I just finished talking with one of my Vietnamese neighbor and learned that there are two SVN Swifts went to the Phillipnes on April 30, 1975. Here how it goes:

My neighbor (Hoa) was a university student on 4/30/1975 and on the 29th of April, his brother, who was an OinC of a SVN Swift told the family that he had a special assignment to go to Cat Lo from Nha Be. The family knew that it was the trip out of Vietnam. Hoa asked his brother to allow him to go along and his brother granted the request. It turned out that there were four Swifts went to Cat Lo and the entourage was SVN ADM. Hoang Co Minh. When they got to Cat Lo, ADM. Hoang Co Minh and his family disembarked; the four OinC's held a meeting among themselves. Two Swifts decided to go back to Nha Be and the remaining two decided to go to An Thoi (Hoa was on on of the remaining two) with the hope that they could link up with An Thoi PCF force to "do something". When the two Swifts got close to An Thoi they ran into an America warship (a destroyer, I presume because I also ran into a destroyer on the way out of An Thoi to go to Guam).

The people on the two Swifts were then picked up by the destroyer but the crews of the two Swifts remained on their boats and folled the destroyer all the way to the Phillipines. I think the story is real because Hoa talked about the two Swifts often came to the destroyer for fuel and supply. That makes sense because the Swift just simply can't go from Cat Lo to the Phillipines without refueling. On top of that Hoa was a student then how could he know about the fuel capacity of the Swift. Just want to pass this information along.

Toi

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Terrific story Toi. Wouldn't it be great to find a real
VN Swift still afloat in the Philippines? Sign me up!!
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If Hoa could flesh out the story it would make a nice
companion to Le Ba Thong's The Journey of Destiny
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BTW ... this web page has a new look that makes Le's
story, with its Swift component, just more interesting
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Bob S
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Bob,

Let me see if I could get the OinC write the story in Vietnamese and then I will do the translation. He is in Orange County, CA and I will try to be real nice to my neighbor so that he could introduce me to his older brother (the OinC) then I will take it from there.

Toi Dang

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"Let me see if I could get the OinC to write the story .."
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Super ... good luck ... and you are always nice {grin}
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Bob S
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Toi, terrific story 'ol bud. Next time my Annie goes to the PI... I'll ask that she keep her eyes pealed.
I wonder if the USN would be willing to bring one of those boats home?

Mark