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You are here: Home / Archives for Australian Navy / HMAS Vendetta II

HMAS Vendetta II

Occasional Paper 75: The Vietnam War and the Royal Australian Navy

April 14, 2020

The following address was delivered by Captain Ralph T. Derbidge MBE RAN (Retired) at the Melbourne Shrine of Remembrance to mark Vietnam Veterans Day on 18 August 2010.  It describes the commitment of RAN fleet and air units to that War and the variety of essential tasks and services they provided in support of both the ground and air war.

Captain Derbidge concluded his 36 years of service in 1990 as the Director of Facilities Planning-Navy.  A specialist Gunnery Officer he served in that capacity in five RAN and RN ships.  He had intervening tours as a Staff Officer to the Australian Naval Attache in Washington, as Deputy Director of Surface and Air Weapons and with the Joint Intelligence Organisation.  He commanded HMA Ships Stuart, Canberra and Success and the RAN Apprentice Training Establishment, HMAS Nirimba.

Vietnam – tropical, alluring, fun-filled, breathtakingly beautiful, gastronomically exciting and friendly – today, a magnetic attraction for numerous tourists, businessmen and capital investors, many of them Australians, including Vietnam War veterans.  Ask my wife about Vietnam.  She welcomed me home from the war 39 years ago, but in recent times she enjoyed greatly with friends a group bicycle tour from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi. I didn’t go – I get sunburnt!

But it was not always like that.

Vietnam, some 7,500 kilometres to our north west as the crow flies from Melbourne, and three hours behind Australia’s Eastern Standard Time, lies between the Tropic of Cancer and the Equator.  It is bordered to the west by Cambodia and Laos, and to the north by China.  The northern part of the long eastern shoreline sits within the Gulf of Tonkin while to the south the coastline is washed by the South China Sea.  The shorter western shore faces the Gulf of Thailand.

The scope of my primary interest covers the period from 1956 to 1975 when the country was divided at the 17th parallel of latitude by the Demiltarised Zone (or ‘DMZ’) into the Democratic Republic of Vietnam or North Vietnam and the Republic of Vietnam, albeit South Vietnam.  To understand the Vietnam War, and the Royal Australian Navy’s involvement in that war, it is necessary to have some knowledge of the relatively modern history of Indo-China and Vietnam.

Indo-China had been a sphere of French protectorates and colonisation since the 1850’s but the French influence was interrupted by World War 2 and supplanted by Japanese occupation.  The French returned in 1945 to face much turmoil and unrest as the countries of the region sought self-determination as the sun was setting on British and European empires.  It is not in my brief to dwell at length on the complex issues and proceedings that spawned communist parties and governments in the region and to the north in China and Korea, as Cold War tensions mounted.  It is sufficient for me to note that the Viet Minh forces of northern Vietnam, under the command of General Vo Nguyen Giap, comprehensively defeated the French at Dien Bien Phu some 320 kilometres from Hanoi in May 1954 to end the First Indo-China War.

The armistice and Geneva Conference that followed, and the division of the country at the DMZ, set the scene for future hostilities in the guise of the Vietnam War.  At the time of the French defeat, I was a 14 year old Cadet Midshipman in my first year at the Royal Australian Naval College, then located at Crib Point on Mornington Peninsula.

The Vietnam War officially was a Cold War military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to 30 April 1975 when Saigon fell.  This war followed upon the First Indo-China War and was fought between the communist North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of South Vietnam, supported by the United State and other anti-communist nations, including Australia and New Zealand.

The Viet Cong, a lightly-armed South Vietnamese communist-controlled common front, largely fought a guerilla war against anti-communist forces in the region.  The North Vietnamese Army engaged in a more conventional war, at times committing large units into battle.  US and South Vietnamese forces relied principally on air superiority and overwhelming firepower to conduct search-and-destroy operations involving mainly ground forces, artillery and airstrikes.

The United States entered the war to prevent a communist take-over of South Vietnam as part of their wider strategy of containment.  Military advisers arrived, beginning in 1950.  US involvement increased in the early 1960’s, with US troop levels tripling in 1961 and tripling again in 1962 when Australian military advisers were first sent to the country.  US and Australian combat units were deployed, beginning in 1965.  Operations spanned borders, with Laos and Cambodia being heavily bombed.  Involvement peaked in 1968 at the time of the Tet Offensive.  After this, US and Australian ground forces were progressively withdrawn as part of a policy called Vietnamisation.  Despite the Paris Peace Accords, signed by all parties in January 1973, fighting continued in the South.  The capture of Saigon by the North Vietnamese army in April 1975 marked the end of the Vietnam War.  North and South Vietnam were reunified the following year.

