Kerry, Part LXVII

I'm going to make yet another *yawn* look at Kerry's record, since the media has seized on some official Navy accounts as proving that the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth are lying. I've been posting these over on The Rott, but having so many consecutive Kerry posts gets old, so I'll post this one here.

At issue are the records concerning the Rassmann incident on March 13, 1969, in which PCF-3 struck a mine, Rassmann fell in the water, and Kerry pulled him out of the water. The media is especially enamored of the fact that Thurlow, who's making some of the main charges, got a Bronze Star which sites him for courage under fire. They're also using Freedom of Information Act requests to get a hold of as much of the documentation as they can, though Kerry's records are by and large not going to be released, along with his journal and that of one of his crewmen. It seems the information conduit will be a bit one way on this affair.

Well, to do my part I thought I'd examine whether the official Navy records mention of heavy automatic weapons fire and a second mine really establishes that Kerry's version is correct and the Swift Boat Vets are in fact lying. This is going to be another insanely long Kerry piece, and at this point I'm definitely getting sick of doing these. If there is a less relevant topic in this election that some obscure 35 year-old event on a river that people couldn't find on a map, I'd like to know what it is. But it does bear directly on whether Kerry has the capacity to be Commander in Chief, I think in large part not because of what happened then but the way he's responding now. The strained denials, the avoidance of answering the charges instead of threatening to destroy people, the focus on who might be a donor instead of whether the charges are supportable, all these things strike me as rather telling behavior. But to address those issues requires looking into the facts of the charges, which requires another trip up the Dong Cung Canal. If I keep dragging myself through all this stuff I'm going to want a Vietnam Service Ribbon, and if you click on the fold and wade through all this mess yet again, you'll probably want one too.

The clearest analysis I've seen on what probably happened during this incident is here. The author's conclusions match what I've been thinking, even down to the fact that Kerry's swift boat ran into something submerged instead of getting hit by another mine. I wrote that up in a comment on Donald Sensing's post on the Rassmann episode, but kept having to delete part of my thoughts due to his blog's 1000 character comment limit.

That author thinks a single mine detonated, badly damaging PCF-3 and throwing two crewmen in the water. The boats immediately laid down suppressing fire on the banks in anticipation of an ambush. He doesn't say so, but frankly there may have been a couple VC taking shots at them at first, the same ones who would've detonated the mine, but they should've been quickly silenced. It seems Kerry had his driver speed away, with Rassmann still on board. Kerry's boat then hit something in the river, a log, or maybe rock, knocking Rassmann overboard and injuring Kerry's arm.

Rassmann spent significant time in the water, staying submerged while probably mistaking the sound of .50 caliber outgoing fire for incoming fire, since they're deafeningly loud and things sound strange underwater. Some time later Kerry turned his boat around and returned to pick up Rassmann, but another boat was already on the way to fish him out. The boats were likely never under any fire, and certainly not fire that continued for several minutes, up until the point that people were being pulled from the water, or one of the boats would've taken bullet damage.

Rassmann, in charge of writing awards for his Green Beret unit and thinking he had been under fire, wrote Kerry up for the Silver Star for pulling him out of the water. The commanders of three boats have said they weren't under fire, although the official report says they were. The question would be who reported that they were, since all the damage cited is from a mine or something else, in the case of Kerry's boat.

This is fairly similar to the Washington Post's WaPo examination of the incident. I'd link it as a regular examination of the incident, but after all, it's from the WaPo.

One of the outstanding questions remaining is who wrote the report that ended up being the official Navy version. The Swift Boat Vets think it was probably Kerry, as Thurlow (PCF-51), Chenowith (PCF-23), and Peez (PCF-3), three of the other four commanders present, know it wasn't them. The fourth, Droz (PCF-43), was killed a few months later. I'm pretty sure it was Kerry, and I'll lay out why. For part of this you need to take a great guided tour of a swift boat.

