Two days before USS Jouett (DLG-29) left for Vietnam, Fire Control Technician Mike Ducy sat down to write his parents in Decatur, Illinois.
“Things have been pretty busy on the ship in the past week. We have had a lot of inspections and they have been loading stores about every day.”
He mentioned serving mass for the chaplain. Driving a buddy to pick up the mail. Seeing Valley of the Dolls. And almost as an aside: “I was suppose to meet Bill here Friday evening, but he never made it for some reason. Maybe he is on his way over [to Vietnam] now.”
Bill was his younger brother, a Marine, already bound for Da Nang. They wouldn’t see each other again until April 16th, in a combat zone, aboard the USS Jouett in Da Nang Harbor.
“Cast Off All Lines”
The cruise book captures the morning of January 16, 1968 and the somber mood:
On the morning of January 16, 1968, JOUETT cast off all lines, put both engines astern, and backed away from the pier, leaving wives and children, sweethearts and friends behind. The long months of training and preparation had borne fruit. For the first time, DLG-29 proceeded to conflict, ready to serve.
Mike’s logbook is more to the matter:
1000 — Underway for Pearl Harbor from Nav Station San Diego, Calif. Condition III Set. Steaming with USS Preble (DLG-15). ComDesRon One Embarked.
No sentiment. No mention of the families on the pier. Just the time, the destination, and the formation. That’s the logbook — every day for 184 days, the same disciplined shorthand. The emotion lives in the letters and tape recordings he sent home.
Jouett steamed west with Destroyer Squadron One: five days to Pearl Harbor, liberty in Waikiki, then onward through Guam and Subic Bay. A routine of watches, exercises, and approaches with the escort ships, USS Preble and USS Hull.
“Have M-1 Rifles at Hand”
February 15th, Day 30. One line brings the reality of the situation to bear:
Entered Vietnamese Waters Early in the Morning. 0810 — Anchor in Da Nang Harbor. Have M-1 Rifles at Hand in Topside Working Spaces.
The day before had been Valentine’s Day. A helicopter nearly hit the water when a cargo door opened, causing damage but landing safely. They fired 81mm mortars and observed tropical working hours for the first time. By February 16th, Mike was standing sentry with an Officer at 0600, and Jouett was underway for her first line duty at South SAR station. The Search and Rescue station in the Gulf of Tonkin that would define Jouett’s deployment.
98 Days on Station
What followed was a deployment of extraordinary operational tempo. Jouett served as lynchpin of the Navy’s search and rescue units in the Tonkin Gulf, sailing between the aircraft carriers operating as part of Operation Rolling Thunder and the North Vietnamese coast. Across three periods on the line, Jouett spent 98 days in the Tonkin Gulf combat zone, according to the ship’s official 1968 Command History. On homecoming day, Captain Robert S. Hayes gave the San Diego Union his own tally:
“…as flagship of the search and rescue operations, completed 932 helicopter takeoffs and landings from its deck, made 25 night fuel and supply replenishments from other ships, and served 103 days in the combat zone without a serious accident among its crew of 400.”
Mike’s logbook records every day in the same factual amnner. Eight aviators rescued. Terrier missiles fired at MiGs. A MiG-21 downed. But also: movies on the fantail. Pay days. And more importantly, the weather, which has been helpful in recreating key pieces of Mike’s journey in relation to artifacts in the archive.
On April 16th, Jouett anchored in Da Nang Harbor. At 1230, Mike’s brother Bill came aboard. They got four hours together, reconnecting and recording a tape home. After Bill left at 1630, Mike stood sentry with a .50 caliber machine gun, watching small craft in the harbor.
