As more units moved into Vietnam, it became impractical for the OICC to preside over every bit of construction, even that accomplished by contract. Some selected Air Force sites were also included. He was the first Seabee to win the Nations highest award and the first Navy man to be so decorated for action in Vietnam. They were all assigned to I Corps distributed in mid-1968 as follows: Five battalions in Da Nang, two in Chu Lai, two in Phu Bai, one in Camp Evans north of Hue, one in Quang Tri, and one in Dong Ha. Like the rest of the CEC they were scattered throughout the Navygenerally in shop management positions. 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. He didn't want to tell me what had just happened. A memorandum from the Office of the Secretary of Defense in 1956(and later refined in 1963) assigned contract construction responsibilities to the Army Corps of Engineers in certain parts of the world and to the Navy's Bureau of Yards and Docks (BuDocks) in others. the official turn over to the Vietnamese in June 1972. Now ACB-1 was standing by with its full assault teams in the amphibious ships, ready with piers, fuel systems, and appurtenances to support the landing when and if it came. (either M48 or M60) tanks during their shift (Korean stevedores were paid by the The entire video is 60 minutes long. 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. Apart from sand, rock, and gravel which were available in Vietnam, most of their materials such as lumber, pipe, and fittings came from the U. S., largely by ship but some by air. The terminal has five berths in total: four berths, located along two finger piers of 185m (607ft) each, and one 225m (738ft) berth on a wharf along the shore, for a total of 965m (3,166ft) Throughput capacity at this terminal is over 4.5 million tons per year. He placed the charge on a rib small chest drawer. Ships in this category entered Vietnams inland waterways temporarily as part of their gunfire, interdiction, or support missions. Da Nang Another stems from the pattern of fighting developed by the Marinesa departure from their amphibious rolewherein they settled in fixed bases and conducted tactical operations from them in much the same manner as did the U. S. Army and ARVN. There were Except for LSTs which could beach, all cargo had to be discharged into lighters and transported to the beach where it was offloaded again and loaded onto trucks. One of the dead was Marvin G. Shields (CMA-3), who was posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for conspicuous gallantry in carrying a critically wounded man to safety and in destroying a Viet Cong machine gun emplacement at the cost of his life. Further, they were able on many occasions to engage in civic action projects similar in nature to those of the teams sponsored by USAID. However, the Commanding General of the 3rd Marine Amphibious Force, Lieutenant General L. W. Walt, as the commander in I Corps, in consonance with ComNavForV, made the decision not to place the FEG under the Seabee commander, and the combined use of all engineer elements never did take place. who became our Harbormaster. With the goal of being the most modern seaport in central Vietnam, Da Nang port is currently deploying an investment project to expand Tien Sa Port phase 2 to 2018, increasing the capacity of receiving ships to 50,000 DWT and container ships 3000 TEU, at the same time, set up a transshipment warehouse area with an area of 30h to 50ha in the period of 2015-2020. 2 at the mouth of Sa Ky seaport has the capacity to accommodate ships of 3,000 DWT, mainly for local maritime transport needs. Saigon Port is the main port of southern Vietnam, playing a key role in connecting maritime transport of the Southeast region and the Mekong Delta. A particular bridge near the Hai Van Pass was destroyed six times. 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 teams were designed to be small, mobile, and cross-skilled. They were an outstanding group of young men, and without them the Seabee effort in Vietnam would have been severely curtailed. Thanks VetFriends, It was a wonderful moment that we will both remember for the rest of our lives, and we owe it to VetFriends. The DPPO program was a great success in terms of the journeyman quality of the recruits. We were stationed in Germany in 1975 through 1978. It was converted in April 1966 from a cost-plus-fixed-fee to a cost-plus-award-fee (CPAF) type, designed with an incentive feature to enhance contractor performance. Seabee inspectors ranged from Phu Quoc Island in the south to Dong Ha and Lang Vei in the north, overseeing Vietnamese civilian construction contracts for MACV HSA Saigon was phased out in May 1966 and replaced by the Army's First Logistics Command. 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. according to the Coast Guard investigator, it simply ripped a large whole along Although a CinCPac order in April 1965 stated that military logistics operations at ports and beaches at Da Nang and Chu Lai would be accomplished by the Navy, this was considered by the top command in the Navy as a temporary assignment at most. Finally he Supply Corps officers and rates attached to the battalions working with the Seabee oriented Construction Battalion Center supply departments played a major role in accomplishing this support through various routes of the Navy supply system. During the take over of To turn (a craft) or make a shift to the port side: To hold or carry (a weapon) diagonally across the body, with the muzzle or blade near the left shoulder. Some came from the ranks of the inactive reserve, but most of them were recent college graduates. 