As part of Operation Market Time during the Vietnam War, the US Navy and Coast Guard
intercepted North Vietnamese weapons and supplies that were ferried to the Viet Cong guerrilla.
Among the different vessels used to attack the enemy,
two of them stood out because of their unique features. They
were USS Tucumcari and Flagstaff, the Navy’s latest hydrofoil patrol boats.
With this new technology, the ships were considerably
faster than other patrol boats and more maneuverable due to their raised hulls.
As the patrol boats gained speed, the hydrofoils lifted their hulls out of the water, decreasing
drag and giving a speed boost to capture any Viet Cong sampan who dared to flee the combat zone.
Soon, Tucumcari and Flagstaff became well-known among the enemy forces,
and no one wanted to bump into them at sea. If they did, they knew it was too late to escape…
A New Type of Boat
The first hydrofoil vessel dates back to the 1870s, when patents and designs began to surge
in Europe. Italian inventor Enrico Forlanini was one of the first to develop a functional
hydrofoil alongside British designer John Thornycroft and Frenchman Comte de Lambert.
A hydrofoil is a solid object with a unique shape when placed in water at a specific angle.
It consists of a winglike structure mounted across the keel of a catamaran or on struts
below the vessel's hull. Although there are several hydrofoil types,
they all result in greater speeds and fuel efficiency for the vessel that employs them.
All of the hydrofoil elements below the hull develop lift to raise it out of the water,
resulting in a drastic reduction in hull drag.
Generally, there are two types of hydrofoils: fully submerged and surface-piercing. The
first is usually shaped as an inverted T or a V, while the second is U-shaped.
During the initial years of the 20th century, hydrofoils became more common and began appearing
in the United States. Following the introduction of the first prototypes in the early 1910s,
there were several attempts to come up with standardized designs for passenger boats.
Between the 1930s and World War 2, German engineer Hanns von Schertel worked on
several designs and a self-stabilizing system for fully submerged hydrofoils.
Then, in 1940, the Kriegsmarine built the 17-ton VS-6 Hydrofoil as a mine layer.
The unique design achieved up to 47 knots during trials at the Baltic Sea.
After World War 2, the Soviets captured Schertel’s team and began working with
hydrofoils for military and civilian use. They built ferries, riverboats,
and other watercraft that prompted the US Navy to act and employ hydrofoils for military service.
But it was during the arms race amidst the Cold War that gave way to more experimental
weapons, aircraft, and watercraft, with the hydrofoil patrol boats taking center stage.
The Navy's First Hydrofoil Craft
In the late 1950s, the US Navy’s Ship Characteristics Board, or SCB,
began coordinating the creation of a new type of vessel that would employ hydrofoils.
The purpose of the SCB was to analyze the interests of the Navy’s operators and ship
designers and find common grounds for designing a specific vessel.
In 1958, the board formally issued Project SCB 202, intended to develop
a hydrofoil craft to evaluate its performance and use for the US Navy.
Although the concept was not new, the Navy wanted to see how she could serve its operations at sea.
USS High Point was the first hydrofoil craft delivered to the US Navy.
She was designed by J.M. Martinac Shipbuilding Corp and laid down in June of 1960.
She was then launched in August of 1962 and commissioned exactly one year later.
High Point displaced 110 tons, had a length of 115 feet, a beam of 32 feet, and a draft of 17 feet.
She had three submerged foils that contained propellers and propulsion
nacelles, and she could ride on her hull like a standard vessel.
The patrol craft conducted tests in Puget Sound between 1963 and 1967,
achieving a maximum speed of 48 knots.
The vessel was initially considered for anti-submarine warfare, but she never
saw action and was decommissioned by the Navy in 1975. She was then transferred to the Coast Guard,
where she served in search and rescue and environmental protection missions.
USS Tucumcari In
1966, the US Navy ordered another hydrofoil patrol craft for potential use in Southeast
Asia against the Viet Cong that had infiltrated the rivers of South Vietnam.
USS Tucumcari was named in honor of the Comanche nation, whose Indian word tukamukaru means “To lie
in wait.” The vessel was laid down in September of 1966 at Seattle by the Marine Branch of the
Boeing Company's Aerospace, launched in July of 1967, and delivered to the Navy in March of 1968.
