What the USCG did in Vietnam

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I knew about USCG service during WWll, but I didn't know the CG served in VN. 8,000 served with several being highly decorated. Thanks for sharing the video, I enjoyed all of it.
 
Thanks for the post, both my father and father in law served in the USCG, both served right at the very tail end of WWII. My dad in the P.I. as a radio operator, my father in law learned navigation and served aboard a light ship up in the arctic. He took his navigation skills into the maritime service and worked his way up the ladder to full Captain with American President Lines. They both are gone now but would have truly appreciated your post.
My FIL was a character to say the least, navigation was his lifelong passion. On many of his voyages he would get a couple of midshipman that had just graduated from the Maritime Institute in Maryland. He would wait until the ship had left landfall and would then ask "Mr or Ms. what is our current position?" The young officer would walk over to the nav/sat and respond with the current reading. Old Jack would then walk over and shut the machine off and say "Massive power failure, what is our current position?" They would not have any idea how to figure out where they were. He would walk over to his locker and pull out his well worn sextant and begin Navigation 101. Many of his midshipman would later tell him that it was the most interesting thing they ever learned. He was a very good sailorman.
 
I was a US Naval Reservist, and after coming off active duty in 1970, attended drills for the next four years. Our US Naval Reserve Center also hosted US Marines, and US Coast Guard reserves.

I got to know several of the Coasties who also attended drills the same weekend as I did. I noticed that a lot of them, especially Boatswain's and Gunner's Mates had Viet Nam service ribbons. Seems like they ran PBR's and Swift boats along the coast, especially down toward Saigon. A couple of them also rated Purple Hearts. Their stock with me went up proportionately afterwards.

Semper Paratis.
 
I'm not sure about any Coast Guard presence on the Navy's Riverine Patrol Boats (like the one in Apocalypse Now), but the Coast Guard's 82-foot Point-class patrol boats were very active in the coastal and river zones, interdicting smuggling vessels and providing fire support with 50cal., 40mm, and 81-mm mortars. Offshore, the larger cutters provided interdiction and fire support with up to 5" guns.

I haven't watched the video yet, but in case it doesn't mention either of these events, both tragic, involving Coast Guardsmen in Vietnam: an 82-footer was strafed by friendly aircraft thinking it was an enemy vessel, and the CO (a LTJG) was killed and the XPO (a BMC, I think) was severely wounded; a Coast Guard LT attached to either the Army or Air Force as a helicopter pilot was killed when the chopper (I think it was a Jolly Green Giant) was hit by ground fire during rescue of a downed pilot.

As any Coast Guardsman learns during the first week of boot camp or OCS, "The Coast Guard is that hard nucleus around which the Navy forms in time of war." :)
 
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