Tape 2, Side 1Tape 2, Side 1 — Mike & Bill Ducy
Hello, Mother, Dad, and David and everyone else at home. Well, right now I'm in Da Nang Harbor and right beside me is Bill. He came aboard the ship just about an hour and a half ago. I was pretty surprised to see him. He said it was about 12 o'clock. It's about quarter to 3 right here. This is Tuesday, April 16th. He's been telling me some of his little war stories and some of the games that they've been playing over here. And they seem to be in pretty good spirits and pretty good shape. I'm having a mic over to him right now and I didn't say a few words. Well, it took a pretty long time getting off this ship. I got in the, or left, uh, left at Hoi An at the, uh, chopper's ship about, uh, 9 o'clock. And got in here about, uh, quarter to 9, I think it was. And, uh, you know, we got pretty high there. I was pretty surprised, I was surprised the choppers fly. I thought they could go up. I got in here around 20 after 9 I think it was. I ran out of the third mast. I didn't really know where to go. I asked the guy who was driving the Navy truck to where the deep water pool was. He said, I'll take you halfway down there. I said, okay. I went down there. I got another ride on down to here. I got down here and talked to some guys in security. This is where all the parts, all down here is, down at the pier is a merchant ship. And this is around the harbor. And what would I do by getting out there? And they tell me all this. And so I end up going back and forth about three times, back up to St. Matthews, back down here, and cross the river on a ferry a couple of times. Going back and forth is what they call the White Alps. It's a naval operations deal down there along the river. Yeah, that's how it is. And when I called up down there, they said, yeah, the ship's in, and it's so many thousand meters out from southeast of the port or something like that, and I didn't understand what he said, you know. So I just took full credit, you know, he knew what he was talking about. And then when I got down there and went up here, and I was talking to one of the guys who was on the radio watch up at the pier there, and there was these small boats there running back and forth to the ship. And he said, yeah, well, I feel about the guys who, you know, who the ship is, and they'll run you out there. He said, yeah. So he ran me out here, and he finally got out here. He said, I'll let the hands of the air on the ground, man. It's really rocky. Well, I think I'll stop. The ship's rocking a little bit, and I think I'll fix the land and everything out here. And my point of space, he works out. Well, I don't think he's going to get seasick. It's pretty calm out here right now. But the weather right here is really hot. I'd say it's at least 90 outside. the air is pretty heavy and still yeah it's really clear out here it's uh the visibility is very far but it's a lot nicer than the last time that we were in here which was just about a month ago no that's wait a minute two months ago as a matter of fact it was in february the 14th that we were here last and that was just about two months ago um i gotta do up in that good navy towel here we had hamburgers and nice potatoes at that Of course, he had to wait in line like the rest of us. I don't suppose that's any new experience for him. Might be able to hear some helicopters and jets in the background. There's a lot of air activity going on around here. There's an awful lot of ships out here in the harbor. Doug, did you notice a lot of ships tied up in there? Yeah, there was a bunch of merchant ships out there. I think that's the reason why we don't tie up in there is because they've got so many merchant vessels in there that they don't have room for the Navy ships. and you think they might be afraid they might get shot at or fired on? Yeah, I mean, they have snipers in there, you know, and they're like secure hills. They really can't be secure. Nobody's really secure over here, you know. That's right. This is where we think you're at, we're secure. That's definitely right. The ship's supposed to leave here about 530 this afternoon, and no doubt we'll be able to find a boat to take him back to the pier. Hey, hey, he said we might have to swim back. We can't find any other way back there. I'm sure he wouldn't mind it being the hot, sticky weather that it is right here. David, you should be getting those packages by right now. By the time you begin to take them, you should be getting those packages. They're coming in about three weeks. Send them to Parkville Post. and hope you enjoy this camouflage utility. I know I do over here. I think it kind of needs to be worn around. It's a lot different. You can wear just the pants and not the shirt because it's too hot. You can wear pants and boots and that's about it. And then you can always use them to play around in, play army, stuff like that there. Or play Marines if you want to. And I hope you really enjoy this time. I know that one deal I sent, we found in a Buddhist pagoda, which is a church type deal that they have over here, a round deal. It's made out of wood and carved. And it's got a hole through the middle of it and it's placed about a quarter of an inch and you hit it with a ring, or a dead ring, but you know, a knocking sound on it. It sounds very neat. And today is really hot for me because I've been doing a lot of walking, which I wasn't used to doing, especially on a hard ground. We used to walk in the sand up to our knees. And walking back