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." 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. https://www.thoughtco.com/vietnam-war-gulf-of-tonkin-incident-2361345 (accessed March 4, 2023). The commander also added the requirement of collecting photographic intelligence of ships and aircraft encountered, as well as weather and hydrographic information. 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 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. Both sides claimed successes in the exchange that they did not actually achieve. 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. These types of patrols had previously been conducted off the coasts of the Soviet Union, China, and North Korea. As a result, the ships offshore were able to collect valuable information on North Vietnamese military capabilities. There remains some disagreement among historians about the second (Aug. 4) incident, which involved the Maddox and another destroyer, the USS Turner Joy. With this information, back in Washington President Johnson and his advisers considered their options. The 122 additional relevant SIGINT products confirmed that the Phu Bai station had misinterpreted or mistranslated many of the early August 3 SIGINT intercepts. 313-314. 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. At Hon Nieu, the attack was a complete surprise. However, planes from the aircraft carrier Ticonderoga (CVA-14) crippled one of the boats and damaged the other two. 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. 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 ". 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. 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. In addition, the destroyer USS Turner Joy began moving to support Maddox. 10. Both were perceived as threats, and both were in the same general area at about the same time. (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.). What will be of interest to the general reader is the treatment of the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. 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. Three days later, she rendezvoused with a tanker just east of the DMZ before beginning her intelligence- gathering mission up the North Vietnamese coast. Early Military Career Did Johnson learn something from the first experience? In Saigon, Ambassador Maxwell Taylor objected to the halt, saying that "it is my conviction that we must resume these operations and continue their pressure on North Vietnam as soon as possible, leaving no impression that we or the South Vietnamese have been deterred from our operations because of the Tonkin Gulf incidents." To have a Tonkin Gulf conspiracy means that the several hundred National Security Agency and naval communications cited have been doctored. WebGulf of Tonkin conspiracy. 11. For the maritime war specialist, it is of course invaluable. . As far as the headlines were concerned, that was it, but the covert campaign continued unabated. Forced Government Indoctrination Camps . 13. The Pyramid and All-Seeing Eye . It took only a little imagination to see why the North Vietnamese might connect the two. Not reported at the time, Herrick instructed his gun crews to fire three warning shots if the North Vietnamese came within 10,000 yards of the ship. Captain Herrick had been ordered to be clear of the patrol area by nightfall, so he turned due east at approximately 1600. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.. The North also protested the South Vietnamese commando raid on Hon Me Island and claimed that the Desoto Mission ships had been involved in that raid. 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. Telegram from the Department of State to the Embassy in Vietnam, 3 August 1964, FRUS, Vietnam, 1964, p. 603. 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. The captain of Maddox, Commander Herbert L. Ogier Jr., ordered his ship to battle stations shortly after 1500 hours. 8. 17. He then requested the passage of a resolution "expressing the unity and determination of the United States in supporting freedom and in protecting peace in Southeast Asia." 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.. The ships gunners used the standard 5 mil offset to avoid hitting the boats. 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. And it didnt take much detective work to figure out where the commandos were stationed. To the northwest, though they could not see it in the blackness, was Hon Me; to the southwest lay Hon Nieu. Through the evening of Aug. 4, while no new information arrivedto clarify the eventin the Gulf, the White House narrative was firmly in place. Neither ships crew knew about the North Vietnamese salvage operation. Whether they produced battlefield images of the dead or daguerreotype portraits of common soldiers, []. On 3 August, the CIA confirmed that "Hanois naval units have displayed increasing sensitivity to U.S. and South Vietnamese naval activity in the Gulf of Tonkin during the past several months. Based on the intercepts, Captain John J. Herrick, the on-scene mission commander aboard nearby Turner Joy, decided to terminate Maddoxs Desoto patrol late on August 1, because he believed he had indications the ship was about to be attacked.. In fact, the United States had been waging a small, secret war against North Vietnam since 1961. Arguing that he did not seek a "wider war," Johnson stated the importance of showing that the United States would "continue to protect its national interests." The intelligence community, including its SIGINT component, responded with a regional buildup to support the increase in U.S. operational forces. 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. In the years covered here, the Navy was generally known throughout the U.S. Mission in Saigon for being in the housekeeping business, operating supply warehouses, and running the officer clubs, PXs and other amenities, an inevitable part of the American military's baggage. 4. ThoughtCo, Feb. 16, 2021, thoughtco.com/vietnam-war-gulf-of-tonkin-incident-2361345. Neither Herricks doubts nor his reconnaissance request was well received, however. Seventh Fleet reduced it to 12 nautical miles. Telegram from Embassy in Vietnam to Department of State, 7 August 1964. The first such Desoto mission was conducted off the North Vietnamese coast in February 1964, followed by more through the spring. Listen to McNamara's conversation with Johnson. 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. In November of 2001, the LBJ Presidential library and museum released tapes of phone conversations with the President and then Defense 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. 5. Related:LBJ knew the Vietnam War was a disaster in the making. 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 The only solution was to get rid of the evidence. "1 Most of these would be shore bombardment. Historians still argue about what exactly happened in the Gulf of Tonkin in August of 1964. 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. McNamara did not mention the 34A raids.15. 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. Robert S. McNamara, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam (New York: Times Books, 1995), pp. Kennedy Hickman is a historian, museum director, and curator who specializes in military and naval history. Suffice to say here that the version as presented here by Marolda and Fitzgerald is highly credible and completely plausible, and I for one am persuaded of its correctness. 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. . And, of course, McNamara himself knew about the "South Vietnamese actions in connection with the two islands," but his cautiously worded answer got him out of admitting it. JCS, "34A Chronology of Events," (see Marolda and Fitzgerald, p. 424); Porter. In the future, conventional operations would receive all the attention. This article is based on the PRI podcast, LBJ's War, hosted by David Brown. In this case, perception was much more important than reality.10. Unable to catch the fast South Vietnamese PTFs, the government in Hanoi elected to strike instead at USS Maddox. Two nearly identical episodes six weeks apart; two nearly opposite responses. Shortly after ordering the airstrikes, Johnson went on television and addressed the nation regarding the incident. Sign up for The Top of the World, delivered to your inbox every weekday morning. After suggesting a "complete evaluation" of the affair before taking further action, he radioed requesting a "thorough reconnaissance in daylight by aircraft." The maximum closure distance was originally established at 20 nautical miles, but the commander of the U.S. It set a very terrible precedent, which is that he would go on to escalate further, not with any striking confidence that his objectives will be achieved, but only with the assurance that, unless he embarked on these massive military escalations, America would fail in Vietnam and he might well be labeled the only president in American history to lose a war.. Hanoi at the time denied all, leading to a third interpretation that remains alive today as what might be called the Stockdale thesis. Declassified NSA documents show that US intelligence members concealed relevant reports from Congress to push the narrative of a second attack. Both boats opened fire, scoring hits on the tower, then moved on to other buildings nearby. including the use of armed force" to assist South Vietnam (the resolution passed the House 416 to 0, and the Senate 88 to 2; in January 1971 President Nixon signed legislation that included its "repeal"). Two days later, August 4, Maddox returned to the area, supported by the destroyer Turner Joy (DD-951). 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.

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