Spence Dry: A SEAL's Story
By
Captain Michael G. Slattery, U.S. Navy (Retired) and Captain Gordon I. Peterson, U.S. Navy (Retired)
Proceedings, July 2005
Early in 1972, two U.S. airmen being held as prisoners of war at the infamous "Hanoi Hilton" prison set in motion an escape plan. In response, the U.S. Pacific Fleet orchestrated what became known as "Operation Thunderhead," a rescue mission that played out that June in the Red River delta.
Spence Dry (above, at center holding paper) briefs his SEAL Platoon Alpha on the deck of the USS Grayback in April 1972 at Subic Bay. Philip "Moki" Martin, still a CPO, is in left foreground nearest camera.
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Special operations forces from SEAL (sea, air, land) Team One and Underwater Demolition Team (UDT)-11 were assigned to assist the POWs. One of them, Lieutenant Melvin Spence Dry, U.S. Navy, was killed on the classified mission—the last SEAL lost during the Vietnam War. His father, retired Navy Captain Melvin H. Dry, a 1934 Naval Academy graduate and a submariner, spent the rest of his life trying to learn the circumstances surrounding his son's death. The details, however, were long shrouded in secrecy.
Following his Naval Academy graduation in 1968, Spence Dry reported to postgraduate school. Sea duty followed on the destroyer USS Renshaw (DD-499) but he wanted to join the special-warfare community. Late in 1969 he reported to the 20-week Basic UDT/SEAL Training course of instruction at Naval Amphibious Base, Coronado, California.
Class 56 initially numbered 12 officers and more than 100 enlisted men, including an Academy classmate, Lieutenant (j.g.) Michael G. Slattery. At graduation in June 1970, the class numbered five officers and 22 enlisted. The officers—Mike Cadden, Spence Dry, Jerry Fletcher, Jim Hoover, and Mike Slattery—formed a particularly close bond. Four of the officers, including Dry, were assigned to UDT-13 and deployed within a few months to the Republic of the Philippines. Dry soon moved on to the Republic of Vietnam, where he served for three months as officer-in-charge of the team's Detachment Hotel, based near Danang. There he led his detachment on river reconnaissance, combat demolition, and search-and-destroy operations along Vietnam's Ky Lam River.
Commander John D. Chamberlain, the Grayback 's skipper (below, right), swears Martin in as a Chief Warrant Officer while Dry looks on only four days before the young SEAL officer was killed off North Vietnam.
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Upon their return from Vietnam in 1971, Slattery, Fletcher, and Dry were assigned to SEAL Team One. The team's primary mission was to engage in unconventional warfare, conducting counterguerrilla and clandestine operations in coastal and riverine areas, but with President Richard Nixon's "Vietnamization" policy in full swing, the only combat assignments were one-year tours as advisors to South Vietnamese units.
In November 1971, however, Dry was given the chance to form his own contingency platoon and prepare it for a six-month deployment to the Western Pacific. Lieutenant Robert J. Conger Jr., Dry's assistant officer-in-charge at the time, recalled that he and Dry spent two weeks screening more than 80 enlisted volunteers to identify the 12 best qualified for SEAL Team One's "Alpha" platoon.
"Spence was sure of his direction, and the positive, yet attainable, goals he set for himself gave the platoon a unity and esprit seldom found in any organization," Conger said. One of the more experienced combat veterans in the platoon described Dry as one of the best officers that Team One ever had. Chief Petty Officer (soon to be Warrant Officer First Class) Philip L. "Moki" Martin, a highly experienced SEAL who had served multiple combat tours in Vietnam, rounded out the platoon's leadership. He considered Dry an "operator"—just about the highest accolade a SEAL can give. The 11 other enlisted men also reflected a wealth of combat experience.
Alpha platoon deployed to Okinawa for additional training and stood by.
Operation Thunderhead
Armed with fresh intelligence that the prisoners were planning to steal a boat and travel down the Red River to the Gulf of Tonkin, Admiral Thomas H. Moorer, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on 15 May 1972 authorized the U.S. Pacific Command to execute Operation Thunderhead, a rescue plan proposed by the Pacific Fleet a month earlier. Full details of the operation were known to only a handful of officers individually cleared by Admiral John S. McCain Jr., the PACOM commander.
