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In November of 2001, the LBJ Presidential library and museum released tapes of phone conversations with the President and then Defense 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 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. Subscribe now and never hit a limit. In 1964 an Ohio woman took up the challenge that had led to Amelia Earharts disappearance. Ships radar detected five patrol boats, which turned out to be P-4 torpedo boats and Swatows. 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. Alerted to the threat, Herrick requested air support from the carrier USS Ticonderoga. 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 Tonkin Gulf Resolution (1964) | National Archives 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 And who is going to believe that? 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. At 0354 on 2 August, the destroyer was just south of Hon Me Island. Subsequent research and declassified documents have essentially shown that the second attack did not happen. The subsequent North Vietnamese reporting on the enemy matched the location, course and speed of Maddox. The three torpedo boats continued through the American barrage and launched their torpedoes at 1516. . Senate investigations in 1968 and 1975 did little to clarify the events or the evidence, lending further credence to the various conspiracy theories. Within the year, U.S. bombers would strike North Vietnam, and U.S. ground units would land on South Vietnamese soil. When you visit the site, Dotdash Meredith and its partners may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. 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. LBJ knew the Vietnam War was a disaster in the making. Both U.S. ships opened fire on the radar contacts, but reported problems maintaining a lock on the tracking and fire control solution. Each boat carried a 16-man crew and a 57-mm recoilless rifle, plus machine guns. On July 31, 1964, the destroyer USS Maddox commenced a Desoto patrol off North Vietnam. 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. 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." 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. The Gulf of Tonkin incident, like others in our nation's history, has become the center of considerable controversy and debate. 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. WebThe Senate passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution with only two opposing votes, and the House of Representatives passed it unanimously. In less than 25 minutes, the attack was over. Media Manipulation. WebGulf of Tonkin Resolution, also called Tonkin Gulf Resolution, resolution put before the U.S. Congress by Pres. the Gulf of Tonkin Gulf of Tonkin - Wikipedia The people who are calling me up, they want to be damned sure I don't pull 'em out and run, and they want to be damned sure that we're firm. 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). Summary Notes of the 538th Meeting of the NSC, 4 August 1964, 6:15-6:40 p.m.. 13. The commander also added the requirement of collecting photographic intelligence of ships and aircraft encountered, as well as weather and hydrographic information. But the administration dithered, informing the embassy only that "further OPLAN 34A operations should be held off pending review of the situation in Washington. Milestones: 19611968 - Office of the Historian The stakes were high because Hanoi had beefed up its southern coastal defenses by adding four new Swatow gunboats at Quang Khe, a naval base 75 miles north of the DMZ, and ten more just to the south at Dong Hoi. WebGulf of Tonkin conspiracy. 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. 302-303. Then North Vietnams naval authorities either became confused or were seized by indecision. ", "No," replied McCone. Consequently, while Maddox was in the patrol area, a South Vietnamese commando raid was underway southwest of its position. They were nicknamed "gassers" because they burned gasoline rather than diesel fuel. Interview, authors with James Hawes, 31 March 1996. It took only a little imagination to see why the North Vietnamese might connect the two. HistoryNet.com contains daily features, photo galleries and over 25,000 articles originally published in our nine magazines. . Johnsonasked for, and received, a resolution of war from the US Congress that led to further escalation in the conflict. No actual visual sightings by Maddox.". Both men believed an attack on the American ships was imminent. People are human and make mistakes, particularly in the pressure of a crisis or physical threat to those they support. Conspiracy 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. THE UNITED STATES NAVY AND THE VIETNAM CONFLICT Volume II: From Military Assistance to Combat, 1959-1965 By Edward J. Marolda and Oscar P. Fitzgerald Government Printing Office for The Naval Historical Center 591 pp. These warning shots were fired and the P-4s launched a torpedo attack. By late July 1964, SOG had four Nasty-class patrol boats, designated. Gulf of Tonkin & the Vietnam 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. 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. "11 Forty-five minutes after beginning their attack, the commandos withdrew. Just after midnight on 4 August, PTF-6 turned for home, pursued by an enemy Swatow. Gulf of Tonkin Conspiracy Theory The after-action reports from the participants in the Gulf arrived in Washington several hours after the report of the second incident. 