How to help start a war (Klar) [USNI August 2002]
How to help start a war
Naval History (Volume 16, Number 4); Annapolis; Aug 2002; by Norman Klar;
Abstract:
Klar recalls the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident that plunged the US into the Vietnam War. North Vietnamese troops attacked a US ship in the gulf, resulting in US retaliation and the beginning of the war.
Full Text: Copyright United States Naval Institute Aug 2002
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Will my ship be attacked in the Gulf of Tonkin?" asked the commanding officer of the USS Maddox at a predeployment briefing in July 1964. "No," I responded. "Yours is not the first U.S. ship on patrol in the gulf. The Vietnamese have taken no hostile action against U.S. ships in the past, and I believe they will not take hostile action against your ship."
As everyone now knows, I was wrong.
I was the officer-in-charge of a naval security group activity somewhere [Taiwan-jtm] in the Far East from July 1963 to September 1965. This group performs cryptologic and related functions within the Navy. I had additional duty as the cryptologic advisor to the admiral and his Joint Staff, and served as a member of the intelligence staff. Aside from me, my group consisted of my executive officer and administrative staff in the Joint Staff headquarters. Four officers and the majority of our enlisted people (and me half a day) were located atop a mountain some miles away in our operations spaces at an Air Force Security Service base [Shu Lin Kou---jtm].
The activity was manned by about 70 people, both officers and enlisted. An Army Security Agency unit and my Navy unit were tenants at the base with the Air Force as host.
Sometime in late 1963, my activity received a huge metal van shell to be fitted as a "communications intercept van" to be transferred from one destroyer to another. Qualified personnel commenced work on the van (interrupted by a devastating typhoon, Gloria, which flooded the entire area). When the waters receded, the van was a stinking mess. Electronics and communications personnel and my chief warrant officer maintenance expert cleaned it up and installed radiotelephone and manual Morse positions in it.
The van was to be used for DeSoto patrols, intelligence gathering missions carried out by the U.S. Navy. Our activity had put signals intelligence (SigInt) personnel on board destroyers for temporary additional duty before. When these patrols were in the South China Sea, my people were on board. If the patrol was in the Gulf of Tonkin, personnel from a different naval security group department of a naval communication station somewhere else in the Far East [San Miguel, Philippines-jtm] were flown to our activity to supplement us. We briefed them all thoroughly prior to boarding the destroyers. Intelligence, operations, and communications officers and I gave the intelligence pre-patrol briefings at the Joint Staff headquarters.
In mid-July 1964, the commanding officer of the USS Maddox and his signals intelligence-cleared officers were briefed at the Joint Command headquarters. They were going out on a DeSoto patrol in the Gulf of Tonkin with the USS Turner Joy (DD-951) from late July through the end of August. The briefings included North Vietnamese naval base locations, observation post locations, airfields, and general North Vietnamese order-of-battle information. I gave the SigInt portion of the briefing. When all the briefings were concluded, I asked if anyone had any questions. The skipper of the Maddox raised his hand and asked about a possible attack. My answer of "No" was, regrettably, incorrect.
The SigInt support team in the van consisted of one of my operations officers, who was trained in Chinese, and 15 enlisted personnel (10 from the other naval communication station), including 6 Marines. The team included four who were language-qualified (two of whom had been trained previously in Chinese and two in Vietnamese), two communicators, one cryptanalyst, one traffic analyst, four manual Morse operators, one maintenance man, and two electronic intelligence operators assigned directly to the Maddox operations officer to assist in the combat information center. The Siglnt van spaces held four positions (one communications, one manual Morse, one radiotelephone, and one combination of the last two). Cryptanalysts attempt to decipher or decode the text of messages to determine what is being said and what language is being employed. Traffic analysts determine patterns, identification, and predictability of the target.
The other communication station was masterful in its support. I was a close friend of the naval security group department head there, and I knew that when he was involved in something, we would receive 100% backing.
