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. 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. The World is a public radio program that crosses borders and time zones to bring home the stories that matter. Aircraft from Ticonderoga arrived on-scene at 1528 hours and fired on the boats. Hickman, Kennedy. Both sides claimed successes in the exchange that they did not actually achieve. Codenamed Desoto, they were special U.S. Navy patrols designed to eavesdrop on enemy shore-based communicationsspecifically China, North Korea, and now North Vietnam. Defense Secretary McNamara called the president about the second Phu Bai critic report at approximately 0940 that morning. 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. 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. 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. Lyndon Johnson on August 5, 1964, assertedly in reaction to two 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. Our response, for the present, will be limited and fitting. Telegram from the Department of State to the Embassy in Vietnam, 3 August 1964. Gulf of Tonkin - A secret report reveals how easily soldiers, spies and politicians can jump to a conclusion and plunge the country into war. Returning fire, Maddox scored hits on the P-4s while being struck by a single 14.5-millimeter machine gun bullet. Hickman, Kennedy. Despite McNamaras nimble answers, North Vietnams insistence that there was a connection between 34A and the Desoto patrols was only natural. But Morse did not know enough about the program to ask pointed questions. Moises book, however, was based on only the few SIGINT reports he was able to obtain through the Freedom of Information Act. Joseph C. Goulden, Truth Is the First Casualty: The Gulf of Tonkin AffairIllusion and Reality (Chicago: Rand McNally & Co., 1969), p. 80. originally appeared in the June 2008 issue of Vietnam magazine. Here's why he couldn't walk away. By then, the two American ships were approximately 80 nautical miles from the nearest North Vietnamese coastline and steaming southeast at 20 knots. 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. Any escalation in the bombing of the North risked provoking the Russians or, more likely, the Chinese. The study debunks two strongly held but opposing beliefs about what happened on both dayson the one hand that neither of the reported attacks ever took place at all, and on the other that there was in fact a second deliberate North Vietnamese attack on August 4. 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). After several early failures, it was transferred to the Military Assistance Command, Vietnam Studies and Observations Group in 1964, at which time its focus shifted to maritime operations. There was more or less general acceptance of the Navy's initial account -- there was an unprovoked attack on Aug. 2 by three North Vietnamese patrol boats on an American warship, the destroyer USS Maddox in international waters. 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 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 Hanoi at the time denied all, leading to a third interpretation that remains alive today as what might be called the Stockdale thesis. But the administration dithered, informing the embassy only that "further OPLAN 34A operations should be held off pending review of the situation in Washington. Neither the United States nor State of Vietnam signed anything at the 1954 Geneva Conference. NSA officials handed the key August SIGINT reports over to the JCS investigating team that examined the incident in September 1964. Forty-five minutes after beginning their attack, the commandos withdrew. Ships radar detected five patrol boats, which turned out to be P-4 torpedo boats and Swatows. Thousands of passengers are stranded after Colombias Viva Air grounds flights, The last of Mexicos artisanal salt-makers preserve a 2,000-year-old tradition, I cannot give up: Cambodian rapper says he will sing about injustice despite threats from govt, Ukrainian rock star reflects on a year of war in his country, Ukrainian refugees in Poland will now be charged to stay in state-funded housing, This Colombian town is dimming its lights to attract more tourists to view the night sky, Kneel and apologize!: 76 years after island-wide massacre, Taiwan continues to commemorate and debate the tragedy. 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. "Vietnam War: Gulf of Tonkin Incident." Soon came a second more sinister interpretation -- that the incident was a conspiracy not only provoked by the Johnson administration but one in fact "scenarioed." 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. 