JULY 27, 2024 (Updated and expanded from July 22, 2020 post)
The 1964 Tonkin Gulf Crisis: Did We Shoot at Ghosts During the ‘Second Attack’?
A radar picket destroyer on patrol near the Tonkin Gulf, 1964 — Photo by Si Dunn
Sixty years after it happened, we still have no definitive understanding of what actually occurred during the 1964 Tonkin Gulf Crisis. Two events — one confirmed and the other still debated by historians, academics and conspiracy theorists — caused the United States to escalate a war in Vietnam that ultimately failed and cost some 58,000 American lives.
In my Vietnam War memoir Dark Signals, I put forth my own concepts of what may have transpired during the still-controversial “second attack.” They are based on my observations and personal experiences during and after the Tonkin Gulf Crisis, as well as on information from other sources, including other participants and authors of several key books.
At one level, I was just one sailor among thousands within the armada of ships dispatched to the Tonkin Gulf and South China Sea in August 1964. But I had a rare perspective: As a radio operator aboard the destroyer USS Higbee, I held a high security clearance. And I had direct knowledge of many of the classified messages that flashed to and from the Pentagon, White House, U.S. Seventh Fleet and individual ships. I knew quickly that the reality of the so-called “Second Attack” was very much in doubt.
The First Attack
On Aug. 3, 1964 (U.S. time), three North Vietnamese PT boats attacked the U.S. Navy destroyer USS Maddox in international waters, missing its hull with torpedoes but hitting a piece of metal topside with a heavy machine gun bullet that created a single hole a half-inch in diameter. The Maddox fired back, and aircraft from the carrier USS Ticonderoga arrived and unleashed Zuni rockets and cannon fire. The three PT boats pursuing the Maddox were damaged, and one apparently sank during the daylight clash.
Later, it would be known that the Maddox had been performing electronic eavesdropping missions off the North Vietnamese coast, sometimes within territorial waters claimed by Hanoi and sometimes near areas where secret South Vietnamese commando raids into North Vietnam were being assisted by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.
But what was the so-called second “attack” — the one that helped push Congress into almost-unanimous passage of the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, essentially giving President Lyndon Johnson a blank check to wage undeclared war against North Vietnam?
Blips in the Night: The Second ‘Attack’
In a Dark Signals chapter titled “Attack,” I wrote:
Shortly after 9:30 p.m., August 4, Tonkin Gulf time, the destroyers USS Maddox and USS Turner Joy engaged in a nearly three-hour sea “battle” against what they believed were North Vietnamese PT boats speeding at them through the darkness. The two tin cans fired hundreds of high-explosive shells at fast-moving radar blips and swerved violently to avoid what seemed to be many torpedoes in the water.
Yet the Navy planes that swooped down to help the ships could not find any attacking boats to destroy. Dutifully, they shot up the water around the phantom radar targets identified by the ships. Then, when their fuel ran low, they flew back to their carriers.
Aboard the ships still surging southward from Japan, the radio communications groups were now swamped with messages. And life was no easier in the Navy’s Pacific shore stations. Seventh Fleet communications circuits failed amid the flood of queries, reports and updates, all bearing the startling precedence “FLASH.”
As writer Eugene G. Windchy later noted in his 1971 book, Tonkin Gulf, “The…latest teleprinter equipment, speedy though it was, could not keep up with the demands of human curiosity. Messages…jammed the radio circuits so badly that a high priority item could take four or five hours to get through. It was unfortunate that nobody had thought to send a communications ship….” to help manage the flood of information and demands for more information.
What had just happened in the Tonkin Gulf became less and less clear. Some of the SECRET and TOP SECRET radio messages now reflected growing doubt that a “second attack” had even occurred. One message in particular stood out as I tore it from a radio-teletype machine and prepared to run it up to the Higbee‘s bridge. The dispatch was from Commodore John J. Herrick, the senior officer aboard the Maddox, to officials at the Pentagon, State Department and White House:
“REVIEW OF ACTION MAKES MANY RECORDED CONTACTS AND TORPEDOES FIRED APPEAR DOUBTFUL. FREAK WEATHER EFFECTS AND OVEREAGER SONARMAN MAY HAVE ACCOUNTED FOR MANY REPORTS. SUGGEST COMPLETE EVALUATION BEFORE ANY FURTHER ACTION.”
