Capturing Skunk Alpha
A Barrio Sailor’s Journey in Vietnam
Raúl Herrera
Texas Tech University Press, Lubbock, 2023, 312 pages
Book Review published on: February 23, 2024
In Capturing Skunk Alpha: A Barrio Sailor’s Journey in Vietnam, author Raúl Herrera shares an authoritative account of his service on a crew of Navy Swift Boat sailors in Vietnam. The author, a Mexican American, begins with his background growing up in a San Antonio barrio. He takes the reader through his initial weeks in the service and his subsequent orders to report to the Naval Amphibious Base in Coronado, California, to attend Patrol Craft Fast (PCF) crew training.
During training, Herrera learned the reason the Navy developed Swift Boats, small boats with six-man crews for coastal and brown-water operations. The North Vietnamese had formed Group 759 in late 1961 to supply communists in South Vietnam with arms via coastal sea routes as an alternative to the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The maritime supply effort eventually surpassed the overland route in volume and had become known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail by Sea. The United States responded to these littoral shipments by creating Task Force 115 in early 1965, dubbed Operation Market Time. Operation Market Time was a joint U.S. and South Vietnamese coastal patrol. By early 1966, Swift Boats began patrolling the coastal waters of South Vietnam, joining Coast Guard cutters (USCGC) and other Navy vessels already working to cut off North Vietnamese arms shipments.
While undergoing crew training, Herrera learned of deadly incidents involving early Swift Boat teams already operating in Vietnam, eliminating any illusions about what lay ahead. Once he arrived in Vietnam, Herrera was transported to Da Nang. This would be his base of operation, the northernmost tactical zone, which extended from the demilitarized zone south 250 miles. Within ten days of arriving in Da Nang, he and his crewmates, Swift Boat crew 74-A, were assigned their own Swift Boat, PCF-79. Shortly thereafter, the crew worked extensively out of Chu Lai, about two hours to the south of Da Nang. Around this time, Herrera was overjoyed to receive a letter from his girlfriend, Norma, only to be crushed when reading that she would be married by the time he received the letter.
The climax of the book involves the chase, attack, and capture of the North Vietnamese trawler, Skunk Alpha, just three months after Herrera had been assigned to PCF-79. After initially identifying the vessel, U.S. Navy and Coast Guard vessels kept their distance to avoid detection, which led the gunrunning vessel to continue in its efforts to reach its destination and offload its cargo. The United States followed the vessel for three days before the USS Wilhoite, USS Gallup, USCGC Point Orient, and Swift Boat PCF-79 engaged the trawler in a firefight that disabled the vessel near the mouth of the Sa Ky River. After disarming a damaged self-destruct capability, Skunk Alpha was towed to Chu Lai where some of the PCF-79 crewmen painted the side of the hull with their division’s motto. The capture of Skunk Alpha was significant. The cargo seized from Skunk Alpha include more than three thousand antipersonnel grenades, over one thousand assault rifles, more than three thousand pounds of plastic explosives, ammunition, rockets, and associated launchers, and almost one thousand 82 mm mortar rounds. The crew members of each of the vessels involved in the capture, including the author, were awarded Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry medals at a ceremony in Da Nang.
The celebratory mood only lasted a few weeks before the enemy attacked and overran a South Vietnamese Naval Junk Base just south of the Sa Ky River, resulting in the death of a U.S. Navy lieutenant. Shortly thereafter, while conducting a psychological operations mission, PCF-79 came under attack from multiple enemy positions, resulting in the death of Herrera’s crewmate Bobby Don Carver, the Swift Boat’s forward gunner.
Apart from engagements with the enemy, the book highlights the dangers presented by weather conditions at sea, particularly during Vietnam’s monsoon season. The author notes that during the 1967 northeast monsoon season, three Swift Boats sank, and four Swift Boat sailors drowned. The book closes with a relatively brief description of Herrera’s final hundred days in Vietnam, the splitting up of crew 74A, the anticipation of returning home, and his increasingly romantic long-distance communications with a young lady he had met at the Enlisted Club in California before departing for Vietnam.
For those interested in the Vietnam War or Naval history, Raúl Hererra’s Capturing Skunk Alpha is a well-written memoir of a young Swift Boat sailor’s experience in Vietnam, supported by many interviews, after action reports, and various historical records. The author’s Mexican American heritage takes center stage early in the book and reappears occasionally. However, by the end of the book, what defines Herrera most is his connection with his fellow Swift Boat crew members and their shared experiences.
Book Review written by: Terry D. Mobley, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas