May 6th, 1966. Catlau Naval Base, South Vietnam. The morning mist hung thick over the Meong Delta as Lieutenant Commander Michael Vincent watched three peculiar machines float toward the dock on cushions of compressed air. Through the humid dawn, the senior South Vietnamese Navy officers gathered around him couldn’t suppress their laughter.
One pointed at the ungainainely craft with its bulbous rubber skirt and massive propeller, muttering something in Vietnamese that made his colleagues chuckle. The translator hesitated before speaking. Sir, he says they looked like pregnant elephants trying to dance. Vincent, a Navy Seal who had volunteered for this experimental program, understood the skepticism.
The patrol air cushion vehicles looked absurd. 39 feet long, 24 feet wide, with a greenhouse cabin perched a top an inflated rubber collar crowned by a 16 ft radar mast. They resembled something between a carnival ride and a science fiction prop. Certainly nothing that belonged in a war zone. The British had built them for civilian ferry service, shuttling tourists across calm waters.
Now, the United States Navy planned to unleash them in the most hostile riverine environment on Earth. What the Vietnamese officers didn’t know. What none of the skeptics standing on that dock could have imagined was that within six months, these pregnant elephants would become the most feared weapon in the Meong Delta.
The Vietkong would call them quat monsters. Within 18 months, the hovercraft’s distinctive thunderous roar would send gorillas fleeing into the deepest swamps, and the shark tooththed grins painted on their bows would become the last thing hundreds of enemy fighters would ever see. The story of how floating pancakes terrorized an army begins not with weapons or tactics, but with water.
15,000 square miles of water. The Mikong River Delta stretched south and west from Saigon like the spled fingers of a drowning giant. Fed by the fourth longest river in Asia, the delta was a hydraulic maze of distributaries, canals, tributaries, and flooded rice patties. 8 million people lived there. 2/3 of South Vietnam’s population sustained by the most productive agricultural region in Southeast Asia.
During the wet season from July to October, the monsoon rains and aluvial flooding transformed much of the delta into an inland sea. What passed for roads during the dry season became underwater channels. Villages accessible by foot in March required boats by August. This was perfect terrain for guerilla warfare.
The Vietkong had controlled the Delta’s waterways since the early 1960s. They moved troops and supplies in samps, the ubiquitous wooden boats that looked identical to those used by farmers and fishermen. They established taxation points at canal junctions, extorting money from villagers trying to reach markets.
They built base camps in the swampy plane of Reeds along the Cambodian border where pursuing forces sank into mud that could swallow a man to his waist. The South Vietnamese Navy possessed river assault groups, but their lumbering converted landing craft couldn’t navigate the shallow marshes where the Vietkong fled. Patrol boats drew too much water.
Helicopters couldn’t hover low enough to engage targets hidden beneath dense canopy without exposing themselves to concentrated fire. The Americans needed something that could go anywhere over water, over mud, over marsh grass and rice patties. Something fast enough to chase sampans, tough enough to absorb punishment, and heavily armed enough to destroy anything it caught.
In late 1965, a staff officer at Naval Operations in Washington came across a file on the British SR on5 hovercraft. The report included footage of the civilian craft skimming across the Solent between Portsmouth and the aisle of White at 70 knots riding on nothing but compressed air. The officer circled a line in the specifications draft zero.
By February 1966, Bell Aero Systems had delivered three militarized SK5 hovercraft to the Navy based on the British Saunders row SRN. Each craft measured 38 ft 10 in long with a beam of 23t 9 in. When the cushion inflated, they stood 16 ft 6 in tall. The design was revolutionary. A single General Electric gas turbine engine generating 900 horsepower drove both a 7 foot diameter lift fan and a three-blade variable pitch propeller.
The lift fan created a pressurized air cushion beneath the craft contained by a flexible rubber skirt segmented into 12 sections with finger-like extensions. This cushion raised the entire 7tonon vehicle roughly 2 feet above any surface. The propeller provided thrust while twin rudders and elevators controlled direction.
