The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

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 0.95

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 0.58

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.

PREVIEW： Epochs #249 ｜ Vietnam Navy SEALs

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