The men of the U.S. Navy's brown-water force played a vital but often overlooked role in the Vietnam War. Known for their black berets and limitless courage, they maneuvered their aging, makeshift craft along shallow coastal waters and twisting inland waterways to search out the enemy. In this moving tribute to their contributions and sacrifices, Tom Cutler records their dramatic story as only a participant could. His own Vietnam experience enables him to add a striking human dimension to the account. The terror of firefights along the jungle-lined rivers, the rigors of camp life, and the sudden perils of guerrilla warfare are conveyed with authenticity. At the same time, the author's training as a historian allows him to objectively describe the scope of the navy's operations and evaluate their effectiveness. Winner of the Navy League's Alfred Thayer Mahan Award for Literary Achievement in 1988 when the book was first published, Cutler is credited with having written the definitive history of the brown-water sailors, an effort that has helped readers better understand the nature of U.S. involvement in the war.

The United States Navys fight for control of the waters of Southeast Asia. By far the greatest contribution of the narrative is the insight it provides into the hows and whys of United States involvement in Vietnam, and the attempt of that involvement to bring freedom to those who were unable to achieve it by their own efforts. We see the United States more as a caretaker and less as a policeman in terms of motivation for its involvement half a world away. Andwe see the tremendous price paid by those who served to ensure that freedom ordinary men who, by fate, were thrown together in a strange land, and who fulfilled a part of their destiny, and their Nations, on the brown water. Weldon Bleiler

This work describes riverine combat during the Vietnam War, emphasizing the operations of the U.S. Navy’s River Patrol Force, which conducted Operation Game Warden; the U.S. Army-Navy Mobile Riverine Force, the formation that General William Westmoreland said “saved the Mekong Delta” during the Tet Offensive of 1968; and the Vietnam Navy. An important section details the SEALORDS combined campaign, a determined effort by U.S. Navy, South Vietnamese Navy, and allied ground forces to cut enemy supply lines from Cambodia and disrupt operations at base areas deep in the delta. The author also covers details on the combat vessels, helicopters, weapons, and equipment employed in the Mekong Delta as well as the Vietnamese combatants (on both sides) and American troops who fought to secure Vietnam’s waterways. Special features focus on the ubiquitous river patrol boats (PBRs) and the Swift boats (PCFs), river warfare training, Vice Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt Jr., the Black Ponies aircraft squadron, and Navy SEALs. This publication may be of interest to history scholars, veterans, students in advanced placement history classes, and military enthusiasts given the continuing impact of riverine warfare on U.S. naval and military operations in the 21st century. Special Publicity Tie-In: Commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War (Commemoration dates: 28 May 2012 - 11 November 2025). This is the fifth book in the series, "The U.S. Navy and the Vietnam War." TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction The First Indochina War The Vietnam Navy River Force and American Advisors The U.S. Navy and the Rivers of Vietnam SEALORDS The End of the Line for U.S. and Vietnamese River Forces Sidebars: The PBR Riverine Warfare Training Battle Fleet of the Mekong Delta High Drama in the Delta Vice Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt Jr. Black Ponies The Swift Boat Warriors with Green Faces Suggested Reading

A memoir of heroism, comradeship, danger, and laughter aboard a Vietnam patrol craft, as a small crew grew into a seasoned combat team. Includes photos. During the Vietnam War, 3500 officers and men served in the Swift Boat program in a fleet of 130 boats with no armor plating. The boats patrolled the coast and rivers of South Vietnam, facing deadly combat, intense lightning firefights, storms, and many hidden dangers. This action-packed account by the Officer in Charge of PCF 76 makes you part of the Swift Boat crew. The six-man crew of PCF 76 was made up of volunteers from all over the United States, eager to serve their country in a unique type of duty not seen since the PT boats of WWII. This inexperienced and disparate group of men would meld into a team that formed an unbreakable lifelong bond. After training, they were plunged into a twelve-month tour of duty. Combat took place in the closest confines imaginable, where the enemy could be hidden behind a passing sand dune or a single sniper could be concealed in an onshore bunker. In many cases, the rivers became so narrow there was barely room to maneuver or turn around. The only way out might be into a deadly ambush. This is not a Vietnam memoir filled with political discussions or apologies. It simply tells the stories of these young, valiant sailors with humor and heartfelt emotion—in a suspenseful, surprising book that pays tribute to these sailors who, upon returning home, asked little of their country and received less.

Patrolling the Mekong Delta's Bassac River in heavily armed fiberglass boats, the U.S. Navy's brown-water sailors took the war to the enemy in some of the most extraordinary operations of the Vietnam War. Here is the first important memoir to come out of the brown-water navy, by a former Lieutenant Commander.

During the 1920s Herbert O. Yardley was chief of the first peacetime cryptanalytic organization in the United States, the ancestor of today's National Security Agency. Funded by the U.S. Army and the Department of State and working out of New York, his small and highly secret unit succeeded in breaking the diplomatic codes of several nations, including Japan. The decrypts played a critical role in U.S. diplomacy. Despite its extraordinary successes, the Black Chamber, as it came to known, was disbanded in 1929. President Hoover's new Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson refused to continue its funding with the now-famous comment, "Gentlemen do not read other people's mail." In 1931 a disappointed Yardley caused a sensation when he published this book and revealed to the world exactly what his agency had done with the secret and illegal cooperation of nearly the entire American cable industry. These revelations and Yardley's right to publish them set into motion a conflict that continues to this day: the right to freedom of expression versus national security. In addition to offering an exposé on post-World War I cryptology, the book is filled with exciting stories and personalities.

In 1942 German U-boats turned the shipping lanes off Cape Hatteras into a sea of death. Cruising up and down the U.S. eastern seaboard, they sank 259 ships, littering the waters with cargo and bodies. As astonished civilians witnessed explosions from American beaches, fighting men dubbed the area "Torpedo Junction." And while the U.S. Navy failed to react, a handful of Coast Guard sailors scrambled to the front lines. Outgunned and out-maneuvered, they heroically battled the deadliest fleet of submarines ever launched. Never was Germany closer to winning the war. In a moving ship-by-ship account of terror and rescue at sea, Homer Hickam chronicles a little-known saga of courage, ingenuity, and triumph in the early years of World War II. From nerve-racking sea duels to the dramatic ordeals of sailors and victims on both sides of the battle, Hickam dramatically captures a war we had to win--because this one hit terrifyingly close to home.