The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters - February 08, 2026


PREVIEW： Epochs #249 ｜ Vietnam Navy SEALs


Episode Stats


Length

21 minutes

Words per minute

176.59094

Word count

3,884

Sentence count

222

Harmful content

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

In this episode of Epochs, I talk about US Navy SEALs in Vietnam, the so-called "Backwater War" in 1967, and the work they were doing in and around the Mekong Delta region of Vietnam.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 Hello and welcome back to Epochs. As the last few episodes I've been talking about
00:00:03.740 Special Forces raids and operations. I thought I should continue that at least for one more week,
00:00:09.240 maybe going forward more in the future. This time I thought I would talk about
00:00:13.580 US Special Forces. I'm going to talk about the Navy SEALs in Vietnam, the so-called Backwater
00:00:21.100 War in 1967 in Vietnam. And again I'll be doing quite a lot of reading this week, interrupting
00:00:27.200 myself, giving a bit more detail here or there. So this is an account of specifically 1967, so
00:00:32.720 relatively early on in the whole process. It was when the fighting was arguably at its height,
00:00:39.980 certainly in the Mekong Delta region and certainly as far as the Special Forces were concerned,
00:00:45.540 arguably. So this is just a snapshot really of 1967 of what the underwater demolition teams or
00:00:52.280 the Navy SEALs were doing in and around there. I hope you enjoy it. Let's just dive straight
00:00:57.180 in. So this is an account from TL Bossiljevak and before his account starts there's a bit of
00:01:03.560 blurb and I'll read that out to you. It says, taking their name from the elements they are trained to
00:01:08.080 fight in under and on the sea, air and land, the US Navy SEALs have their origins in the wartime
00:01:14.840 underwater demolition teams, UDTs. Bear that in mind because I'll be saying UDTs quite often and that
00:01:21.920 stands for underwater demolition teams. So that was where the Navy SEALs, their original origins
00:01:28.740 were from. Like it was say in a moment, clearing the beaches before D-Day, stuff like that because
00:01:34.360 they're known as frogmen. They're in the Navy, they're not in the army, they're Navy people and
00:01:39.480 sort of like amphibious warfare. Frogmen, okay. The underwater demolition teams which cleared safe
00:01:45.140 lanes through German beach defences for the 1944 Allied invasion of Normandy. During the Korean War,
00:01:50.720 UDTs prepared the way for the amphibious landing at Inchon. In 1960, a US Navy study suggested the
00:01:58.120 need for units even more specialized than the UDTs. So they've got the underwater demolition teams but
00:02:04.020 they'd like the same guys to be able to fight as extremely competent riflemen as well and other
00:02:09.900 things and be a parachutist and in the end, you know, full-blown special forces, Navy SEALs can do
00:02:15.340 everything. That's the idea. And in 1962, President John F. Kennedy authorized the establishment of two
00:02:21.680 new teams bearing the appropriate acronym of SEAL, Sea, Air and Land. Recruited principally from the
00:02:27.960 UDTs, the SEALs were soon deployed in Vietnam. Although they would later see action throughout the war zone,
00:02:34.120 their initial area of operations was the Mekong Delta in the southernmost corner of Vietnam. With its
00:02:39.660 immense patchwork of swamps, river and rice paddies, the Delta was a natural stronghold for the Viet Cong. 1.00
00:02:46.060 That's the North Vietmanese guerrillas, the North Vietmanese enemy that they're fighting, the Viet Cong.
00:02:51.460 The tasks assigned to the SEALs, as can be seen from the following accounts of their operations in 1967,
00:02:57.660 ranged from setting up listening posts, to monitoring VC movements, to the demolition of VC bunkers.
00:03:03.900 More often than not, the SEALs were sent out in three-man detachments with the simple order
00:03:09.380 SAT-KONG, kill communists. In the first operations, insertion was made by Mike Boat, which are heavily
00:03:16.780 armoured riverine craft, but later by a Boston Whaler, which are 16-foot glass fibre craft with a very
