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.

http://www.military.com/NewContent/0,13190,NI_0705_Seal-P1,00.html the whole story on this link.

28 SHIPMATE

A Hero’s Legacy... 30 Years in the Making

Teriyaki Shrimp  Up the stone staircase from the rotunda at the center of the Naval Academy’s massive Bancroft Hall stands Memorial Hall.This hallowed place honors the memory of those Alumni who were killed in action defending the nation against its enemies.The standards and qualification criteria for this honor are demanding, as they should be.

  But one name, nevertheless, had been missing from Memorial Hall’s honored dead for much too long—that of Lieutenant Melvin Spence Dry ’68— the last Navy SEAL killed during the Vietnam War. Although Spence and I were classmates at the Naval Academy we really didn’t get to know each other well until the shared experience of surviving Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL (BUD/S) training— training that included a cold winter “Hell Week,” seemingly endless formation runs in soft sand, and long cold ocean swims and small boat rock portages at night through plunging surf during Pacific winter storms.

  Getting to know your future teammates was a very big part of that experience. Starting in December 1969,we began as a winter class of 12 officers and more than100 enlisted. By graduation in June 1970,we were down to a core of five officers and 22 enlisted men. By then we all knew each others’ strengths and weaknesses as well as we knew our own.A particularly strong bond formed among those five graduating officers of BUD/S-class 56: Mike Cadden, Jerry Fletcher, Jim Hoover, Spence Dry and me. That bond remains unbroken.

  Following graduation from BUD/S, I joined three of those officers and rented an old house on Fourth Street in Coronado, just up the road from the SEAL and Underwater Demolitions Teams of the U.S. Pacific Fleet.After long days of training and learning our craft in the “Teams,”we would often gather at a favorite local restaurant located across the street on Glorietta Bay in the Hotel Del Coronado’s old boat house.There we would take our meals together and talk shop.Spence would invariably order his favorite meal—teriyaki shrimp. I never saw him order anything else. 

Times were good then and all too short.We were young,well-trained and eager to test our mettle in combat  Four of us were assigned to UDT-13, and within a few months we deployed to the Philippines with the entire command. Spence deployed almost immediately from there to the  Republic of Vietnam as officer in charge (OIC) of Detachment Hotel near Da Nang. There he led his detachment on river reconnaissance, combat demolitions and search-and-destroy operations along the Ky Lam river.When Jim Hoover was seriously wounded at Dong Tam, Spence relieved him, and I relieved Spence.Upon return from Vietnam, Jerry, Spence and I transferred to SEAL Team One. The time at SEAL One was spent training, volunteering and competing for combat deployments.

Upon reflection,we also made a general nuisance of ourselves at San Diego’s local watering holes. SEALs,Marines and naval aviators would compete for attention during off-duty hours and in between WESTPAC deployments. Our favorite haunts for these contests were The Down Winds, MCRD,“MexPac” and the Miramar Officers Club (of the feature filmTop Gun fame).The memories of those uproarious and politically incorrect times are still vivid—we trained hard, played hard and did the things that young men do when they think they’ll live forever. Reality would soon change all that.  

Spence soon deployed to Vietnam as OIC of a SEAL platoon. Such opportunities were becoming rare as the Vietnam War wound down. Nixon’s “Vietnamization” program had ended all the routine SEAL platoon “direct action” deployments.All that was left in Vietnam for newly minted SEALs were one-year tours as SEAL advisors and on exceptional occasions, a tailored mission deployment for a specific purpose or contingency.

  It was a deployment for a special assignment in Vietnam in 1972 that Spence was leading when he was killed during a desperate attempt to accomplish an extremely difficult and hazardous mission—what we eventually learned was a POW rescue mission code named Operation Thunderhead. Officially the word from on high during the summer of 1972 was that he had died in a “training accident,” the specific location and purpose of which were highly classified and disclosed only on a “need-to-know” basis. We wanted to know more.  

Gradually, as the surviving members of his team returned to Coronado,we uncovered the bits and fragments that enabled us to piece together key parts of how his death actually occurred. Spence and his teammates were conducting a highly classified clandestine reconnaissance and attempted rendezvous under extremely hazardous combat conditions off the coast of North Vietnam. They had launched at midnight the night of 3 June from a submerged submarine, the amphibious transport GRAYBACK (LPSS-574), operating in the extremely shallow enemy waters in the northern Gulf of Tonkin off the coast of North Vietnam.  

After several hours of fighting an overpowering tidal current, they had been compelled to scuttle their only mode of clandestine transportation, a SEAL Delivery Vehicle (SDV), after its battery power expired during their struggle against the tidal current and sea state.After swimming seaward with the SDV in tow for seven hours to prevent its capture in enemy patrolled waters, they were recovered by helicopter and returned to the command ship, the nuclear-powered guided-missile cruiser LONG BEACH (CGN-9), for debriefing.

Lieutenant Dry (in center holding paper) briefs his SEAL Platoon “Alpha” on the deck of the submarine GRAYBACK. Photo courtesy of Timothy R. Reeves

  Lieutenant Dry  (on left, partially obscured) and fellow officers have lunch at the “mud flats officer's mess" during their infamous “Hell Week” of SEAL training. Photo courtesy of Robert Dry  

Lieutenant Dry, serving as coxswain, and members of his Alpha Platoon return to GRAYBACK following a training exercise prior to Operation Thunderhead. Photo courtesy of Timothy R. Reeves  

SEAL Team One's commanding officer promotes Slattery (right) and Dry (center) to lieutenant in 1971 during a ceremony at the team’s compound in Coronado, CA. U.S. Navy Photo courtesy of 

26 Robert Dry  

 By Captain Michael G. Slattery ’68, USN (Ret.) A Tribute to a Classmate and SEAL Teammate  

FEATURE  But in true SEAL tradition, Spence would not quit. He knew he had to return as soon as possible to the submarine. He had information vital for a backup team preparing to launch a second attempt, and Spence was determined to see that they got it. During a secure communication with GRAYBACK’S commanding officer and the on-scene tactical commander, then-Commander John D. Chamberlain, Spence maintained that the information and experience he had just gained were vital to the success of future missions.

