Qualla: An Thoi Naval Base https://qualla.com/an-thoi-naval-base en-us © 2026 Bendyline Thu, 20 Aug 2026 16:39:17 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_res/siteimages/rsslogo.png Qualla: An Thoi Naval Base https://qualla.com/an-thoi-naval-base An Thoi Naval Base: Introduction https://qualla.com/an-thoi-naval-base/ On 30 October 1965, two boats tied up at An Thoi that had no business being in a war. PCF-3 and PCF-4 were fifty feet long, thirteen feet in the beam, and built of aluminium roughly a quarter of an inch thick - about the thickness of a paperback. No naval architect had designed them. Sewart Seacraft of Louisiana built the hull as a water taxi to run roughnecks out to oil rigs in the Gulf of Mexico, and the US Navy bought it more or less unaltered because it was fast, cheap and available immediately. Six men crewed each one. Within months PCF-4 would be gone, destroyed by a mine, the first Swift Boat lost in Vietnam. This is where that campaign was run from: a fishing town on the southern tip of Phu Quoc island, closer to Cambodia than to most of Vietnam, that almost no American could have found on a map.

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]]> Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/w/3/c/b/an-thoi-naval-base-wp/w3cb-an-thoi-naval-base-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full An Thoi Naval Base: Quarter-Inch Aluminium https://qualla.com/an-thoi-naval-base/ The Patrol Craft Fast was a compromise wearing a uniform. Twin General Motors diesels drove it to 32 knots, which was its whole argument - fast enough to run down a junk, fast enough to leave. Two .50-calibre machine guns sat in a tub above the pilothouse, with an unusual over-an...

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]]> Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/w/3/c/b/an-thoi-naval-base-wp/w3cb-an-thoi-naval-base-quarter-inch-aluminium.mp3 0:06 2 full An Thoi Naval Base: Boarding the Fishing Fleet https://qualla.com/an-thoi-naval-base/ The mission had a deceptively gentle name: Operation Market Time. Its object was to stop weapons reaching the Viet Cong by sea, and its method was to stop, board and search anything that floated. On 24 July 1965 the newly formed Division 11 of Coast Guard Squadron One left Subic ...

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]]> Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/w/3/c/b/an-thoi-naval-base-wp/w3cb-an-thoi-naval-base-boarding-the-fishing-fleet.mp3 0:06 3 full An Thoi Naval Base: Building It Out of Nothing https://qualla.com/an-thoi-naval-base/ An Thoi had begun as a Republic of Vietnam Navy post in the early 1960s, headquarters of Coastal District IV, renamed the 4th Naval Zone on 16 October 1963. There was almost nothing there. On 14 December 1964, engineers from the American construction consortium RMK-BRJ arrived ab...

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]]> Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/w/3/c/b/an-thoi-naval-base-wp/w3cb-an-thoi-naval-base-building-it-out-of-nothing.mp3 0:06 4 full An Thoi Naval Base: Handing Back the Keys https://qualla.com/an-thoi-naval-base/ The Americans left in stages rather than all at once. Division 11 was disestablished on 5 June 1969, its surviving cutters sent east to Cat Lo. The base itself was formally turned over to the Republic of Vietnam Navy on 28 May 1971, part of the vast transfer of hardware and respo...

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]]> Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/w/3/c/b/an-thoi-naval-base-wp/w3cb-an-thoi-naval-base-handing-back-the-keys.mp3 0:06 5 full An Thoi Naval Base: The Same Water https://qualla.com/an-thoi-naval-base/ The base never closed. It serves today as the Vietnam People's Navy's Region 5 command, still watching the same approaches, still tied to the same pier line. What changed is everything around it. Phu Quoc, Vietnam's largest island at 575 square kilometres, has turned into a resor...

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]]> Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/w/3/c/b/an-thoi-naval-base-wp/w3cb-an-thoi-naval-base-the-same-water.mp3 0:06 6 full