Qualla: Mayaguez Incident

Mayaguez Incident: Introduction

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit U.S. Air Force, Public domain. At 06:07 on the morning of 15 May 1975, Khmer Rouge radio broadcast that the SS Mayaguez would be released. Thirteen minutes later the first American helicopter set down on a beach on the island of Koh Tang, and what is usually called the last battle of the Vietnam War began. The ship's crew were not on Koh Tang. They had been taken off it the day before and were some forty kilometres away on another island, where that same morning they were told they could go back to their ship. By the time they were safely aboard a US destroyer, three helicopters had been shot out of the sky and men had been dying on Koh Tang for close to four hours.

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Image: U.S. Air Force | Public domain

Mayaguez Incident: Six Miles Off Poulo Wai

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit United States Air Force, Public domain. The Mayaguez was a container ship owned by Sea-Land Service, built in 1944 as a wartime freighter and later rebuilt into one of the first American all-container vessels. She was running from Hong Kong to Sattahip in Thailand with routine freight, government and military container...

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Image: United States Air Force | Public domain

Mayaguez Incident: A Test Case

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown authorUnknown author or not provided, Public domain. President Gerald Ford was told at his morning briefing, and the National Security Council convened that afternoon. Saigon had fallen twelve days before. What was said in that room was mostly not about a ship. Vice President Nelson Rockefeller argued the crisis would be "judged in...

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Image: Unknown authorUnknown author or not provided | Public domain

Mayaguez Incident: Twenty or Thirty Men

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit U.S. Navy, Public domain. The rescue was assembled in roughly two days. Marines of BLT 2/9 would assault Koh Tang, where the crew were believed to be held. A company of 1/4 Marines would board the Mayaguez herself from the destroyer escort USS Harold E. Holt. Aircraft from the carrier USS Coral Sea would ...

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Image: U.S. Navy | Public domain

Mayaguez Incident: Four Hours Behind

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit U.S. Navy, Public domain. Of the eight helicopters in the first wave, three were destroyed and four more damaged past use. Knife 31 took two rocket-propelled grenades on the approach to East Beach and went down burning fifty metres offshore; thirteen men died in the crash, in the water, or on the sand try...

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Image: U.S. Navy | Public domain

Mayaguez Incident: The Arithmetic

Mon, 17 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit U.S. Marine Corps, Public domain. Forty-one Americans died, and the figure is usually given whole when it should not be. Twenty-three of them — eighteen Air Force security policemen and five aircrew — were killed on 13 May when their helicopter crashed in Thailand on the way to the staging base, before anyone rea...

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Image: U.S. Marine Corps | Public domain