  Accordingly, it was decided that the SEALs would be returned to GRAYBACK in the submarine’s operating area off the coast of North Vietnam.The SEALs would jump into the water near the submarine—a “helo cast” in SEAL parlance.The two SEALs and two UDT-11 SDV operators boarded the Navy helicopter for a rendezvous an hour before midnight. Beyond the challenge inherent with a nighttime cast, the attempted rendezvous was further complicated by the highly classified nature of the SEALs’mission—an operation so secret that the submarine had to remain submerged and undetected even by the U.S.Navy’s Seventh Fleet. 

Its ships patrolled throughout this area of the Tonkin Gulf, and only a select few were aware of GRAYBACK and its Navy special warfare swimmers operating in their midst. After several unsuccessful passes, including one flown over North Vietnam’s coast, the helicopter pilot thought he had finally spotted the signal from the submarine. Spence and his men prepared to conduct the helo cast to link-up and lock-in to the sub.When told they were over their objective and given the signal to “drop,”Spence stepped out of the helo. The rest of the SEALs rapidly followed.  

The helo was too high and fast for safe entry, and the jumpers hit the water hard. Spence was killed on impact, and the others injured—two seriously. Complicating the worsening chain of events,GRAYBACK was not in the immediate vicinity. The survivors were forced to tread water in the presence of enemy patrol boats until they were recovered by helicopter at daybreak. During the course of the night, one of the SEAL platoon’s most experienced combat veterans, then-Warrant Officer First Class Philip “Moki”Martin, found Spence’s body and held it for recovery. Spence would be the last SEAL to die in Vietnam. 

Because his death was not specifically caused by enemy fire, and therefore, according to the cover story, simply a tragic mishap, it was classified as “accidental.” Besides the potential political fallout during the waning years of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam, disclosing the highly classified nature of the operation that surrounded his death would put similar future POWrescue attempts at risk. But the risk to Spence and his fellow SEALs during that particularly dangerous operation was from more than just the looming threat of hostile fire.

  Several treacherous operational hazards were encountered throughout the entire operation’s full mission profile.And although certain aspects of his mission still remain classified, the risks included the night underwater lock out and launch from the submarine GRAYBACK; the long hours of submerged transit through enemy patrolled waters to the target area in an unproven, free-flooding SDV; the strong tidal current and sea state that made mission success problematic and ultimately forced the SEALs to tow the SDV seaward for seven hours to prevent its capture; and the high risk of detection and engagement by aggressive enemy patrol boats that probed the coastal waters and extreme shallows of the northern Tonkin Gulf off North Vietnam.

  Such mission uncertainties of SEAL operations go with the territory. Throughout the entire rescue attempt, Spence’s team needed to remain undetected—even by friendly forces.But if the enemy did detect the SEALs and forced them to return fire, it would have been merely one more mission event to overcome in a long and continuous sequence of one high-risk rescue operation. We didn’t know those details when we learned of Spence’s loss at morning quarters in SEAL Team One’s compound in Coronado back in June 1972. 

All we knew was that a close friend and good teammate, an outstanding officer with tremendous potential,had been killed.So, on the night that we learned of his death, four of his closest teammates gathered once more at Coronado’s Chart House and asked for a table for five by the window. It was a nice spot—one that Spence surely would have approved of—overlooking Glorietta Bay and the lights of San Diego and the Coronado Bridge. Everyone around us that night seemed to know something exceptional was unfolding...and they gave our table a wide berth. In that private space we each retold stories about Spence and raised our glasses to the empty chair and separate place that we had made the waiter set—with teriyaki shrimp.

Epilogue: On 25 February 2008, in an award ceremony in Memorial Hall, Lieutenant M.Spence Dry,USN, was posthumously presented the Bronze Star Medal with Combat Distinguishing Device “for heroic achievement in connection with combat operations against the enemy.” Secretary of the Navy Donald Winter also approved the award of the Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal with Combat Distinguishing Device for then-CWO Moki Martin for May 2008 29 heroic actions during that high-risk mission off the coast of North Vietnam more than 35 years ago.

Following the award ceremony several of those who had attended that farewell dinner back in Coronado gathered that evening at the Annapolis Chart House for a very special reunion.  Although it had been more than 35 years, our memories were still fresh and old stories flowed with the wine, and maybe a tear or two.a

This tribute by Captain Mike Slattery ’68,USN (Ret.), provided the basis for an article he co-authored with classmate Captain Gordon I. Peterson ’68,USN (Ret.),“Spence Dry—A SEAL’s Story,” published in the U.S.Naval Institute Proceedings in July 2005. Captain Slattery teaches History and Government at Campbell University in Buies Creek,NC.

The five officers of BUD/S class 56 taken at the ceremony, from L to R:  Captain Mike Slattery ’68, USN (Ret.); Lieutenant Commander Jim Hoover, USNR (Ret.); Lieutenant Spence Dry ’68, USN (photo); Commander Jerry Fletcher, USN (Ret.) and Lieutenant Commander Mike Cadden, USNR (Ret.).          

Then-Lieutenants (junior grade) Michael G. Slattery (left) and M. Spence Dry following the completion of "Hell Week" during Basic UDT/SEAL (BUD/S) Training. Photo courtesy of Robert Dry May 2008 27      Photo by Spence Cadden