Where is tonkin gulf

Roosevelt Harry S. Truman Dwight D. Eisenhower John F. Kennedy Lyndon B. Bush Bill Clinton George W. Help inform the discussion Support the Miller Center. University of Virginia Miller Center. The Tonkin Gulf. Lyndon Johnson signed the Tonkin Gulf resolution on August 10, August 3, As news of the August 2 attack by a North Vietnamese PT boat on the Maddox reached Washington, administration officials publicly characterized the incident as unprovoked aggression.

Maddox and U. Turner Joy, which allegedly occurred on August 2 and August 4, , respectively. The two destroyers were stationed in the Gulf Tonkin, a body of water now often referred to as the East Vietnam Sea, in waters that separate Vietnam from the Chinese island of Hainan. They were there as part of an effort to support South Vietnamese military raids on what was then the North Vietnamese coast.

According to the U. Navy, both Maddox and Turner Joy reported being fired upon by North Vietnamese patrol boats, but later doubts surrounding the veracity of the second attack, on Turner Joy, emerged. Johnson , with the understanding that the president would seek their approval before launching a full-scale war in Vietnam with U.

In , following the defeat of the French colonialists at the hands of the Viet Minh at Dien Bien Phu, the last battle of the First Indochina War, the country of Vietnam was divided into northern and southern halves, ruled by separate regimes, during the Geneva Conference. Elections were scheduled to reform the country under a unified government—elections the communists of the North, who had support in the rural South, were favored to win.

However, the United States was committed to containing the spread of communism—this was at the height of the Cold War with the Soviet Union—and by the late s, the American government had thrown its support behind South Vietnamese leader Ngo Dinh Diem when he refused to hold elections. This insurgency marked the beginning of the Second Indochina War. By , his hold over power in South Vietnam was so tenuous that he was ultimately overthrown and assassinated by some of his own generals in a move reportedly sanctioned by the administration of President John F.

Kennedy , which had already sent military advisors to the country to support homegrown forces. President Kennedy was himself assassinated a few weeks later and his successor, Johnson, believed that the only way to stem the losses suffered by South Vietnamese troops was to increase U.

By this time, U. In the summer of , with U. Military Assistance Command, the focus of these attacks shifted from commando raids on land to shoreline bombardments using mortars and rockets.

These actions on the shores of the Gulf of Tonkin were conducted with U. In the early morning hours of August 2, , the crew of Maddox received an intelligence report suggesting that three North Vietnamese patrol boats had been dispatched to attack it. Herrick, initially ordered Maddox to head out to sea, hoping to avoid confrontation. However, a few hours later, Herrick reversed his orders, and the destroyer returned to the Gulf. The Gulf of Tonkin Incident occurred in August North Vietnamese warships purportedly attacked United States warships, the U.

Maddox and the U. Turner Joy, on two separate occasions in the Gulf of Tonkin, a body of water neighboring modern-day Vietnam. President Lyndon Baines Johnson claimed that the United States did nothing to provoke these two attacks and that North Vietnam was the aggressor. Subsequent reports show that the United States actually provoked these attacks by supporting South Vietnamese commandos operating in North Vietnam and by using U.

There remains no doubt that the North Vietnamese attacked the U. Maddox in the first incident, which occurred on August 2, , although it does appear that the United States provoked this attack. President John F. Kennedy was also assassinated, and the war continued under new leadership in both countries.

Before his death, Kennedy had increased the U. However, South Vietnam continued to experience political instability and military losses to North Vietnam. By August, , the Johnson Administration believed that escalation of the U. The post-Diem South proved no more stable than it had been before his ouster, and South Vietnamese troops were generally ineffective.

In addition to supporting on-going South Vietnamese raids in the countryside and implementing a U. The U. Navy stationed two destroyers, the Maddox and the Turner Joy, in the Gulf of Tonkin to bolster these actions.