Tucumcari displaced 57 tons under full load, had a length of 72 feet, a beam of 35 feet,
and a draft of 4.6 feet. She became the first hydrofoil craft propelled by Bristol Proteus
gas turbine driving water jets and employed two forward hydrofoils and propellers on an
aft-mounted single foil, allowing her to reach a maximum speed of over 40 knots.
USS Tucumcari was armed with one 40-millimeter gun, four .50-caliber machine guns,
and one 81-millimeter mortar. An officer and 12 men comprised the ideal crew.
The patrol boat was sent to San Diego in July of 1968,
where she was evaluated and tested with the Pacific Fleet and Amphibious Forces.
Some of her exercises involved day and night operations with other patrol boats and cruisers.
A Brief Tour of Duty
According to US Navy records, while training at San Diego, USS Tucumcari performed:
(QUOTE) “A mission of mercy, rendezvousing with a Navy tug beyond helicopter range and
receiving on board one of the tug's crewmen for transportation to San Diego for emergency leave.”
Once USS Tucumcari completed a year of operations, she was deployed to Vietnam
to support the war effort alongside another of the Navy’s hydrofoil ships, USS Flagstaff.
This vessel had been built by Grumman Aerospace and had almost the same
configuration as Tucumcari. Both hydrofoils consolidated Coastal Squadron 3 and were
based in Cam Ranh Bay, soon becoming an essential asset in Operation Market Time.
This joint effort between the Army, Navy,
and Coast Guard was meant to dismantle the illegal shipping of weapons and supplies
by the North Vietnamese Army to the Viet Cong guerrilla operating deep inside South Vietnam.
During their six months of deployment,
USS Tucumcari and USS Flagstaff patrolled the rivers and shores of Vietnam alongside the
Navy’s iconic Patrol Boat River or PBRs that were part of the Brown Water Navy.
The ships quickly earned a reputation as serious threats because of their speed.
Tucumcari’s crew went over the basics of Market Time, intercepting enemy shipping,
interrogating villagers crossing the rivers aboard their sampans,
and engaging enemies when they were uncovered.
According to the Naval History and Heritage Command, USS Tucumcari: (QUOTE) “Logged 200
hours of foilborne operations, including day and night, all-weather, and high sea-state missions.
She also conducted underway replenishments with
larger fleet units and vertical replenishment from helicopters.
The latter even included medical evacuation operations and the transfer of cargo loads.”
The two hydrofoil patrol boats returned to San Diego in March of 1970 and
operated on the West Coast until Tucumcari was transferred to the Atlantic Fleet in August.
Exercise Evil Edge
Tucumcari was sent to Europe and the Mediterranean in 1971 to showcase
the capabilities of hydrofoil propulsion to other NATO partners.
The patrol boat conducted her first demonstrations in Copenhagen in April.
The vessel also participated in Exercise Evil Edge, a joint Danish,
West German, and American patrol boat exercise.
During the maneuvers, Tucumcari made simulated attacks against German destroyers.
Afterward, the patrol boat visited Olpenitz, Germany; Rosyth, Scotland;
Brest, France; and Portsmouth, England, before departing for the Mediterranean.
While there, Tucumcari conducted further operations with Greek, Italian,
and Turkish forces before departing aboard the Wood County for the United States in 1972.
While conducting operations with the Atlantic Fleet Amphibious Force,
Tucumcari ran aground in Puerto Rico during night operations and was severely damaged.
As such, she was transferred to the Naval Ship and Research Development Center in Annapolis,
where she was used as a test hulk for fire containment tests and scrapped in 1973.
USS Flagstaff
The other two surviving hydrofoil patrol boats employed by the Navy,
High Point and Flagstaff, were loaned to the Coast Guard in 1974.
Both were evaluated by the Coast Guard Hydrofoil Test and Evaluation Team and
commissioned in November, when they were painted white with the
Coast Guard hull stripe and began operating in San Diego, California.
Flagstaff was employed for search and rescue operations and narcotics interception during
her commission. And although she was a promising vessel, her career was doomed.
Like Tucumcari, she collided with another vessel and was deemed too
costly to repair due to the lack of spare parts for her turbine and other sections.
Although she was repaired, continuous machinery breakdowns convinced the
Coast Guard that such a ship was no longer useful for operational use.
Flagstaff was decommissioned in 1978 and later sold to a private company in the 1990s.
Despite their short carriers, USS Tucumcari and USS Flagstaff paved
the way for the successful Pegasus-class patrol boats and the Jetfoil ferries.
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