(TCPalm.com)
Veterans spotlight: Sebastian vet used dolphins against the enemy in Vietnam
By Joe Crankshaw
Saturday, May 7, 2011
SEBASTIAN — By following his father's advice, Hal Goforth, 67, found himself a naval officer in Vietnam in charge of four highly trained dolphins, one of which went AWOL.
Born in Gainesville and raised in Ocala, Goforth went to the University of Florida to earn a degree in marine biology.
"My father, who had been in the Army in World War II, warned me not to join the Army Reserve Officer Training Corps. He had done that and found himself in the Army fighting in Europe. 'Join the Navy,' he said," Goforth said.
After graduation, Goforth joined the Navy and applied for Officer Candidate School. He told them he wanted to be a diver, not a SEAL but an explosives ordinance demolition specialist. "I knew I was going to be a diver," he said.
The Navy sent him diving school in Key West, then to EOD school, then chemical warfare school and then to Indian Head, Md., where divers trained in the blackness of the Potomac River and learned about all sorts of special weapons including those in the nuclear arsenal.
Upon graduation in March 1968, Goforth was assigned to the aircraft carrier, USS Shangri-la in the Mediterranean. "We did hull checks on all the ships to make sure no one had attached anything harmful," Goforth explained. "They were having submarine problems. They thought something was going on. We met the Scorpion to deliver them their mail, we did a hull check on them. That was the last anyone saw of them."
Back in the U.S., Goforth was assigned to the Operations Department of the EOD unit at Virginia Beach, dispatching dive teams on all of sorts of interesting missions, Goforth said. One of the assignments was in Key West, his favorite place and he snagged the mission to test a new kind of mine. It opened the door to working with dolphins.
When he was being debriefed on the Key West mission, his commander asked him some marine biology questions, which he was able to answer in detail. Shortly after, he was asked if he would extend his tour of duty to work on a top-secret project. He did and found himself working with the original Navy Marine Mammal Project, which studied the use of dolphins, killer whales and other species for military purposes.
Eventually, he found himself assigned to a detail with four dolphins in Cam Ranh Bay, South Vietnam. Their missions was to protect a vital pier where ammunition was unloaded against enemy UDT men.
"The dolphins were deployed at night to small boats called 'Sentry Vehicle Stations' in which the dolphin works," said Goforth. The dolphins each surveyed a 180-degree segment of the bay around the pier using their echo-location senses, which Goforth said are better than any human device. "They (the dolphins) had a paddle at one end of the pen to tell them to search and a 'Yes' and 'No' paddle at the other end," said Goforth. The dolphins got a fish if they saw something and were then released to rout out the enemy swimmer or anyone pretending to be a swimmer for training purposes.
If they found a swimmer, they would approach from behind and hit them with their nose, then return to their station for a fish reward. They never found a real enemy, because the training was carried on in view of the ammunition pier which was crowded with Vietnamese workers, many of whom, Goforth believes, went home and told the Vietcong to find another target.
Goforth said the object was not to kill an enemy diver, but to put him out of commission so he could be captured and interrogated.
One dolphin went AWOL because during the day, South Vietnamese patrolling against enemy swimmers randomly tossed hand grenades into the bay. "The mammal couldn't stand the noise and just took off," said Goforth.
Goforth left active duty in 1993, earned a masters and then a doctorate in marine biology. He worked with the Marine Mammal Training Center, teaching naval personnel how to work with dolphins. He retired from the Navy Reserve as a captain and lives with his wife, the former Sharon Burnett, who also is a diver and marine biologist, in Sebastian.
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