The Maddox departed Keelung on 28 July 1964 and proceeded to the Gulf of Tonkin. During the patrol (31 July10 August), my recollection is that well more than 1,000 North Vietnamese messages were intercepted by the Maddox team and at other sites. There is absolutely no doubt that the North Vietnamese had shadowed, were ordered to attack, and did attack the Maddox on 2 August. Based on shore-based and Maddox team intercepts, we had advance knowledge that motor torpedo boats were going to attack the Maddox. The officer in charge of the security group warned the commanding officer long before the actual attack occurred. Three boats attacked the Maddox. One was sunk, and two others were damaged (one heavily).
Message traffic indicated further attacks on the DeSoto ships were to take place on the night of 4-5 August, and on 4 August the Maddox and Turner Joy reported being attacked, with one more torpedo boat being sunk. SigInt on the 4th indicated heavy tracking of both destroyers, information that one motor torpedo boat was shadowing the patrol, and indications of a possible attack. Again, on 5 August mentions were made of a possible attack. Other impending attacks did not occur, because on 5 August U.S. aircraft from the USS Ticonderoga (CV-14) and USS Constellation (CV-64) attacked Democratic Republic of Vietnam naval ships and installations. An oil depot and a number of enemy boats were destroyed.
A joint resolution of the U.S. House and Senate, called the "Tonkin Gulf Resolution," was passed on 7 August 1964 after President Lyndon B. Johnson asked for it in a 5 August 1964 speech. The resolution essentially marked the beginning of the Vietnam conflict. It stated, in part, "Whereas naval units of the communist regime in Vietnam have deliberately and repeatedly attacked United States naval vessels lawfully present in international waters be it resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled that the Congress approves and supports the determination of the President, as Commander in Chief, take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression."
Of interest is the fact that the officer in the team I put on board the Maddox stuttered. Because of that, my operations officer expressed some concern about sending him. He did (I was told) have slight difficulty in alerting the Maddox's skipper to the impending attack. But we had plenty of warning.
I often imagined what the Maddox's commanding officer would say to me about my prognosticating prowess if we had met after the incident-nothing flattering, I'm sure. We did engage in official correspondence, and he did laud my officer in charge and the entire SigInt team up the chain of command to the Chief of Naval Operations, via my activity, Commander Task Force 72, Commander Seventh Fleet, and Commander-in-Chief Pacific Fleet.
It is interesting to note that the Turner Joy fired both the first and last rounds of U.S. naval gunfire during the Vietnam conflict. And it is ironic that the Maddox was decommissioned on 2 July 1972, given to the Taiwanese Navy four days later, and renamed Po Yang. The Taiwanese decommissioned her and broke her up for scrap in 1985.
By CAPTAIN NORMAN KLAR, U.S. NAVY (RETIRED)
Captain Klar was in the U.S. Naval Security Group from November 1953 to September 1984. He is a Mandarin Chinese linguist whose overseas duties included Kodiak, Alaska (1954), Kami Seya, Japan (1956-59), Taipei, Taiwan (1963-65), and San Miguel, Philippine Islands (1969-71). His stateside duty was at the National Security Agency (1959-63, 1965-69, 1972-84).
Volume: 16
Issue: 4
Start Page: 40-42
ISSN: 10421920
Subject Terms: Military history
Vietnam War
Warships
Military engagements
Geographic Names: Gulf of Tonkin
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.
Added Note from Joseph T. Miller:
Then LCDR Klar was the Officer-in-Charge of the Naval Security Group Activity (NAVSECGRUACT) under the US Taiwan Defense Command (USTDC). Our Naval Security Group Detachment (NAVSECGRDET) based at Shu Lin Kou Air Station, in the mountains fifteen miles outside of Taipei was under his administrative command. He also happens to have been the officer who had me removed from NSG work when I admitted to being in a serious relationship with one of the Taiwanese women who worked on our base. She and I managed to get married before I was ordered off the island and sent to sea duty on the USS Ticonderoga.
Captain Klar passed away on March 25, 2005. Before he passed away, he self-published a memoir, Confessions of a Codebreaker (Tales from Decrypt), in 2004.