00:03:23.800 shallow draft, or IBS, inflatable boat small. It's also irritable bowel syndrome, isn't it? But in this,
00:03:30.480 IBS means inflatable boat small, or even by submarine. Later we'll hear about the USS Tunny,
00:03:38.380 which is a submarine. The SEAL's Vietnam arsenal included the 5.56mm M63A1 stoner light machine gun,
00:03:47.480 which was heavily valued by the SEAL teams, since it could be easily converted for a number of different
00:03:52.600 roles, including submachine gun and assault rifle. They often called it the pig, just because it was a
00:03:58.360 pig to carry. The M79 grenade launcher, and the 9mm M45 Carl Gustav submachine gun, which was popular
00:04:07.660 due to its reliability. For clandestine ops, the SEALs carried a 9mm Smith & Western Mark 22 Model 0
00:04:15.320 silence pistol, nicknamed the Hush Puppy, since it was developed originally for silencing enemy guard
00:04:21.080 dogs. Combat knives such as the Randall and Cabar were standard. Tiger stripe camouflage fatigues were
00:04:27.140 often worn in preference to the usual combat issue green leaf pattern uniform, and many SEALs wore
00:04:32.660 blue jeans, finding that these best withstood the Mekong Mosquitoes. A special combat coat was
00:04:39.280 developed for the use of SEALs, made of camouflage material with a built-in flotation chamber, and
00:04:45.380 designed to carry everything that a SEAL would need on a mission. During the Vietnam War, the SEALs were
00:04:50.040 accredited with 580 VC killed, and since Vietnam, SEAL teams have also seen service in the invasion
00:04:57.020 of Panama, Grenada, and in the 1991 Gulf War. End quote. Of course, there's a lot more than that, but
00:05:03.180 this book I'm reading from is actually quite old, from the 90s, the mid-90s, so, you know, SEALs have
00:05:07.840 done a lot more since then. But okay, let's let the actual account of T.L. Boziljevat, who tells us all
00:05:13.960 about what the SEALs did in Vietnam in 1967. Okay, here we go. Quote. By the beginning of 1967, nearly
00:05:20.840 400,000 U.S. servicemen were involved in Vietnam, i.e., you know, a massive deployment. The war
00:05:27.820 continued to build on all fronts, and then the United States continued to pressure the North
00:05:32.200 Vietnamese and Viet Cong to find an end to the conflict. Navy special warfare involvement also
00:05:37.460 expanded during the year. To date, only one frogman had been killed in UDT SEAL operations in country.
00:05:44.680 The success of SEAL Team 1 platoons led to a wider role in the conflict for both SEAL teams. There was
00:05:50.880 only SEAL Team 1 and SEAL Team 2 at this point, consisting of many platoons each, but there you go.
00:05:55.920 The West Coast-based SEAL Team 1 expanded in manpower, putting additional operational platoons
00:06:02.060 into the Mekong Delta. Meanwhile, for the first time, SEAL Team 2 began to deploy platoons into the
00:06:07.640 war zone at the beginning of 1967. This year would mark a great increase in the Delta fighting. The
00:06:13.540 war in the backwaters of the canals and rivers would no longer be limited to the Ruong Sat Special Zone,
00:06:19.880 the RSSZ. So I'm going to say that a lot as well, or it gets said a lot in this account, the RSSZ,
00:06:25.960 which is the Ruong Sat Special Zone. Put maps up so you can see what we're talking about.
00:06:30.260 The Viet Cong increased their attacks on Saigon shipping in the RSSZ during January 1967. Out of
00:06:37.140 a dozen incidents, three involved minings, while the majority of the others involved ambushes.
00:06:42.020 Two SEAL squads were inserted by Mike Boat to patrol the RSSZ on the 6th of January. While conducting
00:06:48.120 their reconnaissance mission along the Rack Muay Creek, the SEALs discovered a small base camp and
00:06:53.520 subsequently destroyed it. Another patrol on the 9th was detected by enemy forces as it searched a small
00:06:58.900 complex 14 miles south of NAR-B. While at least four VC attempted to surround the SEALs, the frogmen
00:07:05.360 slipped into the Ra-Kat-Lay-B creek and swam quietly downriver. They silently passed a large enemy base
00:07:11.700 camp but escaped to their helicopter extraction point. Once out of the area, airstrikes were called
