"Vietnam War: Gulf of Tonkin Incident." 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. Or purchase a subscription for unlimited access to real news you can count on. Alerted to the threat, Herrick requested air support from the carrier USS Ticonderoga. (The recent NBC television movie In Love and War had Navy pilot James B. Stockdale flying over the scene at the time saying, "I see nothing"; now a retired vice admiral, Stockdale has reiterated the "phoney attack" charge in writings and public speaking.). The commander also added the requirement of collecting photographic intelligence of ships and aircraft encountered, as well as weather and hydrographic information. For the Navys official account stating that both incidents occurred and that 34A and Desoto were "entirely distinct," see Marolda and Fitzgerald, pp. The Geneva Conference in 1954 was intended to settle outstanding issues following the end of hostilities between France and the Viet Minh at the end of the First Indochina War. More important, they did not know the North Vietnamese had begun to react more aggressively to the commando raids. These PTFs were manned by South Vietnamese crews and conducted a series of coastal attacks against targets in North Vietnam as part of Operation 34A. Both U.S. ships opened fire on the radar contacts, but reported problems maintaining a lock on the tracking and fire control solution. Summary Notes of the 538th Meeting of the NSC, 4 August 1964, 6:15-6:40 p.m.. 13. In this case, perception was much more important than reality.10. 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. The Maddox fired againthis time to killhitting the second North Vietnamese boat just as it launched two torpedoes. But for a band of South Vietnamese commandos and a handful of U.S. advisers, not much had changed. Kennedy Hickman is a historian, museum director, and curator who specializes in military and naval history. JCS, "34A Chronology of Events," (see Marolda and Fitzgerald, p. 424); Porter. . But the light helped the commandos as well, revealing their targets. You've read 1 out of 5 free articles of Naval History this month. Herricks concerns grew as the SIGINT intercepts indicated that the North Vietnamese were concentrating torpedo boats off Hon Me Island, 25 nautical miles to his southwest. This article is based on the PRI podcast, LBJ's War, hosted by David Brown. Congress supported the resolution with As the torpedo boats continued their high-speed approach, Maddox was ordered to fire warning shots if they closed inside 10,000 yards. 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 first critic report from Phu Bai reached Washington at about 0740 hours, Eastern Daylight Time (EDT). Within days, Hanoi lodged a complaint with the International Control Commission (ICC), which had been established in 1954 to oversee the provisions of the Geneva Accords. This along with flawed signals intelligence from the National Security Agency led Johnson to order retaliatory airstrikes against North Vietnam. 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. The Secret Side of the Tonkin Gulf Incident, 2. Forced Government Indoctrination Camps . Naval Institute Proceedings (February 1992), p. 59. President Johnson and his advisers nevetheless went forward with a public announcement of an attack. However, unlike the good old days when -- as the wizened cynical Frenchmen put it, history was a lie agreed-on -- no longer can governments after the battle simply set down how it went and that is that. Over the next few years, Johnson used the resolution to rapidly escalate American involvement in the Vietnam War. The captain of Maddox, Commander Herbert L. Ogier Jr., ordered his ship to battle stations shortly after 1500 hours. Typically, the missions were carried out by a destroyer specially outfitted with sensitive eavesdropping equipment. 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. WebCongress repealed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution before the United States' withdrawal from Vietnam in 1973. As the enemy boat passed astern, it was raked by gunfire from the Maddox that killed the boats commander. Based on this, they launched the political process that led to the wars escalation. Sign up to get updates about new releases and event invitations. 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. no isolated event. 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. These warning shots were fired and the P-4s launched a torpedo attack. They never intended to attack U.S. forces, and were not even within 100 nautical miles of the U.S. destroyers position at the time of the purported second engagement.. ", "No," replied McCone. He headed seaward hoping to avoid a confrontation until daybreak, then returned to the coast at 1045, this time north of Hon Me. President Johnson himself apparently questioned the sailorsu0019 report of an attack. Neither the United States nor State of Vietnam signed anything at the 1954 Geneva Conference. 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. The report also identifies what SIGINT couldand could nottell commanders about their enemies and their unreliable friends in the war. Subscribe to LBJ's War onApple Podcasts. NSA analysts from shore-based stations shared Herricks belief and transmitted an immediate warning to all major Pacific Theater commandsexcept to Herrick and Maddox. In fact, the United States had been waging a small, secret war against North Vietnam since 1961. McNamara insisted that the evidence clearly indicated there was an attack on August 4, and he continued to maintain so in his book In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons From Vietnam. The string of intelligence mistakes, mistranslations, misinterpretations and faulty decision making that occurred in the Tonkin Gulf in 1964 reveals how easily analysts and officials can jump to the wrong conclusions and lead a nation into war. Scattered small-arms sent tracers toward the commandos, but no one was hurt. Captain John J. Herrick, Commander Destroyer Division 192, embarked in the Maddox, concluded that there would be "possible hostile action." "13 As far as the State Department was concerned, there was no need to "review" the operations. 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 U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) decided to resume Maddoxs Desoto patrol, but at a greater distance from the coast, accompanied by Turner Joy and supported by aircraft from Ticonderoga. 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. 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. 