Joseph T. Miller
US Navy, 1961-1968
(US Naval Security Group, 1961-1964)
Naval History (Volume 16, Number 4); Annapolis; Aug 2002; by Norman Klar;
Abstract:
Klar recalls the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident that plunged the US into the Vietnam War. North Vietnamese troops attacked a US ship in the gulf, resulting in US retaliation and the beginning of the war.
Full Text: Copyright United States Naval Institute Aug 2002
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Will my ship be attacked in the Gulf of Tonkin?" asked the commanding officer of the USS Maddox at a predeployment briefing in July 1964. "No," I responded. "Yours is not the first U.S. ship on patrol in the gulf. The Vietnamese have taken no hostile action against U.S. ships in the past, and I believe they will not take hostile action against your ship."
As everyone now knows, I was wrong.
I was the officer-in-charge of a naval security group activity somewhere [Taiwan-jtm] in the Far East from July 1963 to September 1965. This group performs cryptologic and related functions within the Navy. I had additional duty as the cryptologic advisor to the admiral and his Joint Staff, and served as a member of the intelligence staff. Aside from me, my group consisted of my executive officer and administrative staff in the Joint Staff headquarters. Four officers and the majority of our enlisted people (and me half a day) were located atop a mountain some miles away in our operations spaces at an Air Force Security Service base [Shu Lin Kou---jtm].
The activity was manned by about 70 people, both officers and enlisted. An Army Security Agency unit and my Navy unit were tenants at the base with the Air Force as host.
Sometime in late 1963, my activity received a huge metal van shell to be fitted as a "communications intercept van" to be transferred from one destroyer to another. Qualified personnel commenced work on the van (interrupted by a devastating typhoon, Gloria, which flooded the entire area). When the waters receded, the van was a stinking mess. Electronics and communications personnel and my chief warrant officer maintenance expert cleaned it up and installed radiotelephone and manual Morse positions in it.
The van was to be used for DeSoto patrols, intelligence gathering missions carried out by the U.S. Navy. Our activity had put signals intelligence (SigInt) personnel on board destroyers for temporary additional duty before. When these patrols were in the South China Sea, my people were on board. If the patrol was in the Gulf of Tonkin, personnel from a different naval security group department of a naval communication station somewhere else in the Far East [San Miguel, Philippines-jtm] were flown to our activity to supplement us. We briefed them all thoroughly prior to boarding the destroyers. Intelligence, operations, and communications officers and I gave the intelligence pre-patrol briefings at the Joint Staff headquarters.
In mid-July 1964, the commanding officer of the USS Maddox and his signals intelligence-cleared officers were briefed at the Joint Command headquarters. They were going out on a DeSoto patrol in the Gulf of Tonkin with the USS Turner Joy (DD-951) from late July through the end of August. The briefings included North Vietnamese naval base locations, observation post locations, airfields, and general North Vietnamese order-of-battle information. I gave the SigInt portion of the briefing. When all the briefings were concluded, I asked if anyone had any questions. The skipper of the Maddox raised his hand and asked about a possible attack. My answer of "No" was, regrettably, incorrect.
The SigInt support team in the van consisted of one of my operations officers, who was trained in Chinese, and 15 enlisted personnel (10 from the other naval communication station), including 6 Marines. The team included four who were language-qualified (two of whom had been trained previously in Chinese and two in Vietnamese), two communicators, one cryptanalyst, one traffic analyst, four manual Morse operators, one maintenance man, and two electronic intelligence operators assigned directly to the Maddox operations officer to assist in the combat information center. The Siglnt van spaces held four positions (one communications, one manual Morse, one radiotelephone, and one combination of the last two). Cryptanalysts attempt to decipher or decode the text of messages to determine what is being said and what language is being employed. Traffic analysts determine patterns, identification, and predictability of the target.
The other communication station was masterful in its support. I was a close friend of the naval security group department head there, and I knew that when he was involved in something, we would receive 100% backing.
