--- title: "The Gulf of Tonkin Incident: The Attack That Never Actually Happened" description: "The supposed event that propelled America into the conflict in Vietnam is known as the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, but more accurately, it was two incidents. Questions about what did and did not happen in the Gulf of Tonkin in early August of 1964 have persisted for nearly six decades. However, when the National Security Agency declassified nearly 200 documents between 2005 and 2006, much of what was thought to be known about the incident was turned upside down. Though heavily redacted, more than 100 of the documents had previously been classified as Top Secret. Contents included phone and meeting transcripts, sketchy timelines cobbled together by NSA and Department of Defense officials after the events took place, and signals intelligence (SIGINT) data and messages that had been electronically intercepted by the USS Maddox.\n\n## Key Takeaways\n- The NSA declassified nearly 200 documents between 2005 and 2006, over 100 previously classified Top Secret, revealing that the second Gulf of Tonkin attack on August 4, 1964 never occurred.\n- The first attack on August 2 was retaliatory — North Vietnamese forces responded to South Vietnamese 34A Operations that had US Navy planning and intelligence support.\n- Commander James Stockdale, overhead in his F-8 during the alleged second attack, saw only black water and American firepower and no enemy vessels whatsoever.\n- Captain John J. Herrick sent a flash message urging complete evaluation before further action, warning that freak weather and overeager operators likely caused the false contacts.\n- NSA historian Robert J. Hanyok found that approximately 90 percent of intercepted SIGINT messages were omitted from reports sent to the White House and Pentagon, with remaining messages containing altered timestamps and fabricated content.\n- Only two senators — Wayne Morse of Oregon and Ernest Gruening of Alaska — voted against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution on August 7, 1964.\n\n## Two Incidents, One Fabricated: What the Declassified Record Reveals\n\nIt is now generally accepted that the first Gulf of Tonkin Incident did occur, but that the North Vietnamese attack was in retaliation to a string of instigations perpetrated by the South Vietnamese Navy — with planning and intelligence help from the US Navy. On the other hand, the second incident that purportedly took place a few days later never happened at all. At least until recently, the official position of the United States was that the USS Maddox was attacked by Vietnamese gunboats, and that at the time the destroyer had been in international waters. This incident was used by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and President Johnson to justify the retaliatory strikes, which ultimately led to the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, and ultimately the war itself. These assertions are not baseless theories. Much of the source material for this information came from the US Naval Institute. In the end, it is now clear that high-level politicians, military officers, and intelligence personnel obscured data, distorted facts, and deceived the American public and international community, and that as a result, the United States entered the war in Vietnam looking like a victim instead of an aggressor.\n\n## Plan 34A Operations and Covert American Involvement\n\nIn early 1964, South Vietnamese Navy commandos began conducting a series of attacks and intelligence gathering missions along the coast of North Vietnam. Consisting of aerial reconnaissance, naval sabotage, and insertions onto the mainland, the missions were collectively known as Plan 34A Operations. The United States did not officially enter the war until a year later, on March 8, 1965, when the 9th Marine Expeditionary Brigade landed at China Beach near Da Nang, but though the South Vietnamese were carrying out the operations, they were receiving logistical, planning, and intelligence support from the Americans. In the early going, 34A Operations yielded few noteworthy results, and worse yet, many commandos were killed, captured, or disappeared altogether. Nonetheless, behind the scenes in the summer of 1964, Commander of the US Military Assistance Command, Lieutenant General William Westmoreland, upped the ante. Now, instead of covert insertions and intelligence ops, the South Vietnamese Navy would focus on shore bombardment using everything from unguided rockets and recoilless rifles to mortars and heavy machine guns, all of which would be fired from fast patrol boats. The 34A Operations were highly classified, because under international law America's involvement was at the very least suspect, and probably illegal. Meanwhile, while the South Vietnamese were taking the fight to their communist counterparts, US Navy vessels and reconnaissance aircraft were busy gathering intelligence. Codenamed Desoto patrols, the Navy monitored radio transmissions and radar activity at coastal installations, noted troop and equipment movements, and tracked Vietnamese junks to determine whether they were funneling men and materials up the Mekong River. After the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the official line was that there had never been any integration or coordination between American and South Vietnamese forces, but this simply was not the case.\n\n## The First Attack: August 2, 1964, in the Gulf of Tonkin\n\nIn late July of 1964, USS Maddox left Taiwan for her Desoto patrol station just off the coast of Vietnam. Equipped with state-of-the-art electronics equipment, the destroyer's mission was to patrol in international waters between the Demilitarized Zone and the Chinese border. On the night of July 30, Maddox was on station in the Gulf of Tonkin while a 34A Operation was launched against Hon Me Island. South Vietnamese commandos in two boats fired machine guns and small cannons at the island's radar installation, while 25 miles to the south, additional units were carrying out a similar attack against Hon Ngu Island. After observing North Vietnamese torpedo boats pursuing the South Vietnamese vessels that had attacked Hon Me, Maddox withdrew from the area. Ironically, Commander Herbert Ogier later claimed that at the time he had been unaware that there had been any South Vietnamese operations in the area. Whether or not he was telling the truth, by August 1, Maddox was back on patrol in the Gulf of Tonkin. On the morning of August 2, the ship's communications personnel intercepted transmissions stating that North Vietnamese forces were preparing retaliatory strikes, possibly on Maddox herself, though