Let's start with Kerry's Bronze Star recommendation here on his campaign website, which reads

On 13 March 1969, LTJG KERRY was serving as Officer-in-Charge of PCF-94 conducting a five boat Sea Lords operation in the Bay Hap river and Dong Cung canal together with ground forces. After sweeping the area for five hours, the boats extracted the ground troops and began exiting the river. Shortly after starting their exit, a mine detonated under one of the boats (PCF-3), lifting it two feet above the water and wounding everyone aboard. Almost simultaneously, another mine detonated close aboard PC-94, knocking 1st LT RASSMAN into the water and wounding LTJG KERRY in the right arm. PCF-51 immediately went to the aid of PCF-3 while PCF-94 provided cover fire. Shortly after LTJG KERRY was informed that he had a man overboard, he immediately turned his boat around to assist the man in the water, who by this time was receiving sniper fire from the river banks. LTJG KERRY, from his exposed position on the bow of the boat, managed to pull LT RASSMAN aboard despite the painful wound in his right arm. Meanwhile, PCF-94 gunners provided accurate suppressing fire. LTJG KERRY then directed PCF-94 to the stricken PCF-3, where his crew attached a line and towed the boat clear of danger. Throughout the entire action, LTJG KERRY proved himself to be calm, professional, and highly courageous in the face of enemy fire.

The explosion of the second mine is a bit dubious, since even members of Kerry's own crew have said they don't think it was a mine, but maybe a close hit with a rocket or something else, but admit they're not sure. Some versions of the story have said Rassmann was blown overboard in the explosion of the mine under PCF-3, some have said he was blown off of PCF-3, and even John Kerry claims that Rassmann wasn't on Kerry's boat, but on some boat behind Kerry's, a notion which was given a good treatment here. That Rassmann fell off another boat is unlikely, since the only boat behind Kerry was PCF-43, which didn't seem to go anywhere during the incident, and if Rassmann fell off one of the boats that didn't go anywhere then he wouldn’t need Kerry to come back to pick him up, as he'd have been right with the other boats the whole time. Even Kerry's account says he had to turn around and head toward the other boats to pick up Rassmann, so it seems certain that Rassmann was indeed on Kerry's boat, despite what Kerry claims.

John Kerry's campaign posted some of the official military records concerning the incident.

One part of that I'd like to cite is the damage report on his boat, filed on March 14, 1969, the day following the Rassmann incident.

Alpha: PCF-94 hull registry number 50NS6678 battle damage Bravo: 1. C-4 2. PCF Not capable of executing Market Time Patrol 3. PCF/OT 1,2/NA Charlie: ETR 18 1200Z Mar 69 Delta: Two Starboard and one port main cabin windows blown out. VRC-46 radio and all remote units pilot house inop. AC wiring shorted out. Onan generator inop. Steerage control after helm inop. Starboard bilge pump broken. Screws curled and chipped. Radar gear box frozen. Main engines experienced RPM drop. Echo: Battle Damage Golf: A. (1) No (2) Yes (3) No (4) No (5) No Hotel: An Thoi, RVN

The Washington Post article I linked mentions this.

In some ways, it was a day like any other. The previous day, Kerry had taken part in a Swift boat expedition that had come under fire, and several windows of Kerry's boat were blown out.

The windows on a Swift Boat look just like the cheap windows you'd see on an RV or camping trailer, as you can see in that guided tour, and having them blown out wasn't that unusual. It had happened to Kerry's boat before, along with others. Yet this was pre-existing damage. The VRC-46 radio mentioned was mounted in the cabin, on the forward starboard side, and right next a window. If the windows were blown out a day earlier, the radio was probably damaged at the same time, automatically making the remote units inoperable.

His boat also had electrical problems with shorted AC wiring. That may be related to why the generator was inoperable, but the breakers or fuses on it should've tripped, so the wiring and the generator might be separate issues. However, shrapnel damage would generally cut wires, leaving the circuit open instead of shorted, but then a cut wire could always short to the hull. But no mention is made of any such type of shrapnel damage, so maybe the wiring problem was just part of a boat's normal electrical headaches.