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. In August and September 1954, elements of ACB-i under Commander L. N. Saunders participated in Operation "Passage to Freedom, a massive evacuation of people and equipment from the Tonkin Delta region of French Indo-China to the south. Early in 1968, responsibility for all rural development and allied civic action type programs was vested in a newly created MACV/U.S. All U.S. personnel began carrying weapons, especially at night. They were there to win the hearts and the minds of the people of South Vietnam, to free these people from the terror of the Viet Cong, and to help them to get on their feet politically, economically, and militarily. ACB-i Seabees had been ashore in Da Nang in April 1964 to place in operation a 200-ton drydock for small, fast boats being turned over by the U. S. to the Vietnamese Navy. At the working session of Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc in Nghe An last February, the planning of Cua Lo port cluster will be implemented. deep water piers wash down the tanks and a ship was brought in especially to take them back to Deep Water Piers Danang Vietnam . protection. [7] As such, Westmoreland recommended the U.S. prioritise developing Cam Ranh Bay instead. The Advanced Base Functional Component system, an outgrowth of lessons from World War II, consists of definitive advanced base component designs and pre-stocked hardware which had been designed, refined bought, sorted, and stored during the peaceful years. Danang, but it didn't look the same. only four deep draft berths from June 9, 1971 until the facility was turned over 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. Like the Army, the Marines had two types of engineering units in the fieldthe Division Engineer Battalions (1st and 3rd) and Force Engineer Battalions (7th, 9th, and 11th), all of whom operated, of course, in I Corps. So, NSA Da Nang came into being in mid-1965 as an activity desperately needed by the Marines, which they were not organized to provide for themselves and which no other service seemed ready to provide. An incident I remember was that the 5th Transportation Command took over the From the latter part of 1964 on, elements of the Marine Expeditionary Brigade were embarked in ships cruising in the Tonkin Gulf waiting for orders to land. I returned to Ft. 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. Van Phong port construction project has been restarted since late 2009 and is scheduled to be completed by 2020 in two phases. Thanks for making it possible, Thanks so much VetFriends.com for your help and genuine concern for locating this long lost buddy of mine, Please Enter a Valid email address with no spaces, VetFriends Members: the more interesting was that there were only ARVN units providing our NMCB-6, the last peacetime battalion to deploy to the war zone, arrived in May 1966. Are you looking for someone who is or was in DANANG VIET NAM, DEEP WATER PIERS? During the early years, ten teams (four teams at any given rime), on six to seven month tours, supported the Special Forces, and two others had split responsibilities between military and rural development programs. First order of business was to bring the existing construction battalions up to wartime strength, and this was followed by the activating of new units. [2] The camp was quickly expanded to include 25 new barracks able to accommodate an additional 1700 men, together with a barber shop, post exchange and milk plant. Early in the 1960s the American presence in Vietnam was growing, and with it came an increasing involvement of the Civil Engineer Corps. Note new pier and old building. Located in Quang Ngai province, Dung Quat port is Vietnam's national general seaport. & E. the Army essentially turned over the entire responsibility for repair and utilities to the contractor. and the total berth length is up to 5,710m. 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. Additionally, design personnel, Americans, Filipinos, and Nationalist Chinese, were provided through a contract with Metcalf and Eddy. In the early days the Marines sent small parties out of the enclaves on village pacification and "search and destroy missions. The contractor did not accomplish the work completely on his own, however; he was given a lot of help by Air Force construction troops and airlift. TWS is the largest online community of Veterans existing today and is a powerful Veteran locator. It might be noted that about four per cent of the Corps was composed of limited duty officers and another three per cent of warrant officers. airforce fighter and an unidentified ARVN helicopter collided in a gigantic However, Seabee strength measured in terms of numbers of battalions could be somewhat misleading, for not all of the Group VIII enlisted men (as the construction trades had come to be designated) were in Naval Mobile Construction Battalions (NMCBs) in 1965; nor are they today. The port handled 320,000 tons of cargo their belongings. n. 1. a. As construction agent for the Department of Defense in Vietnam, the OICC was concerned with a large design effort, both in house and by contract, and he let numerous lump sum contracts to smaller construction contractors (largely Vietnamese or Korean) for the U. S. Army, Navy, Air Force, and State Department. Contingency plans must have realistic construction annexes with real substance to them. There were, in addition, some special well drilling teams for a short period of time. 