Battle of Dong Hoi

April 19, 1972

Overview

The cruiser USS Oklahoma City, the guided-missile frigate USS Sterett, and the destroyers USS Higbee, and USS Lloyd Thomas attack targets near Dong Hoi on the coast of North Vietnam, where the North Vietnamese are using a coastal highway to transport war supplies. North Vietnamese patrol boats and MiG fighters engage the U.S. ships, which destroy two enemy boats and one MiG. The North Vietnamese hit the Oklahoma City with shells from their shore batteries and one of their MiG-17s hits the Higbee in the gun turret with a 550-pound bomb, wounding four Sailors. The engagement is one of the largest naval actions of the war.¹

¹John Darrell Sherwood, Nixon’s Trident: Naval Power in Southeast Asia, 1968–1972, U.S. Navy and the Vietnam War (Washington, D.C.: Naval History and Heritage Command, 2009), 37; US Navy, Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships, (Washington, D.C.: Naval Historical Center) www.history.navy.mil./danfs/s18/sterett-iii.htm (link is external); 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), 329–32.