Week of September 13

Week of September 13

On September 15, 1967, deep in the Mekong Delta, three U.S. Navy Sailors lost their lives in one of the most infamous firefights of the Vietnam War. On that day, Navy Task Force Group 117.2, carrying troops from the Army 3rd Battalion, 60th Infantry Regiment, were ambushed on the Rach Ba Rai River by a battalion of main force Viet Cong. Seven men were killed and over 100 were wounded in the four-hour firefight that followed. This week we focus on three of them: Seaman Richard Cheek, Seaman William T. Diamond, Jr., and Engineman Third Class William Little.

The U.S. military created Task Force 117, also known as the Mobile Riverine Force (MRF), in 1966 as a joint Army-Navy group for specialized amphibious operations in the Mekong Delta. The Delta’s many square miles of snaking canals, waterways, swamps, and rice fields made it an ideal base of operations for the Viet Cong. The United States created the MRF especially for this environment. It boasted Navy gunboats and armored landing craft that were able to land men of the 9th Infantry Division ashore for amphibious strikes against Viet Cong bases nestled in the Delta.

In September 1967, South Vietnamese intelligence sources reported that they had located the Viet Cong 263rd Battalion. MRF headquarters ordered three battalions—two riverine and one mechanized—to encircle, trap, and destroy them. The mission was named Operation CORONADO V. Troops from the barracks ship USS Colletonboarded their rivercraft early in the morning on September 15, and headed up the Rach Ba Rai River for the attack. The Rach Ba Rai was sometimes referred to as a “creek,” due to its narrowness. At one sharp bend, the waterway narrowed to approximately 90 feet wide, lined on both banks with thick, tall vegetation. It was a difficult place for a flotilla of gunboats and troop transports to navigate and it was a perfect location for an ambush.

The first riverine column—composed of minesweepers, LCM “monitor” gunboats, and Armored Troop Carriers (ATCs)—reached this bend in the Rach Ba Rai at about 7:30 am. Both sides of the river erupted in rocket, machine gun, and small arms fire, raking the column of 23 vessels and their crews. The Viet Cong attackers fired from dug-out earthen bunkers along the riverbanks, and amid the thick vegetation they were extremely difficult to spot.

Within the first few minutes, a rocket-propelled grenade struck Monitor 111-2 directly at the coxswain’s deck. The explosion killed the monitor’s coxswain, Seaman Richard Allan Cheek, instantly. Cheek was born in March 1946 and hailed from the small town of Oregon, Illinois, on the banks of the Rock River. He was 21 years old. With Cheek killed, Monitor 111-2 veered and ran aground on the silt bottom. The rest of the boat’s crew continued to return fire as they worked to get it moving again.

Minutes later, Monitor 111-3 was hit, as a rocket slammed into the boat’s 40-millimeter gun turret. The rocket ignited a fire in the ammunition locker and wounded three men, who scrambled to get out of the turret. One of these men was Engineman Third Class William Little, a 22-year-old from Weymouth, Massachusetts. Little was the second American to die on the Rach Ba Rai that day, when a subsequent rocket struck the spot where he was standing.

Just twenty minutes had passed since the firefight began, and at 7:50 am the column’s commander ordered his vessels to withdraw in order to offload casualties (including 52 wounded sailors and soldiers) and bring in reinforcements. By 10:00 am, with the arrival of two more minesweepers and an additional monitor, the column prepared to make a second run through the ambush site in order to land its complement of infantrymen and destroy their attackers. In the meantime, nearby artillery batteries, U.S. Navy F-4 Phantom IIs, and U.S. Army helicopter gunships unloaded as much fire as they could on the Viet Cong position.

The “kill zone” at the ambush site consisted of over a mile stretch of river—narrow and treacherous. Despite the pounding from artillery and air support, the Viet Cong in their deep-dug earthen bunkers opened fire once again on the riverine column when it moved into the river bend at 10:30 am.

As the Armored Troop Carriers made their runs to the landing beaches, a rocket hit the ATC carrying Seaman William Diamond, Jr. Diamond, who was manning a machine gun from the deck, was wounded by the blast and his machine gun was jammed. Nevertheless, he calmly cleared the jam and continued to lay down suppressing fire from an exposed position, even as the ATC was hit by five additional rockets. One of those rockets finally killed Diamond, but his suppressing fire had allowed every infantryman aboard his ATC to land safely. William Diamond, Jr., a 20-year-old Sailor from Ottawa, Illinois (less than 70 miles from Richard Cheek’s hometown), was posthumously presented with the Silver Star for his actions.

CORONADO V resulted in the successful decimation and removal from the area of the 263rd Viet Cong Battalion, but it had come at a heavy cost. After 4 hours of combat, seven Americans were dead (3 sailors and 4 soldiers) and 123 men were wounded. Out of 23 boats in the column, 21 had been severely damaged. Later, gunners reported that due to the narrow river width and the low profile of its banks, they had been unable to lower their 40-millimeter guns enough to fire on the Viet Cong bunkers, which were impervious to machine-gun fire. This report helped lead to the development of the so-called Zippo monitors, equipped with flamethrowers and designed specifically to eliminate riverine bunkers. Seaman Richard Allan Cheek, Engineman Third Class William Harris Little, and Seaman William T. Diamond, Jr. are each honored by name on Panel 26, Row 74 of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C.1


1John Darrell Sherwood, War in the Shallows: U.S. Navy Coastal and Riverine Warfare in Vietnam, 1965–1968 (Washington, D.C.: Naval History and Heritage Command, 2015); John Albright, “Fight Along the Rach Ba Rai,” in John A. Cash, John Albright, and Allan W. Sandstrum, Seven Firefights in Vietnam (Washington, D.C.: Office of the Chief of Military History, Department of the Army, 1985), 67–84; James D. Johnson, Combat Chaplain: A Thirty-Year Vietnam Battle (Denton, TX: University of North Texas Press, 2001), 46–59; Charles Stanley, “Memories Live On of Sailor Killed in ’67,” Ottawa, Illinois Times, June 6, 2018 (accessed 9/12/18); “The Wall of Faces,” Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund (accessed 9/12/18).


 


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Seaman Richard A. Cheek, United States Navy

Seaman Richard A. Cheek,
United States Navy.
(Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund)

Seaman William T. Diamond, Jr., United States Navy.

Seaman William T. Diamond, Jr., United States Navy.
(Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund)

Engineman 3rd Class William H. Little, United States Navy

Engineman Third Class William H. Little, United States Navy.
(Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund)

McCain waiting with his fellow ex-POWs at a Saigon airport just after their release, 1973.

Armed Troop Carriers tied up alongside the barracks ship USS Colleton (APB-36),
September 29, 1967.

 View from the deck of an LCM-6 "Monitor," the vessel that provided the supporting firepower for the MRF's armored troop carriers. Monitors were generally equipped with 20- and 40-millimeter guns and 81-millimeter "direct fire" mortars.

 View from the deck of an LCM-"Monitor," the vessel that provided the supporting firepower for the MRF's armored troop carriers.
Monitors were generally equipped with 20-and 40-millimeter guns and 81-millimeter "direct fire" mortars.
(U.S. Army Center of Military History)

Image of the bend in the Rach Ba Rai that was the sight of the ambush. (U.S. Army Center of Military History)

Image of the bend in the Rach Ba Rai that was the sight of the ambush.
(U.S. Army Center of Military History)