The Maddox departed Keelung on 28 July 1964 and proceeded to the Gulf of Tonkin. During the patrol (31 July10 August), my recollection is that well more than 1,000 North Vietnamese messages were intercepted by the Maddox team and at other sites. There is absolutely no doubt that the North Vietnamese had shadowed, were ordered to attack, and did attack the Maddox on 2 August. Based on shore-based and Maddox team intercepts, we had advance knowledge that motor torpedo boats were going to attack the Maddox. The officer in charge of the security group warned the commanding officer long before the actual attack occurred. Three boats attacked the Maddox. One was sunk, and two others were damaged (one heavily).
Message traffic indicated further attacks on the DeSoto ships were to take place on the night of 4-5 August, and on 4 August the Maddox and Turner Joy reported being attacked, with one more torpedo boat being sunk. SigInt on the 4th indicated heavy tracking of both destroyers, information that one motor torpedo boat was shadowing the patrol, and indications of a possible attack. Again, on 5 August mentions were made of a possible attack. Other impending attacks did not occur, because on 5 August U.S. aircraft from the USS Ticonderoga (CV-14) and USS Constellation (CV-64) attacked Democratic Republic of Vietnam naval ships and installations. An oil depot and a number of enemy boats were destroyed.
A joint resolution of the U.S. House and Senate, called the "Tonkin Gulf Resolution," was passed on 7 August 1964 after President Lyndon B. Johnson asked for it in a 5 August 1964 speech. The resolution essentially marked the beginning of the Vietnam conflict. It stated, in part, "Whereas naval units of the communist regime in Vietnam have deliberately and repeatedly attacked United States naval vessels lawfully present in international waters be it resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled that the Congress approves and supports the determination of the President, as Commander in Chief, take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression."
Of interest is the fact that the officer in the team I put on board the Maddox stuttered. Because of that, my operations officer expressed some concern about sending him. He did (I was told) have slight difficulty in alerting the Maddox's skipper to the impending attack. But we had plenty of warning.
I often imagined what the Maddox's commanding officer would say to me about my prognosticating prowess if we had met after the incident-nothing flattering, I'm sure. We did engage in official correspondence, and he did laud my officer in charge and the entire SigInt team up the chain of command to the Chief of Naval Operations, via my activity, Commander Task Force 72, Commander Seventh Fleet, and Commander-in-Chief Pacific Fleet.
It is interesting to note that the Turner Joy fired both the first and last rounds of U.S. naval gunfire during the Vietnam conflict. And it is ironic that the Maddox was decommissioned on 2 July 1972, given to the Taiwanese Navy four days later, and renamed Po Yang. The Taiwanese decommissioned her and broke her up for scrap in 1985.
By CAPTAIN NORMAN KLAR, U.S. NAVY (RETIRED)
Captain Klar was in the U.S. Naval Security Group from November 1953 to September 1984. He is a Mandarin Chinese linguist whose overseas duties included Kodiak, Alaska (1954), Kami Seya, Japan (1956-59), Taipei, Taiwan (1963-65), and San Miguel, Philippine Islands (1969-71). His stateside duty was at the National Security Agency (1959-63, 1965-69, 1972-84).
Volume: 16
Issue: 4
Start Page: 40-42
ISSN: 10421920
Subject Terms: Military history
Vietnam War
Warships
Military engagements
Geographic Names: Gulf of Tonkin
Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction or distribution is prohibited without permission.
Added Note from Joseph T. Miller:
Then LCDR Klar was the Officer-in-Charge of the Naval Security Group Activity (NAVSECGRUACT) under the US Taiwan Defense Command (USTDC). Our Naval Security Group Detachment (NAVSECGRDET) based at Shu Lin Kou Air Station, in the mountains fifteen miles outside of Taipei was under his administrative command. He also happens to have been the officer who had me removed from NSG work when I admitted to being in a serious relationship with one of the Taiwanese women who worked on our base. She and I managed to get married before I was ordered off the island and sent to sea duty on the USS Ticonderoga.
Captain Klar passed away on March 25, 2005. Before he passed away, he self-published a memoir, Confessions of a Codebreaker (Tales from Decrypt), in 2004.
Joseph T. Miller
US Navy, 1961-1968
(US Naval Security Group, 1961-1964)