Swift Boat Down

Review Written by Bernie Weisz, Historian, Vietnam War May 9, 2011 Pembroke Pines, Florida, USA contact: [email protected] Title of Review: The Sinking of Swift Boat PCF-119. A Confused , Disorganized, Multi-Unit Screw-Up Resulting In Friendly Casualties. What is friendly fire? This is a military term which refers to the discharge of a weapon which results in death or injury among fellow soldiers or allies. Since the inception of warfare, friendly fire incidents have been a part it, however with the development of more sophisticated and deadly weapons it has made the problem increasingly rampant. In the Vietnam War, the definition of friendly fire excluded incidents in which members of the military deliberately fired on their allies, the South Koreans, Australians, New Zealanders, et al., as well as fellow soldiers. For firing on one's own troops a special term came about, called "Fragging." Fragging referred to the act of attacking a superior officer in one's chain of command with the intent to kill that officer. It was most commonly used to mean the assassination of an unpopular officer of one's own fighting unit. Killing was effected by means of a fragmentation grenade, hence the term. There were several factors that brought about friendly fire in Vietnam, such as the wild terrain and visibility during the monsoon season. When soldiers fought on land, sea, or air with which they were not familiar, or when being fired upon by enemy troops, the direction from which the shots were coming from were confusing, it can be explained why this may have occurred. With the addition of poor weather conditions, combat stress, when a soldier mistakenly believed that he was shooting at the enemy, and when a leader issued unclear or ambiguous orders, this was problematic when combined with conditions that prevented soldiers from using their own judgement. A prime example of this was the tragedy that occurred at Mi Lai on March 16, 1968. As Jim Steffes book will reveal, there were situations where it was difficult to determine whether a soldier or sailor was killed by friend or foe, and soldiers due to chagrin or fear of punishment have been known to conceal incidents of friendly fire. The American military provided extensive training to their soldiers to try and prevent the tragedy of friendly fire, which could have had a negative impact on troop morale, mission success, and public image as well as causing death or injury. The impact could be even more deleterious if death occurred because of hostile fire, and for some peculiar, difficult to comprehend reason, it was indeed blamed on American friendly fire, which appears to be the case in the story of "Swift Boat Down." This is a story quite unlike anything I have ever come about. Jim Steffes was an engineer on a Swift Boat in Vietnam participating in "Operation Market Time," which he describes in his book as such" "It was a mission to stop the infiltration of men and material by sea along the entire South Vietnamese coastline; to provide gunfire support to friendly ground units; and to provide psychological warfare operations as needed. A system of patrol areas was set up to enforce the security of the South Vietnamese coastline to deny them to the enemy. Since the majority of friendly commerce moved by water using the coastline intermingling with a large commercial fishing industry, the problem of detecting enemy movement mixed with friendly watercraft became a complicated task. This was an advantage, which the enemy exploited, in the early days of the war. The patrol areas extended from the Demilitarized Zone at the North and South Vietnamese border all the way south, around the Ca Mau Peninsula and then northwest to the Cambodian border. PCF's, also known as "Swift Boats" were assigned to areas from the coastline to approximately 2 miles out at sea." Steffes was part of a six man team, usually cross trained to know each others jobs, that patrolled South Vietnamese waterways making sure that the vast array of sampans were not smuggling weapons, ammunition, or any contraband from the North to the South, in the enemy attempt to make the South China Sea a "Ho Chi Minh Waterway." He described his boat's duties, the PCF-12, as follows: : "Once on station, we began to check out the area for boat traffic and look for suspicious looking junks and sampans. Sometimes while proceeding toward a group of fishing sampans, one will break off and head away from the group. Immediately, the crew springs into Action Stations, the engines roar to life, and the fighting Swift Heads for the evading sampan." While it would make an interesting book per se about his ordeal on the high seas maintaining surveillance during "Operation Market Time," Steffes saved that for a second book he wrote three years later. Instead, this book focuses on the sinking of PCF-19, of which Steffes asserts: "For this author, the story that has whirled around in my head for all these years and the yearning to tell this story may be fulfilled." Jim Steffes arrived in South Vietnam in April of 1968, two months after the Tet Offensive, which was a series of surprise attacks by the Vietcong and the North Vietnamese Army on distinctive cities, towns, and hamlets throughout South Vietnam. It was considered to be a turning point in the Vietnam War. The combined forces of the V.C. and the N.V.A. were about 85,000 strong, and began on January 31, 1968, the first day of the Lunar New Year, Vietnam's most important holiday. It took weeks for U.S. and South Vietnamese troops to retake all of the captured cities, including the former imperial capital of Hue. Despite the offensive being a flagrant military failure for the Communists, it turned into an