Zulu Time The U.S. military uses a single time zone to identify its worldwide message traffic. According to the system, Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) is denoted by the letter Z, phonetically pronounced Zulu. The time is converted to GMT and appears on a message written with the month, day, and military-style, or twenty-four-hour, time. For example, 7:40 p.m. Saigon time on August 4 would be written as Aug041140Z. The same Zulu time would be written for August 4, 7:40 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time (Saigon time and EDT differ by twelve hours). Subscribe Today Did you enjoy our article? Read more in MHQ magazine Subscribe online and save!

At 5:23 Sharp again phoned Burchinal, asking if he had seen the intercept that described the sacrifice of two ships. The general had, but could not tell if it referred to the earlier action of August 2 or the August 4 incident. Sharp was certain it related to the recently concluded fighting and claimed the intercept pins it down better than anything so far. Burchinal assured Sharp that McNamara too was satisfied with the evidence. Six minutes later the JCS transmitted the execute order to CINCPAC directing that by 7 p.m. EDT the carriers launch a one-time maximum effort attack against the five PT bases (the northernmost was later canceled because of weather) and the Vinh oil installation.

During their 5:23 phone conversation, Sharp had informed Burchinal that the airstrikes could not be launched until 8 p.m. Washington time because the carriers operated in a different time zone, one hour behind Saigon. The admiral had also told the carriers to use the extra hour to complete preparations for their attacks.

Throughout the day, Admiral Sharp and General Burchinal had repeatedly assured McNamara that it would be a simple matter to launch an airstrike at first light in the Gulf of Tonkin. When this turned out not to be the case, General Wheeler, who had just returned to Washington, instructed Burchinal to tell McNamara that the carriers could not meet the 7 p.m. launch time as promised because they were operating in the different time zone. Since the president intended to address the nation on the airstrikes at 7, McNamara had a serious problem.

At 6:07 EDT Sharp called Burchinal to confirm that the execute message was agreeable to McNamara, which Burchinal assured him it was. The admiral also acknowledged aircraft would be off target by 9 p.m. EDT. When making his calculations, Sharp apparently discounted the toll Ticonderoga’s extensive night operations in support of the two destroyers had taken on flight and deck crews, which now had to ready the carrier for a maximum effort.

Eight minutes later, McNamara, along with the president and his other senior civilian advisers and General Wheeler, attended the 538th meeting of the NSC. McNamara briefed the members on the North Vietnamese attacks and told them the administration had decided on airstrikes against five targets. He outlined a four-point program involving airstrikes, sending reinforcements to the region to demonstrate resolve, a presidential announcement of these actions, and a joint congressional resolution in support of these and, if necessary, further actions. United States Information Agency Director Carl Rowan asked exactly what had happened and whether it was certain that an attack had occurred. McNamara answered that only highly classified information nails down the incident, and more would be known from incoming reports and in the morning. A draft joint resolution on Southeast Asia was revised, and the president would make it public as soon as U.S. planes were over their targets, which McNamara assumed would be 9 p.m.

At 6:45 the president met with congressional leaders, and McNamara again summarized what was planned. After briefings by Rusk and McCone, Johnson and his advisers answered a series of questions. The president then summarized his case for congressional concurrence with his decisions and reminded his audience that We can tuck our tails and run, but if we do these countries will feel all they have to do to scare us is to shoot at the American flag. The question is how do we retaliate. With expressions of support from all present, the president prepared for his 9 p.m. address to the nation. As the minutes ticked by without further word from CINCPAC that the planes were airborne, McNamara grew increasingly impatient. At 8:39 he phoned Sharp, told him it was forty minutes past the ordered time for takeoff, and instructed him to radio the carriers and find out what was happening. After all, the president expected to make an address to the American people, and I am holding him back from making it, but we’re forty minutes past the time I told him we would launch. Asked how long it would take the planes to reach their targets after launch, Sharp answered a little over an hour. Minutes passed, and the 9 o’clock airtime came and went.