It can be argued that the first peripheral involvement by the RAN in the Vietnam War occurred between 1956 and 1963 when six Australian naval vessels in successive pairs visited the Republic of Vietnam, beginning with HMA Ships ANZAC and TOBRUK, followed by VAMPIRE and QUICKMATCH and, lastly, QUEENBOROUGH and QUIBERON.  Former Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City, was primarily the focal point for this ‘showing of the flag’ as it is colloquially known, but demonstrating at the time, in concert with the United States of America, support for the internally and externally hard-pressed South Vietnam regime of the aloof President Diem and his domineering sister-in-law, Madam Nhu.

Politically and militarily, in and around the Capital, in the Highlands and the Mekong Delta, and in the Central Lowlands, the South was opposed by the increasingly worrying Viet Cong, supported by surrogate North Vietnam, and home grown military and religious dissidents.  Who can forget the images of self-immolating Buddhist monks.

I first visited South Vietnam in 1963 as the Gunnery Officer of HMAS QUIBERON, then exercising this form of ‘gunboat diplomacy’.  It was two years after the Bay of Pigs and Cuba, when the Cold War perhaps was at its most threatening.  Memories of the Malayan Emergency and the Korean War were still vivid, confrontation with Indonesia over newly formed Malaysia was under way and the ‘Domino Effect’ of successively falling democratic governments in Asia and South East Asia was the all pervading fear of the free world lead by the United States of America.  Australian membership of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organisation, or SEATO, and the Australia New Zealand and United States, or ANZUS, Treaty both had implications and obligations for our nation.  A vigorous stand would soon be taken by the United States and some of her allies in South Vietnam.

But back in 1963, I recall a good will port call at Nha Trang, the riviera of Indo-China, and a flurry of official social and ceremonial activity in once Saigon.  All seemed relatively calm and business-like in the South’s capital, but there were disconcerting signs for the keen eyed visitor that not all was well – such as the transit of the scenic Saigon River with overhead escorting aircraft, the requirement to travel in armed convoys up-country and the militarisation of, and midnight curfew in, the city.  I was 23 at the time and unaware that I would return to this troubled land eight years hence in far less pacific circumstances as the Gunnery Officer of HMAS BRISBANE.  Within three years, the Diem regime had been toppled from within and Australia would soon find itself engaged in active hostilities alongside the United States.

As mentioned earlier, Australian Army advisers were sent to South Vietnam as early as 1962 and an RAAF transport flight, No 35 Squadron, was established at Vung Tau in Phuoc Tuy Province in 1964.

But it was not until 1965 that the RAN was in the front line, so to speak, when the former aircraft carrier HMAS SYDNEY, as a fast troop transport, made the first of her 22 trips to South Vietnam to off-load initially an Australian infantry battalion and supporting infrastructure at Vung Tau.  Australian military assistance to the Republic of Vietnam was substantially increased from mid-1966 and it is fitting that I pay tribute to the important logistic role played by the RAN in delivering and returning Australian troops, equipment, ammunition and supplies to and from the war until December 1972.

HMAS Sydney

From June 1966, HMAS SYDNEY was supported in this role by the Australian National Line coastal cargo ship MV JEPARIT, commissioned into the RAN in 1969, and by another ANL vessel, MV BOONAROO, being the first ship commissioned under the new RAN White Ensign in March 1967 for her second voyage to Vietnam.  Escorts for this seaborne logistic lift effort to and from Vietnam over the course of the war were HMA Ships ANZAC, DERWENT, DUCHESS, MELBOURNE, PARRAMATTA, STUART, SWAN, TORRENS, VAMPIRE, VENDETTA and YARRA.

Although the logistic ships and escorts had been ferrying Australian troops and supplies to Vietnam from May 1965, the RAN did not enter the war in a combat role until February 1967 when a six man clearance diving team arrived in country to carry out harbour defence, salvage, explosive ordnance  disposal and a variety of special operations.  This unit, Clearance Diving Team 3, was formed specially for service in Vietnam and eight contingents of the team were to be deployed in-country until May 1971.

In March 1967, the new US built guided missile destroyer or DDG, HMAS HOBART, was deployed for service in Vietnamese waters to join the US Seventh Fleet in operations entailing coastal surveillance and interdiction, shore bombardment of North Vietnamese military targets and similar naval gunfire support of ground operations in the four military regions of South Vietnam.  Sister ships HMAS PERTH and HMAS BRISBANE followed in rotation for a total of eight typical deployments of seven months each until this commitment was withdrawn in October 1971.  The Australian built Daring Class destroyer, HMAS VENDETTA, complemented this effort with one such deployment.

