GULF OF TONKIN

Opening

On 2 August 1964 USS Maddox, on a DESOTO patrol off North Vietnam, engaged North Vietnamese boats. That engagement is not in serious dispute. Washington warned Hanoi. Turner Joy joined. On the night of the 4th both destroyers reported a second attack: radar contacts, torpedoes, gunfire, aircraft off Ticonderoga. Lyndon Johnson went on television. Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution on 7 August. The air war widened.

Even that night the ships were unsure. Captain John J. Herrick cabled that many contacts were doubtful and that freak weather and an over-eager sonar man might be the whole of it. McNamara briefed otherwise. NSA historian Robert Hanyok, in a study declassified in the 2000s, concluded the 4 August attack did not happen and that some SIGINT had been selected to support the one that did. Johnson, later: those sailors had been shooting at flying fish. The first night stands. The second night is the record that started a larger war on a thinner sea.

Timeline

2 August 1964Maddox and North Vietnamese boats. Real fire. Warning to Hanoi. Turner Joy comes up.

4 August, nightBoth ships report a second attack. Aircraft from Ticonderoga. Herrick's doubtful cable the same night. Johnson on television. 7 August the Resolution.

Later briefings treat the second night as solidHanyok's NSA history, released years after, does not. Flying-fish talk from Johnson is later candour, not 4 August paper.

DESOTO patrols were already a known posture. 2 August is a fight with boats that left metal in the water. That night does not need the Resolution to have happened. 4 August is radar and sonar in weather Herrick himself did not trust by morning.

McNamara's briefing and Johnson's television set the public board. Hanyok's later NSA study is why the second night will not sit still. Flying-fish talk from Johnson is candour after the vote, not a 4 August log.

Key figures

The Maddox and Turner Joy crews own the radars and the guns of both nights.

Captain Herrick owns the cable that already doubted the second fight.

Robert McNamara and Lyndon Johnson own the briefing and the Resolution.

Robert Hanyok owns the later NSA sentence that the 4 August attack did not happen.

Physical and documentary trail

What survives:

One: the 2 August engagement that is not seriously disputed.

Two: the 4 August action reports of contacts, torpedoes, and gunfire.

Three: Herrick's same-night cable calling many contacts doubtful.

Four: the Resolution of 7 August and Hanyok's later NSA study. Captain John J. Herrick cable, 4 August 1964, is the originating doubt on the second night.

There is no North Vietnamese wreck from the 4th that the Navy put on a pier. There is no SIGINT page everyone now reads as a clean second attack.

Two nights must stay two nights. A wreck from the 4th would restore the briefing. Herrick's cable already sits against that wreck. SIGINT selected to support an attack is Hanyok's wound, not a newspaper guess.

Review of action makes many reported contacts and torpedoes fired appear doubtful. Freak weather effects on radar and overeager sonarmen may have accounted for many reports.

Things you might not know

• A pilot had "the best seat in the house". James Stockdale, flying overhead on 4 August, later wrote that he saw no boats, no wakes and no torpedoes, only black sea and American firepower.
• Only two senators voted no. Wayne Morse of Oregon and Ernest Gruening of Alaska were the only senators against the resolution. Morse predicted that future generations would look on it with dismay.
• Hanyok's study was secret for years. Robert Hanyok's finding that the second attack never happened first appeared in the NSA's classified journal Cryptologic Quarterly in early 2001.
• The NSA released about 200 documents. They came out in 2005 and 2006 and helped settle what happened on 4 August.
• Vietnam's general agreed. General Vo Nguyen Giap confirmed the 2 August attack but said the 4 August attack never took place.

Competing explanations

A second attack as briefed. This is what Congress voted on. It has action reports. It has Herrick against it the same night.

No second attack, weather and sonar and selected SIGINT. Hanyok's door. The first night still stands.

Later life of the case

Congress repealed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution in 1971, but by then it had carried the United States deep into the Vietnam War. In the 2003 documentary The Fog of War, Robert McNamara himself said the second attack had not happened, and the NSA's 2005 release settled the point for most historians. For an earlier paper that planned pretexts for war, see Northwoods.

Finding

Maddox fought on 2 August 1964, and on the night of the 4th both destroyers reported a second attack that Captain Herrick already called doubtful in the same dark.

What still will not resolve: a wreck from the 4th, or a SIGINT page that restores a clean second attack.