First, the study examines the barrier interdiction portion of the campaign designed to stem the flow of enemy infiltration of men and material from Cambodia into the Mekong Delta. Second, this study analyzes the Denial of Sanctuary Operations and Pacification portion of the SEALORDS operations. Lastly, the Accelerated Turnover to the Vietnamese Program known as 'ACTOV' is examined to determine its effectiveness. The Findings of this study suggest that by concentrating naval forces athwart the major infiltration routes along the Cambodian border, SEALORDS effectively cut enemy lines of communication into South Vietnam and severly restricted enemy attempts at infiltration. Additionally, the findings suggest that SEALORDS contributed significantly to pacification efforts in the southern part of III Corps and all of the IV Corps Tactical Zone. Finally, the ACTOV Program is evaluated as successful and put the navy out ahead of the other services with respect to Vietnamization of the war effort.

Author: LCDR Eugene F. Paluso USN
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
ISBN: 1786250179
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 89

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Book Description
The United States Navy involvement in the Vietnam War prior to 1964 was primarily blue water operations. In 1964, the Vietnam Delta Infiltration Study Group was tasked to conduct a comprehensive study of the problem of enemy infiltration of men and supplies into South Vietnam Mekong Delta region across the Cambodia and Laos borders. The findings of the group were published in the Bucklew Report and concluded that the border infiltration problem was significant and needed to be stopped in order to ensure victory in the Vietnam War. The recommendations were for the U.S. to develop an extensive riverine operations capability to assist the South Vietnamese military in conducting counter-insurgency operations to stop the infiltration problem. The U.S. Navy moved from deep blue water operations to near shore blue water operations with the Operation MARKET TIME patrols, which encompassed larger seagoing craft patrolling the coast to forty miles out to sea. These operations led to the first brown water operations during Operation GAME WARDEN which patrolled the major river systems in the Mekong Delta region in order to interdict enemy movements along the rivers. Soon these patrols revealed the need to ground troops to control the riverbanks in order for the patrols to be effective. The Tet offensive of 1968 revealed that the MARKET TIME and GAME WARDEN patrols were not totally containing the infiltration problem. Operation SEALORDS established patrol barriers that were designed specifically to stop the influx of men and supplies crossing the Cambodian border and sustaining enemy forces operating in the Mekong Delta and Saigon areas. SEALORDS barriers were systematically set up to take control of the Mekong Delta region and deny the enemy the freedom of movement enjoyed for years prior.

Author: Lieutenant Commander William B. Bassett
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
ISBN: 1782896880
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 40

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Book Description
This paper examines U.S. riverine operations in the Vietnam War. With the current drive to establish a riverine capability within the U.S. Armed Forces as an integral part of the GWOT and small wars of the future, the evolution and operation of the U.S. riverine force during the Vietnam War serves as an effective blueprint for the conduct of modern riverine warfare. American riverine forces in Vietnam operated in a diverse range of brown and green water environments, successfully conducting a wide variety of missions. The evolution of these forces reflected the continuing need to develop the capabilities necessary for these operations. Their success was largely derived from experience which resulted in the creation of a variety of discrete riverine task forces specially configured for their specific missions as the situation dictated. U.S. riverine operations in Vietnam illustrate the complex nature of operations in brown and green water and the inherently joint requirement of the forces involved. The lessons learned as a result of these operations should be incorporated as a fundamental part of the creation of any modern riverine force.

Author: Bob Howe
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1922896411
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 317

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Book Description
Dreadful Lady over the Mekong Delta looks at the men of No 2 Squadron and the operations they flew in the Vietnam War in their Canberra bombers. From April 1967, the squadron spent four years attacking enemy targets, many of them in the Mekong Delta region, and contending with the politics, weather, and ‘fog’ of war. The riverine operations supported by No 2 Squadron were but a small part of an allied effort to disrupt the enemy’s movement of troops and supplies to locations in South Vietnam. It was, according to one commentator, ‘a kind of guerrilla warfare conducted in a navy environment’. Bob Howe arrived in Vietnam in 1969 as a youthful Canberra navigator/bomb-aimer, but much of his time was spent as a specialist in bombing operations. His time there provided him with the firsthand experience and detailed information to write this book. This book in its original format was first published in 2016 by the RAAF’s Air Power Development Centre, filling a gap in the recording of the RAAF’s operations in Vietnam. It also describes how crews overcame the difficulties of operating in an intense Asian war in an aircraft that was designed for a completely different environment. This new edition is intended to bring the experiences and exploits of Bob Howe, No 2 Squadron and its Canberra bomber aircraft to life for a new generation of reader.

Author: Mart A. Stewart
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 940070934X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 455

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Book Description
The Mekong Delta of Vietnam is one of the most productive agricultural areas in the world. The Mekong River fans out over an area of about 40,000 sq kilometers and over the course of many millennia has produced a region of fertile alluvial soils and constant flows of energy. Today about a fourth of the Delta is under rice cultivation, making this area one of the premier rice granaries in the world. The Delta has always proven a difficult environment to manipulate, however, and because of population pressures, increasing acidification of soils, and changes in the Mekong’s flow, environmental problems have intensified. The changing way in which the region has been linked to larger flows of commodities and capital over time has also had an impact on the region: For example, its re-emergence in recent decades as a major rice-exporting area has linked it inextricably to global markets and their vicissitudes. And most recently, the potential for sea level increases because of global warming has added a new threat. Because most of the region is on average only a few meters above sea level and because any increase of sea level will change the complex relationship between tides and down-river water flow, the Mekong Delta is one of the areas in the world most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. How governmental policy and resident populations have in the past and will in coming decades adapt to climate change as well as several other emerging or ongoing environmental and economic problems is the focus of this collection.

