21. The US Coast Guard provided over 8,000 personnel for service in Vietnam
One of the least-known stories of the American involvement in the Vietnam War, the US Coast Guard provided ships and patrol boats, manned long-range aids to navigation stations after they built them, and supported the American war effort with aviators for patrols and air and sea rescue details. Fifty-six Coast Guard cutters supported the effort to prevent Vietnamese waterways from being used to supply and reinforce the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese troops in the south. When the policy of Vietnamization was announced and the American withdrawal began, 30 of the cutters were delivered to the South Vietnamese.
They didn’t know how to operate the cutters, nor most of the equipment on them, nor how to maintain them in the harsh climate, where maintenance was critical. The Coast Guard established training schools which were extensions of those in which they had themselves been trained. The training provided by the Coast Guard, as well as the cutters, provided the nucleus of the South Vietnamese Navy for the duration of the war. All members of Coast Guard cutter crews and support personnel were also given a one-day survival training course, conducted in the Philippines, prior to deployment in South Vietnam.