and forth, I had to carry all my gear and my rifle and my 7.82 gear and my helmet and my flak jacket, which is fairly hot in this type of weather. It's kind of a relief to get on this ship and take it all off, you know, and just leave it up there where I came on at and pick it up when I leave again. It's been fairly hot over here. It's about 20 miles south of here. When you get 20 miles south, it's twice as hot as it seems, right? And we ran over all that sand, you know, all the sun, the waves, everything off there. It wouldn't help us much. And yesterday we got a new truck in. It's about our fourth truck in about four weeks. We run through that truck about every week. We see the carburetor trouble. We ain't got enough power to make it up the hill. We got to get up there and stand. When we came up there, we used an Amtrak, had to take our trailer up there. We had generators and most of our gear in the trailer. We put them aside and we take the van off the truck. We used the Amtrak to pull it up there. We couldn't get up there any other way besides choppers. I guess there weren't any choppers that day that we could be using for it. We drove through the truck pretty quick up there. up there. He's kind of mad at us about his Italian area, but they'd come out here and see what it is. Come out to where we was at, here in Hoi An, and see what it's like. They'd understand why we go through so many trucks on the road and travel back there. I guess I did tell you about two Koreans. One of the Koreans we picked up was in a wreck there. He was in pretty bad shape. And his buddy was in a lot worse shape than he was. We didn't want to take him in a Jeep, We had a jeep that day, I was going to Hoi An to pick up some gear. And this one guy we picked up, he looked like he had a fracture in the knee and he was causing a head injury because he was bleeding out of the ear and the mouth. The other guy looked like he had a hip wound of some type because he was bleeding out of both ears, his mouth and his nose. You know, he's really in bad shape. They put him in a back of a six-by, which is a five-ton truck. And took him to the hospital. They couldn't get no ambulance out there. Nobody had any radios in. One six-by came out by the way. It had a 125 in it, which is a packable radio, mobile radio. And he called in and told them what had happened. And they asked him if he needed an assist. He said no, he was taken care of. And last night he did quite a bit of showing around the hill there. Nothing came up on the hill, thank God. I imagine if something came up on a hill, we'd really be moving out of there pretty quick. There wasn't really around there to protect us, just the bunkers that we got down in the fighting holes. I guess that's all we do is get down in the fighting holes or go down to the hills where the Army's at. They've got a bunker with walls on it about four feet wide with sandbags. It's pretty nice. and uh usually was the Korean ring's birthday so they took and set up a bunch of goodies for us and uh I think we had about 6 cases of beer between 15 of us which wasn't too bad oh yeah and uh probably using right now and uh they set up toothpaste soap and uh shaving cream so I guess they might have been hitting around about something I don't know but uh Talk about it on the Korean situation over here. They're kind of messed up. They really don't know what the score things are. They're getting quite a few men wiped out by the VC. But we captured 15 the other night. So I guess they're getting credit for some things. Bill handed the microphone back to me. I guess he wants me to say something now. I gave a little rundown of what we're going to be doing in the next few days. Took us two days to get here from Civic Bay. We left Sunday evening about 6 in the evening. And we got here this morning. It's about 8 o'clock. We got anchored about quarter to 9. We're getting away this evening. We're going to go out for some CT boat operations. There's a couple of CT boats. We'll try our tracking and our gunnery systems right on them. Just a little exercise that we go through every time we come over here. And we'll get up on star station tomorrow afternoon sometime where we'll be Running around in circles for about the next 30 days Okay We haven't got any mail since we left Subic Bay There might be a chance we might get some this afternoon if they had any over here for us and if not We'll get it when we get up on station and the helicopters bring it back out to us again like they did before Like I said before we expected to be pretty quiet up there this time just like it was last time And so the weather could be a lot nicer, which means it's going to be a lot warmer and hotter, a lot more sun. But actually, it's a little bit better than the bad weather we did have up there, all the rain, the fog and everything. It's made the day seem even longer and a lot more boring. I would hope that David started to get used to his arm and he found that he can get along all right with it. Yeah, I told him not to have too good of a time out there shaking. I suppose he really lives it up out there. And I know his heart is really broke because he can't play his drum anymore. Day after tomorrow is payday here on this ship. I expect to leave my money on the books. I don't know just yet how much I'm going to be getting. They should have a pay list up sometime this afternoon. I'll leave my money on the books for another three or four weeks and draw a little bit off of spending Hong Kong. But from now on out, I'm