Moments later, one of the crewmen spotted a North Vietnamese Swatow patrol boat bearing down on them. 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 crews quietly made last-minute plans, then split up. These types of patrols had previously been conducted off the coasts of the Soviet Union, China, and North Korea. 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"). 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 Desoto patrol continued with another destroyer, the Turner Joy (DD-951), coming along to ward off further trouble. 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. In a conversation with Johnson, McNamara confirmedthis, with a reference to OP-CON 34A,acovert operation against the North Vietnamese. This is another government conspiracy that's true. The entirety of the original intercepts, however, were not examined and reanalyzed until after the war. 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 ". "1 Most of these would be shore bombardment. The fig leaf of plausible denial served McNamara in this case, but it was scant cover. 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 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." But only a few minutes later, McNamara was back on the line with news of a second incident in the Gulf of Tonkin. Here's why he couldn't walk away. "The North Vietnamese are reacting defensively to our attacks on their offshore islands. Alerted to the threat, Herrick requested air support from the carrier USS Ticonderoga. 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. 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. The intelligence community, including its SIGINT component, responded with a regional buildup to support the increase in U.S. operational forces. 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. It took only a little imagination to see why the North Vietnamese might connect the two. Both sides claimed successes in the exchange that they did not actually achieve. The first such Desoto mission was conducted off the North Vietnamese coast in February 1964, followed by more through the spring. The United States Military had three SIGINT stations in the Philippines, one for each of the services, but their combined coverage was less than half of all potential North Vietnamese communications. Naval Institute Proceedings (February 1992), p. 59. PRX is a 501(c)(3) organization recognized by the IRS: #263347402. In less than 25 minutes, the attack was over. (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.). Lyndon Johnson on August 5, 1964, assertedly in reaction to two 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. Consequently, while Maddox was in the patrol area, a South Vietnamese commando raid was underway southwest of its position. . The lack of success in SOGs missions during the first few months of 1964 made this proposal quite attractive. WebCongress repealed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution before the United States' withdrawal from Vietnam in 1973. 302-303. The Americans claimed they sank two torpedo boats and damaged a third, while the torpedo boats claimed to have shot down two American aircraft. Carl Otis Schuster, U.S. Navy (ret.) 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. PTF-1 and PTF-5 raced toward shore. The battle was over in 22 minutes. "Vietnam War: Gulf of Tonkin Incident." HistoryNet.com is brought to you by HistoryNet LLC, the worlds largest publisher of history magazines. 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. As far as the headlines were concerned, that was it, but the covert campaign continued unabated. 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. More important, they did not know the North Vietnamese had begun to react more aggressively to the commando raids. 9. North Vietnams immediate concern was to determine the exact position and status of its torpedo boats and other forces. While 34A and the Desoto patrols were independent operations, the latter benefited from the increased signals traffic generated by the attacks of the former. At each point, the ship would stop and circle, picking up electronic signals before moving on. Until the ICC investigation blew over a week later, the commandos camped on a small pier. The Johnson Administration initially limited its response to a terse diplomatic note to Hanoi, the first-ever U.S. diplomatic note to that government. The Secret Side of the Tonkin Gulf Incident, 2. The Taliban silenced him. 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. 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. After a suspected torpedo attack by North Vietnamese patrol torpedo boats led to plans for US retaliation,the captain of the Maddox sent a cable to the Joint Chiefs that advised "complete evaluation before any further action"due to grave doubts over whether an attackhad reallyoccurred. 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.. 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. Ogier then opened fire at 1508 hours, when the boats were only six minutes from torpedo range. 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. 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. Both sides, however, spent August 3 reviewing their contingency plans and analyzing lessons learned from the incident. Both countries were backing North Vietnam, but so far they were staying out of the conflict and the White House wanted to keep it that way. 8. 4. Message, COMUSMACV 291233Z July 1964, CP 291345Z July 1964. The U.S. in-theater SIGINT assets were limited, as was the number of Vietnamese linguists. The secondary mission of the Gulf of Tonkin patrols was to assert American freedom of navigation in international waters. The Gulf of Tonkin Incident famously gave the Johnson Administration the justification they needed to escalate the Vietnam War. 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). 1. 15. 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. 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. 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. As the enemy boat passed astern, it was raked by gunfire from the Maddox that killed the boats commander. 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. And it didnt take much detective work to figure out where the commandos were stationed. 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. For the rest of the war they would be truly secretand in the end they were a dismal failure. 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. When the contacts appeared to turn away at 6,000 yards, Maddoxs crew interpreted the move as a maneuver to mark a torpedo launch. The ships sonar operator reported a noise spikenot a torpedowhich the Combat Information Center (CIC) team mistook for report of an incoming torpedo. By then, the two American ships were approximately 80 nautical miles from the nearest North Vietnamese coastline and steaming southeast at 20 knots. The only opposition came from a few scattered machine guns on shore, but they did no damage. 10. The only solution was to get rid of the evidence. 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). Ticonderoga ordered four A-1H Skyraiders into the air to support the ships. Within the year, U.S. bombers would strike North Vietnam, and U.S. ground units would land on South Vietnamese soil. LBJ knew the Vietnam War was a disaster in the making. 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. Quoted in Steve Edwards, "Stalking the Enemys Coast," U.S. 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.. Given the maritime nature of the commando raids, which were launched from Da Nang, the bulk of the intelligence collecting fell to the Navy. But, to me, the more pernicious deception was this idea that American ships were sailing innocently in the Gulf of Tonkin and were attacked without provocation, he continues. 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. . In 1964 an Ohio woman took up the challenge that had led to Amelia Earharts disappearance. Historians still disagree over whether Johnson deliberately misled Congress and the American people about the Tonkin Gulf incident or simply capitalized on an opportunity that came his way. 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. "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. 136-137. "Vietnam War: Gulf of Tonkin Incident." But Morse did not know enough about the program to ask pointed questions. With this information, back in Washington President Johnson and his advisers considered their options. Two days later, the Gulf of Tonkin resolution sailedthrough both houses of Congress by a vote of 504 to 2. 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. Few areas of the world have been as hotly contested as the India-Pakistan border. Then North Vietnams naval authorities either became confused or were seized by indecision. IV-2 to IV-4. The U.S. ships were supposed to remain well outside North Vietnams claimed five nautical mile territorial limit. The subsequent North Vietnamese reporting on the enemy matched the location, course and speed of Maddox. 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. On July 31, 1964, the destroyer USS Maddox commenced a Desoto patrol off North Vietnam. All missed, probably because the North Vietnamese had fired too soon. While there was some doubt in Washington regarding the second attack, those aboard Maddox and Turner Joy were convinced that it had occurred. 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. Both orders were repeated, but only the latter was relayed to the torpedo boats before the attack was launched. 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. 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. A U.S. Navy SEAL (Sea Air Land) team officer assigned to the SOG maritime operations training staff, Lieutenant James Hawes, led the covert boat fleet out of Da Nang and down the coast 300 miles to Cam Ranh Bay, where they waited out the crisis in isolation. The Dollar Bill . Did Johnson learn something from the first experience? Early Military Career Operations Security (OPSEC) concerns and related communications restrictions prevented Maddox and its operational commanders up to the Seventh Fleet from knowing of the commando raid.
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