USS Warbler (MSC-206)

Highlighting the ship's deployment to the western Pacific, Warbler conducted numerous tours of duty on "Operation Market Time" patrols off the coast of Vietnam to aid in the interdiction campaign to cut off the flow of arms and munitions to the Viet Cong in South Vietnam. A small wooden craft especially designed for coastal minesweeping operations and deployments lasting from a few days to several weeks, Warbler and her sister minesweepers filled the gap between the heavier units of the fleet, like the destroyers and destroyer escorts, and the small craft used for patrol work, until built-for-the-purpose patrol craft could enter the fray. During her "Market Time" cruises, Warbler boarded many junks, ascertaining cargo and destination; investigated contacts of steel-hulled vessels picked up on radar; and endured what at times appeared to be "fearfully strong weather that seemed bent on total destruction" of the ship. At times, boarding of junks was an impossibility because of the vagaries of monsoon-type weather.[2]

During one "Market Time" patrol in the spring of 1968, Warbler conducted a joint salvage evolution with the salvage vessel Conserver. She located a downed F-100 Super Sabre fighter, and a wayward box of hypodermic needles. The ship also conducted extensive searches for an A-6 Intruder, a medevac helicopter, and two target drones. The minesweeper then cruised off the Vietnamese Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) before heading home to Sasebo, via the Nationalist Chinese port of Kaohsiung.[2]

With 45 days of "Market Time" patrols under her belt in 1968, Warbler returned to the coast of Vietnam in January 1969, and patrolled briefly near the port of Vung Tau. Later that autumn, Warbler, in company with her sister-ship Whippoorwill, departed Sasebo on 5 September, bound for Taiwan and Mine Exercise Canned Heat. Unfortunately beset with mechanical difficulties, the ship went dead in the water in the Formosa Strait after attempted repairs at Keelung, Taiwan, had proved ineffective. Eight hours after the ship stopped, Schofield answered Warbler's call for assistance and passed a tow to the heavily rolling minecraft. By 10 September, after rapid repairs at Kaohsiung, Warbler was ready for sea and participated in the scheduled slate of exercises. At the close of the year, the ship received counter-insurgency practice by tracking high speed patrol boats sent out for exercise purposes by Commander, Mine Flotilla 1.[2]

For two months in 1970, Warbler patrolled between Camranh Bay and Nha Trang, investigating suspicious contacts — none of which proved hostile. "Our greatest excitement during this patrol," her commanding officer later wrote, "was provided by an occasional Soviet merchantman that would steam through our area and find himself shadowed and photographed by the mighty Warbler."[2]