Lipan again answered the call during the Vietnam War serving many six month or longer cruises to the battle area (I made two).  Typically she would leave from Pearl Harbor with something in tow for the Western Pacific or would pickup a tow along the way at Guam or the Philippines bound for Vietnam. While in Vietnam some time was spent in port (we stayed at Danang, An Thoi, Vung Tau, Chu Lai, and others for as long as two weeks) but most of the time was spent shadowing Soviet Intelligence-Gathering Trawlers.  They were designed as harmless fishing boats but they were loaded with special electronics.  They were pesky and mischievous and frequently they would try to interfere with the Carrier Battle Groups that steamed by conducting flight ops.  We always "persuaded" them to backoff and I have some nice photos of close aboard Carriers launching and recovering aircraft and the Soviet Trawler trying to play chicken..  In addition we carried special electronic jamming gear to make it difficult for the Soviets to eavesdrop on communications but in those days it was all rudimentary and its questionable how much they heard.....and how much we blocked out.

Also, Lipan made many cruises to the Aleutian Islands of Alaska (again I made two personally). Typically, the cruises were of shorter duration due to the harshness of the environment and mostly involved SAR (Search & Rescue) Operations . During one of our cruises we were involved in the testing of a nuclear device on the island of Amchitka (The Milrow Test), which is written up extensively at the GreenPeace Website.

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