Special Ops: Four Accounts of the Military's Elite Forces

by Orr Kelly

  Those seemingly minor glitches were soon forgotten as Lovell, Jack Swigert Jr., and Fred Haise Jr. broke free from earth orbit and began their journey to the moon.

  At this point, the huge rocket engines that had pushed them into space had been discarded. What was left was a three-part spacecraft. The astronauts were in the command capsule, the cockpit where they expected to spend most of the voyage and where they navigated and controlled the flight. Attached to the capsule were two other units. One, called the service capsule, contained oxygen, water, propellant, and power units. The other was the lunar module, the LM, which two of the astronauts would fly down to the moon’s surface—and back up again—while their companion circled the moon in the command capsule. The LM was connected to the command capsule by a tunnel through which the astronauts could crawl. Early in the flight, they crawled into the LM to see if everything was all right. It was.

  For two days, they sailed uneventfully through space. To the three crew members and the ground crew monitoring its progress, Apollo 13 seemed to be the smoothest flight yet, almost boring.

  And then, fifty-five hours and fifty-five minutes into the voyage, the astronauts heard and felt a sharp bang and vibration. It was just after 7:00 P.M. on the thirteenth of April Looking out the porthole, they could see the craft was venting a large volume of some kind of gas. It formed a cloud so bright that observers reported seeing it through a telescope from Houston—200, 000 miles away.

  The gas was oxygen. One of two oxygen bottles—the one that had been dropped—had exploded. The blast not only blew a hole in the side of the service module, but it also caused a leak in the other oxygen bottle. The oxygen from those two bottles was not essential to keep the astronauts breathing. They had a system that constantly cleansed and recycled the air they breathed. But without oxygen from the damaged tanks, the fuel cells that provided electrical power would go dead and the command capsule would become uninhabitable and its control systems unusable.

  One immediate result of the explosion was that the crew did not have enough power to turn their small rocket engine and head back toward earth. Their only way home was to continue on, fly around the moon, and use the gravity of the moon as a kind of slingshot to hurl them back toward earth. They would have to remain in space—and try to stay alive—for four more days.

  About fifteen minutes before their command module ran out of power, the astronauts crawled through the tunnel into the LM. The plan, worked out by the three crew members and a growing army of experts on the ground, was to use the LM as a lifeboat. The lunar module was equipped with oxygen, water, and batteries to supply electricity. But the LM was only designed to support two astronauts for forty-five hours—time to get from the capsule to the moon and back again safely. The crew had to find a way to stretch the supplies in the LM to keep the three of them alive for ninety hours.

  They cut use of electrical power to the minimum and each of them sipped only six ounces of water a day.

  But then a problem that would have been familiar to any frogman cropped up. The system for purifying the air the astronauts breathed was similar to underwater breathing rigs. The air in the capsule is drawn through a canister containing lithium hydroxide, which cleans it of carbon dioxide and returns oxygen to the capsule. The men calculated that, with the lithium hydroxide canisters in the LM, plus the canisters from the backpacks on the space suits, they could make it back to earth. But after a day and a half in the LM, a warning light indicated the carbon dioxide was rising to a dangerous level. They had not taken into account the demands placed on the system by three, rather than two, astronauts.

  Fortunately, those on the ground had foreseen the problem. They told the astronauts how to build emergency scrubbers [canisters that purify the oxygen], using plastic bags, cardboard, and tape, so they could use the square canisters from the command capsule in the round openings in the LM environmental system. Without that fix, the Apollo 13 crew would have died from breathing the exhaust from their own lungs before they could reach earth.

  Confined to their lifeboat and breathing from their jury-rigged system, the astronauts flew around the moon, made a correction in their course to aim them toward the South Pacific, and headed home. As they approached earth, they jettisoned the battered service capsule—and got their first chance to see how badly damaged it was. Then they used the power of the LM to bring back to life the command module, which carried the heat shield they needed for reentry into the earth’s atmosphere.

