Operation Sealords
Part of theVietnam War
Date 1968–1971 Location South Vietnam Result Successful disruption of Viet Cong supply and communication lines.
Belligerents
South Vietnam United States	Viet Cong

Operation Sealords was amilitary operation that took place during theVietnam War.

SEALORDS is an acronym for Southeast Asia Lake, Ocean, River, and Delta Strategy. It was a joint operation between United States andSouth Vietnamese forces which was conceived byElmo R. Zumwalt, Jr.,Commander, Naval Forces Vietnam (COMNAVFORV), and it was intended to disrupt North Vietnamese supply lines fromCambodia in and around theMekong Delta. As a two-year operation, by 1971 all aspects of Sealords had been turned over to theRepublic of Vietnam Navy (RVNN).

As American forces prepared the South Vietnamese military to assume complete responsibility for the war under theNixon AdministrationsVietnamization policy, they also worked to keep pressure on the enemy. Due to the successes ofOperation Market Time andOperation Game Warden; one of the few places left for the North Vietnamese to smuggle troops and supplies into the Mekong Delta was through the rivers, canals and lakes that were near the Cambodian border.^[1][2]

The Navy in particular spearheaded a drive in the Mekong Delta to isolate and destroy the weakened Communist forces. The Sealords program was a determined effort by theU.S. Navy and the RVNN in conjunction with the U.S.9th Infantry Division'sRiverine Forces, theArmy of the Republic of South Vietnam and theSouth Vietnamese Marine Division.^[3] The objectives of the Sealords operation sought to cut enemy supply lines from Cambodia and disrupt operations at their base areas deep in the delta. The operation, soon designated as Task Force 194, was developed by Vice Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt, Jr. who appointed it to COMNAVFORV in September 1968.^[4]

Admiral Zumwalt officially launched Sealords on 5 November 1968 in the issuance of Operation Plan 111-69 with the blessing of the newCOMUSMACV (Commander of US Military Assistance Command Vietnam), GeneralCreighton Abrams.^[5][6] At that time, Allied naval forces in South Vietnam were at peak strength. The U.S. Navy's Coastal Surveillance Force operated 81Patrol Craft Fast (PCF)s, 26U.S. Coast GuardPoint-class cutters, and 39 other vessels. The River Patrol Force deployed 258 patrol andminesweeping boats; the 3,700-man Riverine Assault Force counted 184 monitors, transports and other armored craft.^[7]Helicopter Attack Squadron (Light) 3 flew 25 armed helicopters. This air component was soon augmented by the 15 fixed-wingOV-10 Bronco aircraft ofAttack Squadron Light (VAL) 4, activated in April 1969. In addition, fiveSEALplatoons supported operations in the delta. In total, Sealords employed 586 American vessels of the Coastal Surveillance Force (Task Force 115: "Operation Market Time"), the River Patrol Force (TF 116: "Game Warden"), and theMobile Riverine Assault Force (TF 117). Complementing the American naval contingent were the RVNN's 655 ships, assault craft, patrol boats and other vessels.^[4] To focus the allied effort on the Sealords campaign, COMNAVFORV appointed hisdeputy, Rear Admiral William Hiram House, USN, the operational commander, or "First Sealord," of the newly activated Task Force 194 in December 1968.^[8] Although continuing to function, the Game Warden, Market Time and Riverine Assault Force operations were scaled down and their personnel and material resources increasingly devoted to Sealords. PCFs, because of their shallow drafts and limited capacity for off-shore operations were tasked for incursions up rivers and canals, while the Coast Guard's Point-class cutters were assigned coastal areas previously assigned to the PCFs.^[9] Task Force 115 PCFs mounted lightning raids into enemy-held coastal waterways and took over patrol responsibility for the delta's larger rivers. This freed thePBRs for operations along the previously uncontested smaller rivers and canals. These incursions into formerVietcong bastions were possible only with the on-call support of naval aircraft and the heavily armed riverine assault craft.

In the first phase of the Sealords campaign allied forces established patrol "barriers," often using electronic sensor devices, along the waterways paralleling theCambodian border.^[10] In early November 1968, PBRs and riverine assault craft opened two canals between theGulf of Siam atRach Gia and theBassac River atLong Xuyen. South Vietnamese paramilitary ground troops helped naval patrol units secure the transportation routes in this operational area, soon namedSearch Turn. Later in the month, Swift boats, PBRs, riverine assault craft, and Vietnamese naval vessels penetrated the Giang Thanh-Vinh Te canal system and established patrols along the waterway fromHà Tiên on the gulf toChâu Đốc on the upper Bassac. As a symbol of the Vietnamese contribution to the combined effort, the allied command changed the name of this operation fromFoul Deck toTran Hung Dao I. Then in December American naval forces pushed up theVàm Cỏ Đông andVàm Cỏ Tây Rivers west ofSaigon, against heavy enemy opposition, to cut infiltration routes from the"Parrot's Beak" area of Cambodia.Operation Giant Slingshot, so named for the configuration of the two rivers, severely hampered Communist resupply in the region near the capital and in thePlain of Reeds.^[8] Completing the first phase of the Sealords program, in January 1969 PBRs,Assault Support Patrol Boats (ASPB), and other river craft established patrol sectors along canals westward from the Vàm Cỏ Tây to theMekong River inOperation Barrier Reef. Thus, by early 1969 a patrolled waterway interdiction barrier extended almost uninterrupted fromTay Ninh Province northwest of Saigon to the Gulf of Siam.^[11]

Further operations would be carried out on the Cua Dai and Hoi An Rivers inQuang Nam Province inI Corps, on theSaigon River as far north asDau Tieng Base Camp in theMichelin Rubber Plantation inIII Corps and on theCa Mau Peninsula waterways inIV Corps. During theCambodian Incursion in May 1970, Sealords task forces sailed up the Mekong River, crossing the Cambodian border, with forces reaching as far upriver as the capital ofPhnom Penh.^[4] Since Operation Sealords was designated as a part of the U.S. military'sVietnamization program, in February 1969 the U.S. Navy began handing over nearly 250 patrol craft and 500 motorized junks, formerly part of Task Forces 116 and 117, to the RVNN. Virtually all of these watercraft were captured by thePeople's Army of Vietnam in 1975.^[12] The U.S. Navy's role in Sealords officially ceased in April 1971 and became the complete responsibility of the RVNN.^[13]

• Lists of allied military operations of the Vietnam War
• Operation Game Warden
• Operation Market Time
• Mobile Riverine Force

• "By Sea, Air, and Land" Chapter 4

• Operations involving American special forces
• Campaigns of the Vietnam War
• Battles and operations of the Vietnam War in 1968
• Battles and operations of the Vietnam War in 1969
• Battles and operations of the Vietnam War in 1970

• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Use mdy dates from August 2011