it is not clear if the ship was named specifically. On board Maddox, Commander of Destroyer Division 192, Captain John J. Herrick, ordered the ship out to sea to avoid an unwanted confrontation. But a short time later, Herrick reversed his original decision and ordered Maddox to steam back toward Hon Me Island, in the vicinity of the aforementioned North Vietnamese torpedo boats. While en route, just after 1430 hours, three North Vietnamese boats were detected approaching from the west at high rates of speed. Less than a half hour later, they were within 10,000 yards of the Maddox. Herrick ordered crews manning the ship's 5-inch guns to fire multiple warning shots across the lead boat's bow, after which it launched a torpedo before turning abruptly and heading back in the direction from which it had come. Then, a second boat launched two more torpedoes, but it was subsequently hit by cannon fire. Re-engaging, the first boat once again turned back toward Maddox and launched another torpedo, but it too was heavily damaged. All told, the engagement lasted less than 20 minutes, after which four F-8 Crusaders that had been dispatched from USS Ticonderoga appeared overhead. Piloted by Navy Commander James Stockdale, the lead F-8 passed directly over the undamaged Maddox at 1530, at which time Stockdale noted that the North Vietnamese boats were heading toward the mainland. He and the other pilots made multiple strafing runs on the fleeing boats with their 20 mm cannons. All three of the boats were damaged, but the first two managed to escape while the third was left smoldering in the water. The following day, Maddox resumed her Desoto patrol, and to highlight America's resolve, President Johnson ordered the 420-foot (127 m) destroyer USS Turner Joy to join her.\n\n## The Phantom Second Attack of August 4\n\nOn the morning of August 4, US intelligence intercepted another transmission indicating that the communists were planning a series of offensive naval operations in and around the Gulf of Tonkin. But unlike during the previous incident, when the skies had been clear and the seas had been calm, on that day visibility was limited and high winds and thunderstorms had churned up large waves. In addition, both the Maddox's SPS-40 long-range radar and the Turner Joy's fire-control radar were not working properly. That evening, Herrick ordered Maddox and Turner Joy out to sea to give them ample room to maneuver in the event that they were attacked. At 2040, crewmen on board Maddox began tracking a number of unidentified contacts. Now nearly 100 miles off the coast, it appeared as though multiple vessels were approaching from various directions, but due to the malfunctioning systems on board both ships, tracking them was proving to be nearly impossible. In fact, as the storm worsened, some of the contacts disappeared, only to reappear dozens of miles away on the other side of the ship. For nearly two hours Maddox and Turner Joy changed speed and maneuvered erratically to make themselves difficult targets for the enemy boats they thought were lurking in the darkness. Personnel on both destroyers reported hearing machine gun fire and seeing muzzle flashes, torpedo wakes, searchlight beams, and even the dim lights inside the cockpits of enemy aircraft. Gunners fired wildly into the darkness with everything at their disposal, ultimately discharging nearly 400 cannon rounds and a half dozen depth charges. Just when the mysterious engagement ended at approximately 2135, Commander Stockdale once again arrived on scene in his F-8, but this time he was alone. Stockdale made repeated runs between the two ships for more than an hour searching for the enemy vessels, but he detected no sign of them. Stockdale famously said later that he had had the best seat in the house, but that as far as he could tell the destroyers were shooting at what he referred to as \"phantom\" targets. All he saw that night was \"black water and American firepower.\" Like Stockdale, Captain Herrick began having serious doubts shortly after the alleged attacks. He ultimately concluded that no North Vietnamese boats had attacked the American ships, and that the false sightings and sketchy radar contacts were the result of poorly trained, inexperienced, and overeager crewmen and their malfunctioning equipment. During the entire encounter, Turner Joy reported no torpedo sightings. Likewise, Herrick thought it likely that radar operators on board Maddox had heard the ship's massive propellers slashing through the choppy seas and misinterpreted the signatures as belonging to enemy torpedoes. In addition, none of the destroyers' gunners had been able to lock onto, let alone hit, any targets, probably because the fire control computers were keying in on undulating wave crests.\n\n## Herrick's Warning and Washington's Rush to War\n\nRecognizing the magnitude of the situation, Herrick sent a high priority flash message to Honolulu in the early morning hours of August 4. His message read: \"Review of action makes many reported contacts and torpedoes fired appear doubtful. Freak weather effects on radar and overeager sonar operators may have accounted for many reports. No actual visual sightings by Maddox. Suggest complete evaluation before any further action is taken.\" Confusion both during and after the incident reigned in Washington. Then again, much of what appeared to be confusion could have been political theater orchestrated by elements within the government that were eager to go to war. During and immediately after the second phantom skirmish, dozens of calls were made between President Johnson, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, CIA headquarters in Langley, and the National Military Command Center inside the Pentagon. In Hawaii, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet Admiral Ulysses Simpson Grant Sharp was in constant contact with Captain Herrick, but the Navy men were communicating via flash message, not speaking to one another by phone. At approximately 0300 local time, Herrick sent a transmission that contradicted at least some of what he had stated previously. He now claimed that the details of the attack presented a \"confusing picture.