Despite this tremendous uncertainty, by midafternoon, the discussion among Johnson and his advisers was no longer about whether to respondbut how. The Gulf of Tonkin incident led to the expansion of the Vietnam War that resulted in a lot of American Neither Herricks doubts nor his reconnaissance request was well received, however. In the subsequent exchange of fire, neither American nor North Vietnamese ships inflicted significant damage. This was the first of several carefully worded official statements aimed at separating 34A and Desoto and leaving the impression that the United States was not involved in the covert operations.9 Those early mistakes led U.S. destroyers to open fire on spurious radar contacts, misinterpret their own propeller noises as incoming torpedoes, and ultimately report an attack that never occurred. Non-subscribers can read five free Naval History articles per month. With a presidential election just three months away and Johnson positioning himself as the peace candidate, the administration spoke of American resolve not to react to provocation and to avoid escalation. At this point, U.S. involvement in Vietnam remained largely in the background. One element of American assistance to South Vietnam included covert support for South Vietnamese commando raids against North Vietnams coastal transportation facilities and networks. CIA Bulletin, 3 August 1964 (see Edward J. Marolda and Oscar P. Fitzgerald, The United States Navy and the Vietnam Conflict: From Military Assistance to Combat, 1959-1965 [Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1986], p. 422). At each point, the ship would stop and circle, picking up electronic signals before moving on. These types of patrols had previously been conducted off the coasts of the Soviet Union, China, and North Korea. PTF-2 had mechanical troubles and had to turn back, but the other boats made it to their rendezvous point off the coast from Vinh Son. For the Navys official account stating that both incidents occurred and that 34A and Desoto were "entirely distinct," see Marolda and Fitzgerald, pp. WebCongress repealed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution before the United States' withdrawal from Vietnam in 1973. 4. PRX is a 501(c)(3) organization recognized by the IRS: #263347402. Listen to McNamara's conversation with Johnson. 3. . It was 1964, an election year, and the Republicans had just nominated Barry Goldwater, a former jet fighter pilot, and hardcore hawk, to run against Johnson in November. But in the pre-dawn hours of July 31, 1964, U.S.-backed patrol boats shelled two North 313-314. Gulf of Tonkin - A secret report reveals how easily soldiers, spies and politicians can jump to a conclusion and plunge the country into war. Although North Vietnamese General Vo Nguyen Giap admitted in a 1984 discussion with Robert S. McNamara that the first attack was deliberate, he denied that a second attack had ever taken place. President Johnson himself apparently questioned the sailorsu0019 report of an attack. A distinction is made in these pages between the Aug. 2 "naval engagement" and the somewhat more ambiguous Aug. 4 "naval action," although Marolda and Fitzgerald make it clear they accept that the Aug. 4 action left one and possibly two North Vietnamese torpedo-firing boats sunk or dead in the water. By late 1958 it was obvious that a major Communist buildup was underway in South Vietnam, but the American SIGINT community was ill-placed and ill-equipped to deal with it. In addition, the US Navy was instructed to conduct Desoto patrols off North Vietnam. Vietnam War: Gulf of Tonkin Incident - ThoughtCo So, whether by accident or design, American actions in the Tonkin Gulf triggered a response from the North Vietnamese, not the other way around. On 30 July, Westmoreland revised the 34A maritime operations schedule for August, increasing the number of raids by "283% over the July program and 566% over June. During the afternoon of 3 August, another maritime team headed north from Da Nang. Unlike McNamara, Johnson, on the morning of Aug.4,1964, was in less of a hurry to respond to an attack. The rounds set some of the buildings ablaze, keeping the defenders off balance. Vaccines. Send the First Troops to Vietnam? LBJ was looking for a pretext to go to Congress to ask for a resolution that would give him the authority to do basically whatever the hell he wanted to do in Vietnam, without the intense public debate that a declaration of war would have required, says historian Chris Oppe. In this case, perception was much more important than reality.10. As the enemy boat passed astern, it was raked