At 9:09 McNamara again phoned Sharp, who told him the carriers would launch their planes in fifty minutes. Oh, my God, gasped McNamara. Sharp then said the planes would be over target at 11 p.m. EDT. The conversation became more and more confused as McNamara tried to pin Sharp down. Was it two hours to the closest target? Sharp assumed that this meant the last TOT (time over target). With a 10 p.m. EDT launch, what was the first TOT? Sharp had no idea. Could the president say at 10, the time of launch, that the air action was in progress against gunboats and their supporting facilities? That, said Sharp, was not a good idea because it would alert the North Vietnamese.

McNamara then phoned President Johnson with news of the delay and suggested that he postpone his address until 10 and leave out the passage about air action now in progress. What, Johnson wanted to know, had delayed the attack? Briefing crews on the mission and loading designated ordnance, McNamara replied. The last aircraft would be off target at about midnight, Washington time. Johnson worried that a premature announcement would leave him vulnerable to charges that he tipped off the enemy to the impending actions, and he would sure as hell hate to have some mother say, ‘You announced it and my boy got killed.’ McNamara assured him there was little danger that would happen, and asked how late Johnson would be willing to hold off his statement. The president replied the 11 o’clock news, but wondered if he even had to make a statement. McNamara was emphatic that something needed to be said. The president walked a tightrope over the timing of his address. He had to avoid alerting the North Vietnamese to the air attacks but at the same time precede any announcement by Hanoi of the raids.

With still no word of any launch, McNamara contacted Sharp at 9:22 urging him to get the aircraft off their carriers, but to no avail. Again at 10:06 McNamara called, and Sharp told him that although he had received no word, he was sure that one outfit went up at 10. But, he said, Constellation was not going to launch its propeller aircraft until 1 a.m. EDT August 5 and its jet fighters at 2:30 a.m. The launches were delayed because the carrier could not get into position. You got that, sir? Yes. My God, snapped McNamara, who told Sharp to get in touch with Ticonderoga and make damn sure she got off. Forty minutes later McNamara tried again, with the same result. Sharp still had no word on any launch. Could not Sharp ask in the clear if the 10 o’clock thing had happened? The president wanted to go on the air at 11:15, and he shouldn’t go on unless he has a confirmation of a launch. Sharp said he was needling them like mad but the circuit is a little jammed up or something.

Only ten minutes before the president was to go on national television, Sharp phoned McNamara to report that Ticonderoga had gotten its planes off fifty minutes earlier, at 10:30 EDT. They would be over target in one hour and fifty minutes. McNamara was confused. How could it take so long — 2 1/2 hours — to reach their targets? Sharp explained that the planes launched in two waves, slower ones first, and then formed up to make a coordinated attack. Still, the time interval between takeoff and attack surprised both Sharp and McNamara, who had assumed the time from first launch to actual strike would be about forty minutes to one hour. When McNamara phoned the White House at 11:25, the president was unable to take the call, so McNamara told McGeorge Bundy that the planes were airborne. Bundy replied that Johnson would speak in about ten minutes.

Sharp, however, had misunderstood the launch information. Only four propeller-driven A-1 Skyraiders had taken off, and they orbited the carrier until 11:15 before departing for their targets. Ticonderoga launched its jet aircraft between 12:16 and 12:23 August 5 — that is, after the president addressed the nation and while McNamara was telling reporters at the Pentagon that naval aircraft from both carriers have already conducted airstrikes against the North Vietnamese bases from which these PT-boats have operated. Constellation, as Sharp had told McNamara, launched its first aircraft at 1 a.m. on August 5, followed ninety minutes later by a second wave.

Ticonderoga’s aircraft struck southern ports first, and three hours later Constellation’s pilots attacked northern targets. During the later raids, North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gunners shot down two U.S. aircraft, an A-1 Skyraider over the Loc Chau PT-boat base and an A-4 Skyhawk at Hon Gay, northeast of Haiphong. The Skyraider airman was killed, while the A-4 pilot, Lt. j.g. Everett Alvarez Jr., parachuted from his damaged aircraft and spent the next 8 1/2 years in captivity in Hanoi.