Certainly the frozen radar gearbox wasn't related to battle, and it's doubtful an inoperable Onan generator was battle damage. I used to own a military 28-volt Onan generator, similar to the AC generator on the swift boat, and they're pretty tough units. At one point 85% of all military generators were Onans, which are also commonly found on RV's these days. My military generator had breakers, but if the one on a swift boat had fuses then you could get in electrical trouble by replacing a fuse with a slug of copper or brass in a field expedient solution to not having any AC power to heat up the morning coffee.

The damage to the after helm steering gear is interesting. A swift boat could be controlled from the deck, aft of the cabin on the left, or from the normal pilot house, with a clutch to engage the aft steering station. That's on the opposite side from the radio that was damaged, and since the windows were blown out earlier they probably represent two different or unrelated incidents.

The starboard bilge pump might've been damaged from overpressure from a mine, but then the port bilge pump was apparently fine, because the report doesn’t mention it. Maybe the pump shorted and took out the electrical wiring and generator, but this is doubtful, unless of course the generator actually used fuses instead of breakers and someone had used a slug of copper or brass to replace a blown fuse. In short, a few of the boat's problems are hard to pin down as actual battle damage, and sound more like maintenance issues.

That leaves "Screws curled and chipped." and "Main engines experienced RPM drop", and I'll reintroduce the problem with the after helm steering control.

Getting back to the WaPo article, we have Pees, Thurlow, and Chenowith moving in line on the left side of the canal, with Kerry and Droz on the right side, with Kerry leading.

"My God, I've never seen anything like it," Chenoweth wrote in what he says is a diary recorded soon after the events. "There was a fantastic flash, a boom, then the 3 boat disappeared in a fountain of water and debris. I was only 30 yards behind." Assuming that they had run into a Vietcong ambush, Chenoweth wrote, "we unleashed everything into the banks."

A later intelligence report established that the mine was probably detonated by a Vietcong sympathizer in a foxhole who hit a plunger as the Swift boats passed through the fishing weir.

Obviously such a mine is a huge explosion, not at all likely to be mistaken for anything else, with a fountain of water and debris plus a boat flying up in the air. Still working from the WaPo analysis we find

"When the mine went off, we were still going full speed," recalled Michael Medeiros, one of Kerry's crew members. Kerry's boat raced off down the river, away from the ambush zone.

If they were indeed going full speed they'd have been doing about 32 kts, or 37 mph. If they were at a swift boat's cruising speed they'd have only been doing 20 kts, or 23 mph.

When the first explosion occurred, Rassmann was seated next to the pilothouse on the starboard, or right, side of Kerry's boat, munching a chocolate chip cookie that he recalls having "ripped off from someone's Care package." He saw the 3 boat lift out of the water. Almost simultaneously, Kerry's forward gunner, Tommy Belodeau, began screaming for a replacement for his machine gun, which had jammed. Rassmann grabbed an M-16 and worked his way sideways along the deck, which was only seven inches wide in places.

So that was what, five to fifteen seconds? At 20 kts and five seconds that would be 168 feet of travel. At 32 kts and 15 seconds that would be 814 feet. And I think we throw away Kerry's claims that Rassmann was on another boat, because part of his story was moving to help Kerry's forward gunner, Tom Belodeau, the same gunner who'd clipped the fleeing VC in the earlier Silver Star incident, when his gun also jammed. Whatever Belodeau's other fine traits, I think he could've maybe spent more time on his machine gun maintenance skills, because his gun seems to jam with alarming frequency.

At this point, Kerry crew members say their boat was hit by a second explosion. Although Kerry's injury report speaks of a mine that "detonated close aboard PCF-94," helmsman Del Sandusky believes it was more likely a rocket or rocket-propelled grenade, as a mine would have inflicted more damage. Whatever it was, the explosion rammed Kerry into the wall of his pilothouse, injuring his right forearm.

The second explosion "blew me right off the boat," Rassmann recalled.