by gunfire from the Maddox that killed the boats commander. President Johnson ordered a halt to all 34A operations "to avoid sending confusing signals associated with recent events in the Gulf of Tonkin." Herrick requested aerial reconnaissance for the next morning to search for the wreckage of the torpedo boats he thought he had sunk. Mr. Andrad is a Vietnam War historian with the U.S. Army Center of Military History, where he is writing a book on combat operations from 1969 through 1973. Top Essentials to Know About the Vietnam War, Timeline of the Vietnam War (Second Indochina War), Vietnam War: General William Westmoreland, M.S., Information and Library Science, Drexel University, B.A., History and Political Science, Pennsylvania State University. Operations Security (OPSEC) concerns and related communications restrictions prevented Maddox and its operational commanders up to the Seventh Fleet from knowing of the commando raid. THIS SECOND volume of the U.S. Navy's multivolume history of the Vietnam War is bound in the same familiar rich blue buckram that has styled official Navy histories since the Civil War and hence resembles its predecessors. The Maddox was attacked at 1600. A National Security Agency report released in 2007 reveals unequivocally that the alleged Aug. 4, 1964, attack by North Vietnam on U.S. destroyers never actually happened. The Dollar Bill . The attack is a signal to us that the North Vietnamese have the will and determination to continue the war." When you visit the site, Dotdash Meredith and its partners may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. After the incident, Herrick was unsure that his ships had been attacked, reporting at 1:27 a.m. Washington time that "Freak weather effects on radar and overeager sonarmen may have accounted for many reports. After the Tonkin Gulf incident, the State Department cabled Seaborn, instructing him to tell the North Vietnamese that "neither the Maddox or any other destroyer was in any way associated with any attack on the DRV [Democratic Republic of Vietnam, or North Vietnam] islands." Senate investigations in 1968 and 1975 did little to clarify the events or the evidence, lending further credence to the various conspiracy theories. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.. "I think we are kidding the world if you try to give the impression that when the South Vietnamese naval boats bombarded two islands a short distance off the coast of North Vietnam we were not implicated," he scornfully told McNamara during the hearings.16 The Maddox fired againthis time to killhitting the second North Vietnamese boat just as it launched two torpedoes. Carl Otis Schuster, U.S. Navy (ret.) To have a Tonkin Gulf conspiracy means that the several hundred National Security Agency and naval communications cited have been doctored. In turn, that means a minimum of several hundred persons were party to a plot that has remained watertight in sieve-like Washington for two decades. Until 1964, Desoto patrols stayed at least 20 miles away from the coast. The Johnson administration had made the first of several secret diplomatic attempts during the summer of 1964 to convince the North Vietnamese to stop its war on South Vietnam, using the chief Canadian delegate to the ICC, J. Blair Seaborn, to pass the message along to Hanoi. The two boats headed northeast along the same route they had come, then turned south for the run back to South Vietnam. Because the North Vietnamese had fewer than 50 Swatows, most of them up north near the important industrial port of Haiphong, the movement south of one-third of its fleet was strong evidence that 34A and the Desoto patrols were concerning Hanoi. The series of mistakes that led to the August 4 misreporting began on August 3 when the Phu Bai station interpreted Haiphongs efforts to determine the status of its forces as an order to assemble for further offensive operations. Operation Fast and Furious 10 They were nicknamed "gassers" because they burned gasoline rather than diesel fuel. Ten shocking conspiracy theories that were completely A Senate investigation revealed that the Maddox had been on an intelligence In November of 2001, the LBJ Presidential library and museum released tapes of phone conversations with the President and then Defense In fact, an earlier Desoto patrol planned for February had been canceled because of concerns over potential interference with South Vietnamese commando missions scheduled for the same time. This article by Capt. Office of the Historian There remains some disagreement among historians about the second (Aug. 4) incident, which involved the