Johnson had second thoughts about the two lost aircraft, but Bundy assured him there was no evidence that his public announcement had adversely affected the operations in any way. According to Bundy, North Vietnamese radar operators had picked up the carrier planes before Johnson spoke on national radio and television. Post-strike assessments, Bundy told Johnson, revealed there was no significant alert at the ports struck by the first attack from Ticonderoga. The loss of two planes occurred during Constellation’s attacks, which were hours later, long after the North Vietnamese went to full alert following the first attack.

On August 4, 1964, amid confusion, uncertainty, misinformation, and painfully slow communications, senior administration officials had to make a critical decision. One might speculate on why they made the one they did. After the August 2 attack in the Gulf of Tonkin, from the decks of Maddox to the halls of the Pentagon, everyone was on edge about the possibility of another North Vietnamese attack. Official Washington was predisposed to strike back given any future provocation. With those preconceptions, it became less important to question the accuracy of events on the night of August 4 than to ready a retaliatory strike. In brief, most attention and energy went into responding to, not assessing, what had happened.

Time constraints placed further pressure on decision makers. Any retaliation, they believed, had to be carried out right away to demonstrate U.S. resolve to North Vietnam and had to be clearly linked to the provocation to justify the response. Waiting several days to sort out the last detail of the August 4 action would blur any linkage and raise questions about the propriety of attacking well after the fact instead of at the time of the provocation. Once U.S. wire services began reporting the new attacks of August 4, there seemed even more reason for Johnson to act quickly.

Neither Washington nor Hanoi had been willing to blink. The administration stepped up OPLAN 34-A operations, Hanoi reacted by reinforcing its coastal naval units in the southern panhandle, the United States ordered a Desoto patrol, OPLAN 34-A raids continued, and North Vietnamese PT-boats attacked Maddox on August 2. Several intercepted North Vietnamese messages were ambiguous. The one McNamara cited as proof positive that an attack occurred may be a recap of the August 2 action intercepted during retransmission to another recipient. But the intercept that got Herrick’s attention ordered North Vietnamese PT-boats and Swatows to make ready for military operations on the night of August 4. One may question whether military operations meant attack, but the August 4 reference left prudent commanders like Herrick and Ogier little choice but to expect trouble in the Gulf that night.

Tandem events, one after the other in rapid sequence, produced a cumulative effect that made any single one of the interrelated and often confusing episodes less consequential than the aggregate picture, which in Washington was one of clear-cut North Vietnamese aggression. That of course is hindsight, a commodity that the civilians and military leaders making decisions on the afternoon and evening of August 4, 1964, could not possess.

Critical U.S. Military Communications Three important August 4, 1964, communications on the Gulf of Tonkin situation motivated the Johnson administration to begin planning retaliatory action against North Vietnam: Nature of Message Originator Time Transmitted Received in Pentagon (EDT) President Notified (EDT) Indication of imminent attack on U.S. destroyers Field unit Aug041140Z 7:40 p.m. Saigon time 8:13 a.m. 9:12 a.m. USS Maddox has radar fixes on 2 skunks and 3 bogies CTF relays Aug041236Z 8:36 p.m. Saigon time 10:30 a.m. 10:53 a.m. U.S. destroyers under continuous torpedo attack Admiral Sharp (phone call) 11:04 a.m. EDT 11:04 a.m. 11:06 a.m. Note the more than two-hour delay between the USS Maddox report of radar fixes and the time President Johnson was informed. In 1964 the military communications and intelligence system in Southeast Asia and the surrounding waters was primitive in comparison to what it became only two years later. Furthermore, the communications system in Hawaii and the Pentagon was only partially automated. Handling of flash precedence messages required some time-consuming labor, time that added to a growing backlog of both flash messages and messages of importance but of lesser urgency.

Edward J. Drea is a regular MHQ contributor and the author of In the Service of the Emperor: Essays on the Imperial Japanese Army (Bison Books, 2003).

This article was originally published in the Summer 2004 edition of MHQ.

For more great articles, subscribe to MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History today!

Pages: 1 2 3