In addition, the US Navy was instructed to conduct Desoto patrols off North Vietnam. Two hours later the Phu Bai SIGINT station transmitted a critic report warning of possible [North Vietnamese] naval operations planned against the Desoto patrol. Twenty-five minutes later, Phu Bai sent a second critic report that said, imminent plans of [North Vietnamese] naval action possibly against Desoto Mission.. It can be deceived and it is all too often incomplete. 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.. But we sure ought to always leave the impression that if you shoot at us, you're going to get hit, Johnson said. They were nicknamed "gassers" because they burned gasoline rather than diesel fuel. Based on the intercepts, Captain John J. Herrick, the on-scene mission commander aboard nearby Turner Joy, decided to terminate Maddoxs Desoto patrol late on August 1, because he believed he had indications the ship was about to be attacked.. Based on this, they launched the political process that led to the wars escalation. In 2005 documents were released proving that Johnson had fabricated the Gulf of Tonkin incident in order to justify attacking North Vietnam. WebThe Gulf of Tonkin While Kennedy had at least the comforting illusion of progress in Vietnam (manufactured by Harkins and Diem), Johnson faced a starker picture of confusion, disunity, and muddle in Saigon and of a rapidly growing Viet Cong in the countryside. In 1996 Edward Moises book Tonkin Gulf and the Escalation of the Vietnam War presented the first publicly released concrete evidence that the SIGINT reporting confirmed the August 2 attack, but not the alleged second attack of August 4. The House passed the resolution unanimously.17 A North Vietnamese patrol boat also trailed the American ships, reporting on their movements to Haiphong. The Gulf of Tonkin act became more controversial as opposition to the war mounted. Fluoride. 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). In an effort to increase pressure on North Vietnam, several Norwegian-built fast patrol boats (PTFs) were covertly purchased and transferred to South Vietnam. In response, the North Vietnamese built up their naval presence around the offshore islands. As is common with specialized histories -- what I call the "tunnels of Cu Chi" syndrome -- this book will tell most readers more about the U.S. Navy in Vietnam than they care to know. The Maddox planned to sail to 16 points along the North Vietnam coast, ranging from the DMZ north to the Chinese border. The Taliban silenced him. 14. Suddenly, North Vietnamese guns opened fire from the shore. Badly damaged, the boat limped home. That initial error shaped all the subsequent assessments about North Vietnamese intentions, as U.S. SIGINT monitored and reported the Norths tracking of the two American destroyers. 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. Two nearly identical episodes six weeks apart; two nearly opposite responses. The three torpedo boats continued through the American barrage and launched their torpedoes at 1516. When the boats reached that point, Maddox fired three warning shots, but the torpedo boats continued inbound at high speed. At each point, the ship would stop and circle, picking up electronic signals before moving on. As Communist communications activity was rising rapidly, American senior leaders were increasing support to the South Vietnamese government. What did and didnt happen in the Gulf of Tonkin on August 2 and 4 has long been in dispute, but the decisions that the Johnson Administration and Congress made based on an interpretation of those events were undeniably monumental. The secondary mission of the Gulf of Tonkin patrols was to assert American freedom of navigation in international waters. Both sides claimed successes in the exchange that they did not actually achieve. The Maddox fired againthis time to killhitting the second North Vietnamese boat just as it launched two torpedoes. 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. The USS Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin is shown in 1963. NSA officials handed the key August SIGINT reports over to the JCS investigating team that examined the incident in September 1964. But the administration dithered, informing the embassy only that "further OPLAN 34A operations should be held off pending review of the situation in Washington. Captain John J. Herrick, Commander Destroyer Division 192, embarked in the Maddox, concluded that there would be "possible hostile action." To subscribe to Vietnam Magazine, click here! The Gulf of Tonkin incident: the false flag operation that started the Vietnam war. Something Isnt Working Refresh the page to try again. Something Isnt Working Unfortunately, much of the media reporting combined or confused the events of August 2 and 4 into a single incident. No one was hurt and little damage wasdone in the attack, but intercepted cables suggested a second attack might be imminent. The fig leaf of plausible denial served McNamara in this case, but it was scant cover. The Johnson Administration initially limited its response to a terse diplomatic note to Hanoi, the first-ever U.S. diplomatic note to that government. Both the Phu Bai station and Maddoxs DSU knew the boats had orders to attack an enemy ship., Not knowing about the South Vietnamese commando raid, all assumed that Maddox was the target. 