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. As the torpedo boats continued their high-speed approach, Maddox was ordered to fire warning shots if they closed inside 10,000 yards. Joseph C. Goulden, Truth Is the First Casualty: The Gulf of Tonkin AffairIllusion and Reality (Chicago: Rand McNally & Co., 1969), p. 80. But, interestingly, on Sept. 18, a similar incident occurred in 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." Over the next few years, Johnson used the resolution to rapidly escalate American involvement in the Vietnam War. . The Gulf of Tonkin incident - Vietnam War The Gulf of Tonkin Incident famously gave the Johnson Administration the justification they needed to escalate the Vietnam War. Until the ICC investigation blew over a week later, the commandos camped on a small pier. 136-137. 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. Conspiracy At the White House, administration officials panicked as the public spotlight illuminated their policy in Vietnam and threatened to reveal its covert roots. For 25 minutes the boats fired on the radar station, then headed back to Da Nang. . HistoryNet.com is brought to you by HistoryNet LLC, the worlds largest publisher of history magazines. 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. 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. originally appeared in the June 2008 issue of Vietnam magazine. A National Security Agency report released in 2007 reveals unequivocally that the alleged Aug. 4, 1964, attack by North Vietnam on U.S. destroyers never actually happened. 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). Until 1964, Desoto patrols stayed at least 20 miles away from the coast. In a conversation with Johnson, McNamara confirmedthis, with a reference to OP-CON 34A,acovert operation against the North Vietnamese. 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 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. Seeking to follow the established policy of containment, Johnson and his Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, began increasing military aid to South Vietnam. The Desoto patrol continued with another destroyer, the Turner Joy (DD-951), coming along to ward off further trouble. 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. Here's why he couldn't walk away. When Did the U.S. It can be deceived and it is all too often incomplete. That very night, the idea was put to the test. A North Vietnamese patrol boat also trailed the American ships, reporting on their movements to Haiphong. Gulf of Tonkin incident | Definition, Date, Summary, Significance McNamara was ready to respond. This is another government conspiracy that's true. In the days leading up to the first incident of August 2nd, those secret operations had intensified.. 4. You can find out more about our use, change your default settings, and withdraw your consent at any time with effect for the future by visiting Cookies Settings, which can also be found in the footer of the site. By then, the two American ships were approximately 80 nautical miles from the nearest North Vietnamese coastline and steaming southeast at 20 knots. North Vietnams immediate concern was to determine the exact position and status of its torpedo boats and other forces. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.. In this case, perception was much more important than reality.10. 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. The Gulf of Tonkin incident was a brief confrontation between United States and North Vietnamese warships, off the coast of northern Vietnam in August 1964. "5, In reality there was little actual coordination between 34A and Desoto. 10. 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. 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. Shortly after ordering the airstrikes, Johnson went on television and addressed the nation regarding the incident. Naval Institute Proceedings (February 1992), p. 59. Office of the Historian What really happened in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964? (Hanoi remains muzzy on the second incident, Aug. 4, presumably since clearly it took place in international waters, the Vietnamese claim of "defensive reaction" is a bit wobbly.). For some reason, however, the second Desoto Mission, to be conducted by Maddox, was not canceled, even though it was scheduled to start at the same time that a late July commando mission was being launched. At 1505, when the torpedo boats had closed within 10,000 yards, in accordance with Captain Herricks orders and as allowed under international law at that time, Maddox fired three warning shots. Subsequent SIGINT reporting and faulty analysis that day further reinforced earlier false impressions. They are part and parcel of a continuing Communist drive to conquer South Vietnam. Lyndon Johnson on August 5, 1964, assertedly in reaction to two PTF-3 and PTF-6 broke off and streaked south for safety; they were back in port before 1200. President Johnson himself apparently questioned the sailorsu0019 report of an attack. To subscribe to Vietnam Magazine, click here! ." To have a Tonkin Gulf conspiracy means that the several hundred National Security Agency and naval communications cited have been doctored. His assessment of the evidence now raised doubts in his mind about what really had happened. On the afternoon of Aug. 2, three Soviet-built P-4 motor torpedo boats were dispatched to attack the destroyer. Just before midnight, the four boats cut their engines. 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. Scattered small-arms sent tracers toward the commandos, but no one was hurt. Hereafter referred to as FRUS, Vietnam 1964; Congressional Research Service, The U.S. Government and the Vietnam War: Executive and Legislative Roles and Relationships, Part II, 1961-1964 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1984), p. 287; Message CTG72.1 040140Z August 1964 (Marolda and Fitzgerald, p. 425). The 122 additional relevant SIGINT products confirmed that the Phu Bai station had misinterpreted or mistranslated many of the early August 3 SIGINT intercepts.