Other messages also questioned whether radar images attributed to North Vietnamese PT boats actually may have been false echoes created by weather anomalies. Still, the naval armada pressed on, and those of us aboard its ships had little knowledge of the intense political debates now raging in Washington and the United Nations about the Tonkin Gulf.
I was puzzled and surprised the next day when I saw a FLASH message with the heading “OPERATION PIERCE ARROW.” It was the signal that President Lyndon B. Johnson had just ordered retaliatory air strikes against North Vietnam. At once, I was troubled that we were pushing toward war without making sure we were right. Other messages in the continuing stream indicated we still had no proof a second attack had occurred.
Two aircraft carriers, the Constellation and Ticonderoga, launched a total of 64 planes, and the selected targets were heavily damaged. These included a PT boat base and an oil storage facility at Vinh, just a short distance north of the demilitarized zone that had been created in 1954 to separate South and North Vietnam. Two pilots were lost: one killed; one captured.
Twenty-one years later, I would meet the pilot who had led that first mission, Commander (later Admiral) James Stockdale. He would tell me that he and other pilots had shared my shock at how the unsubstantiated “second attack” was used as a rationale for going to war.
In his 1984 book In Love & War, Adm. Stockdale recalled his reactions after he was awakened early and informed of his PIERCE ARROW mission. He had just spent the previous night, August 4, flying over the Maddox and Turner Joy, trying to find and shoot nonexistent targets given to him by “spooked operators and spooked equipment[.]” After he returned his F8 Crusader to the Ticonderoga, he had reported “No boats, no boat wakes, no ricochets off boats—nothing but black sea and American firepower” and had gone to bed, confident that higher-ups would sort things out.
But Stockdale, who later would be awarded the Medal of Honor and four Silver Stars for his service in the Vietnam conflict, wrote: “As I spattered my face with cold water and pulled on my khaki trousers, I felt like one of the few men in the world who really understood the enormity of what was going to happen. The bad portents of the moment were suffocating. We were about the launch a war under false pretenses, in the face of the on-scene military commander’s advice to the contrary. This decision had to be driven from way up at the top.”
In that same chapter, I also quoted another carrier pilot who had assisted the Maddox and Turner Joy. Lt. (j.g.) Everett Alvarez had flown an A-4 Skyhawk from the U.S.S. Constellation. In his 1989 book Chained Eagle, Alvarez (who later was shot down and taken prisoner by the North Vietnamese) recalled his unsettled feelings after returning from the night incident in the Tonkin Gulf:
“We sat around in our ready room, still stupefied at how hysterical they’d been on the Maddox and Turner Joy. We had been there to help yet they had shown little ability to coordinate in their wild disorder. None of us had seen any PT boats and it seemed the destroyers were battling phantom targets.”
Shooting at Tonkin’s Ghosts?
In a chapter titled “Sea Ghosts,” I noted that one of the key triggers for the Tonkin Gulf Resolution “had been the one-sided, nighttime naval battle involving the Maddox and Turner Joy and ghostly radar images that later were identified as ‘Tonkin spooks.’” In some accounts they are called “Tonkin ghosts.”
As Edward Moïse explained in his book Tonkin Gulf and Escalation of the Vietnam War, “Tonkin spooks” are radar ghost images “characteristic, not of Asian waters in general, but of certain limited areas in Asia…The phenomenon generates radar images that are much smaller and more clearly defined than those normally generated by weather…Not even the most experienced radar operator can simply look at a Tonkin [s]pook on a radar screen and realize from its appearance that it does not represent an actual surface vessel.”