1. As a result, the ships offshore were able to collect valuable information on North Vietnamese military capabilities. American aircraft flying over the scene during the "attack" failed to spot any North Vietnamese boats. For the maritime war specialist, it is of course invaluable. 313-314. Neither Herricks doubts nor his reconnaissance request was well received, however. https://www.thoughtco.com/vietnam-war-gulf-of-tonkin-incident-2361345 (accessed March 4, 2023). 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. . 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. But by the end of June, the situation had changed. A brief account of the raids is in MACVSOG 1964 Command History, Annex A, 14 January 1965, pp. Incidentally, the first volume, Setting the Stage: To 1959, contains one of the best brief summaries I've read of Vietnam history from the end of World War II through the 1954 Geneva Conference. AND THERE is the fact of Vietnam's position today. We still seek no wider war.. Codenamed Desoto, they were special U.S. Navy patrols designed to eavesdrop on enemy shore-based communicationsspecifically China, North Korea, and now North Vietnam. Was the collapse of the Twin Towers on 911 terrorism are a controlled demolition. Media Manipulation. McNamara did not mention the 34A raids.15. The most popular of these is that the incident was either a fabrication or deliberate American provocation. It took only a little imagination to see why the North Vietnamese might connect the two. As the torpedo boats continued their high-speed approach, Maddox was ordered to fire warning shots if they closed inside 10,000 yards. Forced Government Indoctrination Camps . This explanation held briefly, long enough for President Johnson -- admittedly not inclined to engage in what might be called oververification -- to rush the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution through Congress. In the first few days of August 1964, a series of events off the coast of North Vietnam and decisions made in Washington, D.C., set the United States on a course that would largely define the next decade and weigh heavily on American foreign policy to this day. Congress supported the resolution with Aircraft from Ticonderoga arrived on-scene at 1528 hours and fired on the boats. At 2000 hours local time, Maddox reported it had two surface and three aerial contacts on radar. Midday on August 1, NSGA San Miguel, the U.S. Marine Corps SIGINT detachment co-located with the U.S. Army at Phu Bai, and Maddoxs own DSU all detected the communications directing the North Vietnamese torpedo boats to depart from Haiphong on August 2. On the night of 4 August, both ships reported renewed attacks by North Vietnamese patrol boats. Robert S. McNamara, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam (New York: Times Books, 1995), pp. On 7 August, the Senate passed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, allowing the administration greater latitude in expanding the war by a vote of 88 to 2. LBJ knew the Vietnam War was a disaster in the making. "We believe that present OPLAN 34A activities are beginning to rattle Hanoi," wrote Secretary of State Dean Rusk, "and [the] Maddox incident is directly related to their effort to resist these activities. The Desoto patrol continued with another destroyer, the Turner Joy (DD-951), coming along to ward off further trouble. "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 Just after midnight on 31 July, PTF-2 and PTF-5, commanded by Lieutenant Huyet, arrived undetected at a position 800 yards northeast of the island. The Americans claimed they sank two torpedo boats and damaged a third, while the torpedo boats claimed to have shot down two American aircraft. At this point, U.S. involvement in Vietnam remained largely in the background. The boats followed at their maximum speed of 44 knots, continuing the chase for more than 20 minutes. The report also identifies what SIGINT couldand could nottell commanders about their enemies and their unreliable friends in the war. He has written numerous articles on Vietnam War-era special operations and is the author of two books on the war: Formerly an analyst with the Washington-based Asian Studies Center, Mr. Conboy is vice president of Lippo Group, a large financial services institution in Jakarta, Indonesia. Moments later, one of the crewmen spotted a North Vietnamese Swatow patrol boat bearing down on them. To increase the chances of success, SOG proposed increased raids along the coast, emphasizing offshore bombardment by the boats rather than inserting commandos. But on 7 January, the Seventh Fleet eased the restriction, allowing the destroyers to approach to within four milesstill one mile beyond North Vietnamese territorial waters as recognized by the United States. Gulf of Tonkin & the Vietnam War. WebLyndon Johnson signed the Tonkin Gulf resolution on August 10, 1964. The United States Military had three SIGINT stations in the Philippines, one for each of the services, but their combined coverage was less than half of all potential North Vietnamese communications. "11 No actual visual sightings by Maddox.". Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/vietnam-war-gulf-of-tonkin-incident-2361345. 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. LBJ's War is a new, limited-edition podcast that unearths previously unheard audio that helps us better understand the course of the Vietnam War and how Lyndon Johnson found himself where he did. 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." Quoted in Steve Edwards, "Stalking the Enemys Coast," U.S. The Commander-in-Chief, Pacific, Admiral Harry D. Felt, agreed and suggested that a U.S. Navy ship could be used to vector 34A boats to their targets.6. SOG took the mounting war of words very seriously and assumed the worstthat an investigation would expose its operations against the North. Under the operational control of Captain John J. Herrick, it steamed through the Gulf of Tonkin collecting intelligence. 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.. The original radar contacts dropped off the scope at 2134, but the crews of Maddox and Turner Joy believed they detected two high-speed contacts closing on their position at 44 knots. Two days later, August 4, Maddox returned to the area, supported by the destroyer Turner Joy (DD-951). Approved on Aug. 10, 1964, the Southeast Asia (Gulf of Tonkin) Resolution, gave Johnson the power to use military force in the region without requiring a declaration of war. Surprised by the North Vietnamese response, Johnson decided that the United States could not back away from the challenge and directed his commanders in the Pacific to continue with the Desoto missions. Over the next few years, Johnson used the resolution to rapidly escalate American involvement in the Vietnam War. 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. 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. As the enemy boat passed astern, it was raked by gunfire from the Maddox that killed the boats commander. 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. Around midday on Aug. 4, Adm. Grant Sharp, the top navy commander in the Pacific, made a call to the Joint Chiefs, and it was clear there were significant doubts about this second incident. This time, however, President Johnson reacted much more skeptically and ultimately decided to take no retaliatory action. During a meeting at the White House on the evening of 4 August, President Johnson asked McCone, "Do they want a war by attacking our ships in the middle of the Gulf of Tonkin? 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." . $22. After 15 minutes of maneuvering, the F-8s arrived and strafed the North Vietnamese boats, damaging two and leaving the third dead in the water. This along with flawed signals intelligence from the National Security Agency led Johnson to order retaliatory airstrikes against North Vietnam. In the end the Navy agreed, and in concert with MACV, took steps to ensure that "34A operations will be adjusted to prevent interference" with Desoto patrols.7 This did not mean that MACV did not welcome the information brought back by the Desoto patrols, only that the two missions would not actively support one another. 13. When you visit the site, Dotdash Meredith and its partners may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. We have ample forces to respond not only to these attacks on these destroyers but also to retaliate, should you wish to do so, against targets on the land, he toldthe president. We have no intention of yielding to pressure. For 25 minutes the boats fired on the radar station, then headed back to Da Nang. 5. These secret intelligence-gathering missions and sabotage operations had begun under the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 1961, but in January 1964, the program was transferred to the Defense Department under the control of a cover organization called the Studies and Observations Group (SOG). 2, pp. While 34A and the Desoto patrols were independent operations, the latter benefited from the increased signals traffic generated by the attacks of the former. Johnsonasked for, and received, a resolution of war from the US Congress that led to further escalation in the conflict. 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. Alerted to the threat, Herrick requested air support from the carrier USS Ticonderoga. However, planes from the aircraft carrier Ticonderoga (CVA-14) crippled one of the boats and damaged the other two. As far as the headlines were concerned, that was it, but the covert campaign continued unabated. WebThe Gulf of Tonkin and the Vietnam War. Three days later, she rendezvoused with a tanker just east of the DMZ before beginning her intelligence- gathering mission up the North Vietnamese coast. 