A subtle angle on Smear Admiral --Apocalypse Now portrayal?

[A_Possum]

I was just reminded by another thread that for a long time, Admiral Hoffman, the one who started calling around to organize the smearvets after he read Brinkley's TOUR OF DUTY, has been compared to the "brutish Robert Duvall" character in APOCALYPSE NOW.

Brinkley says, "Decades later, many Swift boat veterans under Hoffman's command would campare him with the rough-hewn colonel in the movie Apocalypse Now..." In short, Captain Hoffman sought to convince his Swift boat skippers to do whatever it took to notch splashy victories in the Mekong Delta and thereby get him promoted."...

..."In an oral history recorded by the Naval Historical Foundation, for example, Kolbe (another swift vet) discussed the downsides of Operation Sealords, particularly working for Captain Roy Hoffman, whom he described as "an absolute mirror image" of Robert Duvall's brutish character in Apocalypse Now, who said he like the "sweet smell of napalm in the morning."...

..."Lieutenant Larry Thurlow (smearvet!), for example, summed up the feeling many Swift boat officers had to Captain Hoffman. 'That man wanted in the worst way to be admiral. That's what (Operation) Sealords was about.'"

Any movie buffs around? Was Hoffman by any chance Coppola's actual inspiration for the movie character?

(Kerry, btw, apparently wrote a negative review of the film for the Boston Herald American when it came out.)