  When they crawled back into the command module it was so cold and clammy that, as the power came back on, it actually rained inside. The temperature was thirty-eight degrees and, as Lovell later said, they were “as cold as frogs in a frozen pool.” They knew almost exactly what it feels like to be a frogman in a SEAL delivery vehicle.

  Shortly before plunging down into the atmosphere, the astronauts used the pressure in the tunnel to blow their lifeboat clear of the command module.

  The landing itself was uneventful as their parachutes dropped them gently into the deep blue Pacific near Samoa at eight minutes after noon, Houston time, on 17 April.

  Their splashdown was within sight of the recovery ship, the USS Iwo Jima. As the command capsule settled into the sea, three members of UDT Thirteen jumped from a hovering helicopter and began the now-routine process of attaching a sea anchor, surrounding the capsule with a flotation collar, and opening the hatch to welcome the astronauts back to earth.

  Members of the recovery team included SN Luco W. Palma and MR3 Roger C. Banfield. After the tension of the last few days, the recovery operation was anticlimactic. In fact it was quicker and smoother than normal. Because the astronauts had not set foot on the moon, they did not have to be isolated to protect the earth from strange bugs from another heavenly body. With the help of the frogmen, they were quickly lifted from their rubber rafts and delivered by helicopter to the deck of the Iwo Jima.

  In 1970, the frogmen were still enjoying the glory days. The Odyssey of Apollo 13 had been followed by millions of people throughout the world. President Nixon flew to Honolulu to welcome the astronauts home.

  But, for the members of the underwater demolition teams, there was another reality—the war in Vietnam. It was not unusual for a frogman to bask in the glory of a spacecraft recovery and, a short time later, find himself surveying a dark beach on the Vietnamese coast or dodging booby traps and blowing Viet Cong bunkers.

  On 18 September 1970, just five months after the Apollo 13 recovery, Palma and Banfield were members of a patrol through “Indian country” near Hoi An in the northern part of South Vietnam. Although their primary assignment was beach reconnaissance, the UDT men were often called on to provide security for technicians installing sensors used to detect movement of enemy units. On this day, the danger, as it turned out, was not from armed Viet Cong, but from a well-hidden booby trap.

  Hospital Corpsman 3d Class Lawrence C. Williams tripped a booby trap made from a powerful 105mm artillery shell. The explosion killed Williams and Palma, who was just behind him. Pieces of shrapnel tore into the back of Banfield, who was just in front of Williams. Banfield was a machinery repairman, but on this day he was, fortunately, acting as a radioman. The radio strapped to his back caught most of the metal, except for one piece that struck him in the lower back. Although seriously wounded, he survived.

  Another UDT Thirteen member on the patrol lost an eye. In all, UDT Thirteen suffered two deaths and eight men wounded in the few months after the unit’s involvement in the Apollo 13 recovery. This was at a time when UDT Thirteen was supposed to be limited to twenty men in country, although a number of “visitors” actually swelled that number from time to time.

  Even then, the bad luck that had followed Apollo 13 seemed not to have run its course.

  On 30 October 1991, the Apollo 13 recovery ship, the USS Iwo Jima, had just left the port of Manama, Bahrain, after routine maintenance during Operation Desert Shield when a steam pipe in the ship’s boiler room ruptured, ki
lling ten sailors.

  PART THREE

  FROGMEN IN VIETNAM

  CHAPTER

  10

  Good Fun in North Vietnam

  Jack Luksik is one of the navy’s most experienced SEALs. With an education provided by the navy, he has advanced to the rank of commander. But when he became a frogman in 1966, he was a very junior enlisted man. This is his story of his adventures on the coast of North Vietnam:

  I came into the teams and was assigned to UDT Eleven August 16, 1966. I was in Vietnam with both UDT Eleven and SEAL Team One.

