50-Year Anniversary of the Gulf of Tonkin Incident

[Baz]

There will be no celebrations today for the fifty-year anniversary of the August 4, 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Incident. The aftermath of the Incident still divides America today.

At 11:00 p.m. Vietnam time, Commander John J. Herrick on the destroyer USS Maddox reported that his ship was under torpedo attack by North Vietnamese PT boats in what was deemed to be the first attack on a U.S. warship since WWII. Two days earlier, the Maddox had engaged three North Vietnamese PT boats making aggressive moves. The incident gave the Johnson administration the “justification” to convince all but two members of Congress to pass a joint resolution of support for military escalation on August 7, 1964.

On August 1st South Vietnamese raiders struck at two targets on the North Vietnamese coast, and the Laotian Air Force bombed infiltration routes along their border with the North as part of a U.S. plan of graduated covert pressure against the North that was known as Operations Plan (OPLAN)-34A. The Maddox's Commander Herrick was not made aware of this activity.

The Maddox was actually on an intelligence mission off the northern coast, carrying surveillance communications and electronics gear along with a complement of specialists from the Naval Security Group, the naval complement to the National Security Agency. Their task was to intercept North Vietnamese communications. The spy ship was in international waters but had been inside territorial waters claimed by North Vietnam when it intercepted Hanoi's PT boats being sent out by the local commander. In the ensuing battle two of the three boats were sunk and the third badly damaged, with no losses to the Maddox.

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