going to be saving most of it and not spend any more than I have to over here. I spent just exactly what I wanted to and bought what I wanted to while we were in Yautuska. And I don't think I'm going to be making any more large purchases while I'm over here. I'd like to get as much stuff back home as I can while I'm over here. Bill just told me here this afternoon that the Illinois State Veterans Administration will send anyone that's over here in Vietnam in the combat zone, will send them $100. dollars because he's going to give me the address as soon as he can get it and uh i'll send a letter back to him real quick i'll send a letter back to him real quick and see if i can pick up on that hundred dollars and see what there is about that they're just handing me a nickel here he says this court-martial offense well i imagine so it carries uh any u.s currency on your person over here because like I said in Japan we had to change our green back to this NPC money yeah funny money is what they also call it and over here in Vietnam they change their NPC into coins also but back in Japan we got to use US coins but over here they have paper money to use for the coins so it's really a kind of a complicated deal but it's all for the better of the economy to keep the money from going to the wrong hands. Now Bill just asked me to ask Zeus if he took it out of his jungle boots that we sent home to him there for Christmas. Bill's got a pair of them on right here and needless to say they look like they've been worn quite a bit. Yeah he took some barbed wire scratches on the top of them and we He was here on the ship with some of his M16s and some of his gear that he brought aboard. And we had quite a crowd of sailors around there asking all kinds of questions and everything. Firing questions of Bill right and left. And he was giving us some pretty good answers. I was kind of surprised to see some of the combat gear over here, which we'd probably never seen or even touched. For a ship being all in a situation where they are really security conscious, They didn't know what they were going to do with his gun when he brought it on board. They didn't know whether to take it down to the small arms locker or just what to do with it. They were kind of confused about it because they probably weren't ever faced with a situation before. So he left it there on the quarterback where he came on board with the rest of his stuff. And they gave him an escort badge, and one of my buddies brought him down. I was laying in my rack catching a noon hour sleep, and I was just starting to get up to go up and get some dinner. And he says, that's right. He said, you better get up. Your brother just called down there and wants you to come up and get him. I said, ah, you're lying. I said, he ain't here. He said, yes, he is. He said, you want me to go up and get him? I said, yeah, go on up and get him. Bring him down here. So he went up and got him and brought him down. And I saw old Bill there. And that's the first question I asked him. I said, do you have anything to eat? He says, no, I haven't had anything since 7 o'clock this morning. And so we finally took up through the trial line and had a couple of handlers at the Now we're all ready for the next meal. Well, they said it's about 5.30, just about time. We're getting underway. I got to go up and stand a watch and a .50 caliber machine gun. We've got two .50 caliber machine guns mounted here in case if we get any attacks from any small boats or anything, which is really ridiculous. ridiculous. You just can't believe how they sweat things when this ship pulls in the port. For example, when we were in Subic Bay for one day, the time before we went to Yokosuka, we stopped there for one day. They let somebody come on board the ship without giving them an escort badge or an escort. They came on board the ship, they had a cardboard box all all wrapped up and they took it up to CIC, which is the place where we have all of our radar gear and our radio transmitters and everything. And they placed this box up there and they walked off the ship. Well, one of the crew members on the ship saw the box over there and went over and unwrapped it. And on the inside there was a nice little note all typed up real neat, which said, this is a bomb. Surprise. So it was that somebody was testing our security strength here on the ship and they had a big shakedown about this and now they really put the pressure on when you're in foreign port now checking everybody that comes on board the ship of course the captain is so afraid somebody's going to take his pride and joy away from him which is true of most captains who have a ship under their command but I guess things are just like that in the Navy. Every branch of the service has their own characteristics and things which are noted for, and I guess this is one thing that the Navy is known for, is a captain who's always worrying about the welfare of his ship. When that captain asked me for my rifle, I said something like, the War Hardened Marines say that rifle stays with me wherever I go, I imagine if I say that he probably had a heart attack or something. You know, we really close a lot of rifles, you know, be out in our reach or not knowing where they're at. Especially, you know, over here. Something does happen right here where we're at now. I doubt anything would, but something did happen. We'd have to get to our weapons pretty quick. I should have really said that to him. He'd probably have had a fit. He'd probably