US Warship Makes Rare Call at Vietnam’s Cam Ranh Bay Port

The united statesBlue Ridge, the flagship of the U.S. Seventh Fleet, is paying a go to this week to Vietnam’s Cam Ranh Bay, the newest signal of the improved relations between the 2 nations.

As VnExpress reported, the Blue Ridge arrived at round 1 p.m. on Monday, “carrying over 1,000 officers and personnel.” The ship was additionally accompanied by the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Waesche.

Through the five-day go to, VnExpress reported, “U.S. naval personnel will meet officers from the Khanh Hoa Individuals’s Committee, in addition to members of the native navy. They’ll interact in athletic exchanges with the Vietnamese navy and coast guards, and they’re going to additionally participate in discussions with the items below Vietnam’s Ministry of Nationwide Protection.”

The go to follows the institution of a Complete Strategic Partnership between Vietnam and the USA in September of final 12 months, which positioned a capstone on twenty years of steadily enhancing relations. The improve is prone to see elevated port calls and visits by the U.S. Navy, which have elevated at a gradual clip over the previous decade.

In June of final 12 months, the plane provider USS Ronald Reagan paid a port name to Da Nang, near Cam Ranh Bay in central Vietnam. This adopted the visits of the carriers USS Theodore Roosevelt (in 2020) and USS Carl Vinson (in 2018).

Nonetheless, Hanoi is extra picky about which overseas vessels it permits to go to Cam Ranh Bay, typically described as one of many best deep-water harbors in Asia. After serving as a U.S. naval base (previous to 1972) and a Soviet base (previous to 2002), the port now serves as residence to its fleet of Russian-built Kilo-class submarines.

In 2010, Vietnam declared its plans to modernize and refurbish the port at Cam Ranh Bay and opened it to overseas vessels. Now recognized formally as Cam Ranh Worldwide Port (CRIP), the bottom has hosted visits by ships from Japan, China, Russia, Australia, and France – a mirrored image in microcosm of Vietnam’s omnidirectional overseas coverage.

U.S. vessels have solely visited the CRIP on a handful of events. In October 2016, the guided-missile destroyer USS John S. McCain visited the bottom together with the submarine tender USS Frank Cable, turning into the primary U.S. Navy warships to take action because the finish of the Vietnam Battle. The John S. McCain and USS Coronado, an Independence-class Littoral Fight Ship, visited the next 12 months.

As in so many different elements of U.S.-Vietnam relations, the return of U.S. Navy vessels to Cam Ranh Bay is layered with historic inversions and ironies. As an illustration, the John S. McCain bore the identify of the U.S. pilot (and later senator and presidential candidate) who was shot down over north Vietnam in 1967 and imprisoned for five-and-a-half years.

The same backstory attends the Blue Ridge, the oldest operational ship within the U.S. Navy. Whereas VnExpress famous that it has visited Vietnam twice up to now, in 2009 and 2012, it’s no stranger to Vietnamese waters. In mid-1972, two years after its commissioning Blue Ridge took half within the U.S. response to North Vietnam’s Easter Offensive, the final main U.S. amphibious fight engagement of the Vietnam Battle. Through the marketing campaign, South Vietnam’s President Nguyen Van Thieu got here aboard the ship to thank the ship’s crew for his or her help in “the preservation of Peace and Freedom” in South Vietnam.

Later, it took half in Operation Homecoming, the return of U.S. prisoners of conflict from Vietnam, and the evacuation of U.S. and South Vietnamese personnel in the course of the fall of Saigon in April 1975.