![]() personnel quickly discovered that the Mayaguez had been abandoned. The boarding operation was a success, but U.S. Air Force CH-53 and HH-53 helicopters.īoth actions would begin early on the morning of May 15. Marine detachment would undertake an armed assault on Koh Tang, ferried by U.S. ![]() Would board the Mayaguez with support from the frigate USS Harold E. A two-pronged rescue operation was developed: U.S. Put into motion, and Koh Tang was put under constant surveillance, with the resultant sinking of Khmer Rouge patrol boats that fired on U.S. Navy P-3 reconnaissance aircraft located the Mayaguez, which had been moved to Koh Tang, an island around 30 miles from the Cambodian mainland. ![]() SOS signals sent from the Mayaguez and an initial U.S. and the Khmer Rouge used different measures for how far territorial waters extended.Ĭlaiming that the Mayaguez had been sailing in Cambodian waters, they seized the ship and took its captain and 39 crew members hostage. Warning shots, including one from a rocket-propelled grenade, and Khmer Rouge fighters then boarded the American vessel. The communist gunboat forced the Mayaguez to stop via On May 12, 1975, a Khmer Rouge patrol boat approached the U.S.-registered container ship SS Mayaguez near the uninhabited Cambodian island of Poulo Wai. The United States and Khmer Rouge-controlled Cambodia, stemming from a hostage situation, would be the final combat action of the Vietnam War. The fall of Saigon in April 1975 was nearly contemporaneous with the installation of another communist government in the region – that of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia.
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