The subsequent North Vietnamese reporting on the enemy matched the location, course and speed of Maddox. Shortly thereafter, the Phu Bai station intercepted the signal indicating the North Vietnamese intended to conduct a torpedo attack against the enemy. Phu Bai issued a Critic Reportshort for critical message, meaning one that had priority over all other traffic in the communications system to ensure immediate deliveryto all commands, including Maddox. Telegram from the Department of State to the Embassy in Vietnam, 3 August 1964, FRUS, Vietnam, 1964, p. 603. 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. They issued a recall order from Haiphong to the port commander and communications relay boat two hours after the torpedo boat squadron command issued its attack order. Hanoi pointed out what Washington denied: "On July 30, 1964 . The Gulf of Tonkin incident led to the expansion of the Vietnam War that resulted in a lot of American 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. Neither Herricks doubts nor his reconnaissance request was well received, however. 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 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. Whats not in dispute is the aftermath: A resolution from the Senate But the light helped the commandos as well, revealing their targets. The maximum closure distance was originally established at 20 nautical miles, but the commander of the U.S. Media Manipulation. Under the operational control of Captain John J. Herrick, it steamed through the Gulf of Tonkin collecting intelligence. Americas Vietnam War had begun in earnest. President, weve just had a report from the commander of that task force out there The report is that they have observed and we don't know by what means two unidentified vessels and three unidentified prop aircraft in the vicinity of the destroyers, McNamara told the president. 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. Despite McNamaras nimble answers, North Vietnams insistence that there was a connection between 34A and the Desoto patrols was only natural. While 34A and the Desoto patrols were independent operations, the latter benefited from the increased signals traffic generated by the attacks of the former. . The two boats headed northeast along the same route they had come, then turned south for the run back to South Vietnam. Congress supported the resolution with On 6 August, Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara told a joint session of the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services Committees that the North Vietnamese attack on the Maddox was ". 313-314. Returning fire, Maddox scored hits on the P-4s while being struck by a single 14.5-millimeter machine gun bullet. It still is not clear whether the order was intended to halt the attack or to delay it until after nightfall, when there was a much greater chance for success. Through the evening of Aug. 4, while no new information arrivedto clarify the eventin the Gulf, the White House narrative was firmly in place. 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. This mission coincided with several 34A attacks, including an Aug. 1 raid on Hon Me and Hon Ngu Islands. HistoryNet.com is brought to you by HistoryNet LLC, the worlds largest publisher of history magazines. PTF-3 and PTF-6 broke off and streaked south for safety; they were back in port before 1200. 8. William Conrad Gibbons, The U.S. Government and the Vietnam War, Part II, 1961-1964, pp. When you visit the site, Dotdash Meredith and its partners may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. One element of American assistance to South Vietnam included covert support for South Vietnamese commando raids against North Vietnams coastal transportation facilities and networks. 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. Shortly after taking office following the death of President John F. Kennedy, President Lyndon B. Johnson became concerned about South Vietnam's ability to fend off the Communist Viet Cong guerillas that were operating in the country. 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. Within the year, U.S. bombers would strike North Vietnam, and U.S. ground units would land on South Vietnamese soil. In the meantime, aboard Turner Joy, Captain Herrick ordered an immediate review of the nights actions. 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. WebGulf of Tonkin Resolution, also called Tonkin Gulf Resolution, resolution put before the U.S. Congress by Pres. He reported those doubts in his after action report transmitted shortly after midnight his time on August 5, which was 1300 hours August 4 in Washington. 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. 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. Early Military Career At this point, U.S. involvement in Vietnam remained largely in the background. 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. With this information, back in Washington President Johnson and his advisers considered their options. He also requested air support. PRX is a 501(c)(3) organization recognized by the IRS: #263347402. 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 Any escalation in the bombing of the North risked provoking the Russians or, more likely, the Chinese. Forced Government Indoctrination Camps . The first critic report from Phu Bai reached Washington at about 0740 hours, Eastern Daylight Time (EDT). Originally begun by the Central Intelligence Agency in 1961, 34A was a highly-classified program of covert operations against North Vietnam. 8. In a conversation with Johnson, McNamara confirmedthis, with a reference to OP-CON 34A,acovert operation against the North Vietnamese. The bullets struck the destroyer; the torpedo missed. Codenamed Desoto, they were special U.S. Navy patrols designed to eavesdrop on enemy shore-based communicationsspecifically China, North Korea, and now North Vietnam. "Vietnam War: Gulf of Tonkin Incident." Oklahoma City Bombing. Alerted to the threat, Herrick requested air support from the carrier USS Ticonderoga. Naval Institute. On the night of 4 August, both ships reported renewed attacks by North Vietnamese patrol boats. AND THERE is the fact of Vietnam's position today. Summary Notes of the 538th Meeting of the NSC, 4 August 1964, 6:15-6:40 p.m.. 13. When the contacts appeared to turn away at 6,000 yards, Maddoxs crew interpreted the move as a maneuver to mark a torpedo launch. 