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. 1, Vietnam 1964 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1992), p. 611. 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. 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. 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 about the same time, there were other "secret" missions going on. Badly damaged, the boat limped home. . 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. 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. JCS, "34A Chronology of Events," (see Marolda and Fitzgerald, p. 424); Porter. 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. 313-314. 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. Summary Notes of the 538th Meeting of the NSC, 4 August 1964, 6:15-6:40 p.m., Foreign Relations of the United States 1964-1968, vol. 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. When the boats reached that point, Maddox fired three warning shots, but the torpedo boats continued inbound at high speed. WebGulf of Tonkin Resolution, also called Tonkin Gulf Resolution, resolution put before the U.S. Congress by Pres. Joseph C. Goulden, Truth Is the First Casualty: The Gulf of Tonkin AffairIllusion and Reality (Chicago: Rand McNally & Co., 1969), p. 80. The House passed the resolution unanimously.17 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. For additional reading, see the recently declassified NSA study by Robert J. Hanyok, Spartans in the Darkness: American SIGINT and the Indochina War, 1945-1975; and Tonkin Gulf and The Escalation of the Vietnam War, by Edward Moise. At the White House, administration officials panicked as the public spotlight illuminated their policy in Vietnam and threatened to reveal its covert roots. 17. Vietnam is a very watery country. A Senate investigation revealed that the Maddox had been on an intelligence This volume deals only with the former. In the future, conventional operations would receive all the attention. The maximum closure distance was originally established at 20 nautical miles, but the commander of the U.S. 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. Through the evening of Aug. 4, while no new information arrivedto clarify the eventin the Gulf, the White House narrative was firmly in place. Subsequent SIGINT reporting and faulty analysis that day further reinforced earlier false impressions. The Gulf of Tonkin incident led to the expansion of the Vietnam War that resulted in a lot of American While 34A and the Desoto patrols were independent operations, the latter benefited from the increased signals traffic generated by the attacks of the former. . Aircraft from Ticonderoga arrived on-scene at 1528 hours and fired on the boats. Both were perceived as threats, and both were in the same general area at about the same time. ", "No," replied McCone. 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. Subscribe to LBJ's War onApple Podcasts. But Morse did not know enough about the program to ask pointed questions. Taking evasive action, they fired on numerous radar targets. Sign up to get updates about new releases and event invitations. The United States denied involvement. The Dollar Bill . They were nicknamed "gassers" because they burned gasoline rather than diesel fuel. 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. 10. Most uncertainty has long centered on the alleged second attack of August 4. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.. 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 Maddox fired againthis time to killhitting the second North Vietnamese boat just as it launched two torpedoes. Moments later, one of the crewmen spotted a North Vietnamese Swatow patrol boat bearing down on them. The first critic report from Phu Bai reached Washington at about 0740 hours, Eastern Daylight Time (EDT). Oklahoma City Bombing. Both of these messages reached Washington shortly after 1400 hours EDT. Despite this tremendous uncertainty, by midafternoon, the discussion among Johnson and his advisers was no longer about whether to respondbut how. 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. During the afternoon of 3 August, another maritime team headed north from Da Nang. While many facts and details have emerged in the past 44 years to persuade most observers that some of the reported events in the Gulf never actually happened, key portions of the critical intelligence information remained classified until recently. And it didnt take much detective work to figure out where the commandos were stationed. 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. The Gulf of Tonkin act became more controversial as opposition to the war mounted. As the torpedo boats continued their high-speed approach, Maddox was ordered to fire warning shots if they closed inside 10,000 yards. 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 ". To increase the chances of success, SOG proposed increased raids along the coast, emphasizing offshore bombardment by the boats rather than inserting commandos. The bullets struck the destroyer; the torpedo missed. The publicity caused by the Tonkin Gulf incident and the subsequent resolution shifted attention away from covert activities and ended high-level debate over the wisdom of secret operations against North Vietnam. 