Background intelligence on North Vietnam, its radar networks and command-and-control systems was limited. Carl Schuster is a retired U.S. Navy intelligence officer with 10 years of experience as a surface line officer. This was almost certainly a reaction to the recent 34A raids. 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 entirety of the original intercepts, however, were not examined and reanalyzed until after the war. 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. 4. Ticonderoga ordered four A-1H Skyraiders into the air to support the ships. He is the author of Shadow War: The Secret War in Laos, as well as several short studies on special operations, including The War in Cambodia (Osprey Books, 1988), The War in Laos (Osprey Books, 1989), and Southeast Asian Special Forces (Osprey Books, 1990). American SIGINT analysts assessed the North Vietnamese reporting as probable preparations for further military operations against the Desoto patrol. 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. By then, the two American ships were approximately 80 nautical miles from the nearest North Vietnamese coastline and steaming southeast at 20 knots. 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. But in the pre-dawn hours of July 31, 1964, U.S.-backed patrol boats shelled two North U.S. SIGINT support had provided ample warning of North Vietnams intentions and actions, enabling the American ship to defend itself successfully. 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. 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. Our response, for the present, will be limited and fitting. The boats followed at their maximum speed of 44 knots, continuing the chase for more than 20 minutes. William Conrad Gibbons, The U.S. Government and the Vietnam War, Part II, 1961-1964, pp. In response, the North Vietnamese built up their naval presence around the offshore islands. He spoke out against banning girls education. Under the operational control of Captain John J. Herrick, it steamed through the Gulf of Tonkin collecting intelligence. Captain Herrick had been ordered to be clear of the patrol area by nightfall, so he turned due east at approximately 1600. The subsequent North Vietnamese reporting on the enemy matched the location, course and speed of Maddox. 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. In turn, that means The Maddox planned to sail to 16 points along the North Vietnam coast, ranging from the DMZ north to the Chinese border. 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. 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. Until the ICC investigation blew over a week later, the commandos camped on a small pier. While there was some doubt in Washington regarding the second attack, those aboard Maddox and Turner Joy were convinced that it had occurred. 11. 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. Message, COMUSMACV 291233Z July 1964, CP 291345Z July 1964. Two days later, August 4, Maddox returned to the area, supported by the destroyer Turner Joy (DD-951). Given the maritime nature of the commando raids, which were launched from Da Nang, the bulk of the intelligence collecting fell to the Navy. 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. 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. We're going to retaliate and well make an announcement a little later in the evening, in the next hour or so and well ask Congress for a resolution of war the next day to support us, Johnson toldan old friend. President Johnson ordered a halt to all 34A operations "to avoid sending confusing signals associated with recent events in the Gulf of Tonkin." But Morse did not know enough about the program to ask pointed questions. The Gulf of Tonkin incident led to the expansion of the Vietnam War that resulted in a lot of American 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. Cruising twenty-eight miles offshore in international waters, Maddox was approached by the North Vietnamese. But the light helped the commandos as well, revealing their targets. They are part and parcel of a continuing Communist drive to conquer South Vietnam. The Americans claimed they sank two torpedo boats and damaged a third, while the torpedo boats claimed to have shot down two American aircraft. IV-2 to IV-4. 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. NSA officials handed the key August SIGINT reports over to the JCS investigating team that examined the incident in September 1964. Historians still argue about what exactly happened in the Gulf of Tonkin in August of 1964. We still seek no wider war.. You've read 1 out of 5 free articles of Naval History this month. 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. He readthe chiefs a cable from the captain of the Maddox. Not all wars are made for navies, and the U.S. Navy had to insinuate itself into the Vietnam one and carve out a role. Both men believed an attack on the American ships was imminent. History is a guide to navigation in perilous times. Based on this, they launched the political process that led to the wars escalation. In August 1964, Congress passed the Tonkin Gulf resolutionor Southeast Asia Resolution, as it is officially knownthe congressional decree that gave President Lyndon Johnson a broad mandate to wage war in Vietnam. 12. Telegram from Embassy in Vietnam to Department of State, 7 August 1964, FRUS 1964, vol. THIS SECOND volume of the U.S. Navy's multivolume history of the Vietnam War is bound in the same familiar rich blue buckram that has styled official Navy histories since the Civil War and hence resembles its predecessors. "The North Vietnamese are reacting defensively to our attacks on their offshore islands. No actual visual sightings by Maddox.". Subscribe to receive our weekly newsletter with top stories from master historians. The intelligence community, including its SIGINT component, responded with a regional buildup to support the increase in U.S. operational forces. Vaccines. This time, however, President Johnson reacted much more skeptically and ultimately decided to take no retaliatory action. 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. Subsequent SIGINT reporting and faulty analysis that day further reinforced earlier false impressions. https://www.historynet.com/case-closed-the-gulf-of-tonkin-incident/, Jerrie Mock: Record-Breaking American Female Pilot, When 21 Sikh Soldiers Fought the Odds Against 10,000 Pashtun Warriors, Few Red Tails Remain: Tuskegee Airman Dies at 96. And who is going to believe that? 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. 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. 8. The United States denied involvement. And it didnt take much detective work to figure out where the commandos were stationed. The most popular of these is that the incident was either a fabrication or deliberate American provocation. Hanoi was more than willing to tell the world about the attacks, and it took either a fool or an innocent to believe that the United States knew nothing about the raids. 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. There was no way to get a commando team ashore to plant demolition charges; they would have do what damage they could with the boats guns.3 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. The crews quietly made last-minute plans, then split up. It is difficult to imagine that the North Vietnamese could come to any other conclusion than that the 34A and Desoto missions were all part of the same operation. Two nearly identical episodes six weeks apart; two nearly opposite responses. 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.