have to find a favor or something for it. Something like that. They don't know what to do, actually. Officers on here, when you call their bluff or call their car, they don't know what to say. They have to go out and get their little book of doing and stuff. That's exactly what they're supposed to do next. You should be getting that tape today or tomorrow, since it's on the target reel. So, uh, taking, playing the shoulder slides and everything, and then, uh, taking the short plate, uh, ground and ground points and all that, and the slides also. I tried to just send the slides and stuff on home, because, uh, they were just mostly, uh, down there at the beach. And, uh, a couple, one slide over, he's over there at the 327PX, and, uh, these little good kids running around, shit-shining boots, talking to one guy. One guy, he was in a truck with a sign of a boot that he was going to put in the truck and a little good kid had a sign of a boot and he looked up when I took the picture. Usually when a, you know what's funny is when there's kids out there peddling off nears and Vietnamese flags and there's a little Arvin Bray, you know. I saw these flags, this guy, this Jack, this Paul Blankens, they said over here these flags that they sell here are actually made over here and they take them on and they stomp them in the dirt and turn them up a little bit and say this is a captured North Vietnamese flag. We hadn't seen them yet in the north of the enemy's flag. They were just in the red and yellow. But one day when we were back there at the battalion area, we were up on the bunker floor. We looked over the rice paddies and the river down there. The groups, they took a long piece of bamboo, I think it was about 30-foot long, and it was about four or five inches in diameter down toward the bottom. They put it up there with the South of the enemy's flag on it, on it and next night we got hit you know with a little bit small ground itself you know two or three guys came came up to the perimeter and we shot some uh grenades at them the import team grenade launchers you know the grenade box on the enemy shot couple of men and captain a couple of uh coffins went down the next morning they wouldn't go down there at night you know to check it out because the guy tore he hit it you know because he shot six grenades down there a couple of them was was in the same area and then spread them out a little bit. And he just tore it and hit that guy that was down there. So they went up in the patrol, you know, we got night patrols out there, you know, they went up in the patrol and checked it out. And the next morning went down there. And also during the night, the dogs and stuff run down to the wire there and stuff, and they go up there around where the firing was at, where the grenades landed at and stuff, and they'd go around and sniff around the kind of ground, and they'd take off running. You know, and then we knew there was somebody down there, And then the next morning we went down there to check it out. A couple of lieutenants and captains went in and checked it out. All they found was a couple of utility jackets and some blood down there. What was that? I imagine they would send a couple, you know, four or five guys out there, you know, to check it out. They probably found a scoop that wounded pretty bad. You know, it just didn't seem that they know how to run it. So you could think on their side, you know, we sent patrol down there. might be an ambush but they always have it set up you know we had the uh 250 calibers and an m60 machine gunner and the m14 with the grenades on the grenade launcher on it so if anything happened down there they'd wipe it out real quick you know without no trouble when they didn't so they got away or whoever's down there i'll tell you about that flag they set up there a little ground assault everything that night and uh so whenever they put that flag knowing that there was a VC in the area, because they put up a flag, you know, to show the VC that they were on our side. These groups of the farming down there was on our side and everything. And so they usually stay watching for that flag pretty well. They finally got the tower built back up over there. CBs came down there. On the front? Yeah, the tower building, yeah. CBs came back there about four weeks later. So that's again for us. They cut it off about 25 foot tall now. They did a pretty good job on it. I just sent a tape home to you the other day. You ought to have it by now. It's probably recording on the other side and ready to send it back. So this tape hasn't ran through all the way, but there's really not too much more to say. So I'm going to sign off here, and I'll hand the mic back to Bill and let him say a few more finishing words. And so everybody be good back there, and Dave be a good boy, and stay out of trouble in school, and try to protect that arm. and don't get mad at anybody and hit them with that cast either because they'll probably be wearing one too. And like I said, they would be good, and I suppose you and Mother are both waiting for school to get out. It's on vacation to be here real soon. Even though it feels like summer right over here, you figure it'd be the same way back home, but I know that it's real nice. Yeah, Bill said he's going to have two years of summer over here, and that's right. and sure the spring weather back here is really nice one of the nicest times of the year so I'll say goodbye for now and be writing a letter soon or sending another tape as I get