Now that's quite interesting. Even the helmsman thinks it wasn't a mine. John Kerry injured his right arm. If we knew for certain he was facing forwards we'd even know that the boat must've kicked left (Newton's laws and all that), and that the explosion must've been on the right side of the boat. Yet the damaged steering gear is on the left side, and Rassman was working his way along the narrow starboard deck up toward the bow, and would've really, really been aware of a huge explosion beside him.

This gets us back to the damage to PCF-94 recorded the next day. "Screws curled and chipped." and "main engines experienced RPM drop", and the steering damage. I'm sure any of you boaters can guess what can tear up a propeller without ripping through the hull, and a mine isn't it. Propellers on submarines take depth charging just fine. Ships that get torpedoed sometimes have their steering knocked out, yet continue under power. Propellers are very tough because they have to withstand enormous forces on a small area. I really doubt you could easily create an explosion that would tear up a propeller like that and not also severely damage the thin aluminum hull of a swift boat. If the rudder was chipped in an explosion then the boat should've leaked like a sieve.

One thing that does "curl and chip" a propeller is hitting something. Hitting something also can pound the heck out of the ships rudder, with the forces transmitted straight to the steering gear. If you go back to the guided tour of a swift boat, at the very bottom you can see a nice model of one, with the twin propellers and rudders shown extending underneath, far below the hull. You also have the propeller shafts extending down there, equally exposed. So if a swift boat, traveling at full speed, as Michael Medeiros says it was, were to hit a submerged log, shelf, or some other object, the boat would take a severe pounding, jerk violently and very loudly (it is a wreck after all), throwing the crew members across the cabin, or in Rassmann's case into the water. As a result the propeller shafts and bearings would likely be damaged, resulting in some RPM problems, the propellers themselves would be chipped and bent, and the steering gear would be damaged.

The second mine story is dubious, and not all accounts include a second mine, with some claiming the first explosion under PCF-3 threw Rassmann overboard. Not all the crew on Kerry's boat thought it was a mine. But Kerry definitely says it was a second mine that hit close aboard, a phrase he's used repeatedly. None of the other officer's accounts seem to mention a second mine, and with PCF-3 having been hit, and they immediately laying down fire and moving to assist why would they even be looking toward Kerry's boat to notice?

Going back to Kerry's Bronze Star recommendation

Almost simultaneously, another mine detonated close aboard PC-94, knocking 1st LT RASSMAN into the water and wounding LTJG KERRY in the right arm.

Looking at the injury listed with the combat action

LTJG John F. Kerry, USN 713525/1100 Injury, Hostile Fire 13 Mar 69, 1530H, Song Bay Hap, WQ 010780. While serving as officer in charge aboard PCF-94 engaged in operations in the above river. LTJG Kerry suffered shrapnel wounds in his left buttocks and contusions on his right forearm when a mine detonated close aboard PCF-94.

Treated by medical officer aboard USCGC Spencer (WHEC-36) and returned to duty with Coastal Divison Eleven.

Obviously the shrapnel wound didn't occur when "the mine" went off, and Rassmann has detailed how that injury occurred earlier in the day when Rassmann and Kerry blew up a large rice cache, with Kerry catching some rice in his butt.

Looking at the official Navy reports Kerry's campaign posted

RF/PF: Moved east about 1500 meters. Troops flushed about 30 men half armed. Distance 1000 meters. Position approximately WQ 000840. No contact made. RF/HF Extracted 1130H and moved by PCF to support MSF but were not landed again. All units proceeded to Cai Nuoc district town. Unable to get air support.