Author: David Andrew Biggs
Publisher: University of Washington Press
ISBN: 0295801549
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
Winner of the 2012 George Perkins Marsh Prize for Best Book in Environmental History In the twentieth century, the Mekong Delta has emerged as one of Vietnam’s most important economic regions. Its swamps, marshes, creeks, and canals have played a major role in Vietnam’s turbulent past, from the struggles of colonialism to the Cold War and the present day. Quagmire considers these struggles, their antecedents, and their legacies through the lens of environmental history. Beginning with the French conquest in the 1860s, colonial reclamation schemes and pacification efforts centered on the development of a dense network of new canals to open land for agriculture. These projects helped precipitate economic and environmental crises in the 1930s, and subsequent struggles after 1945 led to the balkanization of the delta into a patchwork of regions controlled by the Viet Minh, paramilitary religious sects, and the struggling Franco-Vietnamese government. After 1954, new settlements were built with American funds and equipment in a crash program intended to solve continuing economic and environmental problems. Finally, the American military collapse in Vietnam is revealed as not simply a failure of policy makers but also a failure to understand the historical, political, and environmental complexity of the spaces American troops attempted to occupy and control. By exploring the delta as a quagmire in both natural and political terms, Biggs shows how engineered transformations of the Mekong Delta landscape - channelized rivers, a complex canal system, hydropower development, deforestation - have interacted with equally complex transformations in the geopolitics of the region. Quagmire delves beyond common stereotypes to present an intricate, rich history that shows how closely political and ecological issues are intertwined in the human interactions with the water environment in the Mekong Delta. Watch the book trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gp1-UItZqsk

Author: U. S. Military
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781549985959
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 109

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Book Description
The Vietnam War allied naval barrier operations to interdict the enemy infiltration of men and supplies coming across the Cambodian border into the Mekong Delta region was successful only through the utilization of joint combined naval, ground, and air assets. Discussion: The United States Navy involvement in the Vietnam war prior to 1964 was primarily blue water operations. In 1964, the Vietnam Delta Infiltration Study Group was tasked to conduct a comprehensive study of the problem of enemy infiltration of men and supplies into South Vietnam Mekong Delta region across the Cambodia and Laos borders. The findings of the group were published in the Bucklew Report and concluded that the border infiltration problem was significant and needed to be stopped in order to ensure victory in the Vietnam War. The recommendations were for the U.S. to develop an extensive riverine operations capability to assist the South Vietnamese military in conducting counter-insurgency operations to stop the infiltration problem. The U.S. Navy moved from deep blue water operations to near shore blue water operations with the Operation MARKET TIME patrols, which encompassed larger seagoing craft patrolling the coast to forty miles out to sea. These operations led to the first brown water operations during Operation GAME WARDEN which patrolled the major river systems in the Mekong Delta region in order to interdict enemy movements along the rivers. Soon these patrols revealed the need to ground troops to control the riverbanks in order for the patrols to be effective. The Tet offensive of 1968 revealed that the MARKET TIME and GAME WARDEN patrols were not totally containing the infiltration problem. Operation SEALORDS established patrol barriers that were designed specifically to stop the influx of men and supplies crossing the Cambodian border and sustaining enemy forces operating in the Mekong Delta and Saigon areas. SEALORDS barriers were systematically set up to take control of the Mekong Delta region and deny the enemy the freedom of movement enjoyed for years prior. Conclusion: Operation SEALORDS was extremely effective under U.S. control. The enemy could no longer mount large-scale offensives from within the Mekong Delta region as in the 1968 Tet offensive. The tactics, techniques, and procedures developed during the operation were key to the overall success of the counter-insurgency effort. The overarching key to the success of the operation was the joint combined efforts of the naval, ground, and air forces. Barrier interdiction operations cannot be effectively accomplished without joint efforts. Inter-service rivalry initially hampered operational efforts; however, the inter-service efforts eventually led to the operation's success.

Author: Lieutenant Commander Richard Sessoms
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
ISBN: 1782897828
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 67

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Book Description
In 1964 the Viet Cong was firmly entrenched in the Mekong Delta region. Using fear and terror tactics, the insurgency gained control of the population creating a safe haven for the movement to thrive and expand. The United States and the Government of South Vietnam recognized the infiltration problem in the Mekong Delta but their military organizations were either unable or incapable to deal with the problem. The geography of the region made it impossible for a U.S. Army or Marine Corps division to operate effectively and the South Vietnamese Army and Navy lacked the training and equipment to operate successfully. In response to these obstacles, Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, commissioned the U.S. Navy to develop a fighting force capable of operating in the delta and ridding the region of the Viet Cong influence. The Navy used for main Operations: MARKET TIME, GAME WARDEN,-The Mobile Riverine Force, and SEALORDS to achieve these goals. In four short years the Brown Water Sailors experienced marked success with Viet Cong influence minimized and resupply efforts rerouted to the tortuous Ho Chi Minh Trail. However, by the end of 1968 American resolve to fight a war in South Vietnam had deteriorated and the Government needed a way out. President Nixon’s Vietnamization program provided the exit for American forces and in turn mitigated the Brown Water Navy’s successes of the previous four years. The Brown Water Navy overcame tremendous obstacles in less than one year to create and deploy a formidable fighting force to the Mekong Delta. In four years aggressive strides against the Viet Cong insurgency were achieved only to be mitigated by the effects of Vietnamization.