At Dong Ha, five miles below the DMZ, the Seabees of MCB-11 lived through
the worst ammunition disaster in history when the enemy launched a 140-mm rocket
attack and blew up 20,000 tons of ammunition on the afternoon of September
3, 1967 . Elements of the Viet Cong combined with North Vietnamese People's
Army rocket companies, infiltrated within 10 miles of Dong Ha and bombarded
the town in a harassing action designed to disrupt the national elections being
held that day.
In addition to Army and Marine artillery and infantry units guarding the area, Marine Air Group 16 operated. a landing strip in conjunction with the Air Force just outside of the town. Three hundred yards southeast of the airstrip MCB-11 was encamped. Concentrated between the Seabees and the air strip were a fuel dump holding 40,000 gallons of AvGas and an ammunition dump containing 20,000 tons of explosives C-4 plastic explosive, artillery shells and sundry types of ammunition.
MCB-11 had been deployed at Dong Ha since April and the men suspected the enemy would attempt something spectacular to detract from the elections, but just what the Viet Cong had up their pajama sleeves was unknown. At 1400 the first rockets came screaming in, their tail vanes making the peculiar high pitched whistle so familiar to fighting men in Vietnam . The first two shells dropped with deadly accuracy into the AvGas dump. The fuel blew up with a roar and sent a long black column of smoke into the sky. The NVA used the smoke column as a mark to range in on the ammo dump and the Seabee camp.
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One rocket battery “walked” a train of explosions across the Seabee camp while
another battery slammed missiles into the ammunition. The ammo dump took several
hits, then blew up. The men rattled around in their mortar holes helplessly
as succeeding shock waves shook the camp. The 20,000 tons of ammunition continued
to explode during the next eight hours.
By the time the ammo dump erupted, most of the Seabees and Marines had made it to their dugouts. However, many men of MCB-11 remained above ground, dodging smoking hot artillery shells raining down from the ammunition dump explosions, as they carried wounded comrades to the battalion aid station.
Leading Chief Petty Officer Ed Hanby remembers the first effects of the bombardment. “The rockets came in, two of them, and hit the AvGas which exploded all over the place. Then two more rockets or artillery shells hit the ammunition dump and it started to ‘cook off.' Dud shells and smoking live ones were falling all through the camp. The rockets started to hit our camp and that is when we began having casualties.”
Two days before the September 3 attack, the North Vietnamese rockets and 152mm
artillery had hit the Seabee camp with devastating accuracy. The first rocket
struck the hut of Builder Richard Sheets and Constructionman Richard Wager.
Wager was killed as he dived toward his mortar hole trap door in the floor
of the hut. Sheets was peppered with shrapnel and burned from the blast. He
survived to return to the battalion a month later after treatment on the Naval
Hospital Ship Repose.
Five other Scabees died and many were wounded in the first few bursts of the rocket barrage. The North Vietnamese were firing the 140mm Russian made rockets and 152mm artillery shells from camouflaged vantage points above Dong Ha. The accuracy of the rocket fire indicated that Vet Cong artillery spotters had infiltrated the area around the camp and called in the ranges to the enemy batteries. The NVA racketeers bombarded the Seabee camp and the MAG 16 compound for 5everal hours.
Acts of heroism performed by the men of MCB-1I were so numerous they almost
became routine. BUC William H. Neal and SWF2 Joseph H. Wood ran through the
enemy barrage to rescue BUCN Sheets who was standing in the blazing wreckage
of his hut. Ridd1ed with shrapnel and his clothes on fire. The men put the
fire out and carried Sheets three hundred yards to the aid station through
the shells raining down from the explosions. These two men also assisted two
other Seabees who had been mortally wounded.
PN3 William E. Andre and DT2 Michael D. Nelson saved the life of BUH3 Robert A. Martindale who had been blown out of his hut by the blast. Though seriously wounded, BUHCN Edward .1 Stier, aided by BUH3 George C. Dorman scrambled through the smashed huts to assist in the removal of dead and wounded men. LT (Jg) Robert Cahill, Delta Company commander was slightly wounded while aiding other wounded men to safety.
UTP2 F. E. Beckett and SF! Stanley Loziol were welding up holes in the water tank when a round landed near them and blew out the tires on their welder.
The men of MCB-11 performed numerous acts of heroism during the September 3 rocket attack one of the most outstanding was that of BU2 Floyd J. Pratt who rescued 30 Marines trapped in the burning Ammunition Supply Point.
Pratt tells it as: “We were finishing a concrete pour just outside the rear area of the camp. The rounds came in and set off the ammunition which began exploding loudly. We completed the concrete work, then got back into our truck and headed for the back gate. A Marine sergeant stopped me by the back gate and asked if I could drive the truck into the ASP to rescue some Marines. So I did.”
Pratt drove his truck into the thick of the exploding ammunition and 30 Marines piled aboard from where they had been trapped in mortar holes. Pratt got the men out in quick time. Another Marine Sergeant asked Pratt if he would return to the ammunition depot and rescue some wounded Marines supposedly trapped in a bunker. Pratt drove his truck back into the inferno and reached the bunker. Ammunition was going off all around his truck and whizzing pieces of shrapnel bounced off the truck cab and body. Pratt's last trip proved fruitless all the Marines had been evacuated minutes before his arrival. Pratt calmly drove his battered truck back to his company area.
The last elements of MCB-l I were flown into Point Mugu Naval Air Station on December 6, completing the battalion's second deployment. Not all of the men of the battalion came back, nine will remain in Vietnam forever, killed in action by Viet Cong and North Vietnamese regular army attacks at Khe Sahn and Dong Ha.
Click on map for largerview (4 meg) Map courtesy of Fred Korn
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