On the night of 10/11August1966, the US Coast Guard Cutter Point Welcome, a unit of USCG Coastal Division 12 based at Danang, was conducting a Market Time patrol off the mouth of the Ben Hai River. At 0340 the ship had just turned southbound when she was bombed and strafed by B-57 from the U S Air Force's 8th Tactical Bomb Squadron. Hit and with casualties, the cutter continued southbound, taking evasive action as best she could using differential engine thrust (her steering gear had been shot away). After the B-57 exhausted its munitions the USAF on-scene commander (in a C-130, which illuminated the area with parachute flares) called in a section of F-4s from the 480th Tactical Fighter Squadron. The F-4s prosecuted the cutter with Mk81 250-pound bombs and CBU-2A cluster bombs but fortunately missed. By this time the cutter was approaching the mouth of the Cua Viet River, where she came under fire from Vietnamese Junk Force ships. The senior surviving deck officer ordered the ship beached and directed the crew to abandon ship. But as they approached the beach they came under fire from forces ashore. They turned around to return to the Point Welcome, arriving at about the same time as their sister ship, USCGC Point Comfort. The arrival of Point Comfort, with her intact communications gear, was a decided turn for the better – she was able to halt further friendly fire, take aboard the surviving crewmen, coordinate medical evacuation of the wounded, and put a skeleton crew aboard Point Welcome, getting her off the beach and underway. USCGC Point Welcome reached Danang under her own power, arriving at 1615, 11August1966, twelve hours after the last attack. The attacks on Point Welcome failed to sink or even seriously damage the cutter, but they did kill two Guardsmen and wound five other men. The dead were her Commandiing Officer LTJG David C. Brostrom of Los Altos, California, and EN2 Jerry Phillips of Corpus Christi, Texas.