HMAS Hobart

During these operations, HOBART and PERTH came under fire on numerous occasions.  PERTH was hit once during her first deployment and HOBART was struck inadvertently in the dark of one night by missiles fired from a US Air Force aircraft.  BRISBANE, during her first deployment, suffered a gunmount crippling inbore detonation of a faulty high explosive shell in the forward 5-inch gun barrel.

When not on typically month-long Gunline operations, the RAN destroyers were employed on escort duties with United States Navy aircraft carriers in the Tonkin Gulf or receiving ammunition, stores, food, spare parts and mail by underway replenishment from USN fleet train supply ships in the South China Sea.  Periodic detachments were scheduled for routine one-week-long ship maintenance periods and ‘R & R’ in ports such as Subic Bay in the Philippines and Hong Kong and Singapore.  In their five years’ service in the Vietnam War, the four Australian destroyers steamed over 397,000 nautical miles and fired 102,546 rounds of 5-inch and 4.5-inch ammunition amounting to some 2,800 tonnes of high explosive.

HMAS Boonaroo

The RAN Fleet Air Arm, as a separate entity, was also actively and uniquely engaged in the war from late 1967 when the first contingent of the RAN Helicopter Flight Vietnam was integrated fully with the US Army’s 135th Aviation Company.  Four contingents of the Flight served in Vietnam until June 1971, flying mainly in the Mekong Delta in support of ground operations, a hazardous business at the best of times.

There were other, smaller, but no less important RAN contributions to the war effort in South Vietnam, such as Fleet Air Arm helicopter pilots serving with 9 Squadron RAAF at Vung Tau, detached medical officers in Australian and US military hospitals and liaison personnel in Saigon.  Several sea transport officers were seconded from the Department of Shipping and Transport and commissioned into the Naval Reserve.  Back home, a number of dedicated staff in Navy Office and Fleet Headquarters, and in the operational and training establishments, looked to the professional, military intelligence, logistic support and welfare needs of those personnel, ships and aircraft deployed to the war.

The return of HMAS BRISBANE to Sydney from her second deployment on 15 October 1971 marked the end of the RAN’s combat role in the Vietnam War.  All told, some 2,800 naval personnel, all male and volunteers, saw active service in Vietnam.  Of these, eight were killed while 15 received serious injuries.  Eighty naval personnel were honoured with decorations and awards, the majority ‘mentioned-in-despatches’.

Today, Vietnam is united and at peace, but there was a time when we were adversaries of those who sought and gained that unification by a spectrum of ideological and military means.  It was a complex and costly war, and the longest to that point fought by the United States and Australia.

To put it into one context, nine million men served in the US military during the Vietnam War, one third of whom went to the Vietnam theatre, and there has been little latter-day recognition of how brutal the war was for those who fought it on the ground.  Those who believe the war was fought incompletely on a tactical level should consider Hanoi’s recent admission that 1.4 million of its soldiers died on the battlefield, compared to 266,000 Army of the Republic of Vietnam deaths and 58,000 total U.S. dead.  Those who believe that it was a ‘dirty little war’, where the bombs did all the work, might contemplate that it was the most costly war the U.S. Marine Corps has ever fought; five times as many dead as in World War I, three times as many dead as in Korea, and more total killed and wounded than in World War 2.

Significantly, those sacrifices were made at a time when the United States, and to a lesser extent Australia, were deeply divided politically and societally at home over our military involvement in Vietnam, particularly after the Tet Offensive in 1968.  Ask any surviving veteran who returned from that war.  He will tell you all about that!

Australian Naval History on 27 February 2005

February 27, 2005

ADML M.W. Hudson, AC, RAN(Rtd), died in Sydney. He was born in 1933 and entered the RAN College in 1947. During his 44 year career he was commanding officer of HMA Ships VENDETTA, BRISBANE, STALWART, and MELBOURNE. He was also the Flag Officer Commanding the Australian Fleet, (FOCAF), and Assistant Chief of Defence Force (Policy). In 1985 he was appointed as Chief of Naval Staff and held the position until he retired in March 1991. He was promoted to four-star Admiral shortly before his retirement. Following his retirement he served on the Navy League Advisory Council and was President of the Naval Association.

