Aug. 5, 1964 - President Johnson has ordered retaliatory action against gunboats and “certain supporting facilities in North Vietnam” after renewed attacks against American destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin.
In a television address last night, Johnson said air attacks on the North Vietnamese ships and facilities were taking place as he spoke, shortly after 11:30 p.m.
State Department sources said the attacks were being carried out with conventional weapons on a number of shore bases in North Vietnam, with the objective of destroying them and the 30 to 30 gunboats they served.
The aim, they explained was to destroy North Vietnam’s gunboat capability. They said more air strikes might come later, if needed. Carrier-based aircraft were used in last night’s strike.
Administration officials also announced that substantial additional units, primarily air and sea forces, were being sent to Southeast Asia.
This “positive reply,” as the President called it, followed a naval battle in which a number of North Vietnamese PT boats attacked two U.S. destroyers with torpedoes. Two of the boats were believed to have been sunk. The U.S. forces suffered no damage and no loss of lives.
Johnson termed the North Vietnamese attacks “open aggression on the high seas.”
Washington’s response is “limited and fitting,” the President said, and his Administration seeks no general extension of the guerrilla war in South Vietnam.
“We Americans know,” he said, “although others appear to forget, the risks of spreading conflict.”
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