ironic political and psychological victory for them as it dramatically contradicted optimistic claims by the U.S. Government that the war was all but over. On the night of June 15-16, 1968 Jim Steffes, as a crewman on PCF-12, was involved in an incident where a Swift Boat, PCF-19, was sunk with five crewmen perishing. Although it was later deemed "friendly fire, at the time it was two rockets fired from an unidentified aircraft that did the dirty deed. Close to the DMZ's nineteenth parallel, Steffes gives credible testimony in this book of both survivors and eye witnesses observing a lighted aircraft that maneuvered identical to that of a helicopter that was in the area of the attack. Steffes himself watched as his PCF -12 arrived at the sight of the sinking and observed the following: "I saw a round clear nose with what appeared to be two men sitting side by side in an aircraft. a red light under the aircraft was blinking and other lights were steady red and green. Mr Snyder (the Captain of PCF-12)was sitting on the edge of the gun tub when he saw the helicopter to starboard fire a rocket. I walked back to the stern as I passed the after control position, I felt a rush of heat and the hair on my neck stood up. I turned my head to see a small explosion in the water off our port beam. Apparently, the other aircraft fired a rocket that passed between our antennas and exploded in the water. Mr. Snyder must have heard it as well as PCF-12 jumped to max speed to clear the area. We drove at this speed making zigzag patterns so as to not be a clear target." Later, after Steffes boat returned to port in Danang, he was asked to describe the helicopter he saw, which the artist drew based on this. The result drawn of Steffes description? A Soviet built M14 "Hound" helicopter! "Swift Boat Down" is the story of how this attack was wrongly convoluted into a friendly fire incident, with bodies missing from the morgue in Danang, paperwork botched, a sailor unfairly deemed missing in action, and most ignominiously, the subsequent investigation findings of friendly fire being strictly based on exclusion, i.e. the absence of wreckage incorrectly combined with a real event of friendly fire twenty four hours later. Because U.S. jets fired at one American Cruiser and one Australian Frigate within a short time span of the sinking of PCF-19, the events were incongruously linked. In the ladder event, the Aussie Frigate had 2 KIA's and 11 WIA's, but the crucial element was that pieces of U.S. missiles were found on both ships. The twisted logic, despite all evidence Steffes painstakingly documents throughout this book, from Vietnamese witnesses, divers that were on the wreck, the medic on the scene that processed the bodies, pilots that flew in the area, experts in Russian avionics, and even a trip back to Vietnam a decade later, still has this event incorrectly in the record books as a friendly fire incident. Although the authors investigation has not changed this ruling even today, Steffes writes: I was determined to write this story regardless of the fact that the official findings will never be changed. In the political climate of 1968 with America's thoughts of war and ending it on most of their minds it is easy to bring a quick closure to this incident by calling it "friendly fire: and moving on. The media was satisfied and a war weary public felt that it was"just one of those accidents in war. I took the facts as I know that, coupled with testimony from other Marine, Navy, Coast Guard, and Air Force Veterans that were there and told the story as all of us believe it really happened I make the argument that given the proper atmosphere and time to investigate all areas of this incident a different finding may have been reached." This faulty U.S. Government conclusion of the sinking of PCF-19 being attributed to friendly fire is attacked throughout the book. Steffes quotes a Major Stefannson, who when he tried to report his sightings of North Vietnamese helicopters existing over South Vietnam, was castigated as follows: "I too saw one of the NVA choppers up real close. It was reported to Division, but like many other things, I don't think we were believed. When we first reported seeing helicopters at night, an Army team from Saigon flew up to Battalion and took our observers into "custody." They tried to break our report, even accusing us of being influenced by funny cigarettes. I found the visitors from the South to be disgusting." Steffes points out that there were NVA sapper swimmers that were dropped off in the water by enemy choppers near these Swift Boat operations, and he believes PCF-19 ran into one of these swimmer drop-off missions. Why was this classified as friendly fire? Air Command repeatedly claimed no U.S. Aircraft was in the area of the sinking of PC-19 on the night of this tragedy. The author insists that the key to this mislabeling was the events of June 16/17, with the attacks on the two allied warships. The attack of PCF-19 and the 2 warships both occurred within twenty four hours of each other, were both after midnight, both involved aerial attack on a sea vessel. Steffes postulates "It appears that higher commands wanted to give the impression that both events were related once the decision had been made to declare it 'friendly fire." This quick, 160 page read is packed with facts, evidence, maps and photos that will truly make you ruminate as to what the truth was with PCF-19 and question why even today this is still wrongly classified as a "friendly fire" incident. Unquestionably, this book is an eloquent revelation that events are not as they appear to be, calling for justice awaiting the crew of PCF-19, for which they so righteously deserve.