The RAN’s Destroyers

March 11, 1991

Surely destroyers are the backbone of our Royal Australian Navy. Thirty-nine destroyers have served in the RAN since Foundation in 1911, from our first destroyers – HMA Ships PARRAMATTA (1), and YARRA (1), of only 700 tons, to our latest DDGs PERTH, HOBART and BRISBANE displacing over 4,500 tons.

River Class

HMAS Parramatta
HMAS Parramatta

Australia’s first destroyers were known as the River Class (I Class in the Royal Navy). The first two, PARRAMATTA and YARRA, were completely built in the UK during 1910/11, with WARREGO 1910/12, built in England, then disassembled and shipped to Australia to be rebuilt in Cockatoo Island Dockyard in NSW (for the ship building experience). The remaining four were completely built in Cockatoo Island Dockyard – WARREGO 1910/11/12, HUON (laid as DERWENT, but renamed HUON so as not to be confused with HMS DERWENT) 1913/15, TORRENS 1913/15 and SWAN 1915/16. They had a displacement of 700 tons, length 250ft, beam 24½ft and a 9ft draught. They carried one 4″ gun forward, 3x 12pdrs, 3×18″ torpedoes in tubes. Speed of 26/27 knots, with a complement of 66 officers and men. The cost of the UK built ships was £81,500, and the Australian built ships £160,000. (How times have changed.)

These ships served in the Mediterranean and the Pacific areas during World War I, and after the War, from 1919 in various duties, and for Naval Reserve training.

Gift Destroyers

In 1919 the RAN received six gift destroyers from the Royal Navy, the first was HMAS ANZAC (1), 1917 to 1933, a Marksman (Destroyer leader) Class destroyer of 1,660 tons, length 325ft, beam 31½ft, draught 12½ft, with three funnels. Her armament was 4×4″ guns, 2x12pdrs, 4×21″ torpedoes. She had a speed of 34 knots from her triple screws, with a complement of 122 officers and ratings. ANZAC transferred to the RAN, leaving Plymouth (England) in February 1920 and sailed to Sydney, arriving there on 29 April. There was little to do after the War (Great War), and she spent her time on the Australian east coast, though she visited New Guinea and New Britain in 1924, 1926 and 1930. But she remained the only destroyer kept through the depression years, till she was paid off in 1933, and scrapped in 1935. Sold for £1,800, ANZAC was sunk off Sydney on 7 May 1936 as target practice for RAN ships.

S Class

The other five S Class Destroyers – HMA Ships STALWART (1), SUCCESS, SWORDSMAN, TASMANIA and TATTOO were of 1,070 tons, 276ft in length, beam 26¾ft, draught 10½ft, with 3×4″ guns, 1x2pdr, pompoms and machine guns, 4×21″ torpedoes, speed 34 knots and complement of 90 officers and ratings.

For these ships, the majority of their service life was spent in port, and on the east coast, the only exception being TASMANIA, which visited New Guinea in 1924.

These S Class were famous ships, and over sixty more were built for the Royal Navy to replace WW I ships, and though many were scrapped between the wars, eleven still served in the Royal Navy during WW II.

The RAN’s five were built in the UK 1917/18, and commissioned into the RAN 1920. They paid off and went to Reserve in the late 1920s to 1930, and were all sold by 1937.

TATTOO was the last to pay off in 1933. On one of its last trips outside Sydney’s Heads, when passing the Matson Liner MARIPOSA, it signalled ‘Are you catching any fish’. Poor TATTOO! At least – they claimed – TATTOO never broke down.

V&W Class

Next, after service with the Royal Navy from 1918 to 1932, STUART transferred to the Royal Australian Navy in October 1933, along with four V & W Class destroyers (to replace the old S Class destroyers).

HMAS STUART (1) was a Scott Class Destroyer Leader, with displacement of 2,000 tons, length 332ft, beam 31¾ft, draught 12¼ft. Her armament (original) was 5×4.7″ guns, 1×3″ AA and small arms, and 6×21″ torpedoes. Speed 36½ knots and ship’s complement of 185. In her RAN commission, she was the Flotilla Leader, and up to 1939 served mainly in Australian waters, though being decommissioned for two short periods in that time.

With the declaration of war in 1939, STUART (Cmdr H.M.L. Waller, RAN), with the V & Ws HMA Ships VAMPIRE (1), VENDETTA (1), VOYAGER (1), and WATERHEN (1), sailed for the Mediterranean, where the Flotilla saw much action along the North African coast, with the British Fleet all over the Eastern Mediterranean, and with HMAS SYDNEY in action against the Italian Fleet at Calabria, through to the Battle of Matapan, then landings of troops on Greece and Crete, and later evacuating those troops after German occupation. STUART departed the Mediterranean August 22nd 1941, to return to Australia to commence a long and overdue refit, till April 1942. She then served in north eastern Australian waters till 1946, paying off 27th April 1946 and was scrapped in 1947.

