Gulf of Tonkin Incident (1964): The Clash That Escalated Vietnam

The Gulf of Tonkin incident was a pair of reported naval clashes between North Vietnamese forces and US destroyers in early August 1964. The first, on 2 August, was real; the second, on 4 August, almost certainly never happened. Yet the reports led within days to American air strikes on North Vietnam and to the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which gave President Lyndon B. Johnson the authority he later used to send hundreds of thousands of troops to Vietnam.

Background: a widening covert war

By 1964 the United States had about 16,000 to 23,000 military advisers in South Vietnam, helping the Saigon government fight the communist Viet Cong insurgency, which North Vietnam supplied and directed. After the coup that toppled Ngo Dinh Diem in November 1963, South Vietnam was politically unstable, and US officials feared it might collapse.

Washington was already waging a quiet campaign against the North. Under a programme called OPLAN 34A, South Vietnamese commandos, trained and equipped by the United States and using fast patrol boats, raided North Vietnamese coastal installations. Separately, the US Navy ran DESOTO patrols, in which destroyers sailed along the coast to collect radar and radio signals.

The two operations were run independently, but to Hanoi they looked like parts of the same effort. On the night of 30-31 July 1964, 34A commandos shelled the islands of Hon Me and Hon Nieu. The destroyer USS Maddox, commanded by Commander Herbert Ogier with Captain John J. Herrick aboard as commander of the destroyer division, was beginning a DESOTO patrol in the same waters.

The first clash: 2 August 1964

On the afternoon of 2 August, three North Vietnamese P-4 motor torpedo boats raced towards the Maddox, which was then in international waters roughly 28 nautical miles from the coast after earlier approaching closer to shore. The destroyer fired warning shots, then opened fire as the boats closed in.

The boats launched torpedoes, all of which missed. A single heavy machine-gun bullet struck the Maddox, causing no casualties. Navy F-8 Crusader jets from the aircraft carrier USS Ticonderoga joined the fight and strafed the boats. One boat was left dead in the water and the others were damaged. North Vietnamese sources later reported four sailors killed and six wounded.

The engagement lasted less than an hour. President Johnson chose not to retaliate. Instead, the United States warned Hanoi of “grave consequences” for further attacks and ordered the Maddox, now joined by the destroyer USS Turner Joy, to continue its patrol.

The disputed second attack: 4 August 1964

On the night of 4 August, in stormy weather and darkness, the two destroyers believed they were under attack again. Radar operators reported fast-moving contacts, and sonar operators reported more than twenty torpedoes in the water. The ships fired hundreds of rounds and manoeuvred violently for about two hours.

Doubts surfaced almost immediately. Commander James Stockdale, flying overhead from the Ticonderoga, later said he saw no enemy boats, no wakes and no gunfire except the destroyers’ own. Within hours Captain Herrick cabled that a review of the action made many reported contacts and torpedoes appear doubtful, blaming freak weather effects on radar and an overeager sonarman, and recommended a complete evaluation before further action.

In Washington, however, officials relied heavily on intercepted North Vietnamese radio messages that seemed to confirm an attack. Later analysis showed these intercepts actually referred to the 2 August fight or to salvage operations, and that some were mistranslated or mis-timed.

Retaliation and the resolution

Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and Johnson decided to retaliate before the doubts were resolved. Late on 4 August, Washington time, Johnson spoke to the nation on television and announced that air strikes were under way.

On 5 August, in Operation Pierce Arrow, aircraft from the carriers Ticonderoga and Constellation flew 64 sorties against North Vietnamese torpedo boat bases and an oil storage depot at Vinh. Two US aircraft were shot down. Lieutenant (junior grade) Richard Sather was killed, and Lieutenant (junior grade) Everett Alvarez Jr. was captured. Alvarez became the first US pilot taken prisoner in North Vietnam and was held for eight and a half years.

Johnson then asked Congress for a resolution, which had been drafted months earlier. On 7 August 1964 the House of Representatives passed it 416 to 0, and the Senate 88 to 2. Only Senators Wayne Morse of Oregon and Ernest Gruening of Alaska voted against. Senator J. William Fulbright, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, steered it through the Senate. Johnson signed it on 10 August.

