The Swatow Incident

In the South China Sea during the Korean War, an unaccompanied United States Navy destroyer brazenly approached the Communist China seaport of Swatow. The Red Chinese immediately sent 40-50 armed motorized junks to confront and surround the lone destroyer.

      One-hundred-fifty miles to the northwest a secretly-positioned fifteen-ship fast-carrier strike-force waited for word that the destroyer was under attack. The force was poised to immediately retaliate against China’s mainland in an attempt to eradicate communism from the Far East. No one in the nation’s capital in Washington, DC, was aware of the clandestine operation that remains relatively unknown to this day.

      The author served on board the destroyer at the time of the event. He not only discusses the motivation, planning and preparations for the operation but describes details of the incident itself.


A remarkable well-told story of a little-known episode in U.S. history.

  —Henry H. Mauz, Jr. Admiral U. S. Navy (Ret)

     Former Commander-in-Chief, Atlantic Fleet



A story that reads like fiction...but isn’t. A key hidden inflection point in the modern history of Asia finally brought to light through the persistence and dedication of Tracy Winslow and the crew of the USS John A. Bole.

  —Peter Lee , Director and Producer of the documentary, “General MacArthur’s

     Conspiracy to Start a War with China”