File talk:PrimeChanceWimbrown7PatrolBoat.jpg
The sixty five foot Mark III Patrol Boat in this photo is from either Special Boat Unit Twelve or Special Boat Unit Thirteen - I can't tell which because I can't see the boat's number. However it's tied up to Wimbrown so it has to be West Coast and those were the only two West Coast units in ops in the PG at that time. All East Coast units operated off a barge named Hercules.
Both units were based out of Coronado, CA and if I had to guess, I would say it was one of the boats from Thirteen because I think both of the boats from Twelve had fifty cals on both of the fore mounts. This photo clearly shows a mounted sixty on the starboard fore mount.
The boat in the photo is equipped with a forty-millimeter cannon whose barrel is visible just to the port side of the forward sixty. Farther to the port side of the forty would have been another mount, likely with another fifty caliber heavy. Visible on the raised platform is a "piggyback" fifty cal and eighty-one millimeter mortar (note this is the same weapon which the photographer above incorrectly quotes as just an eighty-one millimeter mortar on the barge itself). There's another fifty on the aft port mount and a Mark Nineteen forty-millimeter automatic grenade launcher on the aft starboard mount. The midships aft weapon was a twenty millimeter cannon whose "Mark" designation escapes me. In additon to these, each crewmember carried a personal weapon that may have included: a portable M-60 machine gun, an M-16 automatic rifle, a sawed-off twelve gauge shotgun, a forty-five caliber pistol, an M-203 single shot grenade launcher, or an M-14 automatic rifle. Factoid: Per square inch, a patrol boat carried more armament than any other craft in the Navy.
Wimbrown, a Panamanian-flagged jacking barge converted into what the Navy called a "Mobile Sea Base," was owned by the civilian corporation Brown and Root and was far more heavily armed than what you see in this photograph. It bore two landing pads each capable of landing a single Blackhawk helo. It carried three of the Army's experimental (at the time) Kiowa-class helos. It bore two of the Army's Vulcan cannon (one each fore and aft) and the personnel to support them. It also housed a heavily armed Marine Security Force detachment as well as a Stinger missile platoon. In addition, the barge carried a complement of US Naval SEAL officers, a complete SEAL platoon, four patrol boat crews, Air Force and Navy communcations personnel and an entire complement of civilian employees of Brown and Root who's job it was to maintain the barge, cook, clean, do laundry...etc.
I was on the PB 775 (Nightmare) from April to October of 1988. It was a long and thankless job my shipmates and I performed in the armpit of the universe. We intercepted and aided in the disposal (read: blowing up) of three Iranian mines. We ran more than a hundred day or night patrols and close to twenty Earnest Will missions escorting Kuwaiti tankers for those gutless and ungrateful bastards. I can't remember how many interdictions we did. It was a hundred and thirty degrees on the surface and fifty degrees below decks on Wimbrown. My sunglasses had stress fractures in them from the temp differences. There were oil slicks a foot deep everywhere in the Gulf becuase the oil just burps up from the sandy bottom constantly. Swimming in that hole was like swimming in a smelly bathtub - Except for some of the islands that had cold water springs feeding their reefs - Those were spots of beauty like flowers in a cesspool.
When I left that place I took a real close look at everything around there and made sure I had plenty of pictures because I was never going back - No way, no how. I left the Navy on my EAOS date in November of 1988 - Second best decision I ever made.
I never saw Wimbrown again after I left. However, I did spot Hercules in a scrapyard in Morgan City, LA sometime in the nineties. They were chopping it up for the pieces. I took a photo of the nameplate for old time's sake. I never figured out how they got the thing from the PG back to Louisiana, but I never cared that much either. From my research, PB 775 was taken down to her hull and sold at auction in Guam in the nineties as well. I'm certain a similar fate was met by the rest of the PB's from the Gulf since the Navy had little respect for the "boats".
Tim Sanchez QMSN (in 1988); Special Boat Unit Twelve; Special Warfare Group One; Coronado, CA
So much younger then...
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