Commander Hugh Doyle Recalls USS Kirk’s Deployment to Vietnam

USS Kirk was instrumental in the rescue of 30,000 Vietnamese refugees at the end of the Vietnam War. Commander Hugh Doyle (Ret. USN) was the Chief Engineer on USS Kirk at the time. In this video, he recalls learning about Kirk's deployment to Vietnam and its discovery of the remnant of the Vietnamese Navy at Con Son Island.

Pearl Harbor

When we were at Pearl [Harbor], we started to pick up that something was going to happen. The USS Hancock, aircraft carrier, was in Pearl and they were taking all of their attack and fighter aircraft, the white, we call them the white planes, the attack and fighter airplane off.

They were being craned off the ship and they were putting helicopters aboard. Now this is an attack aircraft carrier, not a helicopter carrier. So we knew something was up and there was a lot of rumor. And one of the problems with the Navy back then, and I'm sure it's still the same way. They're huge rumor mills on the ship, you're trying to figure out what's happened.

Well, we got underway from Pearl Harbor with the Hancock. And we went quick. Usually when ships deploy to WESTPAC, they go at about 15 knots, which is economical speed. When you got past 15 knots, your fuel consumption starts to skyrocket. So we hauled butt.

So we got to Guam and then we went through the San Bernardino Strait and we started taking on more helicopters in the Philippines. In fact, they were taking on US Air Force helicopters. And you talk about a rumor starting then. You know, since when does a Navy aircraft carrier have Air Force helicopter support. So then word got out that we were getting ready for both the Cambodian and the Vietnam evacuations.

Con Son Island

After the first two days after Frequent Wind. The operation to evacuate Saigon was Frequent Wind. And at the end of those two days, we were then sent south by ourselves, with Armitage board.

When we arrived, there were probably 50 or more [Vietnamese] vessels of all sorts of all sizes, and sorts, and conditions. And we went from basically from ship to ship. Not in great detail, but some of them were obviously not seaworthy, couldn't have made that thousand mile trip, no way.

So they consolidated. They spent about the first day consolidating the refugee passengers onto 32 ships, or 32 that finally got underway. We were down there for a better part of a day before we left. I had my engineers, I had an engine men and electricians and machinists mates and we would send them to ships as they needed.

And basically what you're going to do is inspect them. And we'd go aboard and say, "Oh no. There's no way this one's going to make it." So we would then have them move the people off. And most of them, most of those were the smaller ships.

One of them HQ 402 came out of Saigon dockyard. But it had about 2000 refugees aboard. But it had been going through an overhaul at the time. It was not an operable ship and they were able to get one engine running, and one generator running, but they couldn't control the frequency. It kind of wandered up and down. So they came all the way down the Saigon river and out to the ocean and they made it believe it or not. They made it down to Con Son.

But they had a clamshell door. This was a very small version of the LST [Landing Ship Tank] that you were on. You had a clamshell door and a ramp that came down out of it. Well, the clamshell door, one of the problems they were working on, wouldn't close all the way. So as they're going south, they're constantly bringing water into the ship and trying to pump it out. But we ended up sinking that ship because it wasn't seaworthy.

Commander Hugh Doyle (Ret. USN)