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. The 122 additional relevant SIGINT products confirmed that the Phu Bai station had misinterpreted or mistranslated many of the early August 3 SIGINT intercepts. This along with flawed signals intelligence from the National Security Agency led Johnson to order retaliatory airstrikes against North Vietnam. Just after midnight on 4 August, PTF-6 turned for home, pursued by an enemy Swatow. PTF-1 and PTF-5 raced toward shore. One 12.7mm machine bullet hit Maddox before the boats broke off and started to withdraw. But only a few minutes later, McNamara was back on the line with news of a second incident in the Gulf of Tonkin. Media reporting on the NSA reports assessments sparked a brief rehash of the old arguments about the Gulf of Tonkin. In a conversation with McNamara on Aug. 3, after the first incident, Johnson indicated he hadalready thought about the political ramifications of a military response and hadconsulted with several allies. A lesser-known fact is that Jim Morrisons father, Captain George Stephen Morrison, commanded the Carrier Division during the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. 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. 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. 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. Over the next few years, Johnson used the resolution to rapidly escalate American involvement in the Vietnam War. The Health Conspiracy. Hickman, Kennedy. 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. Then they boarded their boats and headed back to Da Nang.12 After 15 minutes of maneuvering, the F-8s arrived and strafed the North Vietnamese boats, damaging two and leaving the third dead in the water. 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. WebThe Gulf of Tonkin and the Vietnam War. no isolated event. Three days later, she rendezvoused with a tanker just east of the DMZ before beginning her intelligence- gathering mission up the North Vietnamese coast. The NSA report is revealing. The rounds set some of the buildings ablaze, keeping the defenders off balance. "1 Most of these would be shore bombardment. 136-137. 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. When the contacts appeared to turn away at 6,000 yards, Maddoxs crew interpreted the move as a maneuver to mark a torpedo launch. Just before midnight, the four boats cut their engines. 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. 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.. 8. By late July 1964, SOG had four Nasty-class patrol boats, designated. In 2005 documents were released proving that Johnson had fabricated the Gulf of Tonkin incident in order to justify attacking North Vietnam. But in the pre-dawn hours of July 31, 1964, U.S.-backed patrol boats shelled two North Meanwhile, by late August 3, the North Vietnamese had learned the condition of their torpedo boats and ordered a salvage tug to recover the damaged craft. This article by Capt. Hanoi pointed out what Washington denied: "On July 30, 1964 . The stage was set. Senator Morse was one of the dissenters. To have a Tonkin Gulf conspiracy means that the several hundred National Security Agency and naval communications cited have been doctored. 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. 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). Subsequent research and declassified documents have essentially shown that the second attack did not happen. 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. Navy, Of course, none of this was known to Congress, which demanded an explanation for the goings-on in the Tonkin Gulf. 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.. The threat removed, Maddox retired from the area to rejoin friendly forces. 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. Send the First Troops to Vietnam? Here's why he couldn't walk away. AND THERE is the fact of Vietnam's position today. . The report also identifies what SIGINT couldand could nottell commanders about their enemies and their unreliable friends in the war. While there was some doubt in Washington regarding the second attack, those aboard Maddox and Turner Joy were convinced that it had occurred. Because the North Vietnamese had fewer than 50 Swatows, most of them up north near the important industrial port of Haiphong, the movement south of one-third of its fleet was strong evidence that 34A and the Desoto patrols were concerning Hanoi. But by the end of June, the situation had changed. 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. Nonetheless, the North Vietnamese boats continued to close in at the rate of 400 yards per minute. NSA officials handed the key August SIGINT reports over to the JCS investigating team that examined the incident in September 1964. CIA Bulletin, 3 August 1964 (see Edward J. Marolda and Oscar P. Fitzgerald, 5. 1. The secondary mission of the Gulf of Tonkin patrols was to assert American freedom of navigation in international waters. Telegram from Embassy in Vietnam to Department of State, 7 August 1964, FRUS 1964, vol. Retrieved from https://www.thoughtco.com/vietnam-war-gulf-of-tonkin-incident-2361345. Lyndon Johnson on August 5, 1964, assertedly in reaction to two 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." "5, In reality there was little actual coordination between 34A and Desoto. Illumination rounds shot skyward, catching the patrol boats in their harsh glare. 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. Interview, authors with James Hawes, 31 March 1996. 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.. Gulf of Tonkin incident, 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 Keep supporting great journalism by turning off your ad blocker. 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. Haiphong again repeated the recall order after the attack. WebLyndon Johnson signed the Tonkin Gulf resolution on August 10, 1964. 426-436. McNamara did not mention the 34A raids.15. 