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CARRIER REPORTS INTRO

During a recent presentation I made to the VVA Agent Orange committee regarding Wayne Dwernychuk’s latest report, I encountered some serious Misrepresentation of Fact regarding which ships did or did not enter the Territorial Waters of Vietnam. The ships in question are all aircraft carriers and they were all within the Vietnam Theater of Combat. However, they did not move from the Theater of Combat into what has been designated as “12 miles from baseline” which defines the Territorial Seas of Vietnam used in the 2019 Blue Water Navy Vietnam Veteran Act.

It is possible to find, through various lists, which ships did enter the Territorial Seas. However, what not everyone knows about, it seems, is a list of ships which were in the Theater of Combat but never entered the Territorial Seas; those who were “left out” of the Blue Water Navy Act of 2019. That list is available in a Report that I published along with considerable help I received from certain other BWN Vets. That report is called the Carrier Reports. It visually graphs out which carriers were in the Theater of Combat during each of the years of the Vietnam War. It also shows quite clearly which of those aircraft carriers entered into the Territorial Seas of Vietnam and when they did that. More importantly, what the Carrier Reports emphasize is what ships did not enter into the Territorial Seas and therefore are not considered eligible for presumption of exposure to herbicide in Vietnam under the current legislation.

It is important to remembered that when the VA assigns presumption of exposure to Blue Water ships, they do so only for the specific days that a ship can show presence within Territorial Seas…. Not the day before and not the day after. The Carrier Reports identify which month a carrier entered the Territorial Seas for one or more days. It is visually graphed out on a month-by-month basis. But within the Carrier Reports documentation it shows the exact dates when the carrier crossed that 12-mile demarcation line based directly on that ship’s deck logs. There are some deck logs that have not yet been read and therefore there are certain months that the carrier might be shown as “Deck Logs Not Available”, meaning the deck logs are not yet posted to the National Archives public portal website <https://www.archives.gov/research/military/logbooks/navy-online>. As those deck logs become available, myself and my associates intend to keep the Carrier Reports up-to-date, so we’re still working on this.

See the entire Carrier Reports HERE http://oldbluewater.com/BWNCarrierReports.htm

Source: Paul Sutton/John Rossie

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