Remembering
Riding with Private Malone
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gh1m0eC1004
If you listened to the song you should have found it incredibly sad – if you fully appreciate how the war there erupted in 1964, drawing in tens of thousands of American service people, it’s even sadder. The following is excerpted from Surprise Attack:
During the summer of 1964 the United States was continuing covert action North Vietnam, at the same time increasing its electronic intelligence collection immediately off the North Vietnamese coast.
Deniable maritime attacks on North Vietnamese coastal targets had begun in 1962 and by early in 1964 the raids began to use U.S Navy provided Swift PT boats. By summer, the American Military Assistance Commander, General William Westmoreland, was shifting from commando attacks to shore bombardment from the patrol boats being operated by the South Vietnamese.
The North Vietnamese responded by sending patrol vessels against raids. On the night of July 30, a reaction group of four patrol boats chased South Vietnamese raiders some 45 nautical miles. On their return north they passed within four miles of the U.S. Destroyer Maddox, performing electronic intelligence in the Gulf of Tonkin.
On the evening of August 3, three South Vietnamese boats attacked a military garrison and a radar site. Some 770 rounds of high explosive were fired during the attacks – all told some four separate attacks on North Vietnamese military targets had been made over five days.
The following day, the destroyer patrol commander moved his ships well offshore to provide maneuvering room in case of attack. Both ships reported continuing technical problems with their radars, the Maddox’s air search radar and the Turner Joy’s fire control radars were both inoperative. From South Vietnam, the Marine SIGNET unit transmitted another CRITIC to the effect that some sort of military preparations were underway, inferring that the destroyers were the likely target.
There were no specific references in the signals, the assumption were that any activity would be targeting the destroyers. Anticipating a night attack, the destroyers began to report a variety of air and surface contacts. The carrier Ticonderoga dispatched a Navy jet to the scene, the pilot easily located both destroyers – quite visible by their wakes – but found no sign of any other vessels in the area.
Navy Commander James Stockdale, in the air over the destroyers was adamant, “I had the best seat in the house to watch that event and our destroyers were just shooting at phantom targets—there were no PT boats there . . . there was nothing there but black water and American firepower.”
In the dark and with a mix of chaotic and intermittent radar, sonar and visible observations, both American destroyers opened fire on perceived targets and reported themselves under attack. The incident was over in some two hours and within three hours the Maddox commander transmitted an after action report advising that the Maddox had never positively identified an enemy vessel.
In the interim, the initial CRITIC warning of possible military action had arrived in Washington at 7:40 pm EST. At 9:25, with no further warnings, the Secretary of Defense had advised the President of a possible second attack in the making.
At 10 pm a flash message reporting an attack was received and within three hours, President Lyndon Johnson had ordered a major retaliatory air attack against North Vietnam. The Maddox after action report – which failed to confirm any enemy sighting – had arrived prior to that decision, along with word that the combat air patrol had also been unable to identify any attacking boats in the vicinity of either destroyer.
At approximately the time the President’s ordered was being issued, the Admiral in Command of the Pacific Fleet had reported that the earl reports of enemy torpedoes in the water appeared doubtful. Freak weather, “over-eager” sonar observers and questionable visual observations were also noted.
Admiral U.S. Grant Sharp recommended delaying any retaliation until his command had time to sort out the intelligence and fully confirm an attack. Additional SIGNET later seems to have persuaded Sharp that the attack was real, however it is now clear that intelligence was mistranslated and misinterpreted.
On the Ticonderoga, Commander Stockdale had his orders to launch retaliatory air strikes. He himself had no doubt about the overall situation, “We were about to launch a war under false pretenses, in the face of the on-scene military commander’s advice to the contrary.”
After action reports and additional information from the military personnel in the field was already arriving in Washington at the time McNamara and Johnson were ordering major retaliation – for an attack which had not actually occurred.
Worse yet, the most current studies strongly suggest that from that point on, intelligence data was classified or possibly even intentionally mishandled, to justify their decision. It would be decades until the full set of signals intelligence reports was released by the National Security Administration, and historians were able to demonstrate – with total certainty – that no second attack had actually occurred.
In fact the NSA documents show exactly the opposite, the signals intelligence was of such quality that it was possible to determine exactly what the North Vietnamese naval forces were doing – which included salvage of their two patrol boats damaged in the previous night’s attacks and a number of close in coastal patrols.
There was no indication of any approach to, much less engagement with American vessels. With the extensive SIGNET now available, a thorough analysis reveals no comparison at all between the North Vietnamese communications activity of August 2 when an engagement did occur, and August 4, when one did not.
Pat Patterson, Lieutenant Commander, United States Navy, “The Truth About Tonkin”, Naval History Magazine, Volume22, number 1, February 2008
http://www.usni.org/magazines/navalhistory/2008-02/truth-about-tonkin
Robert Gillespie, Black Ops Vietnam : The Operational History of MACVSOG, (Annapolis, Maryland, Naval Institute Press, 2011), 23
Pat Patterson, Lieutenant Commander, United States Navy, “The Truth About Tonkin”
Jim and Sybil Stockdale, In Love and War, (Annapolis Maryland, Naval Institute Press, 1990), 5-8
Robert Hanyok, “Skunks, Bogies, Silent Hounds and Flying Fish : The Gulf of Tonkin Mystery 2-4 August 1964 , 25
Jim and Sybil Stockdale, In Love and War, 25.
Robert Hanyok, “Skunks, Bogies, Silent Hounds and Flying Fish : The Gulf of Tonkin Mystery 2-4 August 1964, 3