The result was a machine that defied every category. It wasn’t a boat because it didn’t displace water. It wasn’t an aircraft because it couldn’t fly. It was something entirely new, capable of speeds up to 60 knots over terrain that would stop anything else. The hovercraft could skim across open water, plow through marsh grass, climb river banks, cross rice patties, and transition from water to land without slowing down.
It could clear 4ft obstacles and operate in water as shallow as 6 in or as deep as the sea would allow. Militarization required substantial modifications. The Navy added a rotating turret mounting twin 50 caliber M2 Browning machine guns on the cabin roof. Two M60 machine guns, one port and one starboard, provided additional firepower.
The transparent civilian windows were replaced with armored plates and small viewing ports. Sandbags covered the deck. Additional armor protected the engine compartment and crew stations. A DECA 202 radar with a range of 24 mi crowned the tall mast. Communications equipment included UHF radios, a sixstation intercom system, and radio security sets.
The typical crew consisted of four men, a pilot, co-pilot, and two gunners, though they could operate with just two in emergencies. The armament package made the PACV a formidable weapons platform. The twin 50s in the turret could rotate 360°, delivering 1,200 rounds per minute of halfin projectiles. The M60s added another 1,200 rounds per minute combined.
Crew members and any special forces or ARVN troops riding on the side panels brought their own weapons. M16 rifles, M79 grenade launchers, sometimes remotec controlled M60s mounted at the stern. The craft could maintain sustained fire that no sen, no wooden structure, no unarmored target could withstand. But the PACVS faced skepticism from the moment they arrived in Vietnam.
Training in the calm waters off Coronado, California had revealed concerning issues. The gas turbine engine was incredibly loud, generating over 90 dB at idle and screaming like a jet aircraft at full power. The sound carried for miles, eliminating any possibility of stealth. The complex turbine and transmission system required specialized maintenance.
Each hour of operation demanded 20 hours of maintenance, double that of contemporary military helicopters. The rubber skirt, essential to the air cushion, could be punctured by sharp objects, and replacement sections had to be shipped from the United States. Operating costs approached $1 million per craft, equivalent to 13 standard patrol boats.
Safety concerns emerged during evaluation. One soldier died when he fell into the intake, pulled into the lift fan by the massive airflow. Another lost his hand to the propeller. The craft’s height and bulk made it an obvious target. Its thin aluminum skin and rubber skirt offered minimal protection against automatic weapons fire.
An army evaluation later concluded that the operational ready rate hovered around 55% and there is no hope of the unit fighting to a satisfactory conclusion in any large engagement. The Vietnamese officers watching Vincent’s three PA arrive at Catlau had received intelligence briefings. They knew the craft were experimental, expensive, temperamental, and loud.
What use were they? The answer came on the rivers. On May 20th, 1966, PACV Division 107 launched its first patrol into the Meong Delta. Vincent commanded from the lead craft designated PACV Rio3 with shark teeth freshly painted on the bow. The mission was simple reconnaissance. Following the Bassac River south from Catlow toward the coastal marshes, intelligence indicated light Vietkong activity.
The PACVS would observe, gather information, and avoid engagement. The reality was immediate and violent. At 0730 hours, rounding a bend where the river widened into reedy shallows, Vincent’s radar operator called out multiple contacts. Sam pans, perhaps a dozen, scattering toward the bank. Some fled up river, others turned into narrow channels too shallow for conventional patrol boats.
Vincent’s co-pilot glanced at him. Standard procedure was to radio for PBR support and maintain observation distance. Vincent opened the throttle. The PACV’s turbine shrieked to full power. The nose lifted as the craft surged forward, accelerating from 15 knots to 50 in seconds. The water beneath them blurred.
Wind screamed through the cabin. The two accompanying PACVS followed, forming a wedge that covered 300 yards of river in 30 seconds. The SAM pans tried to escape into the marsh grass, but the hovercraft didn’t slow. They crashed through the reeds at 45 knots, rubber skirt bending around obstacles, lift fan compensating for the uneven surface.