PCF 23 joined at Cai Nuoc. PCFs with MSF embarked departed Cai Nuoc at 1445H proceeding down Bay Hap. At VQ 995770 mine detonated under PCF 3 lifting boat about 2-3 ft out of water. Very heavy black smoke observed at same time boats rcvd heavy A/W and S/A from both banks. Fire continued for about 5000 meters. Two other mine explosions observed. All boats and MSF returned fire and attempted assist PCF 3. PCF 94 picked up MSF advisor who went overboard. 94 towed PCF 3 as bucket brigade controlled flooding. PCF 43 took all WIA to USCGC Spencer for treatment. PCF 94 and 51 assisted PCF 3. LCVP with damage control party was immediately dispatched from Washtenaw County. Boat damage separate message. Spotter aircraft in area spotted and RF/PF Cau Nuoc fired 4.2" Mortar after boats cleared. One secondary explosion vicinity WQ 010782

What's curious is that the official report again mentions the dubious story of a mine, which no one else supports, even Kerry's own helmsman. If Kerry's boat really did hit a submerged object, which would be consistent with the damage to his boat, then nobody else would've reported a second mine because no such explosion would've been visible. Again, about the only person to claim a second mine is Kerry, and the other officers probably wouldn't have been in a position to notice one anyway, nor care to report a mine that completely missed. It's surprising that PCF-94 got almost as many mentions in the official report (three) as PCF-3 (four), when it was the only boat to leave the scene. Four people had to be fished out of the water, but only PCF-94 got mentioned as having done this. The surviving commanders during this incident all say they didn't write up what became the official report, and that Kerry did. Given that the official reports seems focused on the actions of Kerry's boat, and includes the other mines that only Kerry mentions, I'd say they're right. Kerry's casualty report also prominently mentions a mine, and goes so far as to say that the mine's shrapnel was found in his buttocks.

So if Kerry wrote the official report, and the charge is that Kerry was claiming they were under fire when no fire existed, the fact that the report supports Kerry doesn't actually build his case, since it would be an echo of Kerry's version, which is the account in question. Kerry's Bronze Star was written up by Rassmann, who would've been told "it was a mine!" by Kerry, and who thought he was being shot at anyway. And to turn his earlier accident with the rice into a "combat injury" worthy of a Purple Heart, Kerry needs a second mine close aboard PCF-94.

At first, nobody noticed what had happened to Rassmann. But then Medeiros, who was standing at the stern, saw him bobbing up and down in the water and shouted, "Man overboard." Around this time, crew members said, Kerry decided to go back to help the crippled 3 boat. It is unclear how far down the river Kerry's boat was when he turned around. It could have been anywhere from a few hundred yards to a mile.

In Kerry's own account he said he was a few hundred yards away when he saw the splashes around Rassmann, and rushed to rescue him from the sniper fire. If the propeller damage knocked 5 knots off his swift boat's top speed, it would take the boat 20 seconds to cover 300 hundred yards. Toss in the time to turn around, plus slowing, reaccelerating, and slowing to pick up Rassmann and you've got a minimum of a minute. Rassmann says it was several minutes in which he was hiding near the bottom. Four swift boats can lay down over 6000 rounds of .50 caliber machine gun fire in one minute, not to mention what their M-60's and the infantry they were carrying would add. If there really was somebody near the bank using aimed "sniper fire", I don't think they'd have lasted very long.

O'Neill claims that Kerry "fled the scene" despite the absence of hostile fire. Kerry, in a purported journal entry cited in Brinkley's "Tour of Duty," maintains that he wanted to get his troops ashore "on the outskirts of the ambush."

Kerry may have been thinking that, but what happened to his innovative combat tactics from three weeks prior, when he decided that charging the enemy directly was far superior to the older tactic of moving out of the ambush zone and dropping off troops? Yet even if he had decided to go back to the very tactics he'd been deriding a short time earlier, he'd have to maintain a story about enemy fire or else his jaunt down the river is inexplicable. In one of Kerry's own accounts he glosses over the whole thing by talking about the mine, the trickle of blood he saw one on of the dazed gunners from PCF-3, and then wham-o, he's several hundred yards away rushing back to pick up Rassmann.

No wonder his fellow commanders are saying you can't count on John Kerry. He shot off on his own little plan, while leaving a man in the water, and not doing anything to help a badly damaged boat with an injured crew. Yet if there was an ambush to counter-attack from elsewhere then he could maintain it as a plausible maneuver.

