Aug. 3, 1964 - United States forces sank one of three attacking Communist torpedo boats off the coast of North Vietnam yesterday, combat action reports indicated in Washington today as President Johnson issued new shoot-to-kill orders to naval patrols in the South China Sea.
The President sent a second destroyer, the Turner Joy, to join the Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin for continuing reconnaissance.
He also ordered a daily combat air patrol by planes from the carrier Ticonderoga, which has been sailing on alert status several hundred miles south of the area where the Maddox was attacked by the torpedo boats.
One of the boats, identified as North Vietnamese, was strafed by carrier aircraft while sitting dead in the water after being struck by gunfire from the Maddox. The remaining pair, believed badly damaged, escaped into coastal waters.
Johnson’s new directive to the fleet was to attack any force which institutes an attack “with the objective of not only driving off the force but destroying it.”
The President called reporters into his office shortly before noon today to read a terse statement telling of his new instructions, issued after a high command White House conference yesterday. His first order was that the Navy will “continue the patrols in the Gulf of Tonkin off the coast of Vietnam.”
Johnson refused to answer any questions after reading his statement.
Despite the firmness of the President’s order, the basic desire in Washington today, as yesterday, was to avoid exaggerating the incident. Officials said it was the United States’ “hope and expectation” that the incident would prove an isolated one.
Robert McCloskey, the State Department spokesman, said the incident was “serious,” adding that “any time anywhere that an American ship is attacked for unprovoked reasons — that, in our view, is a serious incident.”
However, there was no talk of a retaliatory U.S. strike at North Vietnam or any other measure beyond the President’s order to shoot to kill in the future.
Officials in Washington were still guessing about the motives for the North Vietnamese attack on the Maddox. There has been no sign that North Vietnam wants to provoke the U.S. into full-scale combat as an expansion of the guerrilla war in South Vietnam. The Hanoi regime is giving overall direction to the Viet Cong forces.
Senators at a briefing given by Secretary of State Dean Rusk and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara said no explanation for the attack was given. Senator Richard Russell (D-Ga.) suggested that the North Vietnamese might have been “confused” because there had been some South Vietnamese naval activity in the Gulf of Tonkin.
However, this was precisely the explanation that authoritative State Department officials rejected.
According to one view in the State Department, the attack on the Maddox may have been designed to draw attention to the proximity of the Seventh Fleet patrols to Communist territory. It was said to be an attempt to show that the U.S. was initiating provocative acts.
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