Maddox and another destroyer, the USS Turner Joy. The U.S. Navy stressed that the two technically were not in communication with one another, but the distinction was irrelevant to the North Vietnamese. The historian here is obliged to deal with two basic considerations in offering up an accounting: the event itself -- that is, what actually happened there in the waters off North Vietnam in early August 1964; and the uses made of it by President Lyndon Johnson and his administration. On the afternoon of Aug. 2, three Soviet-built P-4 motor torpedo boats were dispatched to attack the destroyer. Historians still disagree over whether Johnson deliberately misled Congress and the American people about the Tonkin Gulf incident or simply capitalized on an opportunity that came his way. The "nada notion" -- that nothing happened and the Gulf of Tonkin Incident was the product of inexperienced sonarmen and the overworked imagination of young deck-watch officers -- can no longer be sustained. 8. . A lesser-known fact is that Jim Morrisons father, Captain George Stephen Morrison, commanded the Carrier Division during the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. Related:LBJ knew the Vietnam War was a disaster in the making. There was no way to get a commando team ashore to plant demolition charges; they would have do what damage they could with the boats guns.3 Everything went smoothly until the early hours of 2 August, when intelligence picked up indications that the North Vietnamese Navy had moved additional Swatows into the vicinity of Hon Me and Hon Nieu Islands and ordered them to prepare for battle. The first critic report from Phu Bai reached Washington at about 0740 hours, Eastern Daylight Time (EDT). Suddenly, North Vietnamese guns opened fire from the shore. Under the operational control of Captain John J. Herrick, it steamed through the Gulf of Tonkin collecting intelligence. In less than 25 minutes, the attack was over. 9/11. The secondary mission of the Gulf of Tonkin patrols was to assert American freedom of navigation in international waters. The U.S. in-theater SIGINT assets were limited, as was the number of Vietnamese linguists. The commander also added the requirement of collecting photographic intelligence of ships and aircraft encountered, as well as weather and hydrographic information. The lack of success in SOGs missions during the first few months of 1964 made this proposal quite attractive. He readthe chiefs a cable from the captain of the Maddox. 8. 12. Along with other American warships, Maddox was steaming in international waters some 28 nautical miles off North Vietnams coast, gathering information on that countrys coastal radars. U.S. soldiers recall Cam Ranh as a sprawling logistic center for materiel bolstering the war effort, but in the summer of 1964 it was only a junk force training base near a village of farmers and fishermen. HistoryNet.com contains daily features, photo galleries and over 25,000 articles originally published in our nine magazines. Badly damaged, the boat limped home. McNamara took advantage of Morses imprecision and concentrated on the senators connection between 34A and Desoto, squirming away from the issue of U.S. involvement in covert missions by claiming that the Maddox "was not informed of, was not aware [of], had no evidence of, and so far as I know today had no knowledge of any possible South Vietnamese actions in connection with the two islands Senator Morse referred to." Both sides, however, spent August 3 reviewing their contingency plans and analyzing lessons learned from the incident. This volume deals only with the former. And it didnt take much detective work to figure out where the commandos were stationed. Interview, authors with James Hawes, 31 March 1996. Two days later, August 4, Maddox returned to the area, supported by the destroyer Turner Joy (DD-951). Historians still argue about what exactly happened in the Gulf of Tonkin in August of 1964. Both orders were repeated, but only the latter was relayed to the torpedo boats before the attack was launched. Message, COMUSMACV 291233Z July 1964, CP 291345Z July 1964. Conspiracy It authorized the president to "prevent further aggression . Fluoride. Telegram from Embassy in Vietnam to Department of State, 7 August 1964, FRUS 1964, vol. We're going to retaliate and well make an announcement a little later in the evening, in the next hour or so and well ask Congress for a resolution of war the next day to support us, Johnson toldan old friend. . With that report, after nearly four decades, the NSA officially reversed its verdict on the events of August 4, 1964, that