2. The most comprehensive and authoritative history site on the Internet. On the afternoon of Aug. 2, three Soviet-built P-4 motor torpedo boats were dispatched to attack the destroyer. In a conversation with Johnson, McNamara confirmedthis, with a reference to OP-CON 34A,acovert operation against the North Vietnamese. The captain of Maddox, Commander Herbert L. Ogier Jr., ordered his ship to battle stations shortly after 1500 hours. The Navys seaborne SIGINT effort in support of OPLAN-34, called Desoto Missions, played a key role in the events that ultimately led to the Gulf of Tonkin incident. As the enemy boat passed astern, it was raked by gunfire from the Maddox that killed the boats commander. McNamara and the JCS believed that this intercept decisively provided the smoking gun of the second attack, and so the president reported to the American people and Congress. One element of American assistance to South Vietnam included covert support for South Vietnamese commando raids against North Vietnams coastal transportation facilities and networks. We still seek no wider war.. This volume deals only with the former. "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 Pentagon had already released details of the attack, and administration officials had already promised strong action. 1, p. 646. But for a band of South Vietnamese commandos and a handful of U.S. advisers, not much had changed. 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." That very night, the idea was put to the test. 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. The Maddox planned to sail to 16 points along the North Vietnam coast, ranging from the DMZ north to the Chinese border. 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. The Dollar Bill . 3. The Health Conspiracy. Vietnam is a very watery country. 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. Moving in closer, the crew could see their targeta communications towersilhouetted in the moonlight. American SIGINT analysts assessed the North Vietnamese reporting as probable preparations for further military operations against the Desoto patrol. 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. 302-303. AIDS Brotherhood Symbology The Illuminati Flame . Quoted in Steve Edwards, "Stalking the Enemys Coast," U.S. Interview, authors with James Hawes, 31 March 1996. WebThe Gulf of Tonkin and the Vietnam War. 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. PTF-3 and PTF-6 broke off and streaked south for safety; they were back in port before 1200. George C. Herring, ed., The Secret Diplomacy of the Vietnam War: The Negotiating Volumes of the Pentagon Papers (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1983), p. 18. The Gulf of Tonkin act became more controversial as opposition to the war mounted. At each point, the ship would stop and circle, picking up electronic signals before moving on. While I was in training, my motivation was to get these wings and I wear them today proudly, the airman recalled in 2015. 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. The Vietnam War buff will find it fascinating for its wealth of detail carefully set down in understated prose (a welcome relief, I might add, from the hysterical tone that marks much Vietnam War writing). A North Vietnamese patrol boat also trailed the American ships, reporting on their movements to Haiphong. The most popular of these is that the incident was either a fabrication or deliberate American provocation. For the maritime part of the covert operation, Nasty-class fast patrol boats were purchased quietly from Norway to lend the illusion that the United States was not involved in the operations. They were nicknamed "gassers" because they burned gasoline rather than diesel fuel. The two boats headed northeast along the same route they had come, then turned south for the run back to South Vietnam. 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.. The history stops with the U.S. Navy moving into full combat duty -- the naval and air interdictions in South and North Vietnam -- the subject of future volumes. . 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. In an effort to increase pressure on North Vietnam, several Norwegian-built fast patrol boats (PTFs) were covertly purchased and transferred to South Vietnam. 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. Nonetheless, the North Vietnamese boats continued to close in at the rate of 400 yards per minute. WebCongress repealed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution before the United States' withdrawal from Vietnam in 1973. 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. Two days later, the Gulf of Tonkin resolution sailedthrough both houses of Congress by a vote of 504 to 2. 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. The secondary mission of the Gulf of Tonkin patrols was to assert American freedom of navigation in international waters. I would not suggest that he learned from the Gulf of Tonkin incident so much as that he got from it exactly what he wanted, which was an enormous bump in approval ratings 30 percent overnight, says historian Chris Oppe. The first such Desoto mission was conducted off the North Vietnamese coast in February 1964, followed by more through the spring. But we sure ought to always leave the impression that if you shoot at us, you're going to get hit, Johnson said. The lack of success in SOGs missions during the first few months of 1964 made this proposal quite attractive. In the subsequent exchange of fire, neither American nor North Vietnamese ships inflicted significant damage. What will be of interest to the general reader is the treatment of the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. 