Vietnam: Tonkin Circus
It's not as if the Americans were wholeheartedly eager to invade Vietnam: memories of the Korean War were still too vivid (though the "hawks" were all for an invasion!). Both the USSR and the US wanted to resolve the conflict diplomatically. Mediators were found: India and Poland... To be honest, Ho Chi Minh showed little desire to negotiate. It's hard to blame him: the Viet Cong were in full swing an hour's drive from Saigon. The fruit was already ripe and ready to fall into Uncle Ho's hands. The Americans also viewed the situation with alarm, which is why they constantly tried to topple Ho Chi Minh.
South Vietnamese Rangers were intended, among other things, for operations behind enemy lines.
The CIA conducted "covert operations" against the DRV, culminating in "radio games" during which Vietnamese counterintelligence agents would indicate where the next group of American-trained saboteurs would be deployed, arrange a "warm welcome," and then the next recruited radio operator would begin pouring disinformation into the ears of his masters, which elevated their spirits—a powerful underground network was operating in North Vietnam! A total of 80 groups were deployed to the North, all with dismal fates.
"Biet Hai", commandos of the South Vietnamese Navy
In addition to the Americans, the Saigon regime's secret services sent saboteurs into the DRV. Speedboats carrying the "Biet Hai"—naval commandos (recruited mostly from the Nung, a people related to the Thais)—would depart Da Nang at night, shelling and blowing up North Vietnamese coastal targets. Swift and Nasty-class boats could reach speeds of up to 55 knots, and no patrol vessel could match them. fleet The DRV couldn't catch up. There were occasional exchanges of fire between patrol boats, but the Southerners had a distinct advantage—40mm automatic cannons. Incidentally, this moment is worth remembering; it's crucial for understanding subsequent events.
All of the above forced Uncle Ho to become concerned about strengthening the DRV's coastal defenses. Chinese artillery boats—Type 55A Shantou—were supplied by the PRC. Against their 4x37mm guns, the 1x40mm and 1x20mm guns (plus two 12,7mm Brownings) weren't exactly useless, but... they looked incredibly weak. The boats were developed on the basis of the Soviet Project 183 Bolshevik torpedo boats. On July 28, 1964, after a commando raid on Honzyo Island, the Shantou pursued the southern boats for over 40 miles. Two days later, the commandos attempted to storm a radar station on Honmyo Island, but after an intense firefight, they withdrew empty-handed. In general, the DRV sailors were on guard and ready to repel an attack from an absolutely unconditional enemy at any moment.
The destroyer Maddox
And then the US Navy destroyer Maddox appeared off the coast of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam... The destroyer had come for reconnaissance: the "Desoto" mission involved radio reconnaissance and... monitoring the activity of Northern patrol boats. The Americans most likely weren't collecting this data for themselves, but rather to provide information to those same Southern commandos who regularly conducted raids north. Then the circus begins, since the battle described below, or the excess of alcohol in the body of the destroyer division commander, Captain John Herrick (the destroyer itself was commanded by Commander Herbert L. Ogier), which led to hallucinations in one particular naval mind, caused consequences that were quite difficult to calculate.
Captain John Herrick (left) and Commander Herbert L. Ogier
In short, the official American version is as follows. On August 1, Herrick received a warning about an intercepted radio transmission from the Democratic Republic of Vietnam's Naval Command: "Decision to engage enemy this evening." The captain decided that moving the ship away from the coast would clearly not be detrimental. On the night of August 2, several Vietnamese Project 123-bis torpedo boats (NATO designation P-4) and those same Chinese Shantou-class patrol boats received orders to proceed to Hon Me Island. The Americans also intercepted this order and assumed it was an intention to engage the Maddox. Early in the morning of August 2, the NSA sent an urgent telegram to the Navy Command: "Given the demonstrated sensitivity of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the observed preparations for counteraction, the reaction to the Desoto patrol may be more serious than anticipated." However, the destroyer's commander was not listed as the recipient of the telegram, and the US Navy command allowed Herrick to continue operating in the territorial waters of the DRV.
A Project 123-bis torpedo boat on a pedestal in Kaliningrad.
