The 1964 Bay of Tonkin incident was concocted to start a war in Vietnam. "...there was no reason to believe the Maddox was fired upon... a navy pilot flying over the Gulf of Tonkin that night (said) "our destroyers were just shooting at phantom targets, there were no PT boats there. There was not a single intruder"...
In 1961, US President John F. Kennedy reluctantly decided to send his first hundred military advisors plus a special unit of about four hundred soldiers into Vietnam. The next year the number increased to eleven thousand.
Two American cruise boats "were fired upon" on August 2nd, 1964, while illegally entering North Vietnam territorial Bay of Tonkin waters, which they promptly denied, the truth came out later. The US used the incident as an excuse to bomb military targets in North Vietnam. It seemed the US military were insisting on starting a war, and Kennedy was forced to listen to his military advisors, one of the possible reasons for his assassination.
US President Lyndon Johnson in March of 1965, started the first of three years of military bombardment of Vietnam, dropping twice as many bombs on the little suckers as were dropped during the entire Second World War, an operation called Rolling Thunder.
The North Vietnamese responded by evacuating three quarters their industrial complexes to the countryside.
Even though the US, and allied forces, plus 1.5 million South Vietnamese army outnumbered the North four to one, the North kept plugging away, and though they suffered heavy losses in the 1968 Tet Offensive against targets in 105 South Vietnam cities, it was considered a turning point in the war, and caused a big change in the US attitude, demonstrations, university shootings, the 'Beatles' singing 'Give peace a chance', and now the US started trying to figure out how to not win, but just leave gracefully and with dignity, but it was too late. Striking resemblences to the Iraq War of today.
In 1961, US President John F. Kennedy reluctantly decided to send his first hundred military advisors plus a special unit of about four hundred soldiers into Vietnam. The next year the number increased to eleven thousand.
Two American cruise boats "were fired upon" on August 2nd, 1964, while illegally entering North Vietnam territorial Bay of Tonkin waters, which they promptly denied, the truth came out later. The US used the incident as an excuse to bomb military targets in North Vietnam. It seemed the US military were insisting on starting a war, and Kennedy was forced to listen to his military advisors, one of the possible reasons for his assassination.
US President Lyndon Johnson in March of 1965, started the first of three years of military bombardment of Vietnam, dropping twice as many bombs on the little suckers as were dropped during the entire Second World War, an operation called Rolling Thunder.
The North Vietnamese responded by evacuating three quarters their industrial complexes to the countryside.
Even though the US, and allied forces, plus 1.5 million South Vietnamese army outnumbered the North four to one, the North kept plugging away, and though they suffered heavy losses in the 1968 Tet Offensive against targets in 105 South Vietnam cities, it was considered a turning point in the war, and caused a big change in the US attitude, demonstrations, university shootings, the 'Beatles' singing 'Give peace a chance', and now the US started trying to figure out how to not win, but just leave gracefully and with dignity, but it was too late. Striking resemblences to the Iraq War of today.
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