  When I was in UDT, there was an invasion plan—maybe invasion is the wrong word—an amphibious landing—planned north of the DMZ [the so-called demilitarized zone between North and South Vietnam]. The objective was to sweep across that little neck of North Vietnam, just north of the DMZ, turn south, and sanitize the DMZ. Because in fact the DMZ really wasn’t.

  We did all the appropriate recons that were necessary for an amphibious landing. We did miles and miles and miles of this beautiful white sand beach. There’s a gold mine over there in resort community, Club Med-type business if the Vietnamese were interested in turning it into a capitalist enterprise. There are a couple of hundred miles of some of the finest beaches I’ve ever seen.

  When did you do this survey?

  Early to mid-1967. We were on the USS Ogden, LPD-5 Handing platform, dock]. It was a new ship at the time, commissioned in 1962. An LPD can ballast down, then open the stern gate. They wouldn’t ballast down for us. They’d open the stern gate at night and we’d take our IBSs [rubber boats] and paddle in and anchor them maybe a thousand yards out and then go and do what I like to call “administrative reconnaissance under combat conditions at night.”

  We have the two types of reconnaissance—a combat recon, which is the classic predawn recon where you go in to find obstacles and go back and blow them before a landing. And that’s generally for a thousand yards or less of beach. In an administrative recon, you just check the gradient of the beach and note obstacles.

  To run a recon like that, you have your swimmer line extending out from the beach, with guys every twenty-five yards to the point where you reach the three-and-a-half-fathom curve—twenty-one feet. Our classic responsibility is from the high-water line to the three-and-a-half-fathom curve for clearance of obstacles and hydrographic reconnaissance.

  Myself, as the cartographer, and the platoon commander would walk a baseline on the beach, used for reference. You make an approximation of where the high-water mark is. Then you correct it to mean low water when you draw the chart.

  What was your rank then?

  I was an electronics technician seaman apprentice.

  We put down two stakes and then we used red lens flashlights so you couldn’t see the light unless you were directly in front of it. We’d shine the two flashlights out to sea and the swimmers would line themselves up.

  As the cartographer, I’d run out the line real fast. Of course you can run faster than these guys can swim. We’d set up the two stakes and then basically run in a circle to see if there is anything prominent to note down for the hinterland part of the chart.

  Speed was of the essence. You want to cover a couple of thousand yards at twenty-five-yard increments. That’s a lot of work. We had to move fast. The swimmers swim at one speed but there is a lot of setup in moving these two posts and trying to check out and see what you can see.

  The two guys on the beach were moving fast all the time. If you lag and the swimmers have to wait for you, then your swimmer line gets jagged and you start to lose accuracy. You wanted to keep the swimmers all in line, all swimming at one speed and not have them stop and wait for you. That necessitates a lot of fast moving on the beach. You don’t have time to walk real slow and be tactical, as we were trained to.

  That was always good fun because you never knew what you’d be running into. The fishermen, a lot of times, would sleep at their boats, just above the high-water line. Sometimes they would be armed, sometimes not. You’re running around, you’d trip over a boat—you couldn’t see them—and you’d wake these people up.

  We didn’t carry weapons—guns—simply because they were too big of a pain in the butt. The platoon commander decided that would certainly keep us from running off and doing something stupid on an individual basis. I mean, if you don’t have a gun, you’re not going to shoot at anybody. That didn’t go over real big at the time with the platoon.

  You’d trip over a boat you didn’t see sitting there and fall in. A guy would be getting up. You could hear him wrestling around. You know the sound of a gun being picked up. You can tell somebody’s holding a weapon. You distance yourself as fast as you can.

  Did you actually stumble over people?

  Oh, yes. There was no moon, heavy cloud cover, no high-tech cities around, no lights. At times, it was so dark you could barely see your hand in front of your face.

  So we’d wake these people up, they’d jump up, come screaming and hollering, shooting.

  Did you ever run into military units, like an infantry company?

  No, we never ran into a company of NVA. But once we woke somebody up and they started hollering, we didn’t stick around to see if anyone was going to come. The obvious assumption is, yes, someone is going to come. That’s why the man is hollering.