\" Some of the crewmen he had interviewed confirmed that they had seen boats and torpedoes in the water, as well as cockpit lights on enemy aircraft, while others were unsure if they had seen anything at all. By now the prevailing sentiment on both Maddox and Turner Joy was that there had not been an attack. Herrick still considered it possible, but this conclusion was largely based on an intercepted transmission sent from one of the supposed North Vietnamese patrol boats to its base on the coast. It stated that two American planes had been downed, that at least one of the ships had been damaged, and that a few North Vietnamese sailors had been killed. Though inconclusive, amid the mounting doubt, this report was seen as a valuable scrap of evidence, albeit an unsubstantiated one. However, American aircraft had not arrived on-scene until after the supposed attack ended, none had been shot down, and neither ship had sustained any damage. Just after 1600 hours in Washington, McNamara phoned Sharp in Hawaii and asked if he thought that there had been an attack. Sharp's response, in part, was that it was possible. On the other hand, Sharp stated that the torpedo sightings were probably false, that the conditions had been atrocious, that the equipment had not been working properly, and that many of the ships' radar and sonar men were young and inexperienced. He suggested postponing retaliatory strikes until it was definitively determined what had happened. Back in Washington, Air Force Lieutenant General David Burchina was watching the events unfold from the National Military Command Center when he received a phone call from Sharp. Sharp stated that as far as he was concerned, the SIGINT intercept was about as good proof as they were likely to get. After considering the situation, McNamara concluded that he had all the \"proof\" that he needed.\n\n## Retaliatory Strikes, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, and the Road to War\n\nShortly thereafter, at 2330, President Johnson appeared on national television and announced his intent to retaliate against North Vietnam's \"repeated acts of violence against the armed forces of the United States,\" a response which he noted was being carried out as he spoke. Back on the carrier Ticonderoga, Commander Stockdale was preparing plans for air strikes against targets in the north. But unlike Johnson, McNamara, and Herrick, Stockdale had little doubt about what had happened. He later said that the United States was about to start a war under false pretenses. Yet, despite his misgivings, Stockdale diligently planned the reprisal, after which he personally led 18 strike aircraft in a mission against the petroleum storage facility at Vinh. Although the facility was obliterated, two planes were shot down, one airman was killed, and another was captured. Then, on August 7, Congress approved the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which President Johnson signed into law three days later. Only two senators objected — Wayne Morse of Oregon and Ernest Gruening of Alaska. The resolution authorized the president to take all measures necessary to prevent further aggression against America's armed forces. More interestingly, Congress hastily eliminated the standard system of checks and balances between the government and military. Now, with America going to war in Vietnam, President Johnson likened the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution to a portly grandmother's nightshirt, because, as he put it, \"it covered everything.\"\n\n## Declassified Documents and McNamara's Deception\n\nHistorians have long suspected that the second attack in the Gulf of Tonkin never occurred and that the resolution was based on faulty evidence, or worse yet, outright lies. For decades, there was no smoking gun that Johnson, McNamara, or anyone else had intentionally misrepresented intelligence or lied about the incident. However, the declassified documents largely substantiated what no one had been able to prove — that no second attack ever took place. Furthermore, the documents revealed a disturbingly deliberate attempt by Robert McNamara to distort the evidence and mislead Congress, the international community, and the American public. Perhaps the most definitive study into the matter was conducted by official NSA historian Robert J. Hanyok. After pouring through the evidence, he concluded that there had been an attack on August 2, but not on August 4. He also claimed that both Johnson and McNamara considered the SIGINT intercept message a pivotal piece of evidence, and that Congress' approval of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was largely because of it. But Hanyok also discovered that of all the intercepted SIGINT messages, approximately 90% were omitted from reports sent to the White House and Pentagon. Of those that were sent, most contained unexplainable analytic errors, faulty translations, and intentionally altered timestamps. In a few cases, large chunks of messages were deleted altogether, multiple messages were combined into one, and fabricated messages were passed off as authentic. Others disappeared altogether. As for the intercepted North Vietnamese battle transmission, on further examination it was found to be referring to the attack that took place on August 2. During that attack, the North Vietnamese boats were in constant contact with their coastal bases, and nearly all of the messages transmitted between them were intercepted. Yet on August 4, when the second attack was said to have taken place, there were no transmissions whatsoever. When testifying before a joint session of the Armed Services and Senate Foreign Relations committees on August 6, McNamara bobbed and weaved around questions posed by Oregon Senator Wayne Morse. Confident that each and every loose end had been adequately tied up, he claimed that the United States Navy played no part, nor was it in any way associated with the 34A Operations carried out by the armed forces of South Vietnam. At a Pentagon press conference the following day, McNamara was asked if he had been aware of any engagements between the navies of North and South Vietnam. To this question, he responded with a timeless phrase uttered almost exclusively by those with deceptive intentions — \"No, none that I know of.\" Yet an audio clip released by the Johnson Library in 2005 revealed that McNamara had admitted the true nature of the 34A Operations to the President all the way back in August of 1964. On the recording, he told Johnson that \"we\" — meaning the United States — had four PT boats manned by South Vietnamese soldiers attacking radar installations on two North Vietnamese islands. During another meeting of the National Security Council in early August, President Johnson asked whether the attack could be interpreted as North Vietnam's desire to go to war with the United States. CIA Director John McCone answered nonchalantly that the North Vietnamese were only reacting to the attacks on their islands. In a moment of frustration or perhaps remorse just days after passage of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, Johnson famously opined — \"Hell, those damn, stupid sailors were just shooting at flying fish.