USS Whippoorwill (AMS-207)

Her one brush with less than peaceful duty came in the fall of 1958, when the Chinese communists began an artillery bombardment of the Nationalist-held islands of Quemoy and Matsu, located just off the mainland China. Whippoorwill earned the Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal for her service in the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis. Her service in the area lasted from 10 September until 4 November, when tension in the area finally began to cool. Upon concluding her service in the Taiwan Strait, she resumed her more peaceful employment in training missions with the 7th Fleet and units of Allied navies.[2]

The year 1964 brought the ship still closer to actual "hot war" operations. From 16 July to 2 August 1964, Whippoorwill joined a barrier patrol established in the South China Sea off the coast of South Vietnam to assist the South Vietnamese Navy in preventing water-borne infiltrators and logistics from North Vietnam from reaching the Viet Cong rebels in the south. During that phase of American involvement, the United States Navy's role remained essentially passive in nature. While American ships such as Whippoorwill stopped no craft themselves, they vectored South Vietnamese ships in on suspicious contacts.[2]

Though the barrier patrols were dissolved on 2 August, and Whippoorwill resumed her familiar training schedule, events occurred in the Gulf of Tonkin that same day which increased American involvement in the Vietnam War and eventually brought Whippoorwill into intimate association with the war over the next six years. After nine months of normal 7th Fleet operations, the minesweeper returned to Vietnamese waters on 18 April 1965, as one of the American ships assigned to "Operation Market Time". That operation consisted of continuous patrols along South Vietnamese coasts in an effort to interdict the increasing volume of arms and supplies being smuggled from the north into South Vietnam in support of Viet Cong guerrillas.[2]

In many respects, Whippoorwill's "Market Time" duties resembled the barrier patrols she had conducted the previous summer. However, they differed from those patrols in two major respects. First, as a result of the increasingly direct involvement of American forces in the Vietnam War, ships on "Market Time" station actively participated in stop-and-seizure operations rather than limiting themselves to surveillance and passive assistance to the South Vietnamese Navy. Secondly, as a result of the increased communist logistic effort from north to south, "Market Time" operations became a continuous and intensive assignment.[2]

Until she returned to the United States in the fall of 1970, Whippoorwill's sole mission in the Vietnam War consisted of "Market Time" patrols. She alternated month-long tours on station in Vietnamese waters with assignments of variable duration at other points in the Orient. Most often these missions away from Vietnam consisted of mine warfare exercises, upkeep and liberty calls in Japanese ports, and periodic overhauls. Less frequently, they consisted of port calls at other places in the Far East.[2]