Operation Frequent Wind Activity
Underway from Subic Bay on 23 April, Vega sailed for the coast of South Vietnam. By this juncture, the government of South Vietnam was collapsing, leaving tons of American-supplied equipment intact for the communist forces. Operation Frequent Wind was launched to evacuate Vietnamese fleeing the onslaught, lest they be left behind and fall into communist hands. For the next few days, Vega replenished United States and South Vietnamese Navy ships, delivered passengers and mail, and transferred refugee supplies to vessels loaded with fleeing South Vietnamese. Underway at sea from 25 to 30 April, the supply ship arrived off Vung Tau on 1 May and replenished South Vietnamese naval units YFU-69, HQ-3, HQ-800, and HQ-801 as well as conducted a vertical fleet supply replenishment with Mars (AFS-1) and fleet supplies and mail for five other Navy ships.
Heading for Subic Bay, Vega served as escort for the "New Life" flotilla, heavily laden with Vietnamese refugees and their belongings. Arriving at Subic Bay on the 6th, she stood in with the first contingent of refugee vessels -- some 70 craft in all, of all shapes and sizes. Underway for a resumption of escort duties later that day, Vega stood out to sea; she subsequently refueled from Taluga (T-AO-62) on the 7th before conducting underway replenishments over the next two days with Midway (CVA-41), Badger (DE-1071), and Ashtabula (AO-51). Arriving at Subic Bay on 10 May to load supplies, she got underway soon thereafter, in company with Harold E. Holt (DE-1074), for refugee vessel escort duties.
Read more about this topic: USS Vega (AF-59), Vietnam Operations
Famous quotes containing the words operation, frequent, wind and/or activity:
“It requires a surgical operation to get a joke well into a Scotch understanding. The only idea of wit, or rather that inferior variety of the electric talent which prevails occasionally in the North, and which, under the name of “Wut,” is so infinitely distressing to people of good taste, is laughing immoderately at stated intervals.”
—Sydney Smith (1771–1845)
“It was a tangled and perplexing thicket, through which we stumbled and threaded our way, and when we had finished a mile of it, our starting-point seemed far away. We were glad that we had not got to walk to Bangor along the banks of this river, which would be a journey of more than a hundred miles. Think of the denseness of the forest, the fallen trees and rocks, the windings of the river, the streams emptying in, and the frequent swamps to be crossed. It made you shudder.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“You weep, you weep for the sun an Image.
...
the wind calls hideously,
woe for the children’s fate,
woe for a palace rent,
woe, woe for these who spent
life-blood
in hate.”
—Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)
“The teacher must derive not only the capacity, but the desire, to observe natural phenomena. In our system, she must become a passive, much more than an active, influence, and her passivity shall be composed of anxious scientific curiosity and of absolute respect for the phenomenon which she wishes to observe. The teacher must understand and feel her position of observer: the activity must lie in the phenomenon.”
—Maria Montessori (1870–1952)