\"\n\n## The Human Cost and the Question of Accountability\n\nRobert McNamara, 93 years old, died in his bed in Washington on July 6, 2009. All told, more than 58,000 American servicemen died in the conflict, and according to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, nearly 2 million civilians perished as well as approximately 1.1 million regular army and Viet Cong fighters. While many supporters of the war consider McNamara a patriot, those on the other side of the argument tend to prefer the term \"war criminal.\" At least hypothetically, McNamara once referred to himself as the latter, but ironically, it had nothing to do with Vietnam. Before the dropping of the atomic bombs on Imperial Japan, young Robert McNamara had worked with General Curtis LeMay, coordinating the firebombing of Tokyo. Taking place on the night of March 10, 1945, and into the following morning, Operation Meetinghouse resulted in nearly 100,000 civilian deaths, making it the single most destructive aerial bombardment in history. LeMay once said if America had lost the war, he and McNamara would have been tried as war criminals and probably executed. In an interview decades later, McNamara agreed that both he and LeMay probably had behaved as war criminals. Even if the incidents in the Gulf of Tonkin had never happened, it is likely that the United States would have entered the war anyway. What may never be known, however, is why McNamara lied, and who, if anybody, was pulling the strings behind the scenes. Did America enter the war in Vietnam to promote freedom and democracy, or was it simply a matter of money? If it is the latter, one need only look at who profited. The answer is big defense contractors like McDonnell Douglas, Lockheed, Boeing, Grumman, General Dynamics, and Bell Helicopter. Collectively, when inflation is taken into account, these and other companies raked in billions of dollars in profit, and some of their shareholders were the very congressmen and senators who almost unanimously passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. Yet, despite the abundance of evidence against him, McNamara never officially confessed to lying. In fact, he remained aloofly unapologetic, saying, \"I learned early on never to answer the question that is asked of you. Answer the question that you wish had been asked of you. And quite frankly, I follow that rule. It's a very good rule.\" Five decades before either occurred, isolationist California Senator Hiram Johnson may have summed up the Gulf of Tonkin Incident and Vietnam War best when he lamented that the first casualty of war was almost always the truth.\n\n## Frequently Asked Questions\n\n### Why did the North Vietnamese attack the USS Maddox on August 2, 1964?\n\nThe attack on August 2 was retaliatory. South Vietnamese Navy commandos had carried out Plan 34A Operations against North Vietnamese coastal installations, including attacks on Hon Me Island and Hon Ngu Island — missions in which the US Navy provided planning and intelligence support. North Vietnamese forces responded by sending torpedo boats against the Maddox, which was patrolling in the Gulf as part of the covert Desoto intelligence-gathering mission nearby.\n\n### What evidence suggests the August 4 second attack never occurred?\n\nCommander James Stockdale, who flew his F-8 over the area during the alleged engagement, saw only black water and American firepower with no enemy vessels. Captain John J. Herrick sent a flash message to Honolulu the same night urging a complete evaluation before any further action, noting that freak weather effects and overeager operators had likely caused false contacts. Both ships' radar systems were malfunctioning, conditions were stormy, and none of the hundreds of cannon rounds fired that night hit any confirmed target.\n\n### What did NSA historian Robert J. Hanyok find in the declassified documents?\n\nAfter reviewing the declassified NSA materials, Hanyok concluded that the August 4 attack never took place. He found that approximately 90 percent of intercepted SIGINT messages were omitted from reports sent to the White House and Pentagon. Of those that were sent, most contained altered timestamps, faulty translations, and fabricated content. The key intercepted North Vietnamese transmission that McNamara cited as proof of the second attack was, on reanalysis, a message referring to the real engagement that had taken place on August 2.\n\n### How did Robert McNamara mislead Congress about the incidents?\n\nWhen testifying before the Armed Services and Senate Foreign Relations committees, McNamara claimed the United States had played no part in South Vietnamese 34A Operations — a claim contradicted by audio recordings released by the Johnson Library in 2005, in which McNamara told President Johnson that US-supported South Vietnamese PT boats had attacked North Vietnamese radar installations. He also selectively presented SIGINT evidence, omitting the vast majority of intercepted messages that undermined the case for a second attack.\n\n### What were the long-term consequences of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution?\n\nThe Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, passed August 7, 1964, with only two dissenting votes — Senators Wayne Morse of Oregon and Ernest Gruening of Alaska — authorized the president to take all measures necessary to repel aggression without a formal declaration of war. President Johnson later compared it to a grandmother's nightshirt because \"it covered everything.\" The resolution became the legal basis for full-scale US military involvement in Vietnam, a conflict that ultimately claimed more than 58,000 American lives and an estimated 2 million Vietnamese civilian deaths.