Senior Colonel (in Vietnam, this rank is similar to "Senior Captain First Rank") Tran Quy Hai, Deputy Chief of the General Staff, was on duty at the Hanoi General Staff that day. When he was informed of the presence of an American destroyer in the territorial waters and asked the fateful question, "What should we do?" the senior colonel (according to eyewitness accounts) yelled into the phone, "What? They're asking how we should react to this? When an enemy ship invades our territorial waters, we should attack it! What the hell are they waiting for?" The constant Saigon commando raids on DRV territory had many on the General Staff on edge. Afterwards, three Project 123-bis torpedo boats of the 135th Torpedo Group were ordered to attack the Maddox, escorted by two patrol boats.
It must be said that the Americans themselves provided the grounds for the attack. James Bamford, who served as an analyst in US Naval Intelligence, later wrote:
The Maddox's primary mission was to act as a naval provocateur—to stick her gray nose and American flag as close to the belly of North Vietnam as possible, essentially sticking her five-inch guns in the nose of the communist navy... The mission was made even more provocative by being timed to coincide with commando raids, giving the impression that the Maddox was directing these operations... The North Vietnamese therefore had every reason to believe that the Maddox was involved in these actions.
A Vietnamese torpedo boat escapes fire from the Maddox on August 2, 1964.
At 2:00 PM on August 2, the destroyer noticed that the Vietnamese Navy boats had set a course to the east and increased speed to 25 knots. At 2:40 PM, Herrick warned Navy command that he would open fire in self-defense if necessary. Four F-8 Crusider fighters from the aircraft carrier Ticonderoga, which was conducting a training flight, were dispatched to his aid. At 3:05 PM, the destroyer fired three warning shots from its 5-inch gun. However, U.S. Navy officials later claimed that the Vietnamese opened fire first. The boats then set a course for the ship and attacked at 40 knots, firing large-caliber CPVs. However, neither the Maddox's shells nor the boats' torpedoes hit anyone. At 3:20 PM, the Crusaders arrived and attacked the torpedo boats, damaging all three. Four Vietnamese were killed and six wounded (the Americans reported the sinking of one boat, but Vietnamese data does not confirm this). The Maddox escaped with a single bullet hole in the hull, and one of the aircraft also sustained non-fatal damage.
Army General Van Tien Dung, later Minister of Defense of the DRV
On August 3, the Chief of the North Vietnamese General Staff, Van Tien Dung, arrived on the coast and congratulated the sailors on their baptism of fire. However, the sailors themselves were not at the base at the time: they were sheltering from a storm near one of the islands. Apparently, on the plane back, he told the officer accompanying him that the attack had been a mistake and that the senior colonel on duty had exceeded his authority.
The destroyer Turner Joy is another "hero" of the Tonkin incident.
And then came August 4th. The Maddox continued Operation Desoto, but Herrick requested reinforcements, and the destroyer Turner Joy was dispatched. The ships were conducting reconnaissance; the weather in the Gulf of Tonkin was unwelcome: a tropical storm with heavy rain. At 18:40, the radio intercept station again warned of possible attacks by Vietnamese torpedo boats. Two hours later, Herrick reported that his radar had detected two more targets, then three, then ten. Skyhawks were scrambled from the Ticonderoga, and sonar operators on the Maddox heard the noise of torpedo propellers. Heading toward them! At 21:40, Herrick reported that the ships were firing at the attackers, but the radars were unable to reliably lock on to them due to the storm. In general, that evening, American destroyers were racing around the Gulf of Tonkin like crazy, dodging torpedoes and firing hurricane-like fire at Vietnamese torpedo boats, firing more than 300 5-inch shells.
Skyhawks over the Gulf of Tonkin on August 12, 1964.
The funniest part of this whole circus is that there was no attack! The fact is, as I already mentioned, there was a severe storm with tropical rain that day. Herrick saw the boats only on radar, while the more sophisticated radar and sonar systems of the nearby destroyer Turner Joy saw or heard no targets. The pilots later admitted they saw nothing, as did the signalmen on the Maddox and Joy. No one saw the Vietnamese boats with their own eyes. Because they weren't there: Vietnamese combat logs don't record any torpedo boat sorties on August 4, which isn't surprising, given the storm—the Project 123-bis boats aren't particularly seaworthy: they only had a storm force of 4.
