Forty-six years ago today, August 4, 1964, I was aboard USS Higbee (DD-806), steaming at twenty-seven knots toward the Tonkin Gulf. The day before, our destroyer squadron commander, Captain Vincent Patrick Healey, rushed our departure from the naval base at Yokosuka, Japan, so we could get into the action following the North Vietnamese PT Boat attack Sunday, August 2 on USS Maddox.
The above photo, taken from Higbee's helicopter deck, shows USS Mason (DD-852), followed by USS Orleck (DD-886) in the distance. Not seen is the squadron flagship, USS Joseph B. Strauss (DDG-16), leading the way ahead of Higbee.
My wife Elizabeth and our two young sons had arrived in Japan from the states after nineteen hours in a four-engined propeller plane the evening of August 3, hours after our departure. I would not see them for two more months.
That night (August 4) I stood the mid watch (midnight to 0400). After my watch, I stopped by the radio shack to read the fox skeds (incoming messages broadcast to all the ships in the fleet, printed on yellow teletype paper). I soon came across a stack of messages sent at flash precedence from USS Maddox and the embarked destroyer squadron commander, Capt. Herrick. It read like a war novel.
Maddox and her companion ship USS Turner Joy reported being under attack by PT boats. The ships took evasive action to avoid torpedoes detected by sonarmen. The attacking boats, seen on radar, maneuvered at high speed. Lookouts reported flashes of gunfire and cockpit lights. Maddox and Turner Joy fired their five inch guns and reported destroying several boats.
After several messages of that kind, Commodore Herrick sent a message calling into question some of the earlier messages. His messages conveyed increasing doubt that the ships were under attack at all. Then I saw messages from the Pentagon asking probing questions and directing Herrick to keep all of the records, including tracks from the ship's dead reckoning tracer (DRT), radio logs, sonar records and so forth. Commodore Herrick recommended to the Pentagon to take no action until the records were reviewed.
Unknown to him, action was already underway, with a retaliatory strike planned for dawn.
Suddenly there were no more messages on the fleet broadcast about the event. I was certain the message traffic had been moved from general service communications channels to a "back channel" not shared with the operating forces.
Two months later, back in Yokosuka, we began hearing rumors that the two ships may have been firing at each other. I doubted that. But I never believed that the so called second attack, the night of 4-5 August 1964, that was used to justify the Tonkin Gulf Resolution actually happened.
Maddox and her companion ship USS Turner Joy reported being under attack by PT boats. The ships took evasive action to avoid torpedoes detected by sonarmen. The attacking boats, seen on radar, maneuvered at high speed. Lookouts reported flashes of gunfire and cockpit lights. Maddox and Turner Joy fired their five inch guns and reported destroying several boats.
After several messages of that kind, Commodore Herrick sent a message calling into question some of the earlier messages. His messages conveyed increasing doubt that the ships were under attack at all. Then I saw messages from the Pentagon asking probing questions and directing Herrick to keep all of the records, including tracks from the ship's dead reckoning tracer (DRT), radio logs, sonar records and so forth. Commodore Herrick recommended to the Pentagon to take no action until the records were reviewed.
Unknown to him, action was already underway, with a retaliatory strike planned for dawn.
Suddenly there were no more messages on the fleet broadcast about the event. I was certain the message traffic had been moved from general service communications channels to a "back channel" not shared with the operating forces.
Two months later, back in Yokosuka, we began hearing rumors that the two ships may have been firing at each other. I doubted that. But I never believed that the so called second attack, the night of 4-5 August 1964, that was used to justify the Tonkin Gulf Resolution actually happened.
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