00:07:16.860 in on the communist forces with unknown results. Documents captured in December 1966 during Operation
00:07:22.820 Charleston revealed that the VC were using several freshwater wells in the RSSZ for resupply.
00:07:29.280 Subsequent aerial photography confirmed that the VC were using numerous trails leading to the wells.
00:07:34.720 SEALs were immediately ordered to destroy them. On the 12th of January 1967, two six-man teams were
00:07:39.740 inserted by a helicopter. Using explosives, the teams demolished eight wells near Than Thro Hamlet in the
00:07:46.700 Lower RSSZ. Intelligence reports from a US Army advisor in Kanjiao two months later indicated that
00:07:53.900 this action caused great hardship among the communist units in the facility, forcing them to carry water
00:07:59.780 from a much greater distance. Four days later, the SEALs destroyed a large rice cache they discovered in a
00:08:05.400 camp 12 miles south of NAR-B. While the SEALs were moving to insert for one of the demolition operations,
00:08:11.260 another VC ambush of an LCM riverboat occurred on the 20th of January. Many of the SEALs and Navy
00:08:17.580 crewmen aboard were wounded and one visit officer was killed, but the US forces fought back aggressively
00:08:22.320 and ended their mission by killing four enemy soldiers and capturing nearly 360 VC suspects,
00:08:29.100 along with numerous documents and a large quantity of suppliers. Most of the detainees turned out to be
00:08:33.940 active Viet Cong. The SEALs had been operating in conjunction with a US Army unit that was sweeping the
00:08:39.700 area. The SEALs' mission had been to patrol the river and to prevent enemy forces from invading the
00:08:44.700 Army sweep. Other patrols reconned the mangroves for VC activity, many times finding their movement
00:08:50.140 hampered by thick vegetation. On the 9th of January, one patrol was forced to extract by a Maguire rig
00:08:55.780 via a helicopter winch after it was unable to make its way to a riverine extraction site. A small and
00:09:01.960 deserted VC camp and rice cache were found and destroyed by men from SEAL Team 1 on the 16th.
00:09:07.400 The cache, which held an estimated 17.5 tonnes of rice, was scattered by 160 pounds of explosives that
00:09:14.800 the frogmen had requested via helicopter. Although missions were run almost daily, only a handful of
00:09:19.980 enemy contacts resulted. On countless patrols, the SEALs heard the Viet Cong use small arms fire in
00:09:25.700 patterns as signalling and warning from one enemy unit to another. It was easy for the communists to
00:09:31.300 hear the approach of the river vessels used for insertion and extraction by the SEALs. The VC sensed the
00:09:37.400 of the new deadly Navy units and gave them a wide berth. Also during January, Operation Deck House 5
00:09:43.760 utilised men from UDT-12, again remember that's Underwater Demolition Team, so UDT-12, to find and
00:09:51.500 mark safe channels in the Koqian and Hamluong rivers. The success of the operation in the Thanfu secret
00:09:58.520 zone was due in large part to the fact that the Yi missions included channel searches, surf operations,
00:10:04.680 mine searches and salvage work. On the 2nd and 3rd of February, four SEAL Team 1 squads conducted a
00:10:11.020 series of patrolling sweeps in the RSSZ. Several VC bunkers and a concrete system were demolished and
00:10:17.080 four enemy Sampans were fired upon. Sampans is like a small boat, like a kind of a canoe almost,
00:10:23.900 a bit bigger than a little roadboat, but yeah, a boat, a Sampan, a small wooden boat. Additionally,
00:10:30.280 a small quantity of ordnance and equipment was captured. Patrols all throughout the spring consisted
00:10:35.740 of intelligence recons, listening posts and ambushes, and there was a marked improvement in
00:10:40.940 the objectives of the missions compared to the earlier freestyle ambushes of the year before.
00:10:46.460 A few of the operations were designed to abduct Viet Cong for the purpose of gaining intelligence
00:10:51.100 through interrogation. Many team members saw fresh evidence of enemy forces in certain areas,
00:10:56.240 but few actually made any contact. Almost immediately after arriving in-country on the
