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MWSA Review
Capturing Skunk Alpha is chock full of information about the Navy, Swift Boats, Vietnam, and life in the barrio. Raul Herrera offers a first-hand account of each, focusing most of the story on the courageous actions of Swift Boat crews before, during, and after combat.
If you're looking for a comprehensive story about these topics, then I highly recommend this book as the author goes to great lengths providing maps, tables and supporting details along with his own personal eye-witness account of a sailor's life at the height of the Vietnam War.
Review by Rob Lofthouse (May 2024)
Author's Synopsis
On the evening of July 11, 1967, a Navy surveillance aircraft spotted a suspicious trawler in international waters heading toward the Quang Ngai coast of South Vietnam. While the ship tried to appear innocuous on its deck, Saigon quickly identified it as an enemy gunrunner, codenamed Skunk Alpha.
A four-seaborne intercept task force was established and formed a barrier inside South Vietnam’s twelve-mile territorial boundary. As the enemy ship ignored all orders to surrender and neared the Sa Ky River at the tip of the Batangan Peninsula, Swift Boat PCF-79 was ordered to take the trawler under fire. What followed was ship-to-ship combat action not seen since World War II. Capturing Skunk Alpha relates that breathtaking military encounter to readers for the first time.
But Capturing Skunk Alpha is also the tale of one sailor’s journey to the deck of PCF-79. Two years earlier, Raúl Herrera was growing up on the west side of San Antonio, Texas, when he answered the call to duty and joined the US Navy. Raúl was assigned to PCF Crew Training and joined a ragtag six-man Swift Boat crew with a mission to prevent the infiltration of resupply ships from North Vietnam.
The brave sailors who steered into harm’s way in war-torn Vietnam would keep more than ninety tons of ammunition and supplies from the Viet Cong and NVA forces. The Viet Cong would post a bounty on PCF-79; Premier Nguyễn Cao Kỳ and Chief of State Nguyễn Văn Thiệu would congratulate and decorate them for their heroism. Capturing Skunk Alpha provides an eyewitness account of a pivotal moment in Navy operations while also chronicling one sailor’s unlikely journey from barrio adolescence to perilous combat action on the high seas.
Format(s) for review: Paper and Kindle
Review Genre: Nonfiction—Creative Nonfiction
Number of Pages: 312
Word Count: 107,000