In June 1965 the Chief of Civil Engineers in a letter to Chief of Naval Operations noted that the current planning for NSA did not contain Public Works components. In June, 1970, Captain Merdinger will become President of Washington College, Chestertown, Maryland. WebThe deep offshore waters are often referred to as blue waters and naval vessels operating on them are referred to as the Blue Water Navy. The latter, with 46 officers and 1,049 men per battalion, provided more general engineering support of a deliberate nature for the landing force (division and wing). Apparently roles and missions of the various forces had not been clarified to cover this contingency. ". Besides the ability to receive container ships with a tonnage of 50,000 DWT, Chan May port is also selected by the Asian Yacht Association to build a stop for yachts in Southeast Asia with the ability to welcome cruise ships. and a fine, almost completely uniform sand, which was hard to work in, made all vehicles useless except those with tracks. We frequently found in Vietnam that items were not in stock and long delays ensued in getting them. Information on the released Vietnamese workers is sparse, but many carried their newly developed skills into the Vietnamese Army, Vietnamese enterprises of various sorts, and the growing maintenance organizations supporting the U. S. forces. A few days later a typhoon hit Vietnam and I learned the The district invests in IT infrastructure. At the same time, Vung Tau port is one of two international gateways in Vietnam. And it soon became clear in the early months of the conflict that every able Seabee, sooner or later, would take his turn in Vietnam. The new port will augment northern Vietnams growth further. captain who had replaced me was killed while lying in his bed when the main Even in Saigon this appeared to be marginal in the early days (it later improved), with the result that the 100 or so Seabees loaned to NSA Saigon by Da Nang in 1966 were kept in the south until their individual tours were completed. In August of 1967 public works support of the I Corps MACV Advisors (mostly U. S. Army with all other services represented, including Australian Army) was started This not only called for roving teams of automotive and generator mechanics, but also brought permanently assigned Seabees from Public Works to all of the major advisor compounds in I CorpsQuang Tri, Hue, Hoi An, Tam Ky, and Quang Ngai. Practically all of the public works activity in the early months was internal to NSA itself and was theoretically limited to the "secure" areas; but as the troop buildup continued, the demand for an expanded public works organization became more pressing. U. S. combat troops, not "Advisors, were now committed to the land war in Asia which so many had hoped to avoid. The station hospital begun in 1965 had treated over 21,000 casualties, 44,000 nonbattle patients and one million outpatients flowing in from the hostile and disease-ridden I Corps environment. By 2030, this port will have 8 general cargo terminals with a length of 2,280 m. It is forecast that by 2020, the volume of goods via Chan May port will reach 7.4 million tons / year. & E. the Army essentially turned over the entire responsibility for repair and utilities to the contractor. Press BACK to return to this page). A number lasted only a short while, but, conversely, manysome 40 per cent of the Americans, for instancereturned for at least one additional tour. One month later, on 17 July, a Secretary of the Navy Notice established NSA Da Nang. Forerunners of the teams, detachments from regular battalions, had served in Ecuador from 1959 to 1962, in Chile from 1961 to 1963, and in Haiti from 1962 to 1963.Subsequently, Seabee Teams were to sea duty in the Dominican Republic, Upper Volta, Costa Rica, the Central African Republic, Liberia, and Thailand. Parenthetically, as a matter of comparison, it might be noted that the Army Engineers, who at their peak had 27 battalions in country, had two kinds of battalions combat and construction. The former, consisting of 34 officers, 735 men (and a few naval medical personnel) per battalion, provided close combat support to the division. In one way or another every career CEC officer will have some duty with Seabees, and most officers tend to consider Seabee duty among the most rewarding they have experienced. NMCB-10 had been, prior to the Marine landings, the alert battalion on Okinawa, prepared to move en masse to any trouble spot on short notice. To get young men into the Seabees simply to build up to the required numbers was not particularly difficult. Special requirements in Vietnamparticularly in the area of road and airfield construction raised the number by 125, primarily in the equipment operator and mechanics trades. These components were invaluable in getting the Seabee construction effort underway even though some obsolescent equipment was