And the most important point is that even if there was enemy fire, pulling a man out of the water doesn't make you any bigger a target than when you were standing bolt upright on deck, or sitting in an unarmored boat. If Kerry's act of walking up to the bow and leaning over was "heroic", what can you say about the gunners whose job in combat was to stand bolt upright on deck in front of G-d and everybody? Would you have a machine that feeds feeds them a Bronze Star everytime they pull the trigger? And swift boats are thin aluminum and completely unarmored, which is why their standard ambush response was to get the heck out of the area as fast as they could go. By pulling Rassmann out of the water Kerry did nothing to increase his personal risk of getting shot, since there's nowhere on the boat except in between the engines that offered significantly more protection. You might argue that obviously he was more visible on the bow, but note that if there was anyone delivering any aimed fire at that particular spot Rassmann would've already been dead.

And finally, the boats were involved in this action for quite a long time, both the initial events, moving the injured crew of PCF-3 to PCF-43, then hooking up a tow and arranging bailing parties to keep PCF-3 afloat. Did all this enemy fire just stop? If so, when? Thurlow had long been aboard giving aid to PCF-3's crew (lots of back and head injuries) for quite some time before Kerry picked up Rassmann, since even Kerry recounts that Thurlow hopped aboard PCF-3 before he discusses turning his boat around to go back. Thurlow even fell in the water when PCF-3 bumped into a sandbar and had to have a boat come over and fish him out, too. Yet if Rassmann hadn't been picked up, and was still taking fire, wouldn't Thurlow have been under fire the whole time? Yet he claims he wasn't.

And the whole story requires you to buy into the notion that the VC on the banks would be shooting at poor Rassmann, who was completely invisible underwater for most of the time, somewhat apart from the other boats which were laying down heavy suppressive fire, fire which could amount well over 12,000 rounds in two minutes if they had that much ammunition linked up and ready to go. Yet the VC are ignoring the five boats, the people like Thurlow walking around on PCF-3 giving aid, all those rear gunners standing bolt upright, and the infantry on board who were sitting ducks. For some reason they're supposedly shooting at Rassmann, and then of course sitting their waiting for John Kerry to make his appearance on the bow. Strange VC indeed, you might think, but no worries, because obviously they can't hit the side of a barn. Not one bullet hole in Kerry's boat, or any other, aside from three in Thurlow's boat which he said happened the previous day. How can five boats sit still in a narrow canal with heavy automatic weapons and small arms fire coming from both banks and none of them get hit with anything?

Perhaps initially there were some shots, but by the time Kerry's jaunt down the river was over I'd think any enemy must've been silenced, because nobody can sit and shoot at a bunch of sitting fifty foot boats from close range and not hit anything after trying for a couple of minutes. Blind men would accomplish that much by random chance. And Kerry and the official Navy report said it went on for 5,000 meters, or about 3 miles. And this was with PCF-94, damaged prop and all, towing PCF-3, so you know those three miles went very slowly. Yet Kerry, who writes in oozing detail about every bit of angst he can suck from a broken fingernail, doesn't say a thing about the hazards of running the three-mile gauntlet.

They say that the burden of proof is on the accuser, but I'd say the burden of proof is on the one with the wildly improbable account. And the shame of this whole thing is that if Kerry hadn't been out trumpeting his heroism nobody would've said a thing. About this or any other incident he could've easily said "I have no idea why they gave me the Bronze Star, never did. They were handing them out like lollipops over there, and I think that's wrong. I never felt I deserved the Silver Star, but apparently the Navy did, and so I guess I have to accept that." He'd still have his medals, the full credit that such medals normally come with, and people would've thought even more of him for minimizing his heroism, showing what a true hero he must've been off in those jungles. But no… That's not the John Kerry we're stuck with.

*** UPDATE ***

I've seen a few vague references that the propeller damage may have also been earlier, which leaves, well, nothing at all as to damage to the boat, except that they were zipping through the fishing weirs and may have snagged and yanked something. High velocity fragment damage extends beyond the blast damage of a typical weapon, which would leave a mystery as to what type of "explosion" could've hit the boat.