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. The report also identifies what SIGINT couldand could nottell commanders about their enemies and their unreliable friends in the war. 9/11. 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. Then they boarded their boats and headed back to Da Nang.12 They are part and parcel of a continuing Communist drive to conquer South Vietnam. The accords, which were signed by other participants including the Viet Minh, mandated a temporary ceasefire line, which separated southern and northern Vietnam to be governed by the State of Vietnam an President Johnson ordered a halt to all 34A operations "to avoid sending confusing signals associated with recent events in the Gulf of Tonkin." 11. HistoryNet.com contains daily features, photo galleries and over 25,000 articles originally published in our nine magazines. Under the operational control of Captain John J. Herrick, it steamed through the Gulf of Tonkin collecting intelligence. Two nearly identical episodes six weeks apart; two nearly opposite responses. 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. 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. 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." 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). 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. Both orders were repeated, but only the latter was relayed to the torpedo boats before the attack was launched. 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." 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 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.). McNamara did not mention the 34A raids.15. The Desoto patrol continued with another destroyer, the Turner Joy (DD-951), coming along to ward off further trouble. Aircraft from the Ticonderoga (CVA-14) appeared on the scene, strafing three torpedo boats and sinking the one that had been damaged in the battle with the Maddox. 17. Badly damaged, the boat limped home. Fluoride. The Gulf of Tonkin incident was a 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 unprovoked attacks by North Vietnamese torpedo boats on the destroyers Maddox and Turner Joy of the U.S. The Secret Side of the Tonkin Gulf Incident | Naval History no isolated event. The intelligence community, including its SIGINT component, responded with a regional buildup to support the increase in U.S. operational forces. However, planes from the aircraft carrier Ticonderoga (CVA-14) crippled one of the boats and damaged the other two. 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 At about the same time, there were other "secret" missions going on. Send the First Troops to Vietnam? The 522-page NSA official history Spartans in Darkness: American SIGINT and the Indochina War, 1945-1975, triggered a new round of media reporting and renewed debate about what really happened in the Gulf of Tonkin. We have no intention of yielding to pressure. Americas Vietnam War had begun in earnest. Naval Institute. CIA Director John McCone was convinced that Hanoi was reacting to the raids when it attacked the Maddox. The departure of the North Vietnamese salvage tug en route to the damaged craft was reported to the American ships as a submarine chaser, not a serious threat but certainly more so than an unarmed seagoing tug. And it didnt take much detective work to figure out where the commandos were stationed. 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. 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. LBJ knew the Vietnam War was a disaster in the making. . 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. There remains some disagreement among historians about the second (Aug. 4) incident, which involved the Maddox and another destroyer, the USS Turner Joy. 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. North Vietnams immediate concern was to determine the exact position and status of its torpedo boats and other forces. Media Manipulation. When the enemy boats closed to less than 10,000 yards, the destroyer fired three shots across the bow of the lead vessel. 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 combating unconventional opponents and the potential consequences of relying too heavily on a single source of intelligence. That night, on national television, Johnson addressedthe American people, saying,Renewed hostile actions against United States ships on the high seas in the Gulf of Tonkin have today required me to take action and reply. 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." The first reports of the encounter from the destroyers reached the White House at 1000 EDT. The Americans claimed they sank two torpedo boats and damaged a third, while the torpedo boats claimed to have shot down two American aircraft. Unlike much else that followed, this incident is undisputed, although no one from the US government ever admitted publicly that the attack was likely provoked by its covert actions. At 2000 hours local time, Maddox reported it had two surface and three aerial contacts on radar. PRX is a 501(c)(3) organization recognized by the IRS: #263347402. When the boats reached that point, Maddox fired three warning shots, but the torpedo boats continued inbound at high speed. "Vietnam War: Gulf of Tonkin Incident."
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