The sound was apocalyptic, drowning out everything. A continuous roar like sustained thunder. The lead saman tried to hide beneath overhanging vegetation. Vincent’s turret gunner opened fire. The twin 50 spoke, each gun cycling at 600 rounds per minute, sending armorpiercing incendiary rounds into the wooden boat at pointblank range.
The samp disintegrated, not sank, disintegrated. Hull planks exploded into splinters. Water erupted in boiling columns. Two Vietkong who had been crouched in the boat were thrown into the air by the impact force. The PHCV roared past the debris cloud without slowing. The second Saman grounded on a mudbank. The crew leaped out and ran.
The hovercraft climbed the bank, following them across a rice patty. The M60 gunners opened fire, their weapons chattering in shorter bursts, tracers marking curving paths across the open ground. One gorilla fell, another dove into irrigation ditch. The PACV pivoted, rubber skirt flexing, and accelerated along the ditch edge.
The Vietkong was trapped in water, too deep to run through, too shallow to hide beneath. He raised his hands. Vincent throttled back and the craft settled onto the water beside him. ARVN troops riding on the side panels jumped down and pulled the prisoner aboard. In less than six minutes, the three PACVS had destroyed four sampons, captured one prisoner, scattered enemy forces, and demonstrated capabilities that no one watching had thought possible.
They had transitioned from river to marsh to land to rice patty without stopping. They had pursued targets into terrain that stopped everything else. And they had done it at speeds that made evasion impossible. The reports reached Saigon that evening. Within a week, Task Force 116 headquarters requested immediate expansion of PACV operations, but triumph bred adaptation.
The Vietkong were not stupid. After the initial shock wore off, they began developing counter measures. The hovercraft’s greatest strength, its speed and noise became its weakness. The roar of the turbine announced the PACV’s presence long before it arrived. Ambushes could be prepared. Gorillas abandoned the main rivers and moved deeper into the marshes where overhanging trees limited maneuverability.
They strung cables across narrow channels at neck height capable of decapitating anyone riding on the exposed deck. They planted mines on mud banks where hovercraft transitioned from water to land. They concentrated fire on the tall radar mast and the thin aluminum cabin, knowing that penetrating hits could destroy critical systems.
The Navy pulled the PACVS back to Catlow in August 1966 for modifications. Engineers added more armor around the engine compartment and crew stations. The radar mast was reinforced. Additional gun mounts allowed more flexible fields of fire. More critically, tactics evolved. The craft began working in conjunction with helicopter scouts who could identify targets before the loud hovercraft approached.
They started using their radar to locate enemies at night when the noise mattered less. They discovered that shutting down the turbine while floating in a marsh turned the PACV into an instant armored listening post, silent and deadly with radar tracking any movement within miles. The transformation from Curiosity to weapon system crystallized during operation quivot in November 1966.
The plane of reeds stretched northwest from Saigon toward the Cambodian border, covering roughly 2500 square miles of wetland, swamp, and seasonally flooded grassland. During the monsoon season, much of it lay under 3 to 5 ft of water hidden beneath 10-ft tall reeds and elephant grass.
The Vietkong had used it as a sanctuary for years. The area was essentially inaccessible. Helicopters couldn’t see through the dense vegetation. Boats couldn’t navigate the shallow water clogged with vegetation. Troops on foot sank into mud. The gorillas built elaborate camps in the reeds, established supply caches, trained recruits, and launched attacks before retreating into the swamp where pursuit was impossible.
In mid- November, intelligence indicated a major Vietkong force operating from the plane of Reeds near Mach Hoa, a district capital 30 miles from the Cambodian border. The enemy unit estimated at battalion strength had been conducting raids against South Vietnamese outposts and ambushing convoys. Special forces advisers at Machoa requested support.