had led that night to President Lyndon Johnsons televised message to the nation: The initial attack on the destroyer Maddox, on August 2, was repeated today by a number of hostile vessels attacking two U.S. destroyers with torpedoes. On Tuesday morning, Aug. 4, 1964, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara called President Lyndon Johnson with a report about a possible confrontation brewing in southeast Asia. As it turns out, Adm. Sharp failed to read to the Joint Chiefs the last line of the cable, whichread: Suggest a complete evaluation before any further actions.. A U.S. Navy SEAL (Sea Air Land) team officer assigned to the SOG maritime operations training staff, Lieutenant James Hawes, led the covert boat fleet out of Da Nang and down the coast 300 miles to Cam Ranh Bay, where they waited out the crisis in isolation. Hickman, Kennedy. "13 As far as the State Department was concerned, there was no need to "review" the operations. This is not the place to establish the final truth on the Gulf of Tonkin matter and certainly I am not the person to render the ultimate judgment. Johnsonasked for, and received, a resolution of war from the US Congress that led to further escalation in the conflict. WebLyndon Johnson signed the Tonkin Gulf resolution on August 10, 1964. This article is based on the PRI podcast, LBJ's War, hosted by David Brown. The captain of Maddox, Commander Herbert L. Ogier Jr., ordered his ship to battle stations shortly after 1500 hours. The tug departed Haiphong at approximately 0100 hours on August 4, while the undamaged torpedo boat, T-146, was ordered to stay with the crippled boats and maintain an alert for enemy forces. At about 0600, the two U.S. destroyers resumed the Desoto patrol. Air action is now in execution against gunboats and certain supporting facilities in North Vietnam which have been used in these hostile operations., The next day, the president addressed Congress, seeking the power to to take all necessary measures in support of freedom and in defense of peace in Southeast Asia.. PTF-6 took up station at the mouth of the Ron River, lit up the sky with illumination rounds, and fired at the security post. Hickman, Kennedy. 11. WebTo many online conspiracy theorists, the biggest false flag operation of all time was the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. After suggesting a "complete evaluation" of the affair before taking further action, he radioed requesting a "thorough reconnaissance in daylight by aircraft." It reveals what commanders actually knew, what SIGINT analysts believed and the challenges the SIGINT community and its personnel faced in trying to understand and anticipate the aggressive actions of an imaginative, deeply committed and elusive enemy. Gulf of Tonkin - National Security Agency In 1964 an Ohio woman took up the challenge that had led to Amelia Earharts disappearance. Within the year, U.S. bombers would strike North Vietnam, and U.S. ground units would land on South Vietnamese soil. Reinforced by Turner Joy, Herrick returned to the area on Aug. 4. He spoke out against banning girls education. Congress supported the resolution with Whether they produced battlefield images of the dead or daguerreotype portraits of common soldiers, []. https://www.historynet.com/case-closed-the-gulf-of-tonkin-incident/, Jerrie Mock: Record-Breaking American Female Pilot, When 21 Sikh Soldiers Fought the Odds Against 10,000 Pashtun Warriors, Few Red Tails Remain: Tuskegee Airman Dies at 96. In fact, the United States had been waging a small, secret war against North Vietnam since 1961. Senator Wayne Morse (D-OR) challenged the account, and argued that despite evidence that 34A missions and Desoto patrols were not operating in tandem, Hanoi could only have concluded that they were. In the years covered here, the Navy was generally known throughout the U.S. Mission in Saigon for being in the housekeeping business, operating supply warehouses, and running the officer clubs, PXs and other amenities, an inevitable part of the American military's baggage. The NSA report is revealing. A joint resolution of Congress dated August 7, 1964, gave the president authority to increase U.S. involvement in the war between North and South Vietnam and served as the legal basis for escalations in the Johnson and Nixon administrations that likely dwarfed what most Americans could have imagined in August 1964. Forty-eight hours earlier, on Aug. 2, two US destroyers on patrol in the Gulf of Tonkin the Maddox and the Turner Joy were attacked by North Vietnamese boats. The 122 additional relevant SIGINT products confirmed that the Phu Bai