Скачать или смотреть Brownwater Navy: River War in the Mekong Delta (1967)

June 1967. After a 10,000-mile voyage, USS Harnett County reaches the mouth of the Co Chien River in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta. For the next twelve months, her 278 sailors join the Navy’s “Brownwater” war—patrolling a labyrinth of canals, boarding hundreds of sampans, and fighting an enemy who hides in mangrove shadow and rice paddy mist.

Drawn from an original U.S. Navy film, this documentary drops you aboard the tender and out on the river in small, armed fiberglass patrol boats. You’ll see how river sailors and helicopter crews searched a thousand miles of waterways to choke off Viet Cong movement, while corpsmen set up improvised clinics in village schoolyards to treat illness and win trust. The camera stays for the grind, too: engines that never quite rest, weapons that rust in monsoon rains, pumps that clog, and long 16–18-hour patrols where a friendly wave can mask a hidden grenade.

Key moments you’ll see:
• Arrival in the Delta: Harnett County anchors near the Co Chien—two miles from where the real work begins.
• Life Afloat: Reveille, crowded mess lines, and then the “formalities end” as crews push off for day-long patrols.
• River Interdiction: Stopping 200–300 boats a day; reading faces, papers, and cargo for the subtle tells of a guerrilla supply chain.
• Monsoon Season: Relentless rain tests men and machines; maintenance becomes a second battle.
• Contact on the Bali Canal: A planned decoy transit turns into a firefight from tree line to shoreline; shipboard helicopters scramble to strike bunkers and supply sampans.
• Cost and Courage: A helicopter is shot down by a sniper in a sampan—reminding everyone of the price paid on the rivers.
• Human Terrain: Navy corpsmen running a pop-up clinic in Hung Mi village—quiet work as vital as any firefight.

Why it matters: the Mekong’s 5,000+ miles of rivers and canals were the Delta’s highways. Controlling them meant controlling movement—of rice, people, weapons, and influence. This is the Brownwater Navy’s story from the deckplates up: endurance under monsoon skies, ambushes in narrow cuts, and the small mercies of medicine amid a shadow war. If you’re interested in the Mobile Riverine Force, PBR operations, or how sailors adapted blue-water traditions to a green-water fight, this is essential viewing.

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