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. came and picked me up and said that he had changed his mind. In Hoi An, Vietnam The idea of one-service support in an area was pushed by top command and began to make some headway. While the Navys responsibilities in this area were still being debated in Washington, however, efforts were made, primarily in ComServPac, to lay down some general rules for the operation of NSA, should it become a reality. This was started officially in March 1967 for the First Marine Air Wing and soon spread to the other Marine units in the major enclaves. This is actually the first time I have discussed this information since Do you have DANANG VIET NAM, DEEP WATER PIERS Reunion information you'd like to share, "When I Joined VetFriends, I read about the email locator service, and sent an email to my old friend. daylight shift and arrived at the port to find a newly assigned cargo operations There were many highly placed recommendations to stop the interchange of battalions, but experience with the huge Seabee construction effort at Cubi Point a decade before indicated that productivity and morale were enhanced by keeping the battalions intact. Then, two teams designated for the rural development program were deployed in the latter part of 1963, and from October of that year, the United States Operations Mission (USOM), whose functions were later replaced by the State Department's U. S. Agency for International Development (USAID), sponsored and financially supported these two teams. USAID took over sponsorship and financial support of all Seabee Teams in January 1966 when the number of U. S. engineer troops (Army and Navy) in country had increased to the point where team support to the Special Forces was no longer needed. Hotline: (+00) 65 9018 4988. He wrote me and WebUser Review - Flag as inappropriate It shows some of what life there was like, it does not, can not show the blood, sweat, and tears that went into each day. At any given time, normally two of the seventeen CEC officers assigned to a construction battalion would be limited duty or warrant officers. The Support Activity's Public Works Department, during Captain S. C. Gill's tenure as PWO, ultimately numbered well over 2,000 people, of whom nearly 200 were Seabees. Spread out over 200 miles of war-torn country, operating in cities and hamlets, and catering to all the elements of the U. S. Armed Services as well as to those of other countries, it was the largest and most diverse public works organization the Navy had ever put together. Like the Peace Corps, the Seabee Teams put something into the country: They develop human resources. Their placing of two eight-section causeway piers from the open sea was described by Major General Collins, Commanding General of the 3rd Marine Division, as ". . Subsequently 50 more were added to provide perimeter security for base camps and job sites, bringing new authorized allowances to 24 officers and 738 enlisted men. Join now and never hit a limit. This is more evident on each of my trips to Vietnam." WebThere were three deep-draft ship piers for ocean-going ships, while LSTs used the Tien Sha, Bridge, Museum, and Ferry cargo facilities. What a conversation we had. 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. Generally speaking, they operated in II, III, and IV Corps, but when Army units moved into I Corps to reinforce the Marines in 1967-68 four Army engineer battalions accompanied them. The Navys answer to this problem was to import CBMU-302, a slightly smaller (200 and later 300 men) version of the CBMU which went to I Corps about the same time. 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. Water With facilities including advanced network system, modern equipment technology, 200 CCTV and information and personnel management system, Hai Phong port is always a convenient location, ensuring safety and suitable for transport purposes international commercial transactions. Here they were concerned, along with the contractor, with erecting buildings, installing pipe lines, grading roadsall phases of construction necessary to create these major logistics bases. The total area of the port system is 299,256m2 (3,221,160sqft), of which 29,204m2 (314,350sqft) is warehouse space and 183,722m2 (1,977,570sqft) is yard space. The primary mission of NSF was to train the Vietnamese Navy to take over after U.S. It might be noted that the OICC office had some capability for doing its own design in house with a small number of U. S. civil servants and third country nationals, but the bulk of its design work was carried out by architectural and engineering firms located in Southeast Asia. When CBPac planners had been working on contingency plans with the Marines on Okinawa they had visualized, under the direct chain of command of the Commanding General, the Commander of the 30th NCR (a CEC Captain), wearing a second hat as Commander of the Force Engineer Group (FEG). https://www.thefreedictionary.com/Deepwater+pier, [Middle English, from Old English, from Latin, The left-hand side of a ship or aircraft facing forward. Though the bulk of their work was in the Saigon area, public works forces operated country wide. To get young men into the Seabees simply to build up to the required numbers was not particularly difficult. The Americans and free-world employees signed on for 18 months. Even more significant were the combined cost-plus-fixed-fee contracts for repair and utility functions at Army facilities negotiated between the Army and Pacific Architects and Engineers, Inc. Many times they had to do a job over again. reluctantly told me that the Korean stevedores were in a hurry to remove six Da Nang was the keystone, the major, deep water port and the major air base. You've read 1 out of 5 free articles of Proceedings this month. Check out top 10 below! Individual projects under $25,000 financed by "Maintenance" rather than "Construction" funds and tactical support construction projects were not subject to this process but were handled by the separate Services who used troops, in house civilians, or contractors, as convenient. 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.
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