| On May 12, 1975, the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia captured a U.S.-registered container ship, the SS Mayaguez, en route to Sattahip, Thailand on a routine supply mission. With the election a year and a half away and his approval rating sagging, then president Gerald Ford called for an immediate rescue of the crew, alleged to be held on Koh Tang, a minute island in the Gulf of Siam. A last-minute mission was thrown together in which a battalion of Marines would be airlifted from U Tapao, Thailand to Koh Tang by Air Force helicopters with local area support from the aircraft carrier USS Coral Sea and three Navy destroyers. The mission was a disaster with eighteen men killed in the assault and only three of the original fifteen helicopters still flyable at the end of the day. The bodies of the dead were left to lie where they fell for the next twenty years. To this day, eight bodies have yet to be recovered. And the Mayaguez crew? They were released by the Cambodians early in the morning of 15 May, not from Koh Tang, but from Rong Sam Lem, another island twenty-two miles away. Moreover, Ford knew the crew was not on Koh Tang, and he knew it some twenty hours before the assault began! Why would a president go through with an assault on an island that held no captives? "One of the men who died on Koh Tang was my friend, Richard Van de Geer, copilot of KNIFE 31, and nominally, the last man to die in the Vietnam War. Richard and the other spirits have quite a story to tell." -Ejner Fulsang Editorial Descriptions are usually submitted by the manufacturers, publishers and authors. Contact u
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