The Secret Sentry (13 page)

At seven twenty a.m. on Friday, July 31, only a few hours after the OPLAN 34A attack on Hon Me and Hon Nieu Islands had taken
place, the
Maddox
refueled from the tanker USS
Ashtabula
east of the demilitarized zone (DMZ), then steamed northward along the North Vietnamese coast on its assigned patrol track.
During the refueling, lookouts on the
Maddox
spotted the South Vietnamese patrol craft that had attacked Hon Me and Hon Nieu moving south at maximum speed toward their
base at Da Nang.
²⁰

For the next two days, the
Maddox
sailed northward at a leisurely pace, spending most of July 31 off Hon Gio Island near the DMZ, then the morning of August
1 off the port of Vinh Son, before reaching its third orbit point (“Point Charlie”) off Hon Me Island just as the sun was
setting, at seven p.m. As noted above, Hon Me had been attacked by South Vietnamese Nasty patrol boats two nights earlier.
Up to this point, the two-day cruise along the North Vietnamese coast had been uneventful. But unbeknownst to the
Maddox
, North Vietnamese radar stations were closely following the ship’s movements.
²¹

Shortly before midnight (eleven twenty-seven p.m.) on August 1, U.S. Navy radio intercept operators at San Miguel and Phu
Bai, in South Vietnam, intercepted a North Vietnamese radio message. It took almost three hours to decrypt, then translate
the message. When fully translated, it turned out to be a high-priority message from the North Vietnamese Southern Fleet headquarters
at Ben Thuy to an entity designated only as “255,” stating that it had “decided to fight the enemy tonight.” The San Miguel
analysts were pretty sure the “enemy” referred to was the
Maddox
.
²²
A few minutes later, a second message was intercepted by the San Miguel listening post that confirmed it. Shortly after that,
at one fifty-five a.m. on August 2, San Miguel intercepted a third message revealing that three Russian-made P-4 PT boats
had been dispatched from nearby Thanh Hoa naval base to reinforce the three Swatow-class patrol boats already operating in
the Hon Me–Hon Nieu area, where the
Maddox
was cruising.
²³

At two twenty-four a.m., San Miguel forwarded a summary of the translated “fight the enemy tonight” intercept to the COMVAN
on the
Maddox
. A few minutes later, Lieutenant Moore, the commander of the COMVAN, woke Captains Herrick and Ogier in their staterooms
and informed them of the new intelligence. The report unsettled Herrick, who concluded that the
Maddox
was about to be attacked. At two fifty-four a.m., Herrick sent a FLASH-precedence message to the commander of the U.S. Seventh
Fleet in Japan stating, “Contemplate serious reaction my movements [vicinity] Pt. Charlie in near future. Received info indicating
possible hostile action.” Without waiting for a reply from the Seventh Fleet, Herrick ordered general quarters sounded on
the
Maddox
and shifted course to the east. While the crew took up battle stations, the destroyer sped away from the North Vietnamese
coast and the threatened attack at flank speed.
²⁴

Despite the urgent request from the on-scene commander to cancel the remainder of the patrol because of “unacceptable risk,”
Herrick was directed to resume the patrol by the commander of the Seventh Fleet. The
Maddox
reached “Point Delta,” off the port and naval base of Thanh Hoa, at nine forty-five a.m. and prepared for an eight-hour orbit
just off Hon Me Island. But the cautious Herrick refused to allow the
Maddox
to come as close to the North Vietnamese coastline as he had the previous day, keeping his ship out of harm’s way as best
he could.
²⁵

At two past ten a.m. as the
Maddox
sailed toward Hon Me Island, an urgent message titled “Possible Planned Attack by DRV Navy on Desoto Patrol” was sent from
NSA to CINCPAC and the Seventh Fleet—but strangely enough, the COMVAN on the
Maddox
was not on the distribution list. The NSA message noted that an intercepted July 31 North Vietnamese message detailing the
damage caused by the OPLAN 34A attack on Hon Me also “indicated DRV [North Vietnamese] intentions and preparations to repulse
further such attacks.” As a result, NSA concluded that the North Vietnamese “reaction to Desoto patrol might be more severe
than would otherwise be anticipated” because the North Vietnamese had connected the July 31 commando raid with the presence
of the
Maddox
. The problem was that the
Maddox
did not know this.
²⁶