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. Two hours later the Phu Bai SIGINT station transmitted a critic report warning of possible [North Vietnamese] naval operations planned against the Desoto patrol. Twenty-five minutes later, Phu Bai sent a second critic report that said, imminent plans of [North Vietnamese] naval action possibly against Desoto Mission.. ThoughtCo. In a conversation with Johnson, McNamara confirmedthis, with a reference to OP-CON 34A,acovert operation against the North Vietnamese. 4. Efforts to communicate with the torpedo boats failed, probably because of language and communications equipment incompatibility. 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. The ships gunners used the standard 5 mil offset to avoid hitting the boats. This is another government conspiracy that's true. 10. CIA Director John McCone was convinced that Hanoi was reacting to the raids when it attacked the Maddox. WebThe Senate passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution with only two opposing votes, and the House of Representatives passed it unanimously. For the rest of the war they would be truly secretand in the end they were a dismal failure. Cruising twenty-eight miles offshore in international waters, Maddox was approached by the North Vietnamese. This mission coincided with several 34A attacks, including an Aug. 1 raid on Hon Me and Hon Ngu Islands. 3. Codenamed Desoto, they were special U.S. Navy patrols designed to eavesdrop on enemy shore-based communicationsspecifically China, North Korea, and now North Vietnam. 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. Forced Government Indoctrination Camps . The lack of success in SOGs missions during the first few months of 1964 made this proposal quite attractive. The Desoto patrol continued with another destroyer, the Turner Joy (DD-951), coming along to ward off further trouble. Early Military Career 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." A subsequent review of the SIGINT reports revealed that this later interceptMcNamaras smoking gunwas in fact a follow-on, more in-depth report of the August 2 action. Herricks concerns grew as the SIGINT intercepts indicated that the North Vietnamese were concentrating torpedo boats off Hon Me Island, 25 nautical miles to his southwest. Or purchase a subscription for unlimited access to real news you can count on. 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. A brief account of the raids is in MACVSOG 1964 Command History, Annex A, 14 January 1965, pp. Listen to McNamara's conversation with Johnson. Operation Fast and Furious 10 Approved on Aug. 10, 1964, the Southeast Asia (Gulf of Tonkin) Resolution, gave Johnson the power to use military force in the region without requiring a declaration 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. He is the author of. 14. Just after midnight on 31 July, PTF-2 and PTF-5, commanded by Lieutenant Huyet, arrived undetected at a position 800 yards northeast of the island. 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. The crews quietly made last-minute plans, then split up. Today, it is believed that this second attack did not occur and was merely reports from jittery radar and sonar operators, but at the time it was taken as evidence that Hanoi was raising the stakes against the United States. As Communist communications activity was rising rapidly, American senior leaders were increasing support to the South Vietnamese government. As is common with specialized histories -- what I call the "tunnels of Cu Chi" syndrome -- this book will tell most readers more about the U.S. Navy in Vietnam than they care to know. The boats followed at their maximum speed of 44 knots, continuing the chase for more than 20 minutes. . Unfortunately, much of the media reporting combined or confused the events of August 2 and 4 into a single incident. That very night, the idea was put to the test. In 1964 the Navy was attempting to determine the extent of North Vietnams maritime infiltration into the South and to identify the Norths coastal defenses so that Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV) could better support South Vietnams commando operations against the North. 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. Neither ships crew knew about the North Vietnamese salvage operation. Based on this, they launched the political process that led to the wars escalation. The only solution was to get rid of the evidence. Unlike McNamara, Johnson, on the morning of Aug.4,1964, was in less of a hurry to respond to an attack. That initial error shaped all the subsequent assessments about North Vietnamese intentions, as U.S. SIGINT monitored and reported the Norths tracking of the two American destroyers. 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. WebJoe Rogan interview on the 911 Conspiracy Theory. If there had been any doubt before about whose hand was behind the raids, surely there was none now. In less than 25 minutes, the attack was over. U.S. SIGINT support had provided ample warning of North Vietnams intentions and actions, enabling the American ship to defend itself successfully. On 28 July, the latest specially fitted destroyer, the Maddox (DD-731), set out from Taiwan for the South China Sea. And so, in the course of a single day, and operating on imperfect information,Johnson changedthe trajectory of the Vietnam War. 9. During May, Admiral U. S. G. Sharp, the Pacific Fleet Commander-in-Chief, had suggested that 34A raids could be coordinated "with the operation of a shipboard radar to reduce the possibility of North Vietnamese radar detection of the delivery vehicle."
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