Traditional operations had failed. The Vietkong simply faded into the reads. Vincent proposed using the three Navy PACVS in a joint operation with Army helicopters, special forces, and Vietnamese CDG troops. The mission was designated Operation Quaivat, Vietnamese for Monster, the name the Vietkong had given the hovercraft. for 5 days.
Beginning November 20th, the task force would sweep the plane of Reeds, destroying enemy sanctuaries and disrupting supply lines. The hovercraft would penetrate areas no other craft could reach, flushing the enemy into the open where helicopters and infantry could engage them. At 0600 hours on November 20th, a Sunday morning with low clouds and light rain.
Three POCVS departed Machoa. Each carried its normal crew plus six special forces operators and eight Vietnamese CIAG troops. The decks were crowded with men clinging to safety lines, weapons ready. Shark teeth grinned from the boughs. The turbines roared to life, echoing across the flooded plane.
Above them, four Huey helicopters swept ahead, scouting targets and marking positions with smoke grenades. The first contact came within 20 minutes. A Huai spotted sampans hidden under vegetation three miles northwest of Mach Hoa. Vincent’s PACV accelerated across the flooded grassland, leaving a wake of bent reads and displaced water.
The craft covered three miles in four minutes, the landscape blurring into shades of green and brown. They burst into a small clearing where five sampans were tied to tree stumps. Vietkong scattered into the reeds. The turret gunner opened fire. The twin 50s tearing through vegetation like a harvester.
Sam puns exploded into kindling. A secondary explosion indicated one had been carrying ammunition. The PACV pivoted, hunting for targets while the special forces troops dismounted and swept the area. They found three enemy dead and bunker complex with enough supplies to support a company. Over the next five days, the pattern repeated across the plane of reads.
The helicopters would spot targets. The POCVS would race across terrain that should have been impassible. The enemy would flee or fight, and the heavy machine guns would speak. The craft proved nearly unstoppable. Small arms fire punched holes in the aluminum skin and rubber skirt, but the lift fan compensated, maintaining the air cushion despite multiple leaks.
The PACVS ran over sand pans, capsizing them through sheer mass and wake turbulence. They knocked down 20ft trees, pushing through vegetation that would have stopped vehicles 10 times heavier. Field repairs became legendary. One crew used a flattened beer can to shim a damaged steering linkage. Another patched skirt holes with duct tape and continued operations.
The psychological impact exceeded the physical destruction. The Vietkong had never faced anything like the PACVS. The deafening roar announced their approach, but gave no indication of direction in the echo chamber of the swamp. The craft appeared suddenly, moving at impossible speeds across terrain where nothing mechanical should function.
They pursued sampons into the deepest marshes where the gorillas thought they were safe. They climbed riverbanks and crossed land. They operated at night using radar, silent except for the thunder of their passage when they attacked. The Vietkong called them monsters and the name carried real terror.
The official tally from Operation Quivat documented 23 enemy killed in action confirmed by body count. The PACVS destroyed 71 sampans and an equal number of structures including a printing press used for propaganda. They captured 11 prisoners, substantial quantities of arms and ammunition, six outboard motors, and 60 pounds of documents that provided intelligence on Vietkong operations throughout the region.
They discovered and marked 194 bunkers for follow-up operations. Remarkably, despite the intense combat, not a single American or Vietnamese operating with the PACVS was killed or seriously wounded. Their speed and maneuverability made them elusive targets despite their size and noise. The success of Operation Quaivat transformed perceptions.
What had been viewed as an expensive experimental curiosity became a combat proven weapon system. The Army watching the Navy’s results requested their own hovercraft. In May 1968, three Army air cushion vehicles arrived in Vietnam. Designated ACV91, ACV92, and ACV93. They were extensively modified from the Navy’s design.
Bell Aero systems had widened the cockpit, increased engine power, added a second gun position, and built flat decks on top of the skirt specifically designed to carry infantry. The cabin was fully armored with no passenger windows. The rubber skirt used an improved fingered design segmented into 12 sections that better handled rough terrain.