Tonkin spooks were encountered by several other 7th Fleet ships in the early weeks after the events of August 3-4, 1964. For example, a lesser-known “third attack” involved the destroyers Morton and Edwards on September 18, 1964. My ship, the Higbee, had had its own encounters with the weather phenomena during August and September. Several times, we were rousted out of our racks and called to battle stations when radar operators saw solid images of what appeared to be PT boats preparing to attack in the night. In one nerve-wracking session, I was summoned to the Combat Information Center on the double and told to be ready to send a FLASH message to the Seventh Fleet, the Pentagon, the White House, and others. As I watched, two images on the radar screen moved toward us, getting closer and closer to warning-shot range. Then, gradually, they merged into one blob and faded out.
The lessons of these false encounters, unfortunately, were not quickly learned in the Seventh Fleet, and lives ultimately would be lost. For example, over a three-night period in June, 1968, U.S. Air Force jets attacked what they thought were North Vietnamese helicopters flying in darkness over the Tonkin Gulf. Two of the targets, however, turned out to be U.S. Navy Swift boats. Both were sunk, and five sailors were killed. The Air Force jets later fired at the Australian destroyer HMAS Hobart, killing two of her crewmen, and also attacked an American cruiser, USS Boston, was hit. Several other ships and small craft likewise were damaged.
“Unusual atmospheric conditions prevailing in Vietnamese waters at this period have been commented on by U.S. Air Force officers,” according to a report of the Naval Historical Society of Australia.
Most Say ‘Yes,’ Some Say ‘No’
It is now widely accepted that Tonkin spooks and excited imaginations were responsible for the August 4, 1964, “second attack” that led to the Tonkin Gulf Resolution and escalated America’s long involvement in the Vietnam War. However, some Navy veterans who were on the Maddox and Turner Joy still dispute the “Tonkin spooks and excited imaginations” explanations, and, in postings on the web, they have presented their evidence and have stood by what they believe happened.
I can still recall how dark Tonkin Gulf can be on a moonless, cloudy night. And I still remember my own fear and wild imaginings as we rushed to battle stations with the bos’un’s pipe squealing, the 1MC public address system alive with hatch-closing and door-sealing orders ( “Set Condition Zebra throughout the ship!”), and the general quarters klaxon blaring “blong-blong-blong!”
During one call to general quarters, we were told that an enemy air raid was likely. Before I reached my battle station, I grabbed an old .45 pistol from Radio Central. I intended, ridiculously, to shoot at any MiGs that might attack my ship. And if we were bombed and sunk, I intended to use the guns to shoot any tiger sharks that came at me.
Ironically, seabirds could also have played a role in the “second attack” and other incidents. Some 22 species of seabirds have been identified in the Tonkin Gulf, and a few U.S. Navy officers with experience in the region have postulated that seabird flocks—which could show up on powerful radar screens and move at PT-boat speeds—might have been culpable in the phantom sea battles.
Radarmen aboard the Higbee told me in 1964 and 1965 that they could see groups of seabirds moving on their screens. And often, when I stood out on the ASROC deck trying to fight seasickness, I watched long, narrow flocks of small, dark seabirds that resembled auks or small ducks flying low and fast as they flowed past the ship. The birds flew along for a few minutes, and then they landed to rest. After a short time, they took off again and swept along just above the waves, furiously flapping their short, stubby wings. When they were airborne, they flew faster than a destroyer moving at top speed. Were these the mysterious “PT boats” that surged through the night?
Nature and Self-Deception
Ultimately, the total “truth” of what happened during the Tonkin Gulf Crisis may never be determined. Yet the ease with which technology and nature can deceive us, even now, should not be ignored. Likewise, we should not forget the unbridled power of human imagination, particularly when we again find ourselves surrounded by darkness, fear, and some of nature’s ambiguous ghosts. With new and frequent nuclear saber rattlings over Ukraine, these are very dangerous times.
— Si Dunn
Si Dunn is the author of Dark Signals: A Navy Radio Operator in the Tonkin Gulf and South China Sea, 1964-1965. His other books include a novel, Erwin’s Law, a novella, Jump, and three works of poetry.
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