On August 2d and 4th, 1964, American naval officials alleged that
torpedo boats from the Democratic Republic of (northern) Vietnam [DRVN]
had attacked two American destroyers the Maddox and the C. Turner Joy,
in the Gulf of Tonkin. The attendant American response would mark a major
political and military escalation of the American war on Vietnam.
Earlier, the U.S. had begun surveillance and probing actions against
the DRVN, as part of Operations Plan 34-A, or OPLAN 34-A. A component of
these operations were DeSoto Patrols, in which American ships would patrol
along and bombard the coast of the DRVN, in the Gulf of Tonkin.
In August 1964, the U.S. was conducting such operations and was patrolling within the DRVN's territorial waters [according to international law, a nation controls the waters from its shore to 12 miles out, at which point it becomes international water]. The American ships were obviously engaging in provocative actions.
Against that backdrop, and the continued deterioration of American efforts to preserve the fictive state of the Republic of (southern) Vietnam and its puppet regime, the alleged attacks against the U.S. destroyers occurred. In essence the U.S. needed a casus belli, a reason to intensify its military actions against the DRVN. or face certain failure.
So, when the reports of the attacks against the Turner Joy and Maddox arrived in Washington, they served an important political purpose–to legitimize further attacks against northern Vietnam. At the time, there was confusion at best, and significant skepticism about the attacks. President Lyndon Johnson himself laughed "hell, those dumb stupid sailors were just shooting at flying fish." Subsequent research, especially by historian Ed Moise, indicates that the first attacks on August 2d may have occurred but the second set almost certainly did not. But the facts really didn't matter.
The episode provided Johnson with the rationale to begin air strikes above the seventeenth parallel in Vietnam, and the president also went to congress to seek political authorization for expanded military action.
The result was the Southeast Asia Resolution, more commonly known as the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. The act gave the president authority to "take all necessary measures" to defend American interests, including the RVN, in Southeast Asia. The Resolution passed overwhelmingly, 416-0 in the House of Representatives and 88-2 in the senate. Johnson now had a political basis with which to wage war, a blank check for aggression. The Resolution, he said in his inimitable Texas style, "was like Grandma's nightshirt, it covered everything."
The Tonkin episode was indeed timely. The RVN was receiving about $2 million a day in U.S. aid but continued to founder, and victory by the National Liberation Front and Ho Chi Minh's communists seemed inevitable. Indeed, the NLF and the Viet Cong, its military arm, controlled about 40 percent of all RVN territory, had majority control in over 50 percent of southern provinces, and had over 90 percent control in five.
So, with the war going badly, and Johnson running as a peace candidate
in the 1964 election, the Tonkin incident was a blessing. It gave the president
the excuse he wanted to ratchet up the war while appearing to defend American
interests.
The Tonkin incident also stands as another in a long line of contrived
or overblown "crises" which helped lead to wars–the Maine, the Lusitania,
Weapons of Mass Destruction and so forth.
So the Vietnam War, an ultimately tragic encounter which led to the deaths of over 58,000 Americans and, often forgotten, millions of Vietnamese and other Indochinese, had reached an important turning point on August 2d and 4th, 1964.