Dry's platoon left Subic Bay in April in the amphibious-transport submarine USS Grayback (LPSS-574), skippered by Commander John D. Chamberlain. The Grayback , formerly a Regulus guided-missile submarine, had been converted in 1968 to support clandestine operations. The diesel-electric submarine was modified to carry approximately 60 troops plus four SEAL delivery vehicles (SDVs) in two "wet" hangars on her bow. The SDVs were small, free-flooding, unpressurized fiberglass minisubmarines equipped with rudimentary navigational equipment.
Prior to departing Subic Bay, Dry's platoon conducted training on the Grayback with the four-man Mark VII, Mod 6 SEAL delivery vehicle (SDV) shown here being lowered to its towing sled. The "wet" (free-flooding), unpressurized, and underpowered mini-submarine was equipped with rudimentary navigational equipment. |
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The rescue plan was straightforward, but challenging. Dry and Martin would launch at night from the submerged submarine in an SDV piloted by two UDT-11 operators already embarked in Grayback and head for a small island off the mouth of the Red River. There the two SEALs would establish an observation post and watch for any sign of the escapees. "The time Spence and I were to spend on the island was a minimum of 24 hours and up to 48 hours," Martin remembered. "We were to look for a red light on a boat during the night and a red flag during the day."
Should the escaping POWs be sighted, the two would intercept them and coordinate their rescue with the waiting ships of the Seventh Fleet. North Vietnamese soldiers garrisoned the island. Occasional Vietnamese fishing boats plied the waters, and enemy patrol boats were always a possibility. There were other concerns, including a night underwater lock-out and launch from the Grayback in an under-powered SDV; a cold, submerged transit to the island in the confined and totally dark hold of the unproved free-flooding Mark VII vehicle; strong currents and tidal conditions; and the need for precise underwater navigation (in the days before the Global Positioning System).
Seventh Fleet helicopters conducted over-water night surveillance along North Vietnam's coast as the date for the escape approached. The Grayback arrived on station on 3 June 1972. Chamberlain and Dry decided to conduct a clandestine SDV reconnaissance mission that night. After dark, Chamberlain launched the vehicle at the end of flood tide to provide a maximum amount of slack water; he planned to recover it on the ebb tide. "Operation of a four-knot SDV in a two-knot current was extremely challenging," Chamberlain recalled, "and required not only excellent driving skills but also a fine understanding of navigation."
Dry, Martin, and the two UDT operators, Lieutenant (j.g.) John Lutz and Fireman Thomas Edwards, launched from the submerged Grayback shortly after midnight, but a combination of navigational errors and the strong current took them off course. After searching for more than an hour without sighting the island, the crew was compelled to abort the mission and, unable to locate the Grayback , scuttle their underpowered SDV after its battery power was exhausted. They planned to head out to sea if they could not locate the submarine.
The men were treading water a few miles off the coast when rescued early the next morning by a combat search-and-rescue HH-3A helicopter assigned to Helicopter Combat Support Squadron (HC)-7. To preserve operational security, Lutz used the helicopter's door gun to sink the SDV, which was too heavy to be retrieved. The four men were flown to the nuclear-powered guided-missile cruiser USS Long Beach (CGN-9), the command ship for Thunderhead, where they debriefed, communicated briefly with the Grayback , and planned their next steps.
"We've Got to Get Back to Grayback"
Dry, aware of the impending launch of the second SDV, knew that he and his men had to return to the Grayback quickly. The Navy was prepared to let the mission run up to three weeks, if necessary; given Dry's key leadership role and Martin's combat experience, both were needed if a follow-on SEAL insertion using another SDV was to succeed.
The decision was made to transport them by helicopter from the Long Beach for a night water drop (a "cast" in SEAL/UDT parlance) next to the Grayback at 11 p.m. on 5 June. The plan called for the helicopter's crew to make visual contact with the Grayback 's infrared (IR) signaling light atop the submarine's snorkel mast, which operated in beacon mode during Operation Thunderhead. In this configuration, it was a revolving, flashing red light. During briefings with the pilots, Dry and Martin emphasized that the maximum limits for the drop were "20/20"—20 feet of altitude at an airspeed of 20 knots, or an equivalent combination.
The weather was overcast, with sea state 1-2, indicating a maximum wave height of approximately four feet. HC-7's "Big Mother" crew was faced with finding the Grayback while maintaining radio silence in cloudy weather on a dark night. Martin noted high winds and two- to three-foot swells as he boarded the helicopter on the Long Beach.
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