While the Junk Force was concerned with inshore and Delta river traffic, the Vietnamese Navy Sea force ships assigned to Market Time patrol were ordinarily placed under the operational control of the Coastal Zone commanders. General Vo Nguyen Giap, Peoples War, Peoples Army. The former had six River Assault Groups (RAGs) which were patterned after the old French Division Naval DAssaut, but with two significant differences. The number of people then living under Vietnamese control in the area was estimated to be about 9,000. But it was a necessary business and the Brown Water sailor attacked the job of getting it done with the same enthusiasm he had shown in seeking out the enemy on the rivers and canals of the Delta. Furthermore, ground commanders generally tended to discount the economic and strategic importance of the Nam Can. Coast Guard Squadron One provided WPBs for barrier patrols along the seventeenth parallel and in the Gulf of Thailand. Waterborne transportation is relied upon almost exclusively in the rural areas for the movement of goods and crops to market, and for inter-village communications. He found himself the victim of a mutiny on 8 April 1965, when his Force Commanders and other senior officers rose against him, charging him with graft in the operation of a fleet of coastal freighters, which had been seized by the Government at the time of the 1963 coup. A new family of fighting craft appeared, newly built or adapted from older boats in our inventory. By the summer of 1966, nearly 50 per cent of the senior officers of the Navy were either out of the country or assigned to non-Navy duties in the country. The heaviest fighting of the war had occurred in the North, and consequently the bulk of the French Expeditionary Force and the great mass of its equipment were located there when the fighting ended. The Trn Hng o site subsequently became the headquarters of Republic of Korea armed forces in Vietnam. At 08:00 on 15 February, USAF General John W. Vogt Jr., as USSAG/7AF commander, took over from MACV control of American air operations. In the meantime, TF 116, Game Warden, had been established (on 18 December 1965) with an assigned mission "to assist the Government of South Vietnam in denying the enemy the use of the major rivers of the Delta and the Rung Sat Special Zone. Rear Admiral Ward was assigned additional duty as CTF 116. Original plans called for four APBs, two ARLs, two LSTs, and two River Assault Squadrons (RAS) each consisting of 34 converted LCM-6 craft (26 ATCs, 5 Monitors, 2 CCBs, 1 Refueler), and 16 ASPBs which would be newly constructed.6. SEALS were used on special warfare and intelligence missions. Ultimately, only the rivers and memories will remain. Many came from the enemy controlled region of the Nam Can. The DAO performed many of the same roles of MACV within the restrictions imposed by the Paris Peace Accords until the Fall of Saigon. The economy of the Nam Can grew dramatically, the population mushroomed, and the pace of the pacification effort was quickened to keep in step. On 14 April 1967, the first of the permanent Riverine Assault Force support ships, the USS Kemper County (LST-854), arrived at Vung Tau. Our Navy itself was old and afflicted with bloc obsolescence. The first permanent United States naval presence in Vietnam was established in August 1950, soon after the outbreak of the Korean War, when the Navy Section of Military Assistance Advisory Group, Indo china, was formed in Saigon with Commander James B. Cannon, U. S. Navy, and seven officers and men. Sea Float sailors constructed schools in each of the two newly settled hamlets. Coastal Group 16, Naval Advisory Group Vietnam - Navy Unit Directory The Commander-in-Chief Pacific Fleet, common superior of Commander Seventh Fleet and Chief, Naval Advisory Group, determined which units would be assigned. In April, Operation Silver Mace II was launched with combined U. S. Navy, U. S. Air Force, Vietnamese Army, Navy, and Marine Corps units. Two corps-level HQs were established in 1965-66, Task Force Alpha (soon to become I Field Force, Vietnam) for U.S. forces in the II Corps Tactical Zone and II Field Force, Vietnam, for U.S. Army forces in the III Corps Tactical Zone. VMH: Vietnam - usnamemorialhall.org The disadvantages of this support concept for continuing boat operations were the same as noted earlier for the offshore support of PBRs during early Game Warden operations. The Special Forces company commander reported that he couldnt hold the beachhead overnight and that with "very little arms and ammunition remaining, it was not worthwhile to land again. Conversely, the Vietnamese sailors, seeing that the boats and the responsibility for operating them were soon going to be theirs, would be expected to redouble their efforts to prepare themselves. Group. Many of these lines of supply run through or across navigable water, and naval operations, dating back to the Indochina War, have endeavored to sever or disrupt them. The senior military officer on this Mission was Major General Graves B. Erskine, U. S. Marine Corps, and the naval officers attached were Captain Mervin Halstead and Commander Ralph J. Michels. At peak strength in 1968, the American naval advisory . Efforts at population and resources control should concentrate, they argued, in areas where the population was heavier and the resources greater than they were in the uninviting barrens of the Nam Can. Despite an avowed intention late in the war to increase the combat role of the Vietnamese, particularly under the ill-starred Navarre Plan, the war ended with the Vietnamese Navy operating only one Infantry Landing Ship Large (LSIL), one LCU, and some thirty smaller amphibious craft. By September the Nam Can population figures were growing at a rapid rate, doubling the number of people in the Sea Float area of operations every 25 days. Its conclusions were that infiltration from the North existed on a scale sufficient to support the expanded level of operations by the enemy in South Vietnam, and that only nominal resistance to that infiltration was being made. Advisors reported that even these statistics did not reflect the true situation, since units were frequently only "administratively employed. The irregulars were ordinarily recruited from the population in the vicinity of each coastal group. The Vung Ro Incident confirmed what had long been suspected, but for which there had been no previous evidence.1 The large amount of material discovered indicated that more than just a few shipments had been made. Miscellaneous materials that could not be associated with any one office on the commanders staff also are indicated. "Market Time in the Gulf of Thailand, by Captain James A. Hodgman, U. S. Coast Guard, in Naval Review 1968. The group included ATCs, Monitors, and ASPBs. Properly supported by vigorous and aggressive bank patrols, it is possible that the barriers might have succeeded in virtually shutting off what they could only curtail in the absence of the required level of ground support. The MSOs were not themselves permitted to intercept suspect shipping, but used their radar to vector Vietnamese naval units to suspicious contacts. With the elapse of five months, all the three same brigades remained in the new division, but the brigade at Chu Lai was now named the 3rd Brigade, 4th Infantry Division, after a responsibility swap that had occurred in August. The year 1964 was one of rapid change in the posture of U. S. Navy activity in Vietnam.