![]() Four barges demolished to clear channels.Six large sunken ships obstructing channels demolished or removed.Since its inception, HCU-1 conducted these salvage and clearance operations: Large or small, salvage and clearance operations were the unit business: vital to the Vietnam effort. Major jobs were less frequent and required the mobilization of many craft, personnel, and materials. Most salvage jobs consisted of segmented operations requiring the independent operation of teams and craft deployed in-country. This job was the first of three dredge jobs, all similar in size and configuration, all sunk in Dong Tam and all less than a kilometer apart. The second major salvage operation in January/February 1967, was one of the world's largest dredges, the 170 feet (52 m) Jamaica Bay, at Đồng Tâm Base Camp. The patch was manufactured by the Ship Repair Facility, Subic Bay Naval Shipyard, Philippines. The world's largest salvage patch to date, costing over $50,000, was designed/applied by the HCU-l personnel. Baton Rouge Victory and its $500,000+ cargo was salvaged. The entire command, except for one Light Lift Craft, participated. " A large-scale operation ensued: the tender, the Subic staff, an all support personnel were called to the job site. ![]() The Baton Rouge Victory was the first American vessel sunk in the Saigon ship channel. Six months and numerous smaller operations later, the Victory ship Baton Rouge Victory was salvaged on the Long Tau River, South Vietnam. Twenty-four days after unit commissioning, salvage of the merchant vessel Sea Raven near Chu Lai, South Vietnam, was underway. The unit was under the operational and administrative control of Commander Service Group Three Vietnam detachments were under the operational control of Commander, Naval Forces Vietnam. Harbor Clearance Unit One, or HCU-One, was established at Subic Bay on 1 February 1966 with a hand-picked cadre of five officers and sixty-five enlisted men. The original harbor clearance units were formed during World War II and were active clearing the obstructed harbors of Bizerte, Tunisia Naples, Italy Cherbourg, France and Manila and Subic Bay, Philippines. Salvage also meant the recovery of, the repair of, and/or the demolition of aircraft and bridges trucks, tanks, and tractors forklifts and ferry landings sampans and steamers. ![]() They rescued from the murky waters of the Mekong and its tributaries practically every type of vessel utilized in Vietnam. They covered every corner of South Vietnam: from the harbors of Saigon to the rivers of the lower Mekong Delta from the coastline to the upper highlands near the Cambodian and Laotian borders, from the DMZ to Sea Float in the southernmost tip of the country. From South Korea to Guam, to Japan and the Philippines, HCU-1 detachments aided military forces of the US, South Vietnam, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. The unit's role encompassed the entire spectrum of marine salvage. ![]() Whatever the actual intent was, the concept was proven so effective that the command was moved to continuous salvage service at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, near the end of the Vietnam War. Harbor Clearance Unit One, a United States Navy unit, was commissioned in February 1966 with the mission ".to provide salvage repair diving and rescue services in rivers and restricted waters and to conduct harbor and river clearance operations in the Western Pacific." Some contended that the intended mission was to provide rapidly deployable diving and salvage teams in direct support of the Vietnam War. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |