Buckles Comic David Gilbert, High School Bowling Nationals 2022, What Does Juror Status Ended Mean California, Who Did Eddie Van Halen Leave His Money To, Articles G

The Vietnam War buff will find it fascinating for its wealth of detail carefully set down in understated prose (a welcome relief, I might add, from the hysterical tone that marks much Vietnam War writing). Declassified NSA documents show that US intelligence members concealed relevant reports from Congress to push the narrative of a second attack. During the afternoon of 3 August, another maritime team headed north from Da Nang. As is common with specialized histories -- what I call the "tunnels of Cu Chi" syndrome -- this book will tell most readers more about the U.S. Navy in Vietnam than they care to know. Cruising twenty-eight miles offshore in international waters, Maddox was approached by the North Vietnamese. On 7 August, the Senate passed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, allowing the administration greater latitude in expanding the war by a vote of 88 to 2. :: Douglas Pike, director of the Indochina Studies Program at the University of California-Berkeley, is the author of the forthcoming "Vietnam and the U.S.S.R.: Anatomy of an Alliance.". Neither ships crew knew about the North Vietnamese salvage operation. 1, Vietnam 1964 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1992), p. 611. Ticonderoga ordered four A-1H Skyraiders into the air to support the ships. ThoughtCo. 9/11. Today, it is believed that this second attack did not occur and was merely reports from jittery radar and sonar operators, but at the time it was taken as evidence that Hanoi was raising the stakes against the United States. THE UNITED STATES NAVY AND THE VIETNAM CONFLICT Volume II: From Military Assistance to Combat, 1959-1965 By Edward J. Marolda and Oscar P. Fitzgerald Government Printing Office for The Naval Historical Center 591 pp. Simultaneously, U.S. SIGINT was placed on increased alert to monitor indications of future North Vietnamese threats to the Desoto Missions, and additional air and naval forces were deployed to the Western Pacific. Unfortunately, much of the media reporting combined or confused the events of August 2 and 4 into a single incident. Historians still disagree over whether Johnson deliberately misled Congress and the American people about the Tonkin Gulf incident or simply capitalized on an opportunity that came his way. WebJoe Rogan interview on the 911 Conspiracy Theory. Here's why he couldn't walk away. The conspiracy theory has been dying for several years, and this work will probably be a stake through its heart. Subsequent SIGINT reporting and faulty analysis that day further reinforced earlier false impressions. Not reported at the time, Herrick instructed his gun crews to fire three warning shots if the North Vietnamese came within 10,000 yards of the ship. $22. Haiphong again repeated the recall order after the attack. As the torpedo boats continued their high-speed approach, Maddox was ordered to fire warning shots if they closed inside 10,000 yards. He is the author of. For the maritime war specialist, it is of course invaluable. Thus, the South Vietnamese raid on Hon Me Island, a major North Vietnamese infiltration staging point, became the tripwire that set off the August 2 confrontation in the Gulf of Tonkin. We still seek no wider war.. For the rest of the war they would be truly secretand in the end they were a dismal failure. But in the pre-dawn hours of July 31, 1964, U.S.-backed patrol boats shelled two North The USS Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin is shown in 1963. People are human and make mistakes, particularly in the pressure of a crisis or physical threat to those they support. Scattered small-arms sent tracers toward the commandos, but no one was hurt. Aircraft from Ticonderoga arrived on-scene at 1528 hours and fired on the boats. These warning shots were fired and the P-4s launched a torpedo attack. In addition, the US Navy was instructed to conduct Desoto patrols off North Vietnam. By then, the two American ships were approximately 80 nautical miles from the nearest North Vietnamese coastline and steaming southeast at 20 knots. The first reports of the encounter from the destroyers reached the White House at 1000 EDT. I would not suggest that he learned from the Gulf of Tonkin incident so much as that he got from it exactly what he wanted, which was an enormous bump in approval ratings 30 percent overnight, says historian Chris Oppe. 1. Originally begun by the Central Intelligence Agency in 1961, 34A was a highly-classified program of covert operations against North Vietnam. "4 Vaccines. This along with flawed signals intelligence from the National Security Agency led Johnson to order retaliatory airstrikes against North Vietnam. A North Vietnamese patrol boat also trailed the American ships, reporting on their movements to Haiphong. The World is a public radio program that crosses borders and time zones to bring home the stories that matter. Telegram from Embassy in Vietnam to Department of State, 7 August 1964, FRUS 1964, vol. This explanation held briefly, long enough for President Johnson -- admittedly not inclined to engage in what might be called oververification -- to rush the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution through Congress. On 28 July, the latest specially fitted destroyer, the Maddox (DD-731), set out from Taiwan for the South China Sea. Although McNamara did not know it at the time, part of his statement was not true; Captain Herrick, the Desoto patrol commander, did know about the 34A raids, something that his ships logs later made clear. Ogier then opened fire at 1508 hours, when the boats were only six minutes from torpedo range. The Gulf of Tonkin incident was a complex naval event in the Gulf of Tonkin, off the coast of Vietnam, that was presented to the U.S. Congress on August 5, 1964, as two unprovoked attacks by North Vietnamese torpedo boats on the destroyers Maddox and Turner Joy of the U.S. The Maddox fired againthis time to killhitting the second North Vietnamese boat just as it launched two torpedoes. WebThe Gulf of Tonkin While Kennedy had at least the comforting illusion of progress in Vietnam (manufactured by Harkins and Diem), Johnson faced a starker picture of confusion, disunity, and muddle in Saigon and of a rapidly growing Viet Cong in the countryside. WebThe Senate passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution with only two opposing votes, and the House of Representatives passed it unanimously. The North Vietnamese did not react, probably because no South Vietnamese commando operations were underway at that time. PTF-3 and PTF-6 broke off and streaked south for safety; they were back in port before 1200. Despite this tremendous uncertainty, by midafternoon, the discussion among Johnson and his advisers was no longer about whether to respondbut how. Thousands of passengers are stranded after Colombias Viva Air grounds flights, The last of Mexicos artisanal salt-makers preserve a 2,000-year-old tradition, I cannot give up: Cambodian rapper says he will sing about injustice despite threats from govt, Ukrainian rock star reflects on a year of war in his country, Ukrainian refugees in Poland will now be charged to stay in state-funded housing, This Colombian town is dimming its lights to attract more tourists to view the night sky, Kneel and apologize!: 76 years after island-wide massacre, Taiwan continues to commemorate and debate the tragedy. "1 Most of these would be shore bombardment. In the meantime, aboard Turner Joy, Captain Herrick ordered an immediate review of the nights actions. Forced Government Indoctrination Camps . Was the collapse of the Twin Towers on 911 terrorism are a controlled demolition. . Cookies collect information about your preferences and your devices and are used to make the site work as you expect it to, to understand how you interact with the site, and to show advertisements that are targeted to your interests. "Vietnam War: Gulf of Tonkin Incident." At 1505, when the torpedo boats had closed within 10,000 yards, in accordance with Captain Herricks orders and as allowed under international law at that time, Maddox fired three warning shots. The boats followed at their maximum speed of 44 knots, continuing the chase for more than 20 minutes. ", "No," replied McCone. This is not the place to establish the final truth on the Gulf of Tonkin matter and certainly I am not the person to render the ultimate judgment. The House passed the resolution unanimously.17 Mr. Andrad is a Vietnam War historian with the U.S. Army Center of Military History, where he is writing a book on combat operations from 1969 through 1973. The Gulf of Tonkin incident led to the expansion of the Vietnam War that resulted in a lot of American Alerted to the threat, Herrick requested air support from the carrier USS Ticonderoga. Nigerians await election results in competitive race. On Tuesday morning, Aug. 4, 1964, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara called President Lyndon Johnson with a report about a possible confrontation brewing in southeast Asia. The NSA report is revealing. "14, Nasty fast patrol boats demonstrated their versatility in the Pacific Ocean before going to Vietnam.U.S. Both U.S. ships opened fire on the radar contacts, but reported problems maintaining a lock on the tracking and fire control solution. So, whether by accident or design, American actions in the Tonkin Gulf triggered a response from the North Vietnamese, not the other way around. In fact, an earlier Desoto patrol planned for February had been canceled because of concerns over potential interference with South Vietnamese commando missions scheduled for the same time. Four boats, PTF-1, PTF-2 (the American-made patrol boats), PTF-5, and PTF-6 (Nasty boats), were on their way to bombard a North Vietnamese radar installation at Vinh Son and a security post on the banks of the nearby Ron River, both about 90 miles north of the DMZ. The ships sonar operator reported a noise spikenot a torpedowhich the Combat Information Center (CIC) team mistook for report of an incoming torpedo. Three days later, she rendezvoused with a tanker just east of the DMZ before beginning her intelligence- gathering mission up the North Vietnamese coast. 4. Both the Phu Bai station and Maddoxs DSU knew the boats had orders to attack an enemy ship., Not knowing about the South Vietnamese commando raid, all assumed that Maddox was the target. no isolated event. There remains some disagreement among historians about the second (Aug. 4) incident, which involved the Maddox and another destroyer, the USS Turner Joy. Early Military Career And who is going to believe that? Johnsonasked for, and received, a resolution of war from the US Congress that led to further escalation in the conflict. WebThe Gulf of Tonkin and the Vietnam War. AND THERE is the fact of Vietnam's position today. It took only a little imagination to see why the North Vietnamese might connect the two. 302-303. Both orders were repeated, but only the latter was relayed to the torpedo boats before the attack was launched. The subsequent North Vietnamese reporting on the enemy matched the location, course and speed of Maddox. The Gulf of Tonkin incident was a brief confrontation between United States and North Vietnamese warships, off the coast of northern Vietnam in August 1964. Under the operational control of Captain John J. Herrick, it steamed through the Gulf of Tonkin collecting intelligence. The string of intelligence mistakes, mistranslations, misinterpretations and faulty decision making that occurred in the Tonkin Gulf in 1964 reveals how easily analysts and officials can jump to the wrong conclusions and lead a nation into war. Kennedy Hickman is a historian, museum director, and curator who specializes in military and naval history. Not all wars are made for navies, and the U.S. Navy had to insinuate itself into the Vietnam one and carve out a role. In response, the North Vietnamese built up their naval presence around the offshore islands. This was the first of several carefully worded official statements aimed at separating 34A and Desoto and leaving the impression that the United States was not involved in the covert operations.9 It is not NSA's intention to prove or He then requested the passage of a resolution "expressing the unity and determination of the United States in supporting freedom and in protecting peace in Southeast Asia." A U.S. Navy SEAL (Sea Air Land) team officer assigned to the SOG maritime operations training staff, Lieutenant James Hawes, led the covert boat fleet out of Da Nang and down the coast 300 miles to Cam Ranh Bay, where they waited out the crisis in isolation. As such, its personnel in Vietnam were the envy of their Army counterparts in the bush since, as it was commonly put, sailors sleep between clean sheets at night (the grunts were also envious of the Air Force, where you fight sitting down). https://www.historynet.com/case-closed-the-gulf-of-tonkin-incident/, Jerrie Mock: Record-Breaking American Female Pilot, When 21 Sikh Soldiers Fought the Odds Against 10,000 Pashtun Warriors, Few Red Tails Remain: Tuskegee Airman Dies at 96. Herricks concerns grew as the SIGINT intercepts indicated that the North Vietnamese were concentrating torpedo boats off Hon Me Island, 25 nautical miles to his southwest. Telegram from the Department of State to the Embassy in Vietnam, 3 August 1964, FRUS, Vietnam, 1964, p. 603. The commander also added the requirement of collecting photographic intelligence of ships and aircraft encountered, as well as weather and hydrographic information. (Hanoi remains muzzy on the second incident, Aug. 4, presumably since clearly it took place in international waters, the Vietnamese claim of "defensive reaction" is a bit wobbly.). This was almost certainly a reaction to the recent 34A raids. The electronic intercept traffic cited here is too voluminous to permit a conclusion that somehow everything was the figment of the collective imaginations on both sides. Send the First Troops to Vietnam? Congress supported the resolution with The first such Desoto mission was conducted off the North Vietnamese coast in February 1964, followed by more through the spring. In August 1964, Congress passed the Tonkin Gulf resolutionor Southeast Asia Resolution, as it is officially knownthe congressional decree that gave President Lyndon Johnson a broad mandate to wage war in Vietnam. McNamara did not mention the 34A raids.15. George C. Herring, ed., The Secret Diplomacy of the Vietnam War: The Negotiating Volumes of the Pentagon Papers (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1983), p. 18. The battle was over in 22 minutes. A joint resolution of Congress dated August 7, 1964, gave the president authority to increase U.S. involvement in the war between North and South Vietnam and served as the legal basis for escalations in the Johnson and Nixon administrations that likely dwarfed what most Americans could have imagined in August 1964. And, of course, McNamara himself knew about the "South Vietnamese actions in connection with the two islands," but his cautiously worded answer got him out of admitting it. There was no way to get a commando team ashore to plant demolition charges; they would have do what damage they could with the boats guns.3 When the boats reached that point, Maddox fired three warning shots, but the torpedo boats continued inbound at high speed. Any escalation in the bombing of the North risked provoking the Russians or, more likely, the Chinese. During May, Admiral U. S. G. Sharp, the Pacific Fleet Commander-in-Chief, had suggested that 34A raids could be coordinated "with the operation of a shipboard radar to reduce the possibility of North Vietnamese radar detection of the delivery vehicle." In less than 25 minutes, the attack was over. Few areas of the world have been as hotly contested as the India-Pakistan border. Both were perceived as threats, and both were in the same general area at about the same time. The Maddox planned to sail to 16 points along the North Vietnam coast, ranging from the DMZ north to the Chinese border. It reveals what commanders actually knew, what SIGINT analysts believed and the challenges the SIGINT community and its personnel faced in trying to understand and anticipate the aggressive actions of an imaginative, deeply committed and elusive enemy. Fluoride. In the summer of 1964, President Lyndon Baines Johnson needed a pretext to commit the American people to the already expanding covert war in South East Asia. 2, pp. Those same reports were shown to the select congressional and senate committees that also investigated the incident. In the future, conventional operations would receive all the attention. They arrived on station overhead by 2100 hours. The most popular of these is that the incident was either a fabrication or deliberate American provocation. The United States Military had three SIGINT stations in the Philippines, one for each of the services, but their combined coverage was less than half of all potential North Vietnamese communications. These secret intelligence-gathering missions and sabotage operations had begun under the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 1961, but in January 1964, the program was transferred to the Defense Department under the control of a cover organization called the Studies and Observations Group (SOG). In fact, the North Vietnamese were trying to avoid contact with U.S. forces on August 4, and they saw the departure of the Desoto patrol ships as a sign that they could proceed to recover their torpedo boats and tow them back to base. . Hickman, Kennedy. The 122 additional relevant SIGINT products confirmed that the Phu Bai station had misinterpreted or mistranslated many of the early August 3 SIGINT intercepts. THIS SECOND volume of the U.S. Navy's multivolume history of the Vietnam War is bound in the same familiar rich blue buckram that has styled official Navy histories since the Civil War and hence resembles its predecessors. . Navy, Of course, none of this was known to Congress, which demanded an explanation for the goings-on in the Tonkin Gulf. Gulf of Tonkin - A secret report reveals how easily soldiers, spies and politicians can jump to a conclusion and plunge the country into war. At this point, U.S. involvement in Vietnam remained largely in the background. "13 As far as the State Department was concerned, there was no need to "review" the operations. WebMany historians now agree that the Gulf of Tonkin incident, in which many believed North Vietnamese ships had attacked American naval forces, may not have occurred in the way it was described at the time. Thats what all the country wants, because Goldwater's raising so much hell about how he's gonna blow 'em off the moon, and they say that we oughtn't to do anything that the national interest doesn't require. 5. This volume deals only with the former. . WebCongress repealed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution before the United States' withdrawal from Vietnam in 1973. He has appeared on The History Channel as a featured expert. Did Johnson learn something from the first experience? For some reason, however, the second Desoto Mission, to be conducted by Maddox, was not canceled, even though it was scheduled to start at the same time that a late July commando mission was being launched. 8. On the night of 4 August, both ships reported renewed attacks by North Vietnamese patrol boats. The only opposition came from a few scattered machine guns on shore, but they did no damage. Quoted in Steve Edwards, "Stalking the Enemys Coast," U.S. Typically, the missions were carried out by a destroyer specially outfitted with sensitive eavesdropping equipment. The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) decided to resume Maddoxs Desoto patrol, but at a greater distance from the coast, accompanied by Turner Joy and supported by aircraft from Ticonderoga. The Tonkin Gulf Incident in the past two decades has been treated by at least three full-scale studies, dealt with at length by Congressional committees and extensively referenced in general histories, presidential memoirs and textbooks on the U.S. legislative function. Moreover, the subsequent review of the evidence exposed the translation and analysis errors that resulted in the reporting of the salvage operation as preparations for a second attack. To have a Tonkin Gulf conspiracy means that the several hundred National Security Agency and naval communications cited have been doctored. Most uncertainty has long centered on the alleged second attack of August 4. In July 1964, Operational Plan 34A was taking off, but during the first six months of this highly classified program of covert attacks against North Vietnam, one after the other, missions failed, often spelling doom for the commando teams inserted into the North by boat and parachute. What did and didnt happen in the Gulf of Tonkin on August 2 and 4 has long been in dispute, but the decisions that the Johnson Administration and Congress made based on an interpretation of those events were undeniably monumental. 17. You've read 1 out of 5 free articles of Naval History this month. With that false foundation in their minds, the on-scene naval analysts saw the evidence around them as confirmation of the attack they had been warned about. This was the only time covert operations against the North came close to being discussed in public. When you visit the site, Dotdash Meredith and its partners may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. Both sides, however, spent August 3 reviewing their contingency plans and analyzing lessons learned from the incident. Both South Vietnamese and U.S. maritime operators in Da Nang assumed that their raids were the cause of the mounting international crisis, and they never for a moment doubted that the North Vietnamese believed that the raids and the Desoto patrols were one and the same. They issued a recall order from Haiphong to the port commander and communications relay boat two hours after the torpedo boat squadron command issued its attack order. In addition, the destroyer USS Turner Joy began moving to support Maddox. Carl Otis Schuster, U.S. Navy (ret.) Shortly after taking office following the death of President John F. Kennedy, President Lyndon B. Johnson became concerned about South Vietnam's ability to fend off the Communist Viet Cong guerillas that were operating in the country. For 25 minutes the boats fired on the radar station, then headed back to Da Nang. 13. WebLyndon Johnson signed the Tonkin Gulf resolution on August 10, 1964. Gulf of Tonkin & the Vietnam War. Aircraft from the Ticonderoga (CVA-14) appeared on the scene, strafing three torpedo boats and sinking the one that had been damaged in the battle with the Maddox. At the White House, administration officials panicked as the public spotlight illuminated their policy in Vietnam and threatened to reveal its covert roots. . He reported those doubts in his after action report transmitted shortly after midnight his time on August 5, which was 1300 hours August 4 in Washington. One of the great ironies of the Gulf of Tonkin incident for President Johnson is that it was for him, politically, a great success, he continues. In an effort to increase pressure on North Vietnam, several Norwegian-built fast patrol boats (PTFs) were covertly purchased and transferred to South Vietnam. . Sign up for The Top of the World, delivered to your inbox every weekday morning. The reports conclusions about the Gulf of Tonkin Incident are particularly relevant as they offer useful insights into the problems that SIGINT faces today in PTF-6 took up station at the mouth of the Ron River, lit up the sky with illumination rounds, and fired at the security post. Easily outdistancing the North Vietnamese boat, the commandos arrived back at Da Nang shortly after daybreak.8, North Vietnam immediately and publicly linked the 34A raids and the Desoto patrol, a move that threatened tentative peace feelers from Washington that were only just reaching Hanoi. The tug departed Haiphong at approximately 0100 hours on August 4, while the undamaged torpedo boat, T-146, was ordered to stay with the crippled boats and maintain an alert for enemy forces. At about 0600, the two U.S. destroyers resumed the Desoto patrol. Robert S. McNamara, In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam (New York: Times Books, 1995), pp. The reports conclusions about the Gulf of Tonkin Incident are particularly relevant as they offer useful insights into the problems that SIGINT faces today in combating unconventional opponents and the potential consequences of relying too heavily on a single source of intelligence. The bullets struck the destroyer; the torpedo missed. The most comprehensive and authoritative history site on the Internet. Returning fire, Maddox scored hits on the P-4s while being struck by a single 14.5-millimeter machine gun bullet. In Saigon, Ambassador Maxwell Taylor objected to the halt, saying that "it is my conviction that we must resume these operations and continue their pressure on North Vietnam as soon as possible, leaving no impression that we or the South Vietnamese have been deterred from our operations because of the Tonkin Gulf incidents." The series of mistakes that led to the August 4 misreporting began on August 3 when the Phu Bai station interpreted Haiphongs efforts to determine the status of its forces as an order to assemble for further offensive operations. Joseph C. Goulden, Truth Is the First Casualty: The Gulf of Tonkin AffairIllusion and Reality (Chicago: Rand McNally & Co., 1969), p. 80. PTF-1 and PTF-5 raced toward shore. Seeking to follow the established policy of containment, Johnson and his Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, began increasing military aid to South Vietnam. In Saigon, General William C. Westmoreland, the new commander of Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV), approved of the plan, and SOG began testing 81-mm mortars, 4.5-inch rockets, and recoilless rifles aboard the boats. But by the end of June, the situation had changed. In July, General Westmoreland asked that Desoto patrols be expanded to cover 34A missions from Vinh Son north to the islands of Hon Me, Hon Nieu, and Hon Mat, all of which housed North Vietnamese radar installations or other coastwatching equipment. The history stops with the U.S. Navy moving into full combat duty -- the naval and air interdictions in South and North Vietnam -- the subject of future volumes. Suddenly, North Vietnamese guns opened fire from the shore. 10. Mr. For the Navys official account stating that both incidents occurred and that 34A and Desoto were "entirely distinct," see Marolda and Fitzgerald, pp. The Johnson Administration initially limited its response to a terse diplomatic note to Hanoi, the first-ever U.S. diplomatic note to that government. Everything went smoothly until the early hours of 2 August, when intelligence picked up indications that the North Vietnamese Navy had moved additional Swatows into the vicinity of Hon Me and Hon Nieu Islands and ordered them to prepare for battle. But, interestingly, on Sept. 18, a similar incident occurred in the Gulf of Tonkin. More important, they did not know the North Vietnamese had begun to react more aggressively to the commando raids. In the years covered here, the Navy was generally known throughout the U.S. Mission in Saigon for being in the housekeeping business, operating supply warehouses, and running the officer clubs, PXs and other amenities, an inevitable part of the American military's baggage. The two boats headed northeast along the same route they had come, then turned south for the run back to South Vietnam. Two nearly identical episodes six weeks apart; two nearly opposite responses. To increase the chances of success, SOG proposed increased raids along the coast, emphasizing offshore bombardment by the boats rather than inserting commandos. But for a band of South Vietnamese commandos and a handful of U.S. advisers, not much had changed. Forty-eight hours earlier, on Aug. 2, two US destroyers on patrol in the Gulf of Tonkin the Maddox and the Turner Joy were attacked by North Vietnamese boats. There was more or less general acceptance of the Navy's initial account -- there was an unprovoked attack on Aug. 2 by three North Vietnamese patrol boats on an American warship, the destroyer USS Maddox in international waters. McNamara was ready to respond. The Gulf of Tonkin Incident famously gave the Johnson Administration the justification they needed to escalate the Vietnam War. The Navys seaborne SIGINT effort in support of OPLAN-34, called Desoto Missions, played a key role in the events that ultimately led to the Gulf of Tonkin incident. In truth, two of the torpedo boats were damaged, of which one could not make it back to port, while a single American aircraft sustained some wing damage. In the subsequent exchange of fire, neither American nor North Vietnamese ships inflicted significant damage. Such arguments are rooted in the information and documents released by Daniel Ellsberg and others, and were reinforced over the decades by anniversary interviews with some of the participants, including ships crewmen and officers. The SIGINT intercepts also detected that the North Vietnamese coastal radar stations were tracking Maddox and reporting its movements to the outbound torpedo boats. In response, the North Vietnamese boat launched a torpedo. Around midday on Aug. 4, Adm. Grant Sharp, the top navy commander in the Pacific, made a call to the Joint Chiefs, and it was clear there were significant doubts about this second incident. The study debunks two strongly held but opposing beliefs about what happened on both dayson the one hand that neither of the reported attacks ever took place at all, and on the other that there was in fact a second deliberate North Vietnamese attack on August 4. The maximum closure distance was originally established at 20 nautical miles, but the commander of the U.S. The people who are calling me up, they want to be damned sure I don't pull 'em out and run, and they want to be damned sure that we're firm.