ACV 901 and ACV92 were configured as assault air cushion vehicles with maximum armament. ACV 903 was a transport air cushion vehicle with lighter weapons but more troop capacity. The Army ACVs operated as the 39th Cavalry Platoon 9th Infantry Division based at Dong Tom and Benluke. Their mission differed from the navies. While the PACVS primarily conducted patrols and interdiction, the army craft were designed for assault operations.
They would penetrate deep into enemy territory, insert infantry, provide fire support, and extract troops under fire. They were cavalry in the truest sense, highly mobile strike forces operating independently in hostile territory. Lieutenant James Crawford, commanding the 39th Cavalry Platoon, described the Army’s approach in a 1969 report.
We use the ACVS like we’d use helicopters, but with advantages. We can hover over water or land, set up as a fire support base, then extract and move to a new position in minutes. We carry more ammunition than a Huey, more armor, and we can fight our way out if we’re hit. The noise is a problem, but speed compensates.
By the time they know we’re coming, we’re already there. The Army’s more aggressive tactics yielded impressive results, but also revealed the ACV’s limitations. In June 1969, all three Army hovercraft were simultaneously operational for the first and only time. The maintenance demands were brutal. Each ACV required constant attention to the turbine, transmission, lift fan, propeller, skirt, and electronics.
Parts had to be shipped from the United States, creating supply line delays measured in weeks. Training new crews took time, forcing the platoon to dedicate one ACV to training duties 14 days per month. The operational ready rate hovered around 56%. Combat damage compounded maintenance issues. The ACVs absorbed punishment that would destroy conventional craft, but repairs in the field proved difficult.
The complex turbine system couldn’t be fixed with spare parts and wrenches. Damaged craft had to be extracted by CH54 flying crane helicopter and returned to base. The thin aluminum skin while necessary to keep weight down offered minimal ballistic protection. Concentrated automatic weapons fire could penetrate the cabin and engine compartment.
The rubber skirt, for all its improved design, remained vulnerable to sharp objects and could be shredded by sustained fire. The Vietkong adapted. They learned that the hovercraft, despite their impressive capabilities, followed predictable patterns. The ACVs had to transition from water to land at relatively flat banks where the approach angle wasn’t too steep.
Gorillas mined these transition points. The craft operated most effectively in relatively open terrain where their speed advantage mattered. Dense jungle or areas with many obstacles reduced their mobility. And while the hovercraft were fast and maneuverable, they couldn’t turn on a dime. Ambushes set up along narrow channels with crossfire from both banks could inflict significant damage.
The end came on two mornings separated by seven months. January 9th, 1970, ACV91 was conducting a reconnaissance mission in the plane of Reeds near the Cambodian border. Intelligence indicated Vietkong movement in the area, possibly a battalionized force preparing to cross into South Vietnam.
The ACV approached a likely crossing point, a mudbank where the water was shallow enough for troops to wade across. The pilot, Warrant Officer Thomas Kelly, followed standard procedure, reducing speed as they neared the bank, preparing to transition from water to land for a closer inspection. The trip wire was invisible in the murky water.
The mine it triggered was a 55gallon drum packed with captured American explosives positioned precisely where a hovercraft would pass when approaching the bank. The explosion lifted ACV 901 completely out of the water. The blast wave struck the bottom of the craft. The point of maximum vulnerability where the thin aluminum skin of the pleum chamber was exposed.
The pressure crushed the hull, destroyed the transmission, and ruptured the fuel tanks. Kelly and his crew survived the initial blast through a combination of armor and luck. None were killed outright, but 14 men were wounded, some seriously. The ACV, its air cushion destroyed, settled into the water and began taking fire from automatic weapons concealed in the reeds.
The craft was crippled, but not completely disabled. Using the emergency auxiliary power system, they managed to limp away from the kill zone. The damaged turbine screaming in protest. A PBR patrol raced to their position and provided covering fire while they transferred the wounded. ACV 901 was eventually recovered by helicopter, but the damage was catastrophic.
