Capturing Skunk Alpha

On the evening of July 11, 1967, a Navy surveillance

aircraft spotted a suspicious trawler in international waters heading toward

the Quang Ngai coast of South Vietnam. While the ship tried to appear innocuous

on its deck, Saigon quickly identified it as an enemy gunrunner, codenamed

Skunk Alpha.

A four-seaborne intercept task force was established and

formed a barrier inside South Vietnam's twelve-mile territorial boundary. As the

enemy ship ignored all orders to surrender and neared the Sa Ky River at the

tip of the Batangan Peninsula, Swift Boat PCF-79 was ordered to take the

trawler under fire. What followed was ship-to-ship combat action not seen since

World War II. Capturing Skunk Alpha relates

that breathtaking military encounter to readers for the first time.

But Capturing Skunk

Alpha is also the tale of one sailor's journey to the deck of PCF-79. Two

years earlier, Ra?l Herrera was growing up on the west side of San Antonio, Texas,

when he answered the call to duty and joined the US Navy. Ra?l was assigned to

PCF Crew Training and joined a ragtag six-man Swift Boat crew with a mission to

prevent the infiltration of resupply ships from North Vietnam.

The brave sailors who

steered into harm's way in war-torn Vietnam would keep more than ninety tons of

ammunition and supplies from the Viet Cong and NVA forces. The Viet Cong would

post a bounty on PCF-79; Premier Nguyễn Cao Kỳ and Chief of State Nguyễn Văn

Thiệu would congratulate and decorate them for their heroism. Capturing Skunk Alpha provides an

eyewitness account of a pivotal moment in Navy operations while also

chronicling one sailor's unlikely journey from barrio adolescence to perilous

combat action on the high seas.