USS VANCE DE-387

A Tin Can Sailors Destroyer History

USS VANCE DE-387

The Tin Can Sailor, April 2008

The EDSALL-class destroyer escort USS VANCE (DE-387) was launched in Houston by Brown Shipbuilding on 16 July 1943. She was commissioned on 1 November 1943. Her first duty was as flagship for Escort Division (CortDiv) 45, a Coast Guard-manned unit convoying oil tankers from Port Arthur, Texas, to Norfolk and back. In early 1944, she joined Convoy UGS-33, led by the USS BIBB (WPG-31), for the first of eight round-trip voyages from New York to the western Mediterranean. Off Oran in 14 May 1944, a German U-boat managed to torpedo two merchantmen. Moving up from the “whip” position where she was shepherding stragglers, the VANCE sighted the periscope and attempted to ram the submarine. The U-boat dove deeper, evading the escort’s sharp bow. Fir the next ten hours, she made depth-charge and hedgehog attacks until a squadron of destroyers took over. They hunted down and sank the U-616 three days later. The VANCE was off Oran again in July when she helped fight off a German air attack. Besides holding the whip position and rounding up strays, the VANCE carried the division doctor, which meant taking on men from other ships for medical treatment. On 11 May 1945, four days after Germany had surrendered, she captured the surfaced U-873 and put aboard a crew who delivered the prize to Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

The VANCE was soon underway for the Pacific, but arrived after the hostilities had ended. She returned to Green Cove Springs, Florida, where on 27 February 1946, she was placed in reserve. In November 1955, she reactivated and entered the Mare Island Naval Shipyard for conversion to a radar picket destroyer escort, receiving improved air-search radar, communications equipment, and facilities for fighter-direction. Designated DER-387, she was recommissioned on 5 October 1956.
In 1957, she operated out of Seattle, completing eight patrols on Radar Early Warning System stations in the northern Pacific, maintaining a round-the-clock vigil tracking and reporting every aircraft entering or approaching U.S. air space. In June 1958, she was transferred to Pearl Harbor and a month later, patrolled the mid-ocean picket lines from Alaska to Midway, the first ship on the Pacific Distant Early Warning (DEW) line and the first to sail under the newly organized Pacific barrier patrol. She conducted regular DEW-line patrols into 1961.

From August 1961 to March 1962, the VANCE became an ocean-station vessel for Operation Deepfreeze 62. Based at Dunedin, New Zealand, she was a communication relay ship for aircraft carrying vital supplies to Antarctic stations. Upon her return home she operated on the DEW line off the Aleutian Islands through February 1965.

By the mid-1960s, she and other radar picket destroyer escorts were threatened with obsolescence but the worsening situation in Vietnam offered a reprieve. Accordingly, in March 1965, she sailed to Vietnam from Pearl Harbor with the BRISTER (DER-327) and FORSTER (DER-334), to begin coastal patrols as part of Operation Market Time. She operated near the 17th parallel, maintaining communications between airborne Convair EC-121K Constellations and her task unit commander in the JOHN W. THOMASON (DD-760). In May and June, her Market Time surveillance took her into the Gulf of Thailand where she operated with small minesweepers and embarked a Vietnamese navy liaison officer to aid in the ship’s “visit and search” activities.
December 1965 marked the beginning of one of the most controversial episodes in U.S. Navy history when Lt. Cdr. Marcus Arnheiter took command of the VANCE. Ninety-nine days later, on 31 March 1966, Arnheiter was relieved of his command. The subsequent dispute between the navy and Arnheiter lasted more than two years.
The navy’s history of the VANCE makes no mention of the Arnheiter Affair, recording only that after she returned to Market Time duty in January 1966, following which she participated in Operation Masher, an amphibious operation to clear northern Binh Dinh Province of Vietcong insurgents. She moved on to the Gulf of Thailand for close-support and logistics operations with navy PCFs (swift boats) and Coast Guard WPBs interdicting communist coastal supply traffic. What follows is a summary of what is not recorded in the history of those three months.

In April, as a result of an investigation of the so-called Arnheiter Affair, which was said to have been reminiscent of situations described in Mr. Roberts and The Caine Mutiny, the navy concluded that it was justified in Arnheiter’s removal and in deciding that he should never again be given a command. At sea or ashore. The reasons for that decision were many. Arnheiter violated his operating instructions in conducting bombardments “without having been assigned such missions, and without knowing at the time whether U.S. or friendly forces were in the vicinity.” He boarded a foreign ship without authorization. When the VANCE was supposed to be conducting Market Time inspections, he conducted gunfire support and close inshore operations and falsified his position reports. It was believed that he used the DE’s “scout” boat and motor whaleboat as “bait” to draw fire from shore so that the VANCE could return the fire, not only violating policy but endangering the ship’s personnel in the boats. The Secretary of the Navy was especially concerned by the commander’s tendency to “deviate from his assigned mission,” which could have “potentially disastrous consequences.” Such “irregular practices”, and others that seriously demoralized his crew, led to his being relieved of command of the VANCE, which went on to continue her previous record of excellence.

Under a new commander, in April 1966, she patrolled off Cap de Ca Mau, the southernmost tip of South Vietnam, monitoring traffic along the coast and in the South China Sea. Later, off Binh Dinh, as she closed to investigate a trawler, she came under fire from Vietcong ashore. She suffered negligible damage and her 3-inch battery quickly silenced the unseen snipers. In a more humanitarian vein, the VANCE and a “Swift” rescued 56 men, women, and children from a swamped boat near Qui Nhon.

She was relieved by the HAVERFIELD (DER-393) in July 1966, but was soon back for Market Time duty until August, when the SURFBIRD (ADG-383) relieved her. Back with the Seventh Fleet in January 1967, the VANCE relieved the KOINER (DER-331) off the mouth of the Saigon River to hunt for contraband-carrying craft. Her final WestPac deployment on interdiction patrols was in late 1967 and in the fall of 1968, she returned to the West Coast for decommissioning at the Vallejo Inactive Ship Facility on 10 October 1969. The VANCE was struck from the navy list on 1 June 1975 and subsequently sunk as as a target. She received seven battle stars for service in Vietnam.