\n\n## Related Coverage\n- [Special Operators: Navy SEALs, United States.](https://warfronts.pub/analysis/special-operators-navy-seals-united-states)\n- [Special Operators: Navy SEALs, United States.](https://warfronts.pub/analysis/special-operators-navy-seals-united-states-uw6bmd98)\n- [The Evolution of the Navy SEALs: America's Elite Special Operations Force](https://warfronts.pub/special-operations/navy-seals-origins-and-evolution)\n- [Navy SEALs: Elite Force's Evolution and Impact](https://warfronts.pub/defense/navy-seals-elite-force-evolution-impact)\n- [America's New Fighter Jet, China's Invasion Ships, and More.](https://warfronts.pub/conflicts/americas-new-fighter-jet-chinas-invasion-ships-and-more)\n\n" url: https://warfronts.pub/article/gulf-of-tonkin-incident-attack-that-never-happened.md canonical: https://warfronts.pub/article/gulf-of-tonkin-incident-attack-that-never-happened datePublished: 2026-03-04 dateModified: 2026-03-04 author: - name: Simon Whistler url: https://warfronts.pub/author/simon-whistler publisher: Warfronts image: "https://media.warfronts.pub/cdn-cgi/image/width=1600,height=900,fit=cover,quality=80,format=auto/articles/DBoTMEpbKkc/hero.jpg" type: NewsArticle contentHash: dee747811edfa8deca718ae992615754bd48e157493f101c83d0ab3009cb92df tokens: 6563 summaryUrl: https://warfronts.pub/article/gulf-of-tonkin-incident-attack-that-never-happened.md.summary.md --- The supposed event that propelled America into the conflict in Vietnam is known as the Gulf of Tonkin Incident, but more accurately, it was two incidents. Questions about what did and did not happen in the Gulf of Tonkin in early August of 1964 have persisted for nearly six decades. However, when the National Security Agency declassified nearly 200 documents between 2005 and 2006, much of what was thought to be known about the incident was turned upside down. Though heavily redacted, more than 100 of the documents had previously been classified as Top Secret. Contents included phone and meeting transcripts, sketchy timelines cobbled together by NSA and Department of Defense officials after the events took place, and signals intelligence (SIGINT) data and messages that had been electronically intercepted by the USS Maddox. ## Key Takeaways - The NSA declassified nearly 200 documents between 2005 and 2006, over 100 previously classified Top Secret, revealing that the second Gulf of Tonkin attack on August 4, 1964 never occurred. - The first attack on August 2 was retaliatory — North Vietnamese forces responded to South Vietnamese 34A Operations that had US Navy planning and intelligence support. - Commander James Stockdale, overhead in his F-8 during the alleged second attack, saw only black water and American firepower and no enemy vessels whatsoever. - Captain John J. Herrick sent a flash message urging complete evaluation before further action, warning that freak weather and overeager operators likely caused the false contacts. - NSA historian Robert J. Hanyok found that approximately 90 percent of intercepted SIGINT messages were omitted from reports sent to the White House and Pentagon, with remaining messages containing altered timestamps and fabricated content. - Only two senators — Wayne Morse of Oregon and Ernest Gruening of Alaska — voted against the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution on August 7, 1964. ## Two Incidents, One Fabricated: What the Declassified Record Reveals It is now generally accepted that the first Gulf of Tonkin Incident did occur, but that the North Vietnamese attack was in retaliation to a string of instigations perpetrated by the South Vietnamese Navy — with planning and intelligence help from the US Navy. On the other hand, the second incident that purportedly took place a few days later never happened at all. At least until recently, the official position of the United States was that the USS Maddox was attacked by Vietnamese gunboats, and that at the time the destroyer had been in international waters. This incident was used by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and President Johnson to justify the retaliatory strikes, which ultimately led to the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, and ultimately the war itself. These assertions are not baseless theories. Much of the source material for this information came from the US Naval Institute. In the end, it is now clear that high-level politicians, military officers, and intelligence personnel obscured data, distorted facts, and deceived the American public and international community, and that as a result, the United States entered the war in Vietnam looking like a victim instead of an aggressor. ## Plan 34A Operations and Covert American Involvement In early 1964, South Vietnamese Navy commandos began conducting a series of attacks and intelligence gathering missions along the coast of North Vietnam. Consisting of aerial reconnaissance, naval sabotage, and insertions onto the mainland, the missions were collectively known as Plan 34A Operations. The United States did not officially enter the war until a year later, on March 8, 1965, when the 9th Marine Expeditionary Brigade landed at China Beach near Da Nang, but though the South Vietnamese were carrying out the operations, they were receiving logistical, planning, and intelligence support from the Americans. In the early going, 34A Operations yielded few noteworthy results, and worse yet, many commandos were killed, captured, or disappeared altogether. Nonetheless, behind the scenes in the summer of 1964, Commander of the US Military Assistance Command, Lieutenant General William Westmoreland, upped the ante. Now, instead of covert insertions and intelligence ops, the South Vietnamese Navy would focus on shore bombardment using everything from unguided rockets and recoilless rifles to mortars and heavy machine guns, all of which would be fired from fast patrol boats. The 34A Operations were highly classified, because under international law America's involvement was at the very least suspect, and probably illegal. Meanwhile, while the South Vietnamese were taking the fight to their communist counterparts, US Navy vessels and reconnaissance aircraft were busy gathering intelligence. Codenamed Desoto patrols, the Navy monitored radio transmissions and radar activity at coastal installations, noted troop and equipment movements, and tracked Vietnamese junks to determine whether they were funneling men and materials up the Mekong River. After the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the official line was that there had never been any integration or coordination between American and South Vietnamese forces, but this simply was not the case. ## The First Attack: August 2, 1964, in the Gulf of Tonkin In late July of 1964, USS Maddox left Taiwan for her Desoto patrol station just off the coast of Vietnam. Equipped with state-of-the-art electronics equipment, the destroyer's mission was to patrol in international waters between the Demilitarized Zone and the Chinese border. On the night of July 30, Maddox was on station in the Gulf of Tonkin while a 34A Operation was launched against Hon Me Island. South Vietnamese commandos in two boats fired machine guns and small cannons at the island's radar installation, while 25 miles to the south, additional units were carrying out a similar attack against Hon Ngu Island. After observing North Vietnamese torpedo boats pursuing the South Vietnamese vessels that had attacked Hon Me, Maddox withdrew from the area. Ironically, Commander Herbert Ogier later claimed that at the time he had been unaware that there had been any South Vietnamese operations in the area. Whether