station had misinterpreted or mistranslated many of the early August 3 SIGINT intercepts. In Saigon, General William C. Westmoreland, the new commander of Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV), approved of the plan, and SOG began testing 81-mm mortars, 4.5-inch rockets, and recoilless rifles aboard the boats. Tonkin Gulf Resolution (1964) | National Archives Summary Notes of the 538th Meeting of the NSC, 4 August 1964, 6:15-6:40 p.m.. 13. In late 2007, that information was finally made public when an official National Security Agency (NSA) history of signals intelligence (SIGINT) in Vietnam, written in 2002, was released in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. Haiphong again repeated the recall order after the attack. 4. Although the total intelligence picture of North Vietnams actions and communications indicates that the North Vietnamese did in fact order the first attack, it remains unclear whether Maddox was the originally intended target. Three days later, she rendezvoused with a tanker just east of the DMZ before beginning her intelligence- gathering mission up the North Vietnamese coast. 1, Vietnam 1964 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1992), p. 611. The Taliban silenced him. (Hanoi remains muzzy on the second incident, Aug. 4, presumably since clearly it took place in international waters, the Vietnamese claim of "defensive reaction" is a bit wobbly.). Thus, this is an "official" history, not an official one because "the authors do not necessarily speak for the Department of Navy nor attempt to present a consensus." Background intelligence on North Vietnam, its radar networks and command-and-control systems was limited. Forced Government Indoctrination Camps . McNamara did not mention the 34A raids.15. Mr. Andrad is a Vietnam War historian with the U.S. Army Center of Military History, where he is writing a book on combat operations from 1969 through 1973. Shortly after ordering the airstrikes, Johnson went on television and addressed the nation regarding the incident. The conspiracy theory has been dying for several years, and this work will probably be a stake through its heart. Under cover of darkness, four boats (PTF-2, PTF-3, PTF-5, and PTF-6) left Da Nang, racing north up the coast toward the demilitarized zone (DMZ), then angling farther out to sea as they left the safety of South Vietnamese waters.2 About five hours later they neared their objective: the offshore islands of Hon Me and Hon Nieu. Subsequent SIGINT reporting and faulty analysis that day further reinforced earlier false impressions. Quoted in Steve Edwards, "Stalking the Enemys Coast," U.S. The reports conclusions about the Gulf of Tonkin Incident are particularly relevant as they offer useful insights into the problems that SIGINT faces today in Illumination rounds shot skyward, catching the patrol boats in their harsh glare. Our response, for the present, will be limited and fitting. Early Military Career Despite McNamaras nimble answers, North Vietnams insistence that there was a connection between 34A and the Desoto patrols was only natural. Moreover, the subsequent review of the evidence exposed the translation and analysis errors that resulted in the reporting of the salvage operation as preparations for a second attack. Gulf of Tonkin incident - Wikipedia In truth, two of the torpedo boats were damaged, of which one could not make it back to port, while a single American aircraft sustained some wing damage. Gradually, the Navy broadened its role from supply/logistics to aid/advisory -- training Vietnamese and developing the South Vietnamese navy's famed "brown water force," those riverine units operating in the country's matrix of rivers and canals and through the coastal network of islands and archipelagos. The battle was over in 22 minutes. The only opposition came from a few scattered machine guns on shore, but they did no damage. The North Vietnamese coastal radars also tracked and reported the positions of U.S. aircraft operating east of the ships, probably the combat air patrol the Seventh Fleet had ordered in support. Hanoi denied the charge that it had fired on the U.S. destroyers on 4 August, calling the charge "an impudent fabrication. The Americans claimed they sank two torpedo boats and damaged a third, while the torpedo boats claimed to have shot down two American aircraft. The most popular of these is that the incident was either a fabrication or deliberate American provocation. The Gulf of Tonkin Incident took place on Aug. 2 and 4, 1964, and helped lead to greater American involvement in the Vietnam War. Although Washington officials