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. Westmoreland reported that although he was not absolutely certain why the Swatows were shifted south, the move "could be attributable to recent successful [34A] operations. Both orders were repeated, but only the latter was relayed to the torpedo boats before the attack was launched. The Maddox was attacked at 1600. While 34A and the Desoto patrols were independent operations, the latter benefited from the increased signals traffic generated by the attacks of the former. Mr. It also outlined the Maddoxs path along the coast on 2 August and the 34A attacks on Vinh Son the following day. 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. Vietnam is a very watery country. 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 We have no intention of yielding to pressure. Was the collapse of the Twin Towers on 911 terrorism are a controlled demolition. JCS, "34A Chronology of Events," (see Marolda and Fitzgerald, p. 424); Porter, Vietnam: The Definitive Documentation (Stanfordville, NY: 1979), vol. 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. Congress supported the resolution with The history stops with the U.S. Navy moving into full combat duty -- the naval and air interdictions in South and North Vietnam -- the subject of future volumes. Those same reports were shown to the select congressional and senate committees that also investigated the incident. The Pyramid and All-Seeing Eye . Nigerians await election results in competitive race. Consequently, while Maddox was in the patrol area, a South Vietnamese commando raid was underway southwest of its position. And it didnt take much detective work to figure out where the commandos were stationed. During the afternoon of 3 August, another maritime team headed north from Da Nang. ThoughtCo, Feb. 16, 2021, thoughtco.com/vietnam-war-gulf-of-tonkin-incident-2361345. 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. 5. He spoke out against banning girls education. 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. The Pentagon had already released details of the attack, and administration officials had already promised strong action. 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. Conspiracy This article is based on the PRI podcast, LBJ's War, hosted by David Brown. 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. National Security Agency He has written numerous articles on Vietnam War-era special operations and is the author of two books on the war: Trial by Fire: The 1972 Easter Offensive, Americas Last Vietnam Battle (Hippocrene Books, 1994), and Ashes to Ashes: The Phoenix Program and the Vietnam War (Lexington Books, 1990). The SIGINT intercepts also detected that the North Vietnamese coastal radar stations were tracking Maddox and reporting its movements to the outbound torpedo boats. This time the U.S. ships detected electronic signals and acoustic indications of a likely second North Vietnamese naval attack, and they requested U.S. air support. The stage was set. Until the ICC investigation blew over a week later, the commandos camped on a small pier. For the maritime part of the covert operation, Nasty-class fast patrol boats were purchased quietly from Norway to lend the illusion that the United States was not involved in the operations. 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. 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 after-action reports from the participants in the Gulf arrived in Washington several hours after the report of the second incident. In addition, the US Navy was instructed to conduct Desoto patrols off North Vietnam. 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 . In Saigon, General William C. Westmoreland, the new commander of Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV), approved of the plan, and SOG began testing 81-mm mortars, 4.5-inch rockets, and recoilless rifles aboard the boats. . 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). 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. Media Manipulation. 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). 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. Captain Herrick had been ordered to be clear of the patrol area by nightfall, so he turned due east at approximately 1600. 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. In an effort to increase pressure on North Vietnam, several Norwegian-built fast patrol boats (PTFs) were covertly purchased and transferred to South Vietnam. 14. Whether they produced battlefield images of the dead or daguerreotype portraits of common soldiers, []. With that false foundation in their minds, the on-scene naval analysts saw the evidence around them as confirmation of the attack they had been warned about. The intelligence community, including its SIGINT component, responded with a regional buildup to support the increase in U.S. operational forces. Listen to McNamara's conversation with Johnson. 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. A firewall existed between covert patrol-boat attacks on North Vietnamese positions and Desoto patrols eavesdropping on shore-based communications. 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. They are part and parcel of a continuing Communist drive to conquer South Vietnam. PTF-1 and PTF-2 were U.S.-built 1950s vintage boats pulled out of mothballs and sent to Vietnam. Few areas of the world have been as hotly contested as the India-Pakistan border. He is the author of. They arrived on station overhead by 2100 hours. . I would not suggest that he learned from the Gulf of Tonkin incident so much as that he got from it exactly what he wanted, which was an enormous bump in approval ratings 30 percent overnight, says historian Chris Oppe. Hickman, Kennedy. Covert maritime operations were in full swing, and some of the missions succeeded in blowing up small installations along the coast, leading General Westmoreland to conclude that any close connection between 34A and Desoto would destroy the thin veneer of deniability surrounding the operations. This was the only time covert operations against the North came close to being discussed in public. And who is going to believe that? Signals Intelligence is a valuable source but it is not perfect. Subscribe to LBJ's War onApple Podcasts. 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. After suggesting a "complete evaluation" of the affair before taking further action, he radioed requesting a "thorough reconnaissance in daylight by aircraft." 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. 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." By then, early news accounts had already solidified some opinions, and the Johnson Administration had decided to launch retaliatory strikes. 2, pp. 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. For the maritime war specialist, it is of course invaluable. What will be of interest to the general reader is the treatment of the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. The contacts were to the northeast of the ship, putting them about 100 nautical miles from North Vietnam but very close to Chinas Hainan Island. Aircraft from the Ticonderoga (CVA-14) appeared on the scene, strafing three torpedo boats and sinking the one that had been damaged in the battle with the Maddox. Gulf of Tonkin Resolution - Definition, Cause & Significance Illumination rounds shot skyward, catching the patrol boats in their harsh glare. A North Vietnamese patrol boat also trailed the American ships, reporting on their movements to Haiphong. One element of American assistance to South Vietnam included covert support for South Vietnamese commando raids against North Vietnams coastal transportation facilities and networks. 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. Both sides claimed successes in the exchange that they did not actually achieve. If there had been any doubt before about whose hand was behind the raids, surely there was none now. WebCongress repealed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution before the United States' withdrawal from Vietnam in 1973. With a presidential election just three months away and Johnson positioning himself as the peace candidate, the administration spoke of American resolve not to react to provocation and to avoid escalation. 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 ", "No," replied McCone. History is who we are and why we are the way we are.. Sign up for The Top of the World, delivered to your inbox every weekday morning. Quoted in Steve Edwards, "Stalking the Enemys Coast," U.S. Subscribe to receive our weekly newsletter with top stories from master historians. The first reports of the encounter from the destroyers reached the White House at 1000 EDT. The first critic report from Phu Bai reached Washington at about 0740 hours, Eastern Daylight Time (EDT). Codenamed Desoto, they were special U.S. Navy patrols designed to eavesdrop on enemy shore-based communicationsspecifically China, North Korea, and now North Vietnam. 17. 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. This was granted, and four F-8 Crusaders were vectored towards Maddox's position. Moments later, one of the crewmen spotted a North Vietnamese Swatow patrol boat bearing down on them. The Gulf of Tonkin incident - Vietnam War In 1964 an Ohio woman took up the challenge that had led to Amelia Earharts disappearance.