or not he was telling the truth, by August 1, Maddox was back on patrol in the Gulf of Tonkin. On the morning of August 2, the ship's communications personnel intercepted transmissions stating that North Vietnamese forces were preparing retaliatory strikes, possibly on Maddox herself, though it is not clear if the ship was named specifically. On board Maddox, Commander of Destroyer Division 192, Captain John J. Herrick, ordered the ship out to sea to avoid an unwanted confrontation. But a short time later, Herrick reversed his original decision and ordered Maddox to steam back toward Hon Me Island, in the vicinity of the aforementioned North Vietnamese torpedo boats. While en route, just after 1430 hours, three North Vietnamese boats were detected approaching from the west at high rates of speed. Less than a half hour later, they were within 10,000 yards of the Maddox. Herrick ordered crews manning the ship's 5-inch guns to fire multiple warning shots across the lead boat's bow, after which it launched a torpedo before turning abruptly and heading back in the direction from which it had come. Then, a second boat launched two more torpedoes, but it was subsequently hit by cannon fire. Re-engaging, the first boat once again turned back toward Maddox and launched another torpedo, but it too was heavily damaged. All told, the engagement lasted less than 20 minutes, after which four F-8 Crusaders that had been dispatched from USS Ticonderoga appeared overhead. Piloted by Navy Commander James Stockdale, the lead F-8 passed directly over the undamaged Maddox at 1530, at which time Stockdale noted that the North Vietnamese boats were heading toward the mainland. He and the other pilots made multiple strafing runs on the fleeing boats with their 20 mm cannons. All three of the boats were damaged, but the first two managed to escape while the third was left smoldering in the water. The following day, Maddox resumed her Desoto patrol, and to highlight America's resolve, President Johnson ordered the 420-foot (127 m) destroyer USS Turner Joy to join her. ## The Phantom Second Attack of August 4 On the morning of August 4, US intelligence intercepted another transmission indicating that the communists were planning a series of offensive naval operations in and around the Gulf of Tonkin. But unlike during the previous incident, when the skies had been clear and the seas had been calm, on that day visibility was limited and high winds and thunderstorms had churned up large waves. In addition, both the Maddox's SPS-40 long-range radar and the Turner Joy's fire-control radar were not working properly. That evening, Herrick ordered Maddox and Turner Joy out to sea to give them ample room to maneuver in the event that they were attacked. At 2040, crewmen on board Maddox began tracking a number of unidentified contacts. Now nearly 100 miles off the coast, it appeared as though multiple vessels were approaching from various directions, but due to the malfunctioning systems on board both ships, tracking them was proving to be nearly impossible. In fact, as the storm worsened, some of the contacts disappeared, only to reappear dozens of miles away on the other side of the ship. For nearly two hours Maddox and Turner Joy changed speed and maneuvered erratically to make themselves difficult targets for the enemy boats they thought were lurking in the darkness. Personnel on both destroyers reported hearing machine gun fire and seeing muzzle flashes, torpedo wakes, searchlight beams, and even the dim lights inside the cockpits of enemy aircraft. Gunners fired wildly into the darkness with everything at their disposal, ultimately discharging nearly 400 cannon rounds and a half dozen depth charges. Just when the mysterious engagement ended at approximately 2135, Commander Stockdale once again arrived on scene in his F-8, but this time he was alone. Stockdale made repeated runs between the two ships for more than an hour searching for the enemy vessels, but he detected no sign of them. Stockdale famously said later that he had had the best seat in the house, but that as far as he could tell the destroyers were shooting at what he referred to as "phantom" targets. All he saw that night was "black water and American firepower." Like Stockdale, Captain Herrick began having serious doubts shortly after the alleged attacks. He ultimately concluded that no North Vietnamese boats had attacked the American ships, and that the false sightings and sketchy radar contacts were the result of poorly trained, inexperienced, and overeager crewmen and their malfunctioning equipment. During the entire encounter, Turner Joy reported no torpedo sightings. Likewise, Herrick thought it likely that radar operators on board Maddox had heard the ship's massive propellers slashing through the choppy seas and misinterpreted the signatures as belonging to enemy torpedoes. In addition, none of the destroyers' gunners had been able to lock onto, let alone hit, any targets, probably because the fire control computers were keying in on undulating wave crests. ## Herrick's Warning and Washington's Rush to War Recognizing the magnitude of the situation, Herrick sent a high priority flash message to Honolulu in the early morning hours of August 4. His message read: "Review of action makes many reported contacts and torpedoes fired appear doubtful. Freak weather effects on radar and overeager sonar operators may have accounted for many reports. No actual visual sightings by Maddox. Suggest complete evaluation before any further action is taken." Confusion both during and after the incident reigned in Washington. Then again, much of what appeared to be confusion could have been political theater orchestrated by elements within the government that were eager to go to war. During and immediately after the second phantom skirmish, dozens of calls were made between President Johnson, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, CIA headquarters in Langley, and the National Military Command Center inside the Pentagon. In Hawaii, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet Admiral Ulysses Simpson Grant Sharp was in constant contact with Captain Herrick, but the Navy men were communicating via flash message, not speaking to one another by phone. At approximately 0300 local time, Herrick sent a transmission that contradicted at least some of what he had stated previously. He now claimed that the details of the attack presented a "confusing picture." Some of the crewmen he had interviewed confirmed that they had seen boats and torpedoes in the water, as well as cockpit lights on enemy aircraft, while others were unsure if they had seen anything at all. By now the prevailing sentiment