Robert McNamara: "We are losing, but we cannot and will not accept it!"
The next day, McNamara chaired a meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The reports from the South weren't optimistic—the Viet Cong were active, the Arvins were useless, intelligence reports indicated a Chinese air division was being transferred to the North, and CIA chief John McCone warned of possible Chinese air raids. aviation to Saigon. And then Herrick reported: "The DRV has thrown down the gauntlet and now considers itself at war with us." "We are losing, but we cannot and will not accept this!" the Minister of Defense declared.
Interestingly, while the American command wasn't particularly alarmed after the first, real clash on August 2, after the fake "battle" on August 4, McNamara gave the order to strike a DRVN naval base. The NSA intercepted a Vietnamese message claiming the Vietnamese had shot down two enemy aircraft and damaged a ship. In fact, the message referred to the August 2 battle, but it took until it was decrypted and passed on to the US Secretary of Defense... And let's not forget: McNamara was a hawk and needed a pretext to intervene in the inter-Vietnamese conflict. Herrick's fictitious battle on August 4 provided such a pretext.
Lyndon Johnson addresses the nation
On August 4, at 18:00 PM, Washington officials announced that a "second deliberate attack" had occurred. McNamara fed Johnson metered information, twisting the meager radio intercept data to his advantage. As a result, at 23:36 PM on August 4, 1964, Lyndon Johnson addressed the nation:
Aggression and terror against civilian settlements in South Vietnam have now been supplemented by open aggression at sea... Repeated acts of violence against the United States armed forces must be met not only with heightened defensive measures, but also with proactive steps... We recognize the risks of conflict escalation, which others seem to overlook. Our goal is to prevent the war from spreading.
Lieutenant Everett Alvarez Jr. in captivity in Vietnam.
Following this, the Joint Chiefs of Staff ordered the Naval Command:
At 7:00 local time, carry out a single maximum action... with the task of ensuring the highest possible level of destruction of targets.
The operation was given the pompous American name "Piercing Arrow." Aircraft from the aircraft carriers Ticonderoga and Constellation raided torpedo boat bases and an oil depot in Vinh. F-8 Crusider, A-1 Skyraider, and A-4 Skyhawk aircraft, in 64 sorties, destroyed, according to pilots, up to 10 percent of all DRV oil depots and 29 torpedo boats. In the process, the Americans lost two aircraft: one Skyraider, whose pilot, Lieutenant Richard Suter, was killed, and one Skyhawk, whose pilot, Second Lieutenant Everett Alvarez Jr., was captured for eight years, thus becoming the first of 600 American pilots to end up in the Vietnamese prison that received the ironic name "Hanoi Hilton."
Both aircraft were shot down with 14,5mm anti-aircraft machine guns. The Vietnamese claimed eight aircraft shot down. However, the American claim should be weighed tenfold: two torpedo boats were actually sunk and several Shantou patrol boats were damaged (the Vietnamese admit to 23). "Nowhere do they lie so much as in war and on the hunt," as Bismarck said.
Tonkin Resolution
In principle, the Gulf of Tonkin incident and Operation Piercing Arrow could have remained isolated incidents, but on August 7, the US Congress passed the Tonkin Resolution (effective August 10). It authorized President Lyndon Johnson to use military force (conventional weapons, not nuclear weapons!) in Southeast Asia without a formal declaration of war. Why not Vietnam? Well, the Americans were well aware of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, which ran through Laos, so to save the trouble...
Lyndon Johnson signs the Tonkin Resolution. His face says, "Why do I need this?"
Both the resolution itself and the use of the Tonkin incident as a pretext for war were largely aimed at a domestic, rather than foreign, audience. Johnson was facing an election, and allowing his rivals to portray the president as "soft on communism" would mean losing the election. Johnson remembered well how Senator Joseph McCarthy had achieved national prominence: he had risen on the "loss of China" in 1949. Allowing someone to undermine him over the "loss of Vietnam" was unacceptable to the president. Incidentally, it was precisely this consideration that led Johnson to reject de Gaulle's plan: a neutral South Vietnam, allowing the United States to withdraw from the war without losing face. America was hurtling full steam ahead into an epic that would transform both the United States and the rest of the world.
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