Junk Force
The Junk Force (Vietnamese: Lực Lượng Hải Thuyền) officially the Coastal Force was a naval security unit of the Republic of Vietnam, composed of civilians trained by the Navy and working in conjunction with the Republic of Vietnam National Police.
Consequently, the administration ordered the Defense Department to support the new force by funding the construction of 501 junks by South Vietnamese shipyards.
[3]: 13 The original plan for the Coastal Force, written by RVNN Commander Hồ Tấn Quyền, called for 420 sailing junks and 63 motorized junks, manned by 2,200 civilian irregulars drawn from local fishing villages, to patrol the inshore coastal waters up to 5 miles (8.0 km) from the coast.
Every division would patrol a 30 miles (48 km) stretch of the South Vietnamese coastline, and their operations would be coordinated by radio from coastal command surveillance centers.
Vietnamese fishermen made an adequate living from the sea during this period and had little interest in joining the junk force.
In a medical survey of Junk Division 33 in 1963, one advisor found that over 50 percent of the junkmen had some type of treatable disease.
[3]: 16 Following the Vũng Rô Bay incident in February 1965 when a North Vietnamese 130 feet (40 m) long steel-hulled freighter manage to slip through RVNN's coastal patrols and it took the RVNN (with Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) and RVNAF support) over four days to secure the area and seize the ship's goods, a report on the RVNN found that the Junk Force's personnel were "by and large, illiterate," operating "under the most difficult living conditions and on an extremely austere basis."
Although this force patrolled the vital inner barrier of the Operation Market Time blockade and was responsible for controlling vast stretches of the coastline, it was in many respects the weakest link in the chain.
Armed with one .50-caliber and two .30-caliber machine guns, these 54 feet (16 m) junks could reach a maximum speed of 12 knots—more than adequate to intercept similar vessels used by the VC.
Beginning in 1964 the Naval Advisory Group recommended that all of these junks be stricken from the fleet; 134 were retired during 1965, with the remainder scheduled to go in early 1966.
Armed with a .30-caliber machine gun, it featured a 110-horsepower diesel engine capable of generating ten knots of speed and was built entirely out of fiberglass, which obviated the need to treat the hulls for wood-boring Teredo worms.
The U.S. Military Assistance Program provided funds for building materials and engines, and the Vietnamese paid the wages of the shipyard laborers who built the junks.
In a report to the Chief of Naval Operations, Vice Admiral Paul P. Blackburn, the United States Seventh Fleet commander, summarized the situation as follows: "The VNN Coastal and Sea Forces effort in Market Time Operations has degenerated to the point where it is effectively non-existent.
"[3]: 45 Ultimately, some of the problems with the Coastal Force were alleviated by integrating it into the regular navy in July 1965, but the sorry state of the service as a whole continued throughout 1965.
The men, most of whom had just a few years of grade school education, lived in primitive conditions far from the comforts of larger towns or cities.