did not believe Hanoi would attack the Desoto ships again, tensions ran high on both sides, and this affected their respective analyses of the events to come. This was granted, and four F-8 Crusaders were vectored towards Maddox's position. It set a very terrible precedent, which is that he would go on to escalate further, not with any striking confidence that his objectives will be achieved, but only with the assurance that, unless he embarked on these massive military escalations, America would fail in Vietnam and he might well be labeled the only president in American history to lose a war.. In July 1964, Operational Plan 34A was taking off, but during the first six months of this highly classified program of covert attacks against North Vietnam, one after the other, missions failed, often spelling doom for the commando teams inserted into the North by boat and parachute. This was reinforced by statements by retired Vietnamese Defense Minister Vo Nguyen Giap who admitted to the Aug. 2 attack but denied ordering another two days later. WebOn August 7, 1964, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, authorizing President Johnson to take any measures he believed were necessary to retaliate and to promote the maintenance of international peace and security in southeast Asia. More important, they did not know the North Vietnamese had begun to react more aggressively to the commando raids. When the contacts appeared to turn away at 6,000 yards, Maddoxs crew interpreted the move as a maneuver to mark a torpedo launch. ", "No," replied McCone. Covert maritime operations were in full swing, and some of the missions succeeded in blowing up small installations along the coast, leading General Westmoreland to conclude that any close connection between 34A and Desoto would destroy the thin veneer of deniability surrounding the operations. While many facts and details have emerged in the past 44 years to persuade most observers that some of the reported events in the Gulf never actually happened, key portions of the critical intelligence information remained classified until recently. This time, however, President Johnson reacted much more skeptically and ultimately decided to take no retaliatory action. He has appeared on The History Channel as a featured expert. As far as the headlines were concerned, that was it, but the covert campaign continued unabated. WHAT REALLY HAPPENED IN THE GULF OF TONKIN? Vietnam is a very watery country. ." Interpretation by historians as to what exactly did and did not occur during those few days in early August 1964 remains so varied that the wonder is that authors Marolda and Fitzgerald were able themselves to settle on the text. No actual visual sightings by Maddox.". For the rest of the war they would be truly secretand in the end they were a dismal failure. Cookies collect information about your preferences and your devices and are used to make the site work as you expect it to, to understand how you interact with the site, and to show advertisements that are targeted to your interests. Nonetheless, the North Vietnamese boats continued to close in at the rate of 400 yards per minute. The most comprehensive and authoritative history site on the Internet. AND THERE is the fact of Vietnam's position today. Both men believed an attack on the American ships was imminent. Gulf of Tonkin incident Facts 136-137. This is another government conspiracy that's true. The Gulf of Tonkin incident led to the expansion of the Vietnam War that resulted in a lot of American soldier casualties. Heavy machine-gun bullets riddled PTF-6, tearing away part of the port bow and wounding four South Vietnamese crewmen, including Lieutenant Son. https://www.thoughtco.com/vietnam-war-gulf-of-tonkin-incident-2361345 (accessed March 4, 2023). At the time, the Navy relied heavily on Naval Support Group Activity (NSGA), San Miguel, Philippines, for SIGINT support, augmented by seaborne SIGINT elements called Direct Support Units (DSUs). He headed seaward hoping to avoid a confrontation until daybreak, then returned to the coast at 1045, this time north of Hon Me. McNamara was ready to respond. One of the great ironies of the Gulf of Tonkin incident for President Johnson is that it was for him, politically, a great success, he continues. Over the next 12 hours, as the president's team scrambledto understand what hadhappened and to organize a response, the facts remained elusive. It also outlined the Maddoxs path along the coast on 2 August and the 34A attacks on Vinh Son the following day. A brief account of the raids is in MACVSOG 1964 Command History, Annex A, 14 January 1965, pp.