00:11:01.260 31st of January, SEAL Team 2 patrols commenced operations. Prior to leaving the continental United
00:11:07.000 States, two SEAL Team 2 platoons, consisting of two officers and 10 enlisted men each, stopped over
00:11:12.800 for two weeks in San Diego to train and confer with SEAL Team 1 elements. During their stop on the west
00:11:18.500 coast, the men trained in weapons and tactics in the desert located east of the city, received intelligence
00:11:24.280 updates and briefs, and prepared their equipment for deployment. The group, which was to include a
00:11:29.120 specially trained scout dog named Prince, arrived at Binh Thuoy airfield outside Kan Tho at the end of
00:11:35.740 the month. From there they moved to Nga B, where some initial orientation missions were run with
00:11:41.160 elements from Team 1 before the east coast units struck out into their own designated areas of operation
00:11:46.640 in the Mekong Delta along the Bassac River and its tributaries. On the 7th of February,
00:11:51.480 one platoon advised the 32nd Vietnamese Ranger Battalion and called in air and artillery support
00:11:57.660 for the unit, yet this type of initial operation was of little consequence. It took a few weeks to
00:12:02.980 iron out problems concerning exactly how the SEALs were to be deployed in the Delta. Many of the same
00:12:08.080 questions that had faced SEAL Team 1 elements in the RSSZ a year before were now echoed in the Delta
00:12:14.740 regions where other platoons were hoping to work. By the second week in March, these issues had been
00:12:19.800 resolved. The Team 2 SEALs were to perform the majority of their missions within five kilometers
00:12:24.700 of the major rivers in the Delta, but they would penetrate further inland with special approval.
00:12:29.520 At times, the elements became the gravest enemy of all, i.e. the jungle and the waterways, of course.
00:12:35.440 Well before dawn on the 13th of February, men from East 12 Detachment Charlie launched from the deck
00:12:41.080 of the Tunny in motorized small boats off Sahuin in 2nd Corps. Again, remember the Tunny is the
00:12:47.500 submarine. Large swells met the men as they anchored the command boat just outside the surf zone and sent
00:12:54.100 two swimmer scouts ashore. In the darkness of the squall, the command boat capsized as it was hit by an
00:12:59.680 estimated 20-foot breaker. The three men on board were unceremoniously dumped into the water.
00:13:04.860 They struggled to the beach as the other boat was rocked by the high surf and fought to remain
00:13:10.440 upright. UDT men in the second boat activated an emergency flare to notify the sub of the situation.
00:13:16.920 The Tunny began to respond to the call for assistance and launched a third IBS. The frogmen
00:13:22.540 from the command boat were barely able to make their way ashore and link up with the scout swimmers
00:13:27.280 stranded on the beach. After burying their radio and the remains of their boat, they began several
00:13:32.380 attempts to swim through the surf. Three of the men made it to the second boat just after 0600 hours.
00:13:37.900 Meanwhile, the Tunny had moved to within 1,300 yards of the beach and anchored. She called on a
00:13:43.140 nearby LST, which stands for landing ship tank, landing ship tank, LST, the USS Westchester County
00:13:51.140 for additional help. The LST launched an amphibious landing craft to join in the search. Just after it had
00:13:57.520 launched, another swimmer was reported recovered by the second IBS. The last swimmer,
00:14:02.180 was recovered by the landing craft after about an hour and the vessel linked up with the sub to
00:14:07.120 transfer all hands. Luckily, the frogmen were uninjured, although they were exhausted by the
00:14:11.600 ordeal. The necessary hydrographic data was finally obtained and Operation Deckhouse 6, designed as
00:14:18.020 another marine assault to throw the communists in 1st Corps off balance, was launched on the 16th of
00:14:23.560 February. New methods and tactics were developed by the frogmen, mostly as a result of trial and error.
00:14:28.540 The seals were beginning to discover that wearing boots into the enemy territory was a dead giveaway.