The resolution approved the president’s determination to “take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression”. It did not declare war, but its sweeping language was so broad that in 1967 Under Secretary of State Nicholas Katzenbach described it to senators as the functional equivalent of one.

Key people

Lyndon B. Johnson, president since Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963, was campaigning against Barry Goldwater, who accused him of weakness on communism. The strikes and resolution allowed him to appear firm while promising not to send American boys to fight an Asian war.

Robert McNamara, the defense secretary, presented the second attack to Congress as certain. In his 1995 memoir he acknowledged that the evidence had been doubtful, and in 1995 he met the former North Vietnamese commander Vo Nguyen Giap, who said no attack had taken place on 4 August.

John J. Herrick, the on-scene commander, was the first to question the reports. James Stockdale, the pilot overhead, was later shot down in 1965 and spent more than seven years as a prisoner of war.

J. William Fulbright later regretted his role and in 1966 began televised hearings that challenged the administration’s conduct of the war.

Consequences

Politics at home and Hanoi’s view

The timing mattered. The crisis came three months before the November 1964 presidential election, and the swift strikes and lopsided vote in Congress strengthened Johnson’s image as a firm but restrained leader. He went on to defeat Goldwater in a landslide, while promising voters that he sought no wider war.

Many members of Congress who voted for the resolution believed they were approving a limited response to a specific attack. During the brief debate, Senator Fulbright assured colleagues that the president did not intend to send large ground armies to Asia. Morse, the leading dissenter, warned that the resolution amounted to a blank cheque and that the patrols were linked to the commando raids.

In Hanoi, leaders saw the 2 August clash as a defence of their waters against a ship cooperating with raiders, and denied any attack on 4 August. The US strikes convinced them that American escalation was coming, and in late 1964 they began sending regular army units south along the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

Escalation and repeal

The resolution removed the need for further congressional approval as the war grew. After Viet Cong attacks on US bases in early 1965, Johnson launched the sustained bombing campaign Operation Rolling Thunder in March and sent the first US Marine combat battalions to Da Nang. By the end of 1965 there were about 184,000 US troops in Vietnam; by 1968 more than 500,000.

As doubts about 4 August grew, so did anger in Congress. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee investigated the incident in 1968, and the leak of the Pentagon Papers in 1971 revealed how much covert activity had been hidden from the public. Congress repealed the resolution in a bill signed by President Nixon in January 1971. Two years later it passed the War Powers Resolution of 1973 to limit a president’s ability to commit forces without congressional approval.

Myths and facts

Myth: the whole incident was invented. The 2 August attack on the Maddox happened and was later acknowledged by Vietnamese officials. What is doubtful is the second attack on 4 August.

Myth: the government knowingly fabricated the second attack. Most historians conclude that officials genuinely believed an attack had occurred, at least at first, but ignored warning signs and pressed ahead. A National Security Agency history by Robert Hanyok, declassified in 2005, found that signals intelligence had been presented in a way that supported the attack while contrary evidence was left out.

Myth: the Maddox was on an innocent routine patrol. Its patrol was an intelligence mission conducted close to coastal areas being raided by US-backed commandos, which explains why Hanoi viewed it as hostile.

By the numbers

Timeline

• 1964, 30-31 July: South Vietnamese commandos raid the islands of Hon Me and Hon Nieu under OPLAN 34A.
• 1964, 2 August: Three North Vietnamese torpedo boats attack USS Maddox and are driven off.
• 1964, 4 August: Maddox and Turner Joy report a second attack at night; Johnson announces retaliation on television.
• 1964, 5 August: Operation Pierce Arrow strikes North Vietnamese bases; Everett Alvarez is captured.
• 1964, 7 August: Congress passes the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution.
• 1964, 10 August: Johnson signs the resolution into law.
• 1965, 2 March: Operation Rolling Thunder begins.
• 1971, January: The resolution is repealed.
• 2005: The NSA declassifies Robert Hanyok’s study of the incident.

Why it matters

The Gulf of Tonkin incident shows how a confused night at sea, reported in haste and presented with certainty, could open the door to a long war. It became a lasting symbol of the dangers of unchecked executive power and of acting on flawed intelligence, and it shaped how Americans debated later conflicts. It was the decisive legal step towards the full-scale Vietnam War.