one from you so long everybody be good be careful and tell David do not trade off his utilities I gave him because they're pretty hard to get unless I got a little pair to trade off for them. The Koreans eat up these American utilities. So I guess we eat up their camouflage utilities. Take care of them and don't get them ripped or torn. You can keep from it. And be good and be careful on your bike if you're riding your new bike with your broken arm. And be good and keep up your homework and schoolwork and everything. Be good in school. And make good grades and not have to worry about flunking or anything like that. And everybody take care, and I guess that's about it from ESL Hewitt, anchored in the South Tennessee off the coast of Da Nang on, what's the date? April 16th. April 16th, 1968 at 3 p.m. 3 p.m. 3 p.m. and I hope everybody is in good condition and everything like that there. When I'm walking through the elephant grass, don't worry, I'll keep my ass down. This is a PS there. I was going to give Mike a little, he had to meet Langley School here in case we just happen to get in on land. We're walking down through the city of Da Nang or maybe Saigon if we get the chance to get down there maybe. and I was going to give him a little language here, which I did say some of it back on my last tape, but I forgot a couple of things. One was opened up, which means I do not understand. I'm like a book is talking to you. You speak a little language and then it gets carried away and starts speaking Vietnamese. Then you just tell him to open it up. Then he'll start over again and then you hope that you get it the second time. And then, uh, Dung Lai, which means stop or halt. That's what we use. That's what we told you. We're going on tweets, checking the ID cards, and if there's anybody outside of the perimeter, he's just waving his hands and all that stuff. In case there's a kid sick or something like that, he wants them to come and take care of him. We tell him, uh, Dung Lai means halt, stop, and we call for an interpreter because we can't speak Vietnamese that good. Then, uh, Chaco La Dai, which means young girl, come here. always a popular phrase. Why would you want to say something like that? Well, you know, I was walking through a veil. You've got to check all the ID cards, all the young people. It's good to have a good reason. Yeah. And then a little crane I picked up. There's quite a bit of it. One of them is you have a veil, which means hello, how are you, and friend. It's a friendly greeting. There goes a small boat down in the water. Good place for a boat to be going, really. A couple of guys going in. Maybe I should have caught that boat. It seemed to be going a little faster than what I came out here. Normally, whenever you're trying to get someplace in a hurry, it doesn't go fast enough. And, let's see. If you think anything else, you're going to get a lead. Well, let's see. Dinky Dow, which means you tell us if these little kids come around pestering you, asking you for chop-chop, which is food in that language, chop-chop, or cigarettes. These little six-year-old kids asking for cigarettes. You tell them, uh, you tell them to dinky-dow, which means, uh, crazy little kids. They don't like it, and they kick off. Or you tell them dee-dee, which means, uh, get away from me or bother me. How do you say rice? Rice. Uh, chop-chop. Well, you know, food. Usually, uh, if you see some, uh, rice, When I went through this one tweet one day, I had this little kid tearing up his parents' home and friends' home and living around him. And I wouldn't let you have that stuff because it would be trapped. And he'd open a big vase and it'd be full of rice and go chop, chop. And I'd take my hand in there and say, okay. And then they have little deals that are like up-sized carrots. You take carrot slices and they turn white. They were white, like a gum or some substance of a gum you chew on for quite a while. The reason why I asked you how you say rice is because in Japan, the word for rice is dozo. D-O-S-O, dozo. That's about one of the only words I learned there in Japan. Then another thing over here when we were doing the Hoi An, we pick up bananas, coconuts. And then the last few weeks we've been in there, they've had watermelons and we asked them how much for the watermelon, they know what it is. In English language, they go, a watermelon, $2. So it's a little one-man watermelon. Buko too much, buko means many, too much, a whole lot. Buko too much, buko. And then usually we can even do them down if we got some time to stick around there. But we got something to trade to them for it. They usually pick it up pretty quick. A guy bought a watch in there in one of the jewelry shops in there. Ten bucks for a watch at a date. And secondhand, you know, self-winding or anything like that. Ten bucks just wasn't too bad. But these droops, they take a $10 in our NPC's money and take it down to the black market and get $12. They just merchandise out of $10. Yeah. from our our NPCs uh well the dollar 18 of their uh piastres or keys whatever they're going to call them what money is called piastres yeah and it's uh pretty big deal in these foreign countries so they can get a hold of any money from the military personnel they'll use it for their own purposes and really have some advantage of it well I guess that's about it in the Vietnamese culture and the highlights of Vietnam and how other people act. I guess I'll be signing off now. So we'll give you bye from Bill and bye from Mike.