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. Three days later, she rendezvoused with a tanker just east of the DMZ before beginning her intelligence- gathering mission up the North Vietnamese coast. 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. The Gulf of Tonkin Incident took place on Aug. 2 and 4, 1964, and helped lead to greater American involvement in the Vietnam War. In the subsequent exchange of fire, neither American nor North Vietnamese ships inflicted significant damage. Typically, the missions were carried out by a destroyer specially outfitted with sensitive eavesdropping equipment. 2. WebJoe Rogan interview on the 911 Conspiracy Theory. Based on this, they launched the political process that led to the wars escalation. The ships gunners used the standard 5 mil offset to avoid hitting the boats. This volume deals only with the former. 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 basic story line of the Gulf of Tonkin incident is as follows: At approximately 1430 hours Vietnam time on August 2, 1964, USS Maddox (DD-731) detected three North Vietnamese torpedo boats approaching at high speed. President Johnson and his advisers nevetheless went forward with a public announcement of an attack. WebCongress repealed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution before the United States' withdrawal from Vietnam in 1973. A Senate investigation revealed that the Maddox had been on an intelligence Naval Institute Proceedings (February 1992), p. 59. The crews quietly made last-minute plans, then split up. Although McNamara did not know it at the time, part of his statement was not true; Captain Herrick, the Desoto patrol commander, did know about the 34A raids, something that his ships logs later made clear. The USS Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin is shown in 1963. 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.. 14. 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. To subscribe to Vietnam Magazine, click here! 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. Just before midnight, the four boats cut their engines. But the administration dithered, informing the embassy only that "further OPLAN 34A operations should be held off pending review of the situation in Washington. This is another government conspiracy that's true. Keep supporting great journalism by turning off your ad blocker. 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. Speculation about administration motives surrounding the Tonkin Gulf incident itself and the subsequent withholding of key information will probably never cease, but the factual intelligence record that drove those decisions is now clear. 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. 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. . "The North Vietnamese are reacting defensively to our attacks on their offshore islands. But only a few minutes later, McNamara was back on the line with news of a second incident in the Gulf of Tonkin. 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. 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. In turn, that means Westmoreland reported that although he was not absolutely certain why the Swatows were shifted south, the move "could be attributable to recent successful [34A] operations. 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. Just after midnight on 4 August, PTF-6 turned for home, pursued by an enemy Swatow. 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. In a conversation with McNamara on Aug. 3, after the first incident, Johnson indicated he hadalready thought about the political ramifications of a military response and hadconsulted with several allies. 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. 2, pp. He spoke out against banning girls education. 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. It is not NSA's intention to prove or Senator Morse was one of the dissenters. Send the First Troops to Vietnam? The World is a public radio program that crosses borders and time zones to bring home the stories that matter. In fact, the United States had been waging a small, secret war against North Vietnam since 1961. 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. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.. The Secret Side of the Tonkin Gulf Incident, 2. 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. While there was some doubt in Washington regarding the second attack, those aboard Maddox and Turner Joy were convinced that it had occurred. 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. Heavy machine-gun bullets riddled PTF-6, tearing away part of the port bow and wounding four South Vietnamese crewmen, including Lieutenant Son. 1. 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.. HistoryNet.com contains daily features, photo galleries and over 25,000 articles originally published in our nine magazines. :: 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.". 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 Herrick requested aerial reconnaissance for the next morning to search for the wreckage of the torpedo boats he thought he had sunk. However, planes from the aircraft carrier Ticonderoga (CVA-14) crippled one of the boats and damaged the other two. No actual visual sightings by Maddox.". Thus, the South Vietnamese raid on Hon Me Island, a major North Vietnamese infiltration staging point, became the tripwire that set off the August 2 confrontation in the Gulf of Tonkin. 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. To the northwest, though they could not see it in the blackness, was Hon Me; to the southwest lay Hon Nieu. . But, interestingly, on Sept. 18, a similar incident occurred in the Gulf of Tonkin. Suns and Stars Despite this tremendous uncertainty, by midafternoon, the discussion among Johnson and his advisers was no longer about whether to respondbut how. Those same reports were shown to the select congressional and senate committees that also investigated the incident. As such, its personnel in Vietnam were the envy of their Army counterparts in the bush since, as it was commonly put, sailors sleep between clean sheets at night (the grunts were also envious of the Air Force, where you fight sitting down). Both sides claimed successes in the exchange that they did not actually achieve. Both of these messages reached Washington shortly after 1400 hours EDT. . "Vietnam War: Gulf of Tonkin Incident." 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. 