San Diego Veteran Spotlight Gary Chapman By David Koontz A San Diego native, Gary Chapman grew up in Navy town. As a boy, he watched with fascination naval ships steaming in San Diego Bay as well as military aircraft flying from Naval Air Station North Island. So it was no surprise what his future held. “Sailing in the bay growing up, watching the ships and seeing the seaplanes take off and land, it was pretty much a foregone conclusion the Navy would be my branch of service,” said Gary, who graduated from Point Loma High School in 1962. After graduating from the University of Utah on a Navy ROTC scholarship, Gary was commissioned an ensign and assigned to the destroyer USS Ault (DD698). Later, as the gunnery officer on the destroyer USS Rogers (DD-876), his ship came under attack off the coast of North Vietnam in the Gulf of Tonkin during Operation Sea Dragon in 1967.
USS Kitty Hawk in 1963 as a Midshipman
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“The Rogers was bracketed by North Vietnamese artillery on one of our Sea Dragon firing missions,” remembered the 76-year-old Gary. “There was a big splash on the port bow, then a bigger splash off the starboard side aft. We went to right full rudder, all ahead flank, and returned counter-battery. Fortunately, the ship did not take a hit, but it was close.” Combat operations for Gary didn’t end when he left the Rogers. His next tour kept him in Vietnam and even closer to the action. Assigned to River Assault Flotilla 1 (RAF 1), he spent a year in the Mekong Delta. “RAF 1 was a joint Army-Navy task force in the Mekong Delta and I was weapon’s boss on the USS Colleton, one of two mother ships for the RAF,” said Gary. “We had 9th Army Division assigned to us and their smaller craft would tie up to pontoons we had lashed alongside.” The Colleton, and another mother ship, would go up the main river channels as far as the Cambodian border. The smaller assault boats would carry Army troops up the smaller channels to seek out the enemy. The boats would return to the anchorage at night and the troops would sleep safely aboard the Colleton.
Deployment to the Western Pacific in 1967