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Audio cassette recording, Tape 2, Side 1 — Mike & Bill Ducy. Transcribed by OpenAI Whisper. Ducy Family Archives
Twelve days later, on April 28th, Jouett made its first major rescue. An F-4B Phantom from VF-21 “Freelancers” off USS Ranger was hit by 85mm anti-aircraft fire near Vinh. Both pilots — LCDR Diego “Duke” Hernandez and LTJG David Lortschey — were rescued in 29 minutes.
In between the operations, Mike sent tape recordings home on cassettes. His family in Decatur would gather around the player and listen, then record a tape back. These tapes survived, 23 in total now digitized and transcribed, a most intimate record of what deployment sounded like and how the family tried to keep him connected to events at home.
The Long Way Home
July 1, Day 167. Underway for Subic Bay. The combat deployment was over and the USS Jouett completed it’s third line duty on South SAR Station. They ended the deployment with 5 successful SAR missions, & 8 rescued aviators.
They offloaded ammunition at Subic, steamed through the San Bernardino Straits past an active volcano, and set course east. On July 9th, Davy Jones appeared to summon the pollywogs. The next morning — July 10th, Day 176 — Jouett crossed the equator at the 180th meridian, and King Neptune’s court held a Shellback initiation ceremony. The date line crossing meant the ship lived two Wednesdays.
A quick stop at Pearl Harbor on July 13th for fuel, stores, and mail — five letters and a package of books — then the final leg to San Diego.
The last entries wind down:
Day 182. Underway for San Diego. Warm, rainy, cooler, high seas. 0800 — Pay Day, drew $201.00.
Day 183. 0830 — Conduct hi-line transfer of personnel from USS Hull. 1530 — Safe driving lecture by California State Trooper.
A safe driving lecture. After six months in a combat zone, someone had the audacity to lecture them about California traffic.
Homecoming and the “Holiday Routine” PoD
1011 — Arrive and Moor Pier #4, U.S. Naval Station, San Diego. Holiday Routine.
The San Diego Union ran the story the next morning:
Bands played, banners fluttered, and wives and children waved yesterday as three vessels of San Diego-based Destroyer Division One returned home from six months’ Vietnam action.
The Jouett wore eight parachutes painted on the superstructure below her bridge, signifying eight aviators were rescued during the deployment.
The cruise book shows the scene: families on the pier with hand-lettered signs — “Welcome Home Dad and Dave,” “HI!!!! RICHARD RD3” — women looking up at the ship through binoculars, a sailor kissing his wife while his daughter held a sign that read “Daddy.”
The Plan of the Day for July 18th had specified uniforms: Tropical White for entering port. It listed the tide tables and the watch bill. It did not mention that the men hadn’t been home in half a year.
Mike Ducy was 20 years old. His logbook — 184 days of terse, factual entries written in a young sailor’s hand — is now browsable day by day alongside his letters, audio tapes, photographs, and official records. His brother Bill’s Marine service in Da Nang runs in parallel. The family’s voice, on cassette tapes recorded from Decatur, fills in what the logbook leaves out.
Welcome to Letters Home — an interactive documentary built from Mike’s first hand account. Start at Day 1, explore the map, or browse the archive.