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 took only a little imagination to see why the North Vietnamese might connect the two. Whats not in dispute is the aftermath: A resolution from the Senate 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. The Gulf of Tonkin act became more controversial as opposition to the war mounted. "4 For additional reading, see the recently declassified NSA study by Robert J. Hanyok, Spartans in the Darkness: American SIGINT and the Indochina War, 1945-1975; and Tonkin Gulf and The Escalation of the Vietnam War, by Edward Moise. Herrick requested aerial reconnaissance for the next morning to search for the wreckage of the torpedo boats he thought he had sunk. IV-2 to IV-4. Gulf of Tonkin incident, complex naval event in the Gulf of Tonkin, off the coast of Vietnam, that was presented to the U.S. Congress on August 5, 1964, as two To have a Tonkin Gulf conspiracy means that the several hundred National Security Agency and naval communications cited have been doctored. American SIGINT analysts assessed the North Vietnamese reporting as probable preparations for further military operations against the Desoto patrol. Nonetheless, the North Vietnamese boats continued to close in at the rate of 400 yards per minute. This was almost certainly a reaction to the recent 34A raids. 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. History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. 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. Forty-five minutes after beginning their attack, the commandos withdrew. The electronic intercept traffic cited here is too voluminous to permit a conclusion that somehow everything was the figment of the collective imaginations on both sides. 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. Oklahoma City Bombing. To subscribe to Vietnam Magazine, click here! "1 Most of these would be shore bombardment. Did Johnson learn something from the first experience? 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. 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. 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. 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. 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 9/11. In 1964 an Ohio woman took up the challenge that had led to Amelia Earharts disappearance. Changing course in time to evade the torpedoes, the Maddox again was attacked, this time by a boat that fired another torpedo and 14.5-mm machine guns. 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. 14. In the future, conventional operations would receive all the attention. Quoted in Steve Edwards, "Stalking the Enemys Coast," U.S. What will be of interest to the general reader is the treatment of the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. Senator Morse was one of the dissenters. 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. They were nicknamed "gassers" because they burned gasoline rather than diesel fuel. Today, it is believed that this second attack did not occur and was merely reports from jittery radar and sonar operators, but at the time it was taken as evidence that Hanoi was raising the stakes against the United States. Moments later, one of the crewmen spotted a North Vietnamese Swatow patrol boat bearing down on them. Fluoride. Reinforced by Turner Joy, Herrick returned to the area on Aug. 4. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution authorized President Lyndon Johnson to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States The Americans claimed they sank two torpedo boats and damaged a third, while the torpedo boats claimed to have shot down two American aircraft. Maddox detected the torpedo boats on radar at a range of almost 20,000 yards and turned away at its top speed of 32 knots. The bullets struck the destroyer; the torpedo missed. Listen to McNamara's conversation with Johnson. The only solution was to get rid of the evidence. 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." 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. HistoryNet.com is brought to you by HistoryNet LLC, the worlds largest publisher of history magazines. Despite Morses doubts, Senate reaction fell in behind the Johnson team, and the question of secret operations was overtaken by the issue of punishing Hanoi for its blatant attack on a U.S. warship in international waters. When you visit the site, Dotdash Meredith and its partners may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. 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 Pentagon had already released details of the attack, and administration officials had already promised strong action. 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. Non-subscribers can read five free Naval History articles per month. . We have no intention of yielding to pressure. . As a result, the ships offshore were able to collect valuable information on North Vietnamese military capabilities. To have a Tonkin Gulf conspiracy means that the several hundred National Security Agency and naval communications cited have been doctored. 10. 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). The secondary mission of the Gulf of Tonkin patrols was to assert American freedom of navigation in international waters. The NSA report is revealing. Hickman, Kennedy. 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. But we sure ought to always leave the impression that if you shoot at us, you're going to get hit, Johnson said. 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. Both of these messages reached Washington shortly after 1400 hours EDT. The subsequent North Vietnamese reporting on the enemy matched the location, course and speed of Maddox. 136-137. The World is a public radio program that crosses borders and time zones to bring home the stories that matter. In response, the North Vietnamese built up their naval presence around the offshore islands. McNamara was ready to respond. Hickman, Kennedy. 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. 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. "14, Nasty fast patrol boats demonstrated their versatility in the Pacific Ocean before going to Vietnam.U.S. The Tonkin Gulf Incident in the past two decades has been treated by at least three full-scale studies, dealt with at length by Congressional committees and extensively referenced in general histories, presidential memoirs and textbooks on the U.S. legislative function. Then North Vietnams naval authorities either became confused or were seized by indecision. Within the year, U.S. bombers would strike North Vietnam, and U.S. ground units would land on South Vietnamese soil. U.S. SIGINT support had provided ample warning of North Vietnams intentions and actions, enabling the American ship to defend itself successfully.