The Little Mike 8 Class LCM Nicknamed Zippo

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She was born in the Marinette Marine Company yard in Wisconsin when her plates were cut. She was one of sixty five ordered for the United States Navy. Her War service life began in 1965 when designated for landing duties as an ATC, armored troop carrier, in Vietnam. As with most of the sixty five built she would be abused, and at times miss-handled, in the hands of others during her service.

Although but just one of the many thousands of insignificant landing craft ever built she would instill an everlasting memory in those who served in her. The little Mike 8 Class LCM, dubbed as Zippo after being converted to carry a flame thrower, went to war in the November of 65 with Old Glory Streaming. She was with certainty as her builders had proudly claimed on their build sheet, all steel American.

I met her for the first time on thanks giving day in the year of our lord 1966 when I arrived at an old French Colonial boat yard. The yard was located at the head of a mud banked side canal off a river in the Mekong Delta in an area abundant in canals. The majority of this terrain was taken up by old abandoned French Plantations. In their heyday the plantations produced a variety of agricultural commodities such as pineapples, sugarcane and rubber. As there were few roads the French had set about building canals for the transportation of the harvested crops to the main shipping ports located on the rivers. The canals were understandably built using the classic Western European style of, straight, narrow and deep.

At the boat yard she had been refitted and issued with a newer style turreted flamethrower, which had been bolted and welded to her deck. On the turret some wag had roughly painted in white scrawled lettering the name Zippo....

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... set out as an over complicated on-paper plan, and sit back expecting the little craft to perform like the line battleships of old.

Unfortunately, the higher-higher proved beyond doubt that they had a tendency to forget, or ignore, the very first principle of a war plan. KISS “Keep it simple stupid” and the second but even more important “After the first round goes off even the best of plans can quickly fall apart”. And at that point the ability to think fast and adapt can mean the difference between an acceptable military success and an unmitigated military disaster. Factual this proved in Zippos case, for in her short existence she certainly experienced both the successes and disasters.

However, life it seems never proves to be quite that simple. In the end no amount of fast thinking and adapting by her crew managed to save Zippo from her premature demise.

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