on both Maddox and Turner Joy was that there had not been an attack. Herrick still considered it possible, but this conclusion was largely based on an intercepted transmission sent from one of the supposed North Vietnamese patrol boats to its base on the coast. It stated that two American planes had been downed, that at least one of the ships had been damaged, and that a few North Vietnamese sailors had been killed. Though inconclusive, amid the mounting doubt, this report was seen as a valuable scrap of evidence, albeit an unsubstantiated one. However, American aircraft had not arrived on-scene until after the supposed attack ended, none had been shot down, and neither ship had sustained any damage. Just after 1600 hours in Washington, McNamara phoned Sharp in Hawaii and asked if he thought that there had been an attack. Sharp's response, in part, was that it was possible. On the other hand, Sharp stated that the torpedo sightings were probably false, that the conditions had been atrocious, that the equipment had not been working properly, and that many of the ships' radar and sonar men were young and inexperienced. He suggested postponing retaliatory strikes until it was definitively determined what had happened. Back in Washington, Air Force Lieutenant General David Burchina was watching the events unfold from the National Military Command Center when he received a phone call from Sharp. Sharp stated that as far as he was concerned, the SIGINT intercept was about as good proof as they were likely to get. After considering the situation, McNamara concluded that he had all the "proof" that he needed. ## Retaliatory Strikes, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, and the Road to War Shortly thereafter, at 2330, President Johnson appeared on national television and announced his intent to retaliate against North Vietnam's "repeated acts of violence against the armed forces of the United States," a response which he noted was being carried out as he spoke. Back on the carrier Ticonderoga, Commander Stockdale was preparing plans for air strikes against targets in the north. But unlike Johnson, McNamara, and Herrick, Stockdale had little doubt about what had happened. He later said that the United States was about to start a war under false pretenses. Yet, despite his misgivings, Stockdale diligently planned the reprisal, after which he personally led 18 strike aircraft in a mission against the petroleum storage facility at Vinh. Although the facility was obliterated, two planes were shot down, one airman was killed, and another was captured. Then, on August 7, Congress approved the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which President Johnson signed into law three days later. Only two senators objected — Wayne Morse of Oregon and Ernest Gruening of Alaska. The resolution authorized the president to take all measures necessary to prevent further aggression against America's armed forces. More interestingly, Congress hastily eliminated the standard system of checks and balances between the government and military. Now, with America going to war in Vietnam, President Johnson likened the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution to a portly grandmother's nightshirt, because, as he put it, "it covered everything." ## Declassified Documents and McNamara's Deception Historians have long suspected that the second attack in the Gulf of Tonkin never occurred and that the resolution was based on faulty evidence, or worse yet, outright lies. For decades, there was no smoking gun that Johnson, McNamara, or anyone else had intentionally misrepresented intelligence or lied about the incident. However, the declassified documents largely substantiated what no one had been able to prove — that no second attack ever took place. Furthermore, the documents revealed a disturbingly deliberate attempt by Robert McNamara to distort the evidence and mislead Congress, the international community, and the American public. Perhaps the most definitive study into the matter was conducted by official NSA historian Robert J. Hanyok. After pouring through the evidence, he concluded that there had been an attack on August 2, but not on August 4. He also claimed that both Johnson and McNamara considered the SIGINT intercept message a pivotal piece of evidence, and that Congress' approval of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was largely because of it. But Hanyok also discovered that of all the intercepted SIGINT messages, approximately 90% were omitted from reports sent to the White House and Pentagon. Of those that were sent, most contained unexplainable analytic errors, faulty translations, and intentionally altered timestamps. In a few cases, large chunks of messages were deleted altogether, multiple messages were combined into one, and fabricated messages were passed off as authentic. Others disappeared altogether. As for the intercepted North Vietnamese battle transmission, on further examination it was found to be referring to the attack that took place on August 2. During that attack, the North Vietnamese boats were in constant contact with their coastal bases, and nearly all of the messages transmitted between them were intercepted. Yet on August 4, when the second attack was said to have taken place, there were no transmissions whatsoever. When testifying before a joint session of the Armed Services and Senate Foreign Relations committees on August 6, McNamara bobbed and weaved around questions posed by Oregon Senator Wayne Morse. Confident that each and every loose end had been adequately tied up, he claimed that the United States Navy played no part, nor was it in any way associated with the 34A Operations carried out by the armed forces of South Vietnam. At a Pentagon press conference the following day, McNamara was asked if he had been aware of any engagements between the navies of North and South Vietnam. To this question, he responded with a timeless phrase uttered almost exclusively by those with deceptive intentions — "No, none that I know of." Yet an audio clip released by the Johnson Library in 2005 revealed that McNamara had admitted the true nature of the 34A Operations to the President all the way back in August of 1964. On the recording, he told Johnson that "we" — meaning the United States — had four PT boats manned by South Vietnamese soldiers attacking radar installations on two North Vietnamese islands. During another meeting of the National Security Council in early August, President Johnson asked whether the attack could be interpreted as North Vietnam's desire to go to war with the United States. CIA Director John McCone answered nonchalantly that the North Vietnamese were only