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. . Listen to McNamara's conversation with Johnson. Two hours later, Captain Herrick reported the sinking of two enemy patrol boats. :: Douglas Pike, director of the Indochina Studies Program at the University of California-Berkeley, is the author of the forthcoming "Vietnam and the U.S.S.R.: Anatomy of an Alliance.". But Morse did not know enough about the program to ask pointed questions. Operation Fast and Furious 10 When the contacts appeared to turn away at 6,000 yards, Maddoxs crew interpreted the move as a maneuver to mark a torpedo launch. The Gulf of Tonkin Incident and many more recent experiences only reinforce the need for intelligence analysts and decision makers to avoid relying exclusively on any single intelligence sourceeven SIGINTparticularly if other intelligence sources are available and the resulting decisions might cost lives. WebThe Senate passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution with only two opposing votes, and the House of Representatives passed it unanimously. After suggesting a "complete evaluation" of the affair before taking further action, he radioed requesting a "thorough reconnaissance in daylight by aircraft." . 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. Here's why he couldn't walk away. With this information, back in Washington President Johnson and his advisers considered their options. 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 the afternoon of Aug. 2, three Soviet-built P-4 motor torpedo boats were dispatched to attack the destroyer. Forty-five minutes after beginning their attack, the commandos withdrew. Quoted in Steve Edwards, "Stalking the Enemys Coast," U.S. 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. Despite the on-scene commanders efforts to correct their errors in the initial after-action reports, administration officials focused instead on the first SIGINT reports to the exclusion of all other evidence. Americas Vietnam War had begun in earnest. Both South Vietnamese and U.S. maritime operators in Da Nang assumed that their raids were the cause of the mounting international crisis, and they never for a moment doubted that the North Vietnamese believed that the raids and the Desoto patrols were one and the same. If there had been any doubt before about whose hand was behind the raids, surely there was none now. . 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). WebMany historians now agree that the Gulf of Tonkin incident, in which many believed North Vietnamese ships had attacked American naval forces, may not have occurred in the way it was described at the time. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.. U.S. and South Vietnamese warships intruded into the territorial waters of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and simultaneously shelled: Hon Nieu Island, 4 kilometers off the coast of Thanh Hoa Province [and] Hon Me Island, 12 kilometers off the coast of Thanh Hoa Province." originally appeared in the June 2008 issue of Vietnam magazine. CIA Director John McCone was convinced that Hanoi was reacting to the raids when it attacked the Maddox. The errors made in the initial analysis were due to a combination of inexperience, limited knowledge of North Vietnams operations and an operational imperative to ensure that the U.S. Navy ships would not be caught by surprise. This article is based on the PRI podcast, LBJ's War, hosted by David Brown. It authorized the president to "prevent further aggression . Telegram from the Department of State to the Embassy in Vietnam, 3 August 1964, FRUS, Vietnam, 1964, p. 603. Originally begun by the Central Intelligence Agency in 1961, 34A was a highly-classified program of covert operations against North Vietnam. Suffice to say here that the version as presented here by Marolda and Fitzgerald is highly credible and completely plausible, and I for one am persuaded of its correctness. Simultaneously, U.S. SIGINT was placed on increased alert to monitor indications of future North Vietnamese threats to the Desoto Missions, and additional air and naval forces were deployed to the Western Pacific. During May, Admiral U. S. G. Sharp, the Pacific Fleet Commander-in-Chief, had suggested that 34A raids could be coordinated "with the operation of a shipboard radar to reduce the possibility of North Vietnamese radar detection of the delivery vehicle." In the summer of 1964, President Lyndon Baines Johnson needed a pretext to commit the American people to the already expanding covert war in South East Asia. The North Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs made all this clear in September when it published a "Memorandum Regarding the U.S. War Acts Against the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in the First Days of August 1964." AIDS Brotherhood Symbology The Illuminati Flame . The rounds set some of the buildings ablaze, keeping the defenders off balance. For the rest of the war they would be truly secretand in the end they were a dismal failure.

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