  Did these people you ran into shoot at you?

  Sure, like I said. But frogman luck always held. It turns out anybody—not just Vietnamese—at night, or even in the daytime, people shooting into water, they shoot high initially. In the daytime, of course, they can correct their aim. They see where the rounds are landing by the splash. But at night, particularly shooting into the ocean, they have no idea.

  We’d watch the tracers. It was rare that anything hit the water near you. Of course you still have the knowledge that those individuals are trying to kill you. It was good fun.

  The only time I really had concern was when they would throw grenades. It would hit the water—particularly for us guys, one or two, who were right up on the beach—within throwing arm distance. We thought we were had. A grenade falls right beside you in the water and it’s nothing you’re going to find and pick up and throw back.

  It hits the water and you know it’s right around there and you figure, oh, man! The only thing you can do, the reasonable thing to do, is go toward the sea. Fortunately, they did a lot of home manufacturing of grenades. And throwing them in the water, the vast majority of times, the waterproofing on their fusing didn’t work. We never had any go off. We didn’t have any casualties.

  Frogman luck was with us. In the event of a compromise, which that was, we would pull back into a swimmer pool off the beach, wait an hour, and then go back in the same spot being more careful not to wake these people up.

  We’d do that all night and then just before dawn we’d go back to the ship and draw up the charts, hit the rack, wait until the evening, then go back and pick up where we left off.

  You were actually in North Vietnam?

  Yes, this was a little bit north of the DMZ.

  Did you know why you were doing it?

  Uh huh.

  How many of you were involved?

  We had a twenty-two-man platoon. It was an augmented platoon because the gradient there was shallow and you didn’t have enough swimmers to do the three-and-a-half-fathom curve with one sweep. And that’s the wrong place to be making multiple sweeps.

  We had two guys on shore and twenty guys strung out, twenty-five yards apart, a standard flutter board line. They would measure the depth, then breath-hold, dive down, and swim a zigzag course looking for any obstacles that could hamper a landing craft.

  How did they record the depth?

  They had a standard swimmer slate.

  Did the invasion, or landing, ever take place?

  I guess General Westmoreland [Gen. William C. Westmoreland, commander of American forces in Vietnam] decided he didn’t want to do that. Like most things in Vietnam, there
were a lot of political considerations.

  How long did you do this?

  I think the longest time out was forty-five days. Almost every night. It was great.

  Overall, it was about four months of recon. That wasn’t all north of the DMZ. We did recons from just north of the DMZ down to south of Da Nang. I believe after the monsoon season, the platoons that went over there would redo them from the DMZ south because everything changes with the monsoon season.

  After the monsoon, we would do channel blasting off in the Cua Viet River delta. You could travel five miles to go a quarter mile, picking your way through sandbars at the mouth of that river after the monsoon season.

  We’d used Mark 8 hose [an explosive charge encased in long sections of rubber hose, which can be laid in a pattern to shape the force of the explosion] and make mat weaves and blow channels so boats could resupply the marines in Hue. That was great. We had some fantastic shots.

  It took a whole day’s evolution to put the mats together and swim them in place and get it all set up. When it finally did go, it was well worth it.

  It sounds as though you were enjoying yourself as a young seaman.

  There was very little incentive to advance at that time. The lieutenant had to order me to take the seaman exam. My paycheck was about eighty bucks every two weeks. We were drawing jump and demo, which was $110 a month, which doubled our pay. The increment in pay between seaman, seaman apprentice, and third class was very little. I was having a good time. Why advance? They were going to give me this job to do anyway.

  CHAPTER

  11

  Operation Jackstay

  In 1966, U.S. forces—and especially the navy’s frogmen—were still trying to learn how to fight a strange new kind of war in the tidal rivers, mangrove swamps, and jungles of Vietnam. Between 26 March and 7 April 1966, members of UDT and SEAL units joined for the first time with marine recon teams and regular navy and marine forces for a major combat operation.