in the system. Included in the bulky items were some 250 pieces of tactical automotive and construction equipment such as bulldozers, tractors, and mobile cranes. PO3 Berglund in guard tower - NSAD Sa Huynh, RVN . At the same time we managed to generate an extensive military peace corps effort in and around the war. The cycle of eight months in country followed by six months back in the U. S. for leave, training, and regrouping cut to a minimum the number of individuals leaving the battalion during its deployment in Vietnam. The one hundred and fifty battalions of World War II had dwindled to two shortly thereafter, were rebuilt to eleven during the Korean War, and returned to ten from that point until the Vietnam build-up in 1965. This information should not be considered complete, up to date, and is not intended to be used in place of a visit, consultation, or advice of a legal, medical, or any other professional. All six were removed and fresh water tank trucks came to the port every two hours to WebDa Nang Vietnam 1972 stock footage and images. The entire video is 60 minutes long. In May 1966 they awarded a cost-plus-incentive-fee "Turn-Key" contract (a complete package, including design and construction) to Walter Kidde Constructors, a subsidiary of Electric Bond and Share Company, at an estimated cost of $52 million. Let us now take a look at the Navy's contributionmade up of disparate elements but brought together under the aegis of the Civil Engineer Corps. [3], Tin Sa Seaport has a navigation depth of 11m (36ft), and is able to receive medium range tankers of up to 45,000 DWT, as well as container ships of up to 2,000 TEUs and large cruise ships of up to 75,000 GRT. (However, it should be noted that all Seabees assigned to duty in Vietnam did not come under the command of 3rd Naval Construction Brigade. Address: 6 Raffles Quay, Singapore 048580. Similarly, though the battalions were led and predominantly staffed by Civil Engineer Corps (CEC) officers (17 of the 24), also included were officers of the Line and Supply (two each), and one each from the Medical, Dental, and Chaplain CorpsSeabees all. The mountains are full of caves, tunnels and Buddhist shrines just waiting to be explored! But as the Seabees in the battalions moved more into the tactical end of the business, there were other Seabees in country who did not; these were Public Works and Construction Battalion Maintenance Unit (CBMU) Seabees attached to the Naval Support Activities headquartered in Da Nang and Saigon, but actually spread all over the country. Untitled . During the take over of Even though there were few contingency plans upon which to build, the Naval Facilities Engineering Command was able to muster practically overnight a tremendous and unprecedented design and construction capability which was so essential to place and maintain combat troops ashore in Vietnam. Da Nang Port: more tourists, more worries, "Seabourn Odyssey Cruise Ship brings 352 visitors to Nng", The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger, "Da Nang Port facilities: Yards and Warehouses", "In Vietnam cruise ships dock at cargo ports", "Da Nang Port facilities: Navigation Channel", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Da_Nang_Port&oldid=1131352128, Articles containing Vietnamese-language text, Articles with unsourced statements from September 2013, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 3 January 2023, at 19:40. Like This Movie Trailer? Provided by Shannon Nichols. As the troop build-up mounted in 1965, the conflicting demands and changing priorities of the various services demonstrated the need for a new regulatory body on the staff of the U. S. Commander in Vietnam. Thus, after two years of experimentation and growth, the Seabee Command in Vietnam had developed into a 9,000 man, 12 battalion force of two regiments under one brigade. waves of the tug boat caused the barge to rock and one tanks block broke loose [11] Due to these limitations, cruise ships generally make short staysabout 2 or 3 days at most. WebDa Nang Vietnam. The crew viewed it as a bad omen and wanted nothing more to Certainly the top deep water sailors of the Navy had no intention of committing large numbers of Navy men ashore in a place like Vietnam. Under the most adverse conditions of climate, terrain, civil unrest, unrestrained warfare, constantly changing requirements, lack of trained workers, and distance from an industrial base, they had changed the face of Vietnam. In simplest terms, under the force levels imposed by the Pentagon, every sailor ashore in Vietnam meant one less sailor in a ship or on a vital shore station somewhere else. close to the deep draft facilities. Here, in some instances, they were replaced by civilians, in others by Fleet sailors, but in many spots there were no replacements at all, and a slow deterioration at these facilities began to set in. find my friend. In