00:14:34.220 Enemy forces went barefoot in most areas, and they would easily pick up the tracks of their
00:14:38.300 enemy's footwear. Many seal platoons began to go barefoot themselves and carried a pair of
00:14:43.040 lightweight coral booties or tennis shoes to be used only in certain terrain. In the mud and on the
00:14:49.240 hard-packed trails, bare feet additionally proved more sensitive and made careful movement along booby-trapped
00:14:54.960 trails more positive. A low-slung booby-trapped tripwire was more easily sensed on bare skin.
00:15:01.360 Stalking without boots also proved to be an absolutely silent method to penetrate an enemy
00:15:06.200 camp. Squad radios were used in the spring without impressive results. They seemed to be too noisy for
00:15:11.720 the small units attempting to remain as ghosts in the brush. Yeah, just to say, going barefoot in the
00:15:16.280 jungles of central Vietnam, in the Mekong Delta, wetlands. Yeah, I wouldn't do it. Get all sorts of
00:15:24.660 bites and, of course, cuts. All sorts of infections quite possible. Yeah, if I could possibly help it.
00:15:35.200 If you could possibly help it, you wouldn't want to go barefoot in the jungle. But obviously, these men
00:15:40.520 make the decision that it may well be a matter of life and death if they don't. So, any sort of
00:15:45.580 hardship they'll just put up with. U.S. ground troops' involvement in Vietnam continued to expand
00:15:50.460 steadily. In the third week of February, Operation Junction City was conducted in III Corps near the
00:15:56.000 Cambodian border, the largest military operation to date. It involved 22 U.S. battalions in a sweep and
00:16:02.700 destroy operation that targeted guerrilla base camps in the south. On the 3rd of March, UDT-11 relieved
00:16:08.980 UDT-12 at the forward-deployed underwater demolitions team in Westpac. UDT-12 later received
00:16:16.820 the Navy Unit's recommendation for its 1966-1967 Westpac cruise. The citation noted that the frogmen
00:16:24.160 reconned over 120 miles of beaches, rivers and harbours in the combat zone and provided other
00:16:29.900 valuable services to the 7th Fleet's amphibious forces. Also in March, UDT-11 received the same
00:16:35.920 award for operations between January 1964 and September 1966. Its effort included the reconnaissance
00:16:42.320 of over 110 miles of beaches and rivers and countless missions in support of the Pacific
00:16:47.260 Fleet's operations. Six LDNN were assigned to conduct training operations with U.S. Navy SEALs
00:16:53.580 out of NARB beginning on the 9th of March. In the initial after-action reports, the Americans felt
00:16:59.120 that the LDNN accompanying the units would be of greater value given a little more time and
00:17:04.340 experience. On the 11th, a 2nd platoon ambush, its first real contact of the tour, interdicted an
00:17:10.340 enemy resupply attempt 15 miles southeast of Kantho. Four VC were killed while the SEALs were extracted
00:17:17.080 by a riverine craft under fire. On the 12th of March, 20 sensors were implanted by a SEAL Team 1 platoon
00:17:23.920 in Vamsat. On the 15th of March, Admiral Sharp and Wald and General Westmoreland, the overall commander,
00:17:29.840 visited SEAL Team 1's detachment Gulf to express their personal admiration for the job the SEALs
00:17:35.600 were tackling all over the Delta. That same day, a small SEAL Team 1 ambush netted three VC killed and
00:17:42.140 several weapons and a small amount of operational equipment from an enemy sandpan. The mud, tidal flows
00:17:47.720 and nipper palms were not always the only environmental hazard. On a riverine abduction ambush mission on
00:17:53.600 17th of March, a SEAL Team 1 frogman encountered an obnoxious crocodile. The amphibian finally forced
00:17:59.680 the frogman to flee his position and shoot in self-defense. Now these are the words of this
00:18:04.020 individual SEAL Team member. He said, at the bank, in about three foot of water, I saw what looked like
00:18:09.440 a stump. The stump started moving closer to me. I stopped. It came closer and closer and when it was
00:18:15.340 about six feet away, I saw that the stump had two eyes and was pointing its snout at me. I moved back
