Chapter 222B

The flag of North Vietnam flies ignominiously over this captured Swift boat after the US declared victory and went home.

But they proudly originated in the Gulf of Mexico, designed and built in Morgan City, LA to ferry men back and forth to the off-shore oil refineries. The CIA liked their utility and were part of the fleet used to harass Castro back in the 1961 Bay of Pigs days.

US Swift boats were not officially supposed to conduct raids into North Vietnam above the DMZ, but it probably happened. Da Nang harbor is reported to be the center for  CIA covert ops, although I couldn't verify it via their declassified secret documents . Page 192 of The Secret War Against Hanoi describes the escalating use of swift boats in the '64- '65 time period. The military MACV SOG Operation Plan 34A took over the Sacred Sword of the Patriots League psyops program on Feb 1, 1964 from the CIA. The larger patrol PTF Nasty boats under this operational plan attacked North Vietnamese targets setting in motion the Gulf of Tonkin Incident and our justification of escalation of the war for the next 10 years.

Col Linh South Vietnamese perspective.

The RVN perspective is meticulously laid out here.

In Vietnam in 1965 the Vung Ro Bay Incident proved the North was capable of supplying the south with arms via waterways. The Navy's Seventh Fleet initiated Operation Market Time which became Task Force 115 , a counter insurgency measure of brown water sailors to combat this menace. The permanent crews established for these swift boats are listed here . Story of he first swift boat PCF 4 taken out by a harbor mine.

The Senator John Kerry commanded PCF 44 and was rebuked for claiming they ventured into forbidden Cambodian waters for the CIA. Yet thanks to the Vietnam experience, the swift boats were brought back for the Iraq war. Afghanistan next?