Vung Ro Bay Incident and Operation MARKET TIME

February 16, 1965

Overview

A U.S. helicopter pilot spots a 130-foot North Vietnamese trawler unloading cargo on a remote beach in South Vietnam’s Vung Ro Bay. Airstrikes capsize the trawler. Three days later, allied personnel reach the scene and find that the trawler was carrying about 100 tons of arms, ammunition, explosives, and other supplies intended for the Viet Cong.

The incident helps provide the final justification for Operation MARKET TIME. This combined U.S. Navy-U.S. Coast Guard-South Vietnamese navy coastal patrol operation is designed to stem the flow of smuggled supplies by sea from North to South Vietnam. During the next seven years, the patrol vessels and aircraft of MARKET TIME help thwart the great majority of infiltration by North Vietnamese coastal vessels. The North Vietnamese respond by moving their seaborne smuggling operations further south, through the ostensibly neutral port at Sihanoukville, Cambodia. They also increase the volume of traffic moving overland through Laos and Cambodia via the Ho Chi Minh Trail.1

¹Edward J. Marolda, The Approaching Storm: Conflict in Asia, 1945–1965, The U.S. Navy and the Vietnam War (Washington, D.C.: Naval History & Heritage Command, Department of the Navy, 2009), 75–76; Edward J. Marolda, By Sea, Air, and Land: An Illustrated History of the U.S. Navy and the War in Southeast Asia (Washington D.C.: Naval Historical Center, 1994), 65, 143–149, 313–315; Alex Larzelere, The Coast Guard At War: Vietnam, 1965–1975 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1997), 1–7; Spencer C. Tucker, ed. The Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War: A Political, Social, and Military History (2nd edition; Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2011), 1971. Matthew Mitchell, Not Your Father’s Coast Guard: The Untold Story of U.S. Coast Guard Special Forces (Bloomington, IN: Author House, 2010).