As I finish reading Ian Toll's Pacific War Trilogy, memories of my military experiences in Asia, 1961-62, keep surfacing. For much of the first half of 1962 our battalion was aboard the USS Princeton, LPH 5, a helicopter carrier. We sailed around the South Pacific ready to make an amphibious landing should hostilities breakout. In Subic Bay, The Philippines, we were ashore for some weeks.
When we left San Diego, CA., for Okinawa we travelled on an old liberty ship, the USS Pickaway. It's top speed was 13 knots so it took us 28 days, though we did stop a few days in Hawaii. When we returned from Asia to Long Beach, CA., aboard The Princeton, it only took two weeks, becasue the carrier was much faster. The Pickaway was crowded with 300 sailors and 1200 Marines, an entire Marine battalion. The Pickaway was 300 feet long and The Princeton over 900.
In addition to the helicopters aboard there were several Piper Cub Airplanes, little two seaters. They were used for flying reconnaissance. Landing them on the carrier was tricky. The ship would sail into the wind moving at about 30 knots. If there were a headwind the air over the flight deck would be approximately 50 mph. enough to keep the little Cubs aloft. When landing the pilot would hover just above the deck, at a signal he'd cut off his engine, sailors would grab the plane to keep it from flipping over backwards.
It was April 1962 when the Princeton delivered Marine Corps advisors and helicopters to Soc Trang in the Mekong Delta area of the Republic of South Viet Nam. I remember watching the helicopters fly off, though we were too far at sea to see land. That was as close as I got to Viet Nam while in the Marines. Those were the first Marine helicopters in Viet Nam and they relieved an Army squadron.
Takk for alt,
Al
The USS PRINCETON (LPH-5), an Essex-class aircraft carrier, was commissioned on 18 NOV 1945, too late for action in world War II. At first with the Atlantic Fleet and then with the Pacific, PRINCETON steam on post-war deployments and then was decommissioned on 20 JUN 1948 and placed in reserve. Twenty six month later, in August 1959, PRINCE was recommissioned and off Korea by December. She made three combat deployments to Korean waters. In the 1950s she was successively classified as CV-37 - CVA-37 - CVS-37 and then LPH-5, a helicopter landing platform ship in March 1959. She first appeared in Vietnam in 1962, and returned for combat deployments through the 1960s. As her twilight approached, PRINCETON recovered Apollo 10 in 1969. USS PRINCETON served her country as LPH-5 for for more than 10 years until decommissioned on 30 JAN 1970.
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