Vietnam Operations
Returning Long Beach 7 December, the minesweeper performed mine countermeasure exercises off the west coast for the next 14 months. Sailing 7 February 1966 Loyalty steamed to the Far East to join U.S. forces assisting South Vietnam to repel Communist aggression. Following a brief stay in the Philippines, she joined operation "Market Time" patrol off the coast of Vietnam early in April.
During Loyalty's first patrol, her crew boarded 348 junks, detained two and arrested 14 enemy smugglers. While the minesweeper was signalling a Junk to heave to on 6 April, she received fire from enemy positions ashore. Loyalty immediately answered this fire and silenced the hostile guns. Two days later, the versatile minesweeper knocked out a Vietcong emplacement which had been firing on a U.S. Army L-19 spotter plane. Rescuing a wounded American adviser from a junk some 2 miles off the coast on 17 April, she ended her patrol 8 days later when she arrived in Hong Kong. She was back on station off South Vietnam 12 May and resumed the task of preventing supplies getting into South Vietnam from the north. Loyalty continued as a unit of task force TF 115 through late 1968, stopping only briefly for respites in Subic Bay or Hong Kong and overhauls in her home port, Long Beach, California. Into 1969, Loyalty remained at Long Beach.
Loyalty was stricken 1 July 1972 and sold for scrapping in December 1973.
Read more about this topic: USS Loyalty (AM-457)
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