the course of their duties the Seabee construction forces were involved in just about every kind of job imaginable. The remaining 115 were U. S. civil servants, Vietnamese, and civilians from other countries. When the Marine Expeditionary Brigade was ordered to land at Da Nang in March 1965, there was no naval activity ashore to support it and no indication in official files that the Navy would move to establish such an activity. WebDanang had become the largest fuel complex in South Vietnam capable of holding over 500,000 barrels. And few people were quite sure how it had happened. Go to https://www.militaryvideo.com/ to purchase the entire video, or to see movie trailers of over 700 other military videos.This is a short clip. Cua Lo port belongs to Nghe An port cluster and is approved as an important container port in the group of seaports in the North Central region of Vietnam, with a port length of 3,020m with the capacity to receive ships of 30,000 DWT - 50,000 DWT. Heretofore we have assumed that the Armyor perhaps the Marineswould do it. You've read 1 out of 5 free articles of Proceedings this month. In February 1966 the Directorate of Construction, U. S. Military Assistance Command Republic of Vietnam (MACV-DC) was established. In many cases, overseas in particular, Seabees were productively employed in public works departments. I was told it was moved, but for the life of me I do not remember to where. Da Nang was the keystone, the major, deep water port and the major air base. The base appears to remain in use by the PAVN. fireball almost directly over the port. Early in the 1960s the American presence in Vietnam was growing, and with it came an increasing involvement of the Civil Engineer Corps. He was the first Seabee to win the Nations highest award and the first Navy man to be so decorated for action in Vietnam. father had developed a serious heart condition, so I was assigned to Fort George disappointed not to find any information, except on the landing craft JUD Page, After apportionment to the Services in Washington the funds were then returned through the Naval Facilities Engineering Command (NAVFAC-formerly BuDocks) chain to the OICC-RVN who acted as banker, before and after the formation of MACV-DC, for all major military construction funds in Vietnam. Experience ultimately showed that the life cycle of a piece of equipment committed to Vietnam averaged 45 months from the time it was received from the factory in a U. S. depot until it passed out of the system. Fortunately for the U. S., the threat of what the enemy could do was not matched by what he actually did, the contractor was thus able to mobilize and build with a minimum of harassment in the early days. In the initial planning for NSA, ComServPac concentrated on the supply, operations, and medical areas but did not devote much attention to Public Works. The Americans and free-world employees signed on for 18 months. U.S. Coordinates 16 7' 34'' N, 108 14' 19'' E. Decimal 16.1263874, 108.2386362. Ultimately every Seabee unit went to Vietnam except CBU-201, which was a small force serving the Antarctic research program. 3 For further discussion on this point, please turn to Commander F. O. McClendon's essay "Doctors and Dentists, Nurses and Corpsmen in Vietnam" in this edition and Captain K. P. Huff, USNR, "Building the Advance Base at Da Nang" in Naval Review 1968, pp. Ancient folklore says that a dragon emerged The year concluded with two reported swimmer sightings on 14 and 30 December, both originating from Da Nangs deep water piers. On 5 June 1965, CinCPacFlt cancelled and superseded his message of 22 May, now stating that NSA would not be established in the immediate future and that the Commanding General, Fleet Marine Force, Pacific, should provide and arrange for all shoreside capability required. utovarni otvor (okrugli prozor na boku broda, (kua, lidmanas) kreis puse, kreisais borts, Dictionary, Encyclopedia and Thesaurus - The Free Dictionary, the webmaster's page for free fun content, Projects are turning the tide on industrial decline; Towns and cities with a proud shipping and dockland heritage seize chance to be transformed, Deeply Embedded ARM Application Macrocells. daylight shift and arrived at the port to find a newly assigned cargo operations Put another way, a battalion could be expected to place about $350,000 worth of new construction a month. NMCB-6, the last peacetime battalion to deploy to the war zone, arrived in May 1966. Coordinates 16 7' 34'' N, 108 14' 19'' E. Decimal 16.1263874, 108.2386362. The new pier facility allowed deep-draft ocean-going vessels to unload cargo directly onto trucks instead of offloading into Lighters while anchored in the harbor. the Harbor where the map is marked "piers". Port Size Medium. (5) If we are to use the ABFC system we must have adequate stocks of the components in our war reserve stocks. The need for NSA to establish