At eleven thirty a.m., an hour and a half after the NSA warning message was issued, three North Vietnamese P-4 PT boats (T-333,
T-336, and T-339 from Division 3 of PT Squadron 135) were spotted by the
Maddox
’s lookouts arriving at Hon Me Island. A few minutes later, the
Maddox
spotted two Swatow patrol boats (T-142 and T-146) entering Hon Me cove. In response to the arrival of these vessels, at eleven
thirty-eight the
Maddox
shifted course to the northeast and moved toward its next patrol orbit point, designated “Point Echo,” in order to put some
distance between it and the five North Vietnamese boats. By two p.m., the
Maddox
was fifteen miles from the North Vietnamese coastline on course for Point Echo, moving northward at a leisurely ten knots.
²⁷

At two sixteen p.m., Lieutenant Moore raced to the bridge of the
Maddox
carry ing yet another single slip of paper. It was a CRITIC message just issued by the listening post at San Miguel, and it
reported that two and a half hours earlier the North Vietnamesenavy headquarters had ordered the five warships at Hon Me Island
to attack “the enemy and use torpedoes.”
²⁸
Despite the fact that this was the second attack order that had been intercepted that day, Captains Herrick and Ogier concluded
that an attack on the
Maddox
was indeed imminent, and at two twenty-three Ogier ordered the
Maddox
to shift course to the east and make best speed for the safety of the open waters at the mouth of the Gulf of Tonkin.
²⁹

The veracity of the information contained in the intercept was confirmed seven minutes later when the
Maddox
’s radar operators detected three North Vietnamese torpedo boats thirty miles to the southwest headed directly toward the
Maddox
at thirty knots. At the time, the
Maddox
was twenty-two miles off the coast of North Vietnam and moving at eleven knots to the east away from the coastline. When the
torpedo boats came within twenty miles of the
Maddox
, at two thirty, p.m., Ogier ordered general quarters sounded and increased the ship’s speed to twenty-five knots, moving
the destroyer’s course further to the southeast so as to present a smaller target to the torpedo boats directly behind him.
At two forty p.m., Herrick sent a FLASH precedence message to the commander of the Seventh Fleet reporting, “I am being approached
by high-speed craft with apparent intention of torpedo attack. Intend to open fire if necessary in self-defense.”
³⁰

By three p.m., the North Vietnamese PT boats were only five miles from the
Maddox
and continuing to close at their maximum attack speed of fifty knots. At five past three, as the PT boats moved into attack
formation at a distance of 9,800 yards from the destroyer to begin their torpedo runs, the
Maddox
fired three warning shots from her five-inch guns across the bow of the lead PT boat. When the boats continued on their attack
run, at seven past three the
Maddox
radioed that it was under attack and opened fire on the attackers with all its main batteries.
³¹

Two of the PT boats launched their torpedoes from a distance of 2,700 yards, forcing the
Maddox
to take evasive action while continuing to fire on the attackers with its main batteries. Just as the third PT boat launched
its torpedoes, it took a direct hit from one of the
Maddox
’s five-inch guns and was reduced to a fiery furnace. At about the same time, four U.S. Navy F-8E Crusader fighters from the
aircraft carrier USS
Ticonderoga
arrived on the scene and attacked the PT boats, which were damaged and retiring from the battle. Under the cover of the air
attack, the
Maddox
took the opportunity to withdraw from the scene and make for the mouth of the Gulf of Tonkin.

When the thirty-seven-minute battle was over, the
Maddox
had fired more than 250 five-inch and three-inch shells. One of the North Vietnamese PT boats was dead in the water and burning
fiercely. The other two torpedo boats had withdrawn back to Hon Me after having suffered extensive damage. For its part, the
Maddox
had been hit by only a single machine gun bullet.