The craft was deemed beyond field repair and shipped back to the United States. The loss of ACV91 changed the operational calculus. Army regulations stipulated that hovercraft work in pairs to protect each other. With only two ACVS remaining, operations had to be carefully planned. If one craft was down for maintenance or training, operations halted.
The pace of missions slowed. August 3rd, 1970. ACV902 was operating near Dong Tam, supporting an infantry sweep through an area known to contain Vietkong supply caches. The mission had been routine, transporting troops to insertion points, providing fire support, maintaining a defensive perimeter.
The enemy presence seemed light, mostly small groups that melted away rather than engaging. Complacency crept in. The command detonated mine was more sophisticated than the trip wire system that destroyed ACV901. Vietkong engineers had buried multiple mines along a canal bank, wired to a firing position 200 meters away in a concealed bunker.
They waited until ACV 9002 was directly over the largest mine. Its crew focused on the opposite bank where suspicious movement had been reported. The enemy detonated all the mines simultaneously. The explosion destroyed ACV92 completely. The blast severed the craft nearly in half, rupturing the fuel tanks and igniting a fireball that consumed the cabin.
Specialist John Grimes, Staff Sergeant Robert Lewis, and Sergeant Michael Patterson were killed instantly. Nine others were wounded, several with severe burns. The craft rolled over and sank in water too shallow to fully suburb it. The broken hull visible above the water line. Smoke pouring from the wreckage. The deaths broke the program.
The 39th Cavalry Platoon was officially deactivated on August 31st, 1970. ACV903, the sole surviving Army hovercraft, was shipped back to Fort Eustace, Virginia, where it was placed on display at the Army Transportation Museum. The Navy’s three PACVS had been withdrawn earlier in June 1970 after completing their evaluation period.
One was transferred to the Coast Guard for trials. Another became a museum piece and the third was sold to civilian operators. The official assessments were mixed but ultimately negative. A 1970 Army evaluation concluded. The ACV provides unique capabilities in wetland operations offering speed and allterrain mobility unmatched by any other vehicle.
However, maintenance requirements, training demands, high costs, and vulnerability to mines make it unsuitable for sustained combat operations in the current operational environment. While the ACV proved effective in specific scenarios, it cannot be recommended for general deployment. The Navy’s evaluation was slightly more favorable, but reached similar conclusions.
The PACVS had successfully demonstrated their ability to operate in areas inaccessible to conventional craft. They had achieved tactical surprise despite their noise largely through speed. Their firepower proved adequate for riverine operations, but the noise eliminated true stealth. The maintenance demands were prohibitive, the training requirements excessive, and the cost per unit unjustifiable when compared to alternatives.
The report noted, “For the price of one PACV, the Navy can field 13 PBRs, which require less maintenance, can be crewed by personnel with conventional boat training, and present smaller targets.” The numbers told part of the story. In four years of operations, the six hovercraft, three navy, and three army had conducted hundreds of missions.
They had destroyed numerous enemy craft and structures, killed or captured hundreds of Vietkong fighters, disrupted supply lines, and denied the enemy use of previously safe sanctuaries. They had transported thousands of troops into combat zones. They had provided fire support for countless operations, and they had done it with remarkably low casualties to their own forces.
Only three Americans had been killed operating the hovercraft, and those deaths came from mines specifically designed to counter them, but the costs were equally clear. $6 million had purchased six hovercraft. Thousands of maintenance hours had kept them marginally operational. Specialized training had diverted skilled personnel from other duties.
Complex supply chains had shipped parts across the Pacific. And for all that investment, the hovercraft had never been decisive. They were spectacular, memorable, psychologically effective. But they didn’t win the war in the Delta. The slow, unglamorous work of PBR patrols, infantry sweeps, and pacification programs did more to control the waterways than the roaring monsters ever could.