However, I have a few further thoughts on some of the statements by various veterans.

Some have mentioned they saw bullets skipping across the water. Well the Dong Cung Canal is only about 75 yards wide, and the boats were near the banks, where the fire was supposedly coming from. Picture a swift boat in your head at about 20 or 30, or even 60 yards distance. You're shooting at the crew manning the guns. Can you imagine missing the whole boat and hitting the water? If bullets were skipping across the water what were the VC shooting at, fish?

Some have mentioned seeing muzzle flashes from the banks, but to my knowledge none has mentioned seeing any actual enemy. It's my understanding that in Nam our forces used red tracers, linked 1 in every 5, as the boat tour above relates. All sources say the boats immediately opened up on both banks with everything they had. Now after a horrific explosion, when men are extremely on edge in the first moments afterward, their heart racing scanning the banks for threats, could some of the flashes from impacting red tracers be mistaken for muzzle flashes? Could a person looking off angle, from a boat other than the one firing, be catching glimpses of a tracer path through a tiny gap in the foliage, making it seem like a repeating pattern of bright red flashes? Maybe some people with combat experience in the jungle can comment on whether such a visual effect exists, and whether someone green and on edge could get momentarily fooled by it. It's been my impression that when everyone opens up everyone is equally sure they were shooting at targets, especially since outgoing .50 rounds are flinging off chunks of trees and clipping off branches, so there's plenty of motion down range. Normally someone has to start screaming "Cease Fire!"

It's just a thought, but it might explain why some would swear they saw flashes while others are equally convinced there was nothing out there, depending on angle and experience, and not a single bullet hole would be found in the boats despite all this "heavy" incoming fire.

**** UPDATE ****

The AK-47 is generally considered capable of shooting 2 MOA (minutes of angle). A competition rifleman with iron sites can aim a bit better than this, and in combat most VC wouldn't approach it, but it does bring up another question. If you were aiming at the side of a swift boat sitting in the water, how far away would you have to be to miss more than you hit?

Assume you aim toward the center cabin, which sits, oh, say 10 feet above the waterline. The boat is far longer, 50 feet, than tall, so just draw a twenty foot diameter circle and fill the bottom half with boat. 2 MOA (minutes of angle) is 0.03333 degrees. If you took an AK and sandbagged it in a nice benchrest, you'd have to be ( tan (0.0333) = 20 feet / range, range = 20 feet / tan (0.03333) ) 34,377 feet away, or 6.5 miles, to expect to miss the boat half the time. Obviously an AK-47 can't shoot that far, so through away that number, which indicates that it's physically impossible to be in range of the boat yet miss the boat from a bench rest.

To miss the boat half the time from 600 yards would mean shooting with only 38 MOA accuracy. Of course they said the fire was coming from the banks. So assuming they were way, way back from the bank, to make it a nice 100 yards, they'd have to shoot so badly that their groups were not 1/2 MOA, not 1 MOA, not 2 MOA, but 228 MOA to miss the boat half the time. But that still means they'd hit it once with just two shots. Keep in mind that the 6 PPC in my e-mail address is the name of a rifle cartridge that shoots 1/4 MOA with a rifle right out of the box.

Given that one VC is going to fire 30 shots, and based on the "target area" of 157 square feet of boat in my previous circle, we need the area of the error circle to be 30 times larger, or 4712 square feet, meaning 77 foot diameter circle. That basically means that the VC would have to shoot so badly that it would take a 77 foot wide 7 story building to be an effective backstop if they were shooting at 100 yards, which is hardly more than half a city block. Blind people shoot more accurately than that just based on sound. And if there's two VC each firing a full magazine the implied accuracy has to decrease even further.

In sum, it's so infinitely improbably that the boats could be fired on to any significant degree and not get hit that it's a near certainy that no significant fire (more than a shot or two) was directed at them. If you asked any American rifleman if he could hit a sitting boat at 100 yards, from an ambush position, he'd instead ask if you want the boat's commander shot in the left eye or the right eye, or at worst the head or the heart.