a base at Cua Viet, some four and one-half miles from the DMZ, to support Dong Ha in the late spring brought Public Works Seabees to construct and maintain the camp. There is little doubt that their influence on Vietnam and its people has been substantialparticularly in relation to the number of Seabees involved. operations office. They Many times they had to do a job over again. which came to Danang periodically. What have we learned about those areas which are vital to our military posture, and which affect or are affected by the naval civil engineer? Also includes day-to-day activities around the facilities, Street scenes in Da Nang (Doc Lap Street), Club Monsoon, Enlisted Mens Club, messhalls, Club Bamboo for CPOs \u0026 Officers, small boat basin and much, much more. Especially, Lec owns a warehouse system right next to the ports in the. North Central region, attracting a part of Laos and Northeast Thailand. Naturally, all Seabee materials were not in the stored components. Port Type Seaport. Though the Brigade Commander reported to Commander Naval Forces Vietnam in Saigon, there was little question that on a day-to-day basis the Seabees were working for the senior officer in I Corps, the Commanding General III Marine Amphibious Force. (A little better than half the life cycle in the U. S.) Further, from an economical and capability standpoint, this piece was good for only one depot overhaul. A steady shift to tactical support construction was also in evidence. In addition a new offensive was As expected, the international transshipment port in Vietnam is capable of receiving 5 million TEUs per year, with 8 berths for container ships with a capacity of up to 12,000 TEUs and 8 berths for feeders and the total port area of 405 ha. There were, in addition, some special well drilling teams for a short period of time. prior to the mine sweeper making a pass thru the channel in order to off load One interesting statistic shows that by mid-1969 the hiring office at San Bruno, California, had screened over 385,000 U. S. applicants to place some 7,000 of them in Vietnam during the course of the contract. A 450 m (1,480 ft) breakwater provides protection from high waves and monsoons. Naval Support Activity (NSA) Danang was officially established on 15 October 1965. . according to the Coast Guard investigator, it simply ripped a large whole along Underwater divers were brought in the next day to begin In mid-1965 the break was completed when OICC Republic of Vietnam was formally established as a separate entity with 135 people, including 20 officers. [6] Da Nang, however, had shallow water and lacked cargo handling equipment. For a number of years recruits had been funneled through the Seabee schools at Port Hueneme, and with time in the field became skilled journeymen. Release of the TSFCs could be authorized by Commander 3rd Naval Construction Brigade when the senior operational commander could certify that his need qualified under ten criteria, which boiled down to urgent, unforeseen, and needed for direct tactical support against the enemy. Currently, Chan May port has Ben 1 and 2 berths and Ben 3 will be completed in 2018. Captain Merdinger was Public Works Officer at Naval Support Activity, Da Nang in 1967-68, and currently commands the Western Division, Naval Facilities Engineering Command at San Francisco, California. support beam to his hootch fell on him, crushing him. Deep Water Pier was where the large ocean vessels could offload cargo to support the armed forces in I corps. Though cost and skill comparisons tend to equate the contractor and military engineer capabilities, it is to be remembered that the primary purposes in maintaining engineer troops are to possess flexibility, to be able to provide rapid initial support to contingency operations and to have the ability to work in a zone of intensive hostilities. Of the first 5,000 recruits some 75 per cent were under 24 years, yet veteran commanders state that they were as effective as their World War II predecessors. It provided the needed medical facility in a hurry, but many pieces of its equipment such as galley stovesthough never usedwere of such an age that the manufacturers no longer made spare parts for them or the manufacturers no longer existed. To get the required experience level in uniform in a hurry, the Navy instituted in the spring of 1966 a Direct Procurement of Petty Officers program. Further escalation of combat operations was, of course, generated in January 1968 when the Tet offensive was touched off by the Communists. and the crew quit and wanted to go home. and the total berth length is up to 5,710m. Fortunately he had also become a member and responded to my email. to carry (a rifle or other weapon) in the port arms position. This became the final consortium of the four contracting companies which were to carry out the bulk of the construction effort in Vietnam under the