News of the North Vietnamese attack on the
Maddox
began rolling across the teletypes in the communications centers at the White House, the CIA, and the State and Defense Departments
shortly after five a.m. Eastern Daylight Time (EDT) on Monday, August 2. President Lyndon Johnson was informed of the attack
before he sat down to breakfast at nine. At a meeting with his national security advisers in the Oval Office at eleven thirty
A.M., senior NSA officials briefed Johnson, Secretary of Defense McNamara, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, and the chairman
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), General Earle Wheeler, on the available SIGINT concerning the attack. CIA director McCone
was notably but mystifyingly not invited to attend the meeting. A review of the evidence convinced those present that the
attack had probably been ordered by overzealous North Vietnamesenaval commanders, leading Johnson not to opt for retaliation
despite pressure from the South Vietnamese government and the American ambassador in Saigon to do so. Instead, Johnson decided
on a more restrained response. Seeking to show strength and resolve, he ordered the
Maddox
to resume its patrol, this time reinforced by the destroyer USS
C. Turner Joy
, but both ships were instructed to stay at least eleven miles from the North Viet nam -ese coastline at all times. Continuous
air cover for the patrol was to be sup-plied by the carrier
Ticonderoga
, stationed nearby in the Gulf of Tonkin, and the aircraft carrier USS
Constellation
was ordered from Hong Kong to reinforce the
Ticonderoga
. Johnson then called news reporters into the Oval Office and announced that the United States intended to continue the Desoto
patrol, and that any repetition of the August 2 attack would have “dire consequences.”
³²

Johnson’s national security officials had already come to the conclusion that the North Vietnamese had attacked the
Maddox
because, as SIGINT showed, Hanoi had connected the presence of the destroyer off the coast with the OPLAN 34A commando raids.
With more raids scheduled for that night and the next three days, and despite suggestions from a few officials at the State
Department that the raids be temporarily suspended to defuse the situation, Johnson and his key national security advisers
concluded that the raids should continue because they were “beginning to rattle Hanoi and [the]
Maddox
incident [was] directly related to their effort to resist these activities.” Determined to show resolve, Johnson and his advisers
ordered the Desoto patrol to continue and the tempo of the OPLAN 34A attacks to be intensified.
³³

At twelve fifteen p.m. EDT (eleven fifteen p.m. Gulf of Tonkin, or GOT, time), NSA headquarters issued orders to the headquarters
of NSA Pacific in Hawaii and to all army, navy, and air force listening posts in the western Pacific, declaring a SIGINT Readiness
Condition BRAVO, which was a heightened state of alert comparable to the DEFCON alert system utilized by the JCS. Under this
elevated SIGINT Readiness Condition, which was designated Lantern, all NSA intercept stations in the Pacific were ordered
to intensify their collection efforts against North Vietnamese communications in support of the ongoing Desoto patrol and
were directed to report immediately by CRITIC-priority message any reflections appearing in COMINT of North Vietnamese or
Chinese military reactions to the Desoto patrol.
³⁴

The events of August 2, 1964, showed NSA at its most impressive. The official NSA history of the affair reports, “The SIGINT
community could be proud of its efforts during the day. The field sites and NSA had intercepted, pro -cessed, and reported
North Vietnamesenaval communications in such a rapid and clear way that everyone in the Pacific command was aware of the approaching
attack.”
³⁵
But it was at the tactical level that NSA’s efforts mattered most. Dr. Edwin Moïse, a historian at Clemson University who
has studied the Gulf of Tonkin incident for almost ten years, concluded that the interception of the North Vietnamese attack
order gave the
Maddox
a crucial advantage over the North Vietnamese, since it allowed the destroyer’s captain to change course in time, forcing
the Vietnamese PT boats to attack the destroyer from the rear. This minimized the target that the unfortunate North Vietnamese
commander could hit and at the same time presented the PT boats with the full force of the destroyer’s weaponry.
³⁶

Interregnum: August 3, 1964

At six thirty a.m. local time on Monday, August 3, the
Maddox
, accompanied by the newly arrived destroyer
C. Turner Joy
, resumed its patrol in the Gulf of Tonkin, heading once again for Point Charlie off the island of Hon Me. Captain Herrick’s
recommendation that the patrol be canceled because of the likelihood of a North Vietnamese attack was rejected by higher authorities,
and he was ordered to resume the patrol. The cruisenorthward was uneventful except for the interception of Skinhead radar
emissions at two twenty p.m. Ensign Frederick Frick, who was the watch officer in the
Maddox
’s combat information center, recalled, “We knew there was a bad guy [Swatow patrol boat] out there. And we knew there were
three or four more of them.”
³⁷