Another story from my Navy days that’s still mostly true.
A big, empty box went over the side. “That’s a Viet Cong box,” the captain announced. “We’re going to attack it. Come to general quarters.”
Our wooden-hulled coastal minesweeper could clear any minefield that threatened the fleet but was not designed as a gun platform. Minesweepers have been described as belligerent-looking yachts with grey paint.
Still, we were on coastal surveillance patrol in Vietnam. Our mission of stopping and searching junks and sampans was largely uneventful and we operated too far from shore to draw Viet Cong gunfire, but action was always possible and we had to be prepared.
And we did have guns, sort of. A manually-trained 20mm cannon on the focsle was designed to blast floating mines and several machine guns were added for Vietnam deployments. Our 35-man crew included one underemployed gunner’s mate.
I was the officer of the deck and, under the captain’s watchful eye, set a course for the box at our maximum speed of about 12 knots. The 20mm gun engaged when we were within range, and when we got closer I turned the ship to bring the broadside machine guns to bear just like it said in the textbook. We missed the box and I brought the ship around for another high-speed pass.
After a couple of unsuccessful passes I began making lazy circles around the box while we blazed away.
We were having a wonderful time! The cannon and machine guns were firing furiously with tracer rounds going everywhere. The captain was shooting a Thompson submachine gun from the bridge wing. The executive officer was lobbing hand grenades. I think the cook had a shotgun.
With all that firepower we could have done serious damage to a North Vietnamese smuggling trawler (as another minesweeper did the following year) and would have positively shredded an armed junk. But the box was a smaller target and harder to hit.
After a lot of enthusiastic shooting we finally sank the box. Ran over it with the ship.