South Viet Nam: McCoy’s Navy

Among the stately carriers and dashing destroyers of the U.S. Seventh Fleet, there exists an ugly, unlikely division of four ships that is known as “McCoy’s Navy.” Its officers and men are recognizable from afar by their luxuriant beards and deep suntans, and the approach of their elderly craft can be detected by the clatter of chipping hammers pecking away at rusty decks. The ships themselves have high, unsheered bows and an ungainly 12-knot waddle, while the most advanced piece of electronic gear aboard any of them is a popcorn machine. Yet Inshore Fire Support Division 93, as McCoy’s Navy is known officially, is one of the most valuable units in the South China Sea. It serves as the seagoing artillery of the South Vietnamese army.

Filling the Gun Gap. Created during last fall’s “gun gap” to add desperately needed firepower to the ground war, McCoy’s Navy consists of three World War II-vintage LSMRs (for Landing Ship Medium, Rocket) and the only inshore-fire-support ship in the world, the U.S.S. Carronade (aptly named for an 18th century cannon). Originally designed to pulverize beachheads for invading U.S. Marines, each ship mounts a battery of 5-in. rocket launchers and a single 5-in. naval rifle. Since the Marines had already landed when McCoy’s Navy showed up last April, the beach smashers had to learn to become pinpoint artillerists. It was no easy task. The spin-stabilized 5-in. rocket is not nearly so accurate as a naval rifle shell. Moreover, no one knew if the squat, underpowered ships could safely negotiate Viet Nam’s tortuous Mekong River Delta—a prime necessity if their rockets’ five-mile strike range was to be applied effectively against inland Viet Cong installations. Slowly but steadily, the rocket men overcame the built-in limitations of their ships and in the process wrote a new manual on shore bombardment.

Only the Carronade was equipped with a fire-control computer, and it was soon beyond repair, owing to a lack of spare parts. Lieut. Commander Roy E. McCoy, 38, who runs the division from his Empire desk aboard the Carronade, quickly jury-rigged an alternative system, known as the “bow and arrow” method. Spotters ashore send target coordinates to the ships’ Combat Information Centers, where men with aluminum ballistic slide rules (copied from a cardboard original found aboard one of the ships) swiftly tot up the deflection, angle-bearing and elevation of the rocket launchers. Then, just to make sure, one officer stands on the bridge to double-check the course of the rockets. Last week, as McCoy’s Navy plastered everything from ammo dumps to Viet Cong villages in support of Saigon’s Operation Franklin, accuracy on all targets ranged from 96% to 99% .

“Better You than Them.” McCoy’s first test came on the third night the Carronade was on the line. A U.S. Army adviser called in from an outpost that was being overrun by Viet Cong, desperately demanded fire support. McCoy explained that his 5-in. gun was out of commission and all he had was rockets. “Never mind,” answered the adviser. “Better you than them.” The Carronade cut loose, slamming rockets into the attackers, only 200 yds. from the friendly troops. That night confidence was born in the accuracy of naval rocket fire. “We got to the point,” says McCoy, “where we became artillery. A love affair developed, and advisers in the outposts told us they couldn’t sleep at night unless we were there. It would take six destroyers to replace us.”

All told, McCoy’s Navy has killed 665 Viet Cong, destroyed 4,367 buildings, sunk 297 gunrunning sampans, and fired 31,251 rockets. Most important, not a single South Vietnamese outpost within range of his rockets has been overrun during the three months his “little armada” has been in action. “The PT was the boat of World War II,” he says. “Now we’re it.”