Red Star Lone Star - Ship Identification Question
 

Attachment 626

I have a (hopefully) fairly easy question that someone on the forum might know the answer to: what is the patrol boat type on the cover of 'Red Star Lone Star'?

I believe it's also the one that they have illustrations of in some of the rulebooks. I had initially thought it was a PBR but it doesn't look quite right. If someone could help me out, I'd appreciate it as my Google skills have left me down. Deck plans and any game stats would be even better!

With the soon-to-be retirement of the 'Corpus Christi' in my campaign, I'm looking to keep the amphibious nature of my group going and I think that 'patrol boat' would be about right.

Some type of swift boat?

http://www.westbourne-model.co.uk/mo...ift%5B1%5D.jpg

P C F Swift
One of the larger types of craft used in the task of coastal and riverine patrols in the Vietnam war was the PATROL CRAFT FAST. This craft was adapted from a commercial design for oil rig support work in the bay of Mexico. About 200 PCFs were constructed between 1965 and 1966 all by the firm of Stewart Seacraft of Berwick, Louisiana, U.S.A.

Paul even has stats http://www.pmulcahy.com/watercraft/us_watercraft.htm

That looks to me very much like the picture on the module. Nice one Kato.

My google-fu is the best ;)

Actually what is really funny is I have used the stats from Paul's site, but never looked for a pic. I searched for oil rig support boat and it was number 18.

More info

http://www.swiftboats.net/extras/boa...ifications.htm

That's definately what it are.. Swiftys were nice, but the PBR was better IMO. Faster and shallower water with awesome firepower.. bacon savers..

Do you guys realize that I don't even know what is on my site any more? I usually have to look.

Red Star Lone Star - Ship Identification Question
 

Kato, your Google-fu is strong. Thanks for the info. What a gap in my memory - for some reason when I heard 'John Kerry and Swift Boats' I thought they were actually talking about a PBR. And Paul, thanks for the stats!

I did find some interesting pics of the interior as well:
http://www.pcf45.com/

I think I have trained my brain to think in "Google", which is probably why I will never adapt to those new natural language search engines.

I plan on equipping most of my Morrow Project naval forces with a PCF/PBR mix so those pic will come in useful, thanks.

I think I have the blueprints/deckplans for the swift boat, fast somewhere on one of my computers. as soon as i can find it, i'll post them here.

Swift boats were a Norweigian design weren't they? I recall reading in a book (perhaps the one about the SOG units that we've talked about on the old forums) that in the Vietnam War they even had some Norweigian crew members for a while.

That would be great. I've been looking for a good deckplan of the swift boat to post it in the maps thread. I've found a pair of them, but not good enough to use them in a game without some work (poor quality, unreadable texts, etc.).

good old story
 

anecdotal story I heard from some Norwegian navy guys that the Gulf of Tonkin incident was brought about by some involvement by Norwegian training crews on boats that got caught up in some sort of military action that again led to said famous incident .

I dont know..but they told a good story !

I suspect they were telling the truth (or something close to the truth). I've read something similar. They were also used to transport captured North Vietnamese fishermen to some special forces camp on an island. The speed of the fast boats and the fact that those captured couldn't see where they were going meant the location of the island stayed secret.

Nasty Boats
 

Interesting. In 1962, the American SOG bought some Norwegian Tjeld class torpedo boats for various black ops along the N. Vietnamese coast (Targan mentioned one of them). They were fast (47 knots) and heavily armed (1 40mm & 1 20mm cannons, .50-cals, and 81mm direct-fire mortars). The official navy designation was PTF (patrol, type fast) but the crews called them "Nasty" for their speed and firepower.

They were raiding the coast of N. Vietnam around the same time and place as the Gulf of Tonking incident so it's possible that HQ's overheard story is true...