00:18:21.360 about three or four feet, pointed my M16 and fired at him. And that's the end of his account. And we're
00:18:27.580 told, the noise compromised the ambush location and caused the men to extract. Always with a markedly
00:18:33.200 unique sense of humor, frogmen throughout Vietnam face their physical adversities with directness.
00:18:39.400 A sign composed and posted by the SEALs at Nabi read, welcome to the Nabi summer resort. For your 0.91
00:18:46.540 pleasure, we provide swimming facilities. Delightful frolics under the ships in the harbor. Boating
00:18:52.020 excursions. Try one of our famous moonlight cruises down the river. Camping trips. Enjoy a night out in
00:18:58.320 the open air as you sit comfortably and companionably beside a trail or a stream. End quote. On the 19th
00:19:05.380 of March, a SEAL Team 1 patrol carried a sniper rifle on an ambush abduction mission with poor results.
00:19:11.160 It seemed to be more trouble than benefit to lug the precision weapon through the mud and thick
00:19:16.220 vegetation, only to find fields of fire that could be covered easily by a weapon with regular iron
00:19:21.560 sights. Again, you're not going to be firing in the jungle. You're not going to be firing over any
00:19:25.820 sort of particularly long range. The biggest problem was that the sniper weapon was not an effective tool
00:19:31.200 at night for SEAL operations at that stage of the war, as the SEALs reported. The SEALs also attempted
00:19:37.300 to pioneer other new techniques in order to gain the upper hand against the sly and elusive enemy.
00:19:42.640 While most squads inserted by riverine craft into their patrol areas, some swam from their boats to
00:19:48.500 shore. A SEAL Team 1 group on the 19th of March jumped from the stern of its PBR as it continued to
00:19:54.780 move upriver. In this way, the engine noise continued at the same pitch and would not indicate to VC close
00:20:00.560 at hand that men had been placed ashore. The team inserted with minimal equipment. No radios were
00:20:06.000 carried. Each man had his weapon, two magazines of ammunition, a flare and a red lens flashlight.
00:20:12.140 Many platoons and squads used this method during the war to insert. It was found in the early years
00:20:17.540 that the engine noise at about 1500 to 1800 RPM from a PBR created enough ambient noise to cover
00:20:24.480 the technique. Another method was to coordinate an overflight of helicopters. Their noise and distraction
00:20:30.080 would often cover the noise of a team inserting or closing on a target. Other patrols utilised
00:20:35.820 false insurgents and extractions to try to catch the enemy. The riverine craft would feint putting
00:20:41.820 men ashore at various points to make the VC nervous and force them to move, a process similar to hunters
00:20:47.720 flushing a rabbit or quail from the bush. The SEALs would then try to catch the VC in ambush. During
00:20:53.280 false extractions, half of the team would depart to the patrol area as others remained in place to lure
00:20:58.960 the enemy into a sense of security as they saw and heard the partial patrol depart. A variation of the
00:21:04.620 false extraction, the double back ambush, had the entire patrol fake a withdrawal to the water as
00:21:10.020 if they were extracting. They would then hook around onto their own trail and lay an ambush for anyone
00:21:14.760 trailing or tracking them. The men of SEAL Team 2 were shifted slightly once again to take advantage of
00:21:20.300 these unorthodox tactics that they and other SEALs were mastering. On the 31st of March, 2nd Platoon were
00:21:26.920 moved to the PBR base at Mytho to begin operations in that part of the Delta. In April, more emphasis
00:21:34.180 was placed on intelligence collection to undermine VC patterns, locations and lines of communication and
00:21:40.220 supplier. SEALs were sent out to occupy observation and listening posts concealed in dense undergrowth
00:21:46.040 for up to seven days at a time, just sitting in the jungle for seven days straight. You have to be
00:21:50.960 extremely fit, incredible endurance and patience of course. We hope you enjoyed that video and if you
00:21:55.820 did please head over to lotusseaters.com for the full unabridged video.