Yet, the impact transcended statistics. The veterans who operated the hovercraft remember them with a mixture of affection and awe. Former Navy Lieutenant Robert Archer, who commanded PACV operations from Cat Low, reflected in a 1998 interview, “Those craft were something special. When everything worked, when the turbine was running smooth and the skirt was intact and you had good intelligence, you were invincible.
We could go anywhere, catch anyone, outrun anything. The Vietkong feared us. You could see it in the prisoners we took. They’d heard the monsters, and when we actually caught them, they knew they’d been caught by something beyond their experience. The Vietnamese who encountered the hovercraft, both allies and enemies, never forgot them.
In a 2006 oral history project, a former Vietkong platoon leader recalled, “The American riverboats. We learned to fight. We knew their patterns, their weapons, their weaknesses. We ambushed them, mined the rivers, attacked them with rockets. Sometimes we won, sometimes they won. But the monsters, the caveat, they were different. You heard them coming.
This terrible thunder that seemed to come from everywhere. Then they appeared, moving impossibly fast across water, across mud, across rice fields. They chased sand pans into swamps where no boat could go. They fired so many bullets that trees fell. We tried to fight them, but they were too fast. We tried to hide from them, but they found us. For a while, we were truly afraid.
The technical lessons influenced future developments. The Marine Corps’s landing craft air cushion, the LCAC, incorporated improvements learned from the Vietnam experience. Better skirt designs, more reliable engines, improved maintenance procedures, and more effective armor, all traced their lineage to the PACVS and ACVs.
The British continued hovercraft development, eventually deploying them in the Faulland’s War. The Soviets built massive hovercraft for amphibious assault. The concept proved viable, but the application required specific conditions to justify the costs. In retrospect, the hovercraft program in Vietnam was a classic example of innovation under pressure.
Faced with an operational problem, the military tried an unconventional solution. The technology worked sometimes brilliantly, but working wasn’t enough. A weapon system must be sustainable, affordable, maintainable, and integrated into larger doctrine. The hovercraft were none of those things. They were spectacular individual performers in a war that required systemic solutions.
The final irony is that the mockery never fully disappeared. Even after operation quivat, even after years of successful combat operations, even after veterans returned home with stories of racing across the plane of Reeds at 60 knots, the hovercraft still looked ridiculous. In photographs, they resembled carnival rides armed with machine guns.
The shark teeth painted on the boughs seem more comical than menacing. The bulbous rubber skirts, the ungainainely proportions, the topheavy appearance, all conspire against taking them seriously. But the Vietkong took them seriously. The gorillas who fled into swamps thought impenetrable, only to hear the thunder and see the monster burst through the reeds took them very seriously indeed.
The samp crews who tried to escape and found themselves pursued across rice patties took them seriously. The base camps that thought themselves safe, nestled in wetlands accessible only on foot, took them seriously when the PACVS arrived with fire and fury. On a muggy morning in late 1970, Lieutenant Commander Michael Vincent stood on the dock at Catlo Naval Base and watched PHCV Road 03 being loaded onto a cargo ship for the voyage home. The shark teeth were faded.
The aluminum hull was pockmarked with patched bullet holes, and the rubber skirt showed years of hard use. A small crowd gathered, mostly Vietnamese sailors and base personnel. One of the older officers approached Vincent and spoke in halting English. The monsters are leaving. Vincent nodded. They are. We laughed at them when they came.
I remember. The Vietnamese officer was quiet for a moment watching the crane lift the hovercraft. We stopped laughing. That was perhaps the best epitap for the program. They were laughed at when they arrived. Those pregnant elephants trying to dance, those ungainainely machines that seem to defy common sense.
But somewhere between cat low and the plain of reeds, between mockery and respect, between laughter and fear, the PACVS had proven that innovation sometimes wears absurd disguises. The Viatkong had a saying in the late 1960s passed among fighters operating in the Meong Delta. When you hear the thunder of the Quaivat, “Run in three directions at once, because the monster can follow them all.