reacting to the attacks on their islands. In a moment of frustration or perhaps remorse just days after passage of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, Johnson famously opined — "Hell, those damn, stupid sailors were just shooting at flying fish." ## The Human Cost and the Question of Accountability Robert McNamara, 93 years old, died in his bed in Washington on July 6, 2009. All told, more than 58,000 American servicemen died in the conflict, and according to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, nearly 2 million civilians perished as well as approximately 1.1 million regular army and Viet Cong fighters. While many supporters of the war consider McNamara a patriot, those on the other side of the argument tend to prefer the term "war criminal." At least hypothetically, McNamara once referred to himself as the latter, but ironically, it had nothing to do with Vietnam. Before the dropping of the atomic bombs on Imperial Japan, young Robert McNamara had worked with General Curtis LeMay, coordinating the firebombing of Tokyo. Taking place on the night of March 10, 1945, and into the following morning, Operation Meetinghouse resulted in nearly 100,000 civilian deaths, making it the single most destructive aerial bombardment in history. LeMay once said if America had lost the war, he and McNamara would have been tried as war criminals and probably executed. In an interview decades later, McNamara agreed that both he and LeMay probably had behaved as war criminals. Even if the incidents in the Gulf of Tonkin had never happened, it is likely that the United States would have entered the war anyway. What may never be known, however, is why McNamara lied, and who, if anybody, was pulling the strings behind the scenes. Did America enter the war in Vietnam to promote freedom and democracy, or was it simply a matter of money? If it is the latter, one need only look at who profited. The answer is big defense contractors like McDonnell Douglas, Lockheed, Boeing, Grumman, General Dynamics, and Bell Helicopter. Collectively, when inflation is taken into account, these and other companies raked in billions of dollars in profit, and some of their shareholders were the very congressmen and senators who almost unanimously passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. Yet, despite the abundance of evidence against him, McNamara never officially confessed to lying. In fact, he remained aloofly unapologetic, saying, "I learned early on never to answer the question that is asked of you. Answer the question that you wish had been asked of you. And quite frankly, I follow that rule. It's a very good rule." Five decades before either occurred, isolationist California Senator Hiram Johnson may have summed up the Gulf of Tonkin Incident and Vietnam War best when he lamented that the first casualty of war was almost always the truth. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### Why did the North Vietnamese attack the USS Maddox on August 2, 1964? The attack on August 2 was retaliatory. South Vietnamese Navy commandos had carried out Plan 34A Operations against North Vietnamese coastal installations, including attacks on Hon Me Island and Hon Ngu Island — missions in which the US Navy provided planning and intelligence support. North Vietnamese forces responded by sending torpedo boats against the Maddox, which was patrolling in the Gulf as part of the covert Desoto intelligence-gathering mission nearby. ### What evidence suggests the August 4 second attack never occurred? Commander James Stockdale, who flew his F-8 over the area during the alleged engagement, saw only black water and American firepower with no enemy vessels. Captain John J. Herrick sent a flash message to Honolulu the same night urging a complete evaluation before any further action, noting that freak weather effects and overeager operators had likely caused false contacts. Both ships' radar systems were malfunctioning, conditions were stormy, and none of the hundreds of cannon rounds fired that night hit any confirmed target. ### What did NSA historian Robert J. Hanyok find in the declassified documents? After reviewing the declassified NSA materials, Hanyok concluded that the August 4 attack never took place. He found that approximately 90 percent of intercepted SIGINT messages were omitted from reports sent to the White House and Pentagon. Of those that were sent, most contained altered timestamps, faulty translations, and fabricated content. The key intercepted North Vietnamese transmission that McNamara cited as proof of the second attack was, on reanalysis, a message referring to the real engagement that had taken place on August 2. ### How did Robert McNamara mislead Congress about the incidents? When testifying before the Armed Services and Senate Foreign Relations committees, McNamara claimed the United States had played no part in South Vietnamese 34A Operations — a claim contradicted by audio recordings released by the Johnson Library in 2005, in which McNamara told President Johnson that US-supported South Vietnamese PT boats had attacked North Vietnamese radar installations. He also selectively presented SIGINT evidence, omitting the vast majority of intercepted messages that undermined the case for a second attack. ### What were the long-term consequences of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution? The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, passed August 7, 1964, with only two dissenting votes — Senators Wayne Morse of Oregon and Ernest Gruening of Alaska — authorized the president to take all measures necessary to repel aggression without a formal declaration of war. President Johnson later compared it to a grandmother's nightshirt because "it covered everything." The resolution became the legal basis for full-scale US military involvement in Vietnam, a conflict that ultimately claimed more than 58,000 American lives and an estimated 2 million Vietnamese civilian deaths. ## Related Coverage - [Special Operators: Navy SEALs, United States.](https://warfronts.pub/analysis/special-operators-navy-seals-united-states) - [Special Operators: Navy SEALs, United States.](https://warfronts.pub/analysis/special-operators-navy-seals-united-states-uw6bmd98) - [The Evolution of the Navy SEALs: America's Elite Special Operations Force](https://warfronts.pub/special-operations/navy-seals-origins-and-evolution) - [Navy SEALs: Elite Force's Evolution and Impact](https://warfronts.pub/defense/navy-seals-elite-force-evolution-impact) - [America's New Fighter Jet, China's Invasion Ships, and More.](https://warfronts.pub/conflicts/americas-new-fighter-jet-chinas-invasion-ships-and-more) <!-- youtube:DBoTMEpbKkc -->