Sailing in the Midget Fleet (cont'd)

NO SPECIAL protocol is followed on board. For instance, whoever happens to be the best cook has the job. As often as not, the cook turns out to be the skipper.

Within 30 hours after Swifts arrived in Vietnam, they were in a fight. They engaged the Viet Cong on Phu Quoc Island in the Gulf of Thailand. The Swifts pumped mortar fire into three separate Viet Cong concentrations which were threatening a Vietnamese Army post. Their firepower was too much for the enemy; he quit.

HELLO THERE-Crew of Navy Swift boat search a Vietnamese junk for possible supplies for the Viet Cong.

There are more than 80 Swift boats now operating in Vietnamese coastal waters. The measure of their hard work can be judged by the 72,000 or more junks they stopped and searched during an eight-month period.

MADE FOR THE JOB-PBRs and Swifts (below) are new types of patrol craft designed for the job of policing coast and numerous waterways of Vietnam.

Most of the junks searched turned out to be nothing more than fishing boats. Others carried supplies, arms and men for the Viet Cong; still others carried draft dodgers and deserters.

The Swift boats get very little rest now, and even less is in store for them. Navy plans call for three alternating crews to keep Swifts now operating in Vietnam on patrol as long as possible.

READY - Craft of Vietnamese junk division stand by in port ready to chase VC.

ABOUT SEVEN months after Swift boats arrived in Vietnam, an even newer guerrilla warfare weapon made its appearance. It was the PBR (for Patrol Boat, River).

Specifically, the PBRs' purpose is to keep the rivers of Vietnam open to peaceful trade and to deny their use to the Viet Cong. They have the distinction of being the first river patrol boats the Navy has acquired since the Civil War.

River boat design has changed during the past 100 years. The current model has a fiber glass hull which is lined with plastic foam to increase buoyancy.

The hull, of course, can't stop bullets but that's a matter of small importance. A PBR, even with holes in the hull, can still remain afloat while all it needs for a repair job is a brush and a "bucket of goop."

The little boats are only 31 feet long and 10 and a half feet wide at the beam. They draw about 12 to 18 inches when dead in the water but when they're on the move, they can get along on as little as nine.

Power comes from two 220-hp engines and the PBRs are propelled by two water-jet units which obviate the necessity of propellers and rudders. Their top speed, fully loaded, is about 25 knots.

Page 2