” It was Gallow’s humor, an acknowledgment that running was futile. The hovercraft could chase you across water, across land, across marsh. The only safety was deep jungle or tunnels, places the monsters couldn’t reach. But the United States had other monsters for those places. Helicopters that could hover over jungle canopy.
Infantry trained in tunnel warfare. The hovercraft were just one tool in an arsenal of innovation, experimentation, and adaptation. They were spectacular, memorable, effective in their niche. They terrorized an enemy who thought themselves safe. And then, like so much else in Vietnam, they faded away. Victims of their own complexity, leaving behind nothing but memories and two museum pieces.
The display at the Army Transportation Museum in Fort Eustace contains ACV903, the sole surviving Army hovercraft. The craft sits in a climate controlled building. Its rubber skirt properly inflated, its turbine preserved but silent. Its machine guns removed. A placard explains the specifications. 38 ft 10 in long, 23t 9 in beam, 7 tons fully loaded, 60 knots maximum speed, zero draft.
The technical details reduce four years of combat operations to numbers that mean nothing to visitors who don’t understand what zero draft meant in the Meong Delta. But to the Vietnamese who encountered them, to the crews who operated them, to the special forces who rode on their decks into the plane of Reeds, those numbers meant everything.
Zero draft meant invulnerability to terrain. 60 knots meant inescapability. 7 tons propelled by 900 horsepower meant momentum that could crash through vegetation, climb banks, and pursue any enemy anywhere they ran. The monsters were real, and for a brief moment in the endless war, they reclaimed the Delta from forces who thought it theirs alone.
The laughter of May 1966 was silenced by the thunder of November. The pregnant elephants learned to dance, and their dance was terrible to behold. The Vietkong called them monsters, and that name carried more respect than mockery. In a war of acronyms and abstractions, where success was measured in body counts and territory controlled, the PACVS and ACVs were refreshingly concrete.
They either caught you or they didn’t. They either destroyed your saman or they missed. They either penetrated your sanctuary or they didn’t. There was no ambiguity, no strategic complexity, just speed and firepower and the inescapable roar of turbines at full power. When the last PACV departed Vietnam in August 1970, an era ended. No military force has since attempted sustained combat hovercraft operations in riverine environments.
The experiment was conducted, the data collected, the conclusions drawn, hovercraft work, but only under specific conditions, and those conditions rarely align with military requirements. The amphibious LCAC fills a different role, moving from ship to shore in conventional operations. The civilian hovercraft continue serving as fairies, but the armed, armored, aggressive combat hovercraft that terrorized the Meong Delta remain unique in military history.
They were laughed at when they arrived. They were feared when they departed. And somewhere between those two reactions lies the truth of military innovation. Sometimes the most effective weapons look absurd. Sometimes technological superiority lies not in sophistication, but in doing one thing, speed and mobility, better than anything else.
Sometimes the monsters are real. The thunder has faded from the delta now. The plane of reeds grows rice instead of hiding gorillas. The canals carry farmers to market instead of weapons to war. The sampans that ply the mikong no longer flee from roaring machines that defy the boundary between water and land. Peace of a sort has returned.
But the Vietnamese who were there remember the quivat. The old men tell young children about the American monsters that could fly across the swamps. The stories have grown in the telling as war stories do until the hovercraft seemed like dragon myths from ancient times. But the core remains true. For four years, the United States deployed six machines that operated in realms thought impossible.
They laughed at them when they arrived. They feared them when they departed. And in between the monsters reclaim the delta one roaring sorty at a time. The shark teeth have faded. The turbines are silent. The rubber skirts deflate in museums. But the memory remains. And memory is sometimes the heaviest weapon of all.
The Vietkong who survived remember running from the thunder. The crews who operated them remember the power. And the Vietnamese officers who laughed on that morning in May 1966 remember the moment they stopped laughing when the pregnant elephants began their terrible dance across the waters of Four.