banner of RMK-BRJ; Raymond- Morrison-Knudsen-Brown-Root-Jones. In a few short years the combination of OICC and RMK-BRJ had produced a modern construction miracle. The VCNO indicated that CinCPacFlt could do the job temporarily, that he would seek additional assets from the Secretary of Defense to do the job if the Army Logistics Command were not to be assigned long range responsibility, and that the Navy would seek an authoritative interpretation of policy to determine "whose responsibility it is. It turned out to be the Navys. (6) It is important that officers of the line and the other staff corps develop an appreciation for the base development problem and that Naval planning staffs in general pay more attention to it. Yet another element of the Civil Engineer Corps was in Vietnam long before the 1965 buildup. And few people were quite sure how it had happened. Finally he Despite a long standing Pentagon policy which confined major military construction administration to the Army and Navy engineersand another policy which made the Navy the DOD construction agent in Vietnamthe Air Force managed to build under their own direction an Air Base at Tuy Hoa. The other two Pacific battalions were at their home port of Port Hueneme, taking leave and retraining, having recently returned from overseas assignments. Early in 1968, responsibility for all rural development and allied civic action type programs was vested in a newly created MACV/U.S. With the projected assignment of a second CEC Flag Officer to Vietnam, the OICC shed his brigade responsibilities and the Regimental Commander in Da Nang, Captain A. R. Marschall, took command of the brigade as well, briefly during the summer of 1967. Much of the early public works effort was directed toward leasing living and working facilities for NSA in the city of Da Nang (est. The idea of one-service support in an area was pushed by top command and began to make some headway. Phone 84 511 821 114. These suggestions went all but unheeded and there was for all practical purposes, no Public Works Department as such included in the initial NSA organization as planned. It seems clear that our system, stock reserves planning, and procedures can be vastly improved. During the early allied buildup in South Vietnam the only primary deep water port to handle incoming cargo ships was the Saigon Port on the Saigon River in the Capital Military District of Gia Dinh Province in III Corps Tactical Zone. China Beach has deep blue water and fine white sand, and is not damaged by pollution, which is known as the Gold Coast of Vietnam. One of the biggest problem areas was real estate Property was not automatically available for our bases but had to be bargained for, haggled over, rented, bought, or condemned as the situation demanded. and as it tipped the barge while falling into the water, the remaining five (White Elephant) and much more. More Photos from Shannon Nichols (Click on thumbnail to enlarge. WebUnplanned, unwanted, undeclared, and unpopular, the Vietnam War in most American eyes just happened. Thus, in August 1965, two new contractors were added Brown and Root of Houston, Texas, and J. This would have given him the same continued authority over Marine battalions with construction capability (division and force battalions oriented primarily toward tactical support) as he had over the Seabees. On April 10, the successful reception of 160,000 tons of Yang Ming Wellhead vessel with capacity of 14,000 TEU docked at Tan Cang - Cai Mep Thi Vai port (CMTV) proved its handling and loading services. I was on duty the night UN/LOCODE VNDAD. Not only were they packaged units, but their use was not subject to the normal budgetary snarl of the line-item oriented military construction program under which most of the permanent facilities were built. Back in May of 1845 at Tourane (now Da Nang), Captain John Percival, commanding the USS Constitution, saw fit to seize as hostages some three Mandarins to force, unsuccessfully, as it turned out, the release of a French bishop at Hue. Navy Lt. and I both went out to the LST, which was now tying up. Veteran L. Prickett, "Dear VetFriends, Thanks so much for your help! LEC's Singapore Representative Smallest of the military contingents were those of the Air Force, Civil Engineering Squadrons (Heavy Repair), which operated at selected Air Force sites. were in the process of berthing a Sealand vessel, the harbormaster called me on According to the plan, by 2020, Chan May port will have 6 general cargo berths with a length of 1,680m. [10], Tho Quang freight warehouse station contains 12,225m2 (131,590sqft) of warehouse space and 29,141m2 (313,670sqft) of yard space. going to assign a tug boat to pull him off of the berth. Because it could barely handle the regular commercial commerce and with the heavy volume of additional [3] :2 fact I was required to draw up an escape plan in case the port came under