Agent Orange Ships Directory

What this list is, and what changed after it

This directory is built from VA's "Navy and Coast Guard Ships Associated with Service in Vietnam and Exposure to Herbicide Agents," July 1, 2019 edition, the last version VA published. It records 403 vessels across five categories, from brown-water patrol boats that lived on the rivers to blue-water ships that docked at Da Nang once.

The law grew past this list. Under the Blue Water Navy Vietnam Veterans Act, federal law now presumes herbicide exposure for veterans who served on a vessel "not more than 12 nautical miles seaward" of the demarcation line of the waters of Vietnam and Cambodia between January 9, 1962 and May 7, 1975 (38 U.S.C. 1116A). That offshore presumption does not depend on a ship appearing on this list. The regulation text of 38 CFR 3.307 still reads the older way; the statute controls.

So this list matters today mainly as evidence: it documents which ships operated on inland waterways, which docked, and when, in VA's own words. Whether a particular veteran was aboard during a listed event is a service-record question this page cannot answer.

Official reference: VA's Agent Orange eligibility page and our Agent Orange presumptive guide.

The five categories, in plain English

• Category I: ships that operated primarily or exclusively on Vietnam's inland waterways, the "Brown Water Navy". Everyone who served aboard is covered by the list's terms.
• Category II: larger ocean-going ships that temporarily entered inland waterways. Coverage attaches to being aboard at the time of entry.
• Category III: ships that docked to a shore or pier. The list pairs this with a statement of personally going ashore.
• Category IV: ships that operated close to shore with documented evidence that crew members went ashore, paired with a statement of personally going ashore.
• Category V: ships whose landing craft regularly delivered supplies or troops ashore, paired with a statement of personally going ashore with the landing craft.

A ship can appear in more than one category, and the dated activity notes beside each entry are quoted from the VA document verbatim.