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Williamstown Naval Dockyard – Part 1

September 11, 1986

Some 16 years ago, in the first or second issue of the ‘Naval Historical Review’, there appeared the first part of a two-part story on the history of Williamstown Naval Dockyard. The second part has never appeared! Various Committee members have been asked to contribute articles for this special issue of the ‘Review’. As an expatriate who still regards himself as a Victorian, and as a former employee of the Dockyard (albeit 40 years ago), I offered to complete the history. In view of the length of time since the first part was published, I will not just follow on from 1918, where Part I finished. In any case, many of today’s readers would not have seen the original article. I will, therefore, begin at the beginning, with apologies to the original authors, Alan Bunnett, G. Halliburton and Paul Webb. I have not used any of their story, but naturally much of the early part of my story will duplicate what they wrote. I will end my story with some personal reminiscences of my time there. Perhaps some readers will have known some of the people I will mention.

WILLIAMSTOWN NAVAL DOCKYARD is situated on Point Gellibrand, a peninsula first observed by white men in 1803. The Point is named after J.T. Gellibrand, a Van Dieman’s Land lawyer, who came with Batman to take up residence in ‘the place for a village’, which had been ‘purchased’ in 1835 from the Yarra Yarra tribe. From its infancy the Port Phillip District had a maritime association, because all its first colonists and their stock came by sea from Van Dieman’s Land or New South Wales. This meant that in 1840 it became necessary to erect a lighthouse and a signal station on Point Gellibrand. The latter operated in conjunction with another station on the site of the present-day Flagstaff Gardens, adjacent to the centre of the city area of Melbourne, to relay the news of incoming ships. In 1852 the lighthouse was demolished and replaced by a timeball tower, the purpose being to regulate all marine chronographs in the harbour by the raising of a ball on a long pole at exactly 1.00 p.m. each day. The tower is still visible near the Dockyard car park.

Shipyards, pilots and shallow berthing were available on the Yarra from the earliest days of settlement, but the discovery of gold at Ballarat in 1851 soon proved them to be totally inadequate. A flood of hopeful gold seekers arrived in ships that frequently found the shallow river unnavigable so they had to be off-loaded in Williamstown for a journey by lighter or (later) rail up to Melbourne. The drastic need for a slipway in a deep-water port to service these vessels soon became apparent to the new Government of the Colony of Victoria, and the construction of this facility was begun in 1856 at Williamstown. This was the largest Government project to date, but it was steeped in controversy from its beginnings. Many felt it was inadequate, and that a graving dock would better serve the bigger ships entering Port Phillip Bay. However, the slipway was finished in 1858, and was so solidly constructed that when its few remaining timbers were removed in 1948 they were still sound and well-preserved after 90 years.

The slipway, which was powered by a 3 hp. steam engine, sloped 1 foot in 20 and could take craft of up to 200 tons deadweight. Total cost for this new acquisition for the Port of Melbourne was £58,000, with a larger bill being avoided by a piece of Government chicanery (’twas ever thus!). The barque Trafalgar put into Hobson’s Bay in 1857 en route to Launceston with a Morten Patent Slipway as part of the cargo. Captain Ferguson, the Harbour-master, arranged with the master of Trafalgar to unload the slipway, which was purchased and erected as the Government Patent Slipway. So was born a dockyard, but Williamstown, which is named after King William IV, had had shipping activity from as early as 1838 when Firefly began a regular ferry run between Melbourne and William’s Town. Brigantines, barques, warship and penal hulks were amongst the vessels which used the slip-way. Reference to penal hulks prompts the statement that no convict labour was ever used to establish what ultimately became Williamstown Naval Dockyard, even though many convicts were housed in 5 yellow penal hulks moored off Point Gellibrand. A notorious slipping was that of the Confederate raider Shenandoah in February, 1865.

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Australian Naval History on 9 October 1979

October 9, 1979

HMAS Vendetta was decommissioned. In her 21 year career, she had steamed 670952 nautical miles. She subsequently served as a source of spare parts for Vampire (II), the last Australian Daring Class Destroyer. Following her decommissioning, Vendetta languished in the ‘mothball’ fleet at Sydney until 1986, when she was sold to Ming Hsieh Steel Mill on behalf of Hodland Enterprises of Taiwan. The ship departed under tow in late 1986, bound for the breaker’s yard in Taiwan

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