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. Illumination rounds shot skyward, catching the patrol boats in their harsh glare. On July 31, 1964, the destroyer USS Maddox commenced a Desoto patrol off North Vietnam. 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. 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. "14, Nasty fast patrol boats demonstrated their versatility in the Pacific Ocean before going to Vietnam.U.S. 17. Captain Herrick had been ordered to be clear of the patrol area by nightfall, so he turned due east at approximately 1600. The 122 additional relevant SIGINT products confirmed that the Phu Bai station had misinterpreted or mistranslated many of the early August 3 SIGINT intercepts. 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 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 addition, the destroyer USS Turner Joy began moving to support Maddox. 1, Vietnam 1964 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1992), p. 611. 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." Unfortunately, much of the media reporting combined or confused the events of August 2 and 4 into a single incident. After suggesting a "complete evaluation" of the affair before taking further action, he radioed requesting a "thorough reconnaissance in daylight by aircraft." Even in the darkness, the commandos could see their targeta water tower surrounded by a few military buildings. WebNational Security Agency/Central Security Service > Home No one was hurt and little damage wasdone in the attack, but intercepted cables suggested a second attack might be imminent. While I was in training, my motivation was to get these wings and I wear them today proudly, the airman recalled in 2015. 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. Vaccines. The rounds set some of the buildings ablaze, keeping the defenders off balance. 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. You've read 1 out of 5 free articles of Naval History this month. Launching on Aug. 5, Operation Pierce Arrow saw aircraft from USS Ticonderoga and USS Constellation strike oil facilities at Vinh and attack approximately 30 North Vietnamese vessels. 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. On 28 July, the latest specially fitted destroyer, the Maddox (DD-731), set out from Taiwan for the South China Sea. But by the end of June, the situation had changed. The fig leaf of plausible denial served McNamara in this case, but it was scant cover. 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. By late July 1964, SOG had four Nasty-class patrol boats, designated. And it didnt take much detective work to figure out where the commandos were stationed. 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. Easily outdistancing the North Vietnamese boat, the commandos arrived back at Da Nang shortly after daybreak.8, North Vietnam immediately and publicly linked the 34A raids and the Desoto patrol, a move that threatened tentative peace feelers from Washington that were only just reaching Hanoi. NSA officials handed the key August SIGINT reports over to the JCS investigating team that examined the incident in September 1964. Badly damaged, the boat limped home. 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." Hanoi at the time denied all, leading to a third interpretation that remains alive today as what might be called the Stockdale thesis. Background intelligence on North Vietnam, its radar networks and command-and-control systems was limited. WebThe Senate passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution with only two opposing votes, and the House of Representatives passed it unanimously. originally appeared in the June 2008 issue of Vietnam magazine. Hickman, Kennedy. They were nicknamed "gassers" because they burned gasoline rather than diesel fuel. CIA Director John McCone was convinced that Hanoi was reacting to the raids when it attacked the Maddox. Conducted under the nationally approved Operations Plan, OPLAN-34A, the program required the intelligence community to provide detailed intelligence about the commando targets, the Norths coastal defenses and related surveillance systems. 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? "4 The North Vietnamese believed that, although they had lost one boat, they had deterred an attack on their coast. The Gulf of Tonkin act became more controversial as opposition to the war mounted. For 25 minutes the boats fired on the radar station, then headed back to Da Nang. As far as the headlines were concerned, that was it, but the covert campaign continued unabated. 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. In 2005 documents were released proving that Johnson had fabricated the Gulf of Tonkin incident in order to justify attacking North Vietnam. The stage was set. Vietnam is a very watery country. 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 Maddox fired againthis time to killhitting the second North Vietnamese boat just as it launched two torpedoes. "11 11. Whether they produced battlefield images of the dead or daguerreotype portraits of common soldiers, []. Such arguments are rooted in the information and documents released by Daniel Ellsberg and others, and were reinforced over the decades by anniversary interviews with some of the participants, including ships crewmen and officers. Perhaps that is the most enduring lesson from Americas use of SIGINT in the Vietnam War in general and the Gulf of Tonkin Incident in particular. Until the ICC investigation blew over a week later, the commandos camped on a small pier. Captain John J. Herrick, Commander Destroyer Division 192, embarked in the Maddox, concluded that there would be "possible hostile action." Few areas of the world have been as hotly contested as the India-Pakistan border. 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 after-action reports from the participants in the Gulf arrived in Washington several hours after the report of the second incident. Message, COMUSMACV 291233Z July 1964, CP 291345Z July 1964. All missed, probably because the North Vietnamese had fired too soon. By then, early news accounts had already solidified some opinions, and the Johnson Administration had decided to launch retaliatory strikes. This article is based on the PRI podcast, LBJ's War, hosted by David Brown. The Desoto patrol continued with another destroyer, the Turner Joy (DD-951), coming along to ward off further trouble.