Word: maddox
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Maddox, a 2,200-ton destroyer, left Yokosuka, Japan, July 23 on what seemed to be a routine mission to observe North Vietnamese naval activity in the Gulf of Tonkin. Stopping at Taiwan, she took aboard a "black box," about the size of a moving van, crammed with electronic gear, and about a dozen new men to tend its innards. What was it for? Defense Secretary Robert McNamara insisted at first that the equipment "consisted in essence" of normal radio receivers that gave the ship "added capacity" to detect indications of possible attack. In testimony released at week...
With the new equipment-whatever it was-Maddox took up patrol, with orders never to venture closer than eight miles to the North Vietnamese mainland, or closer than four miles to any Northern islands. How close she did go, in fact, has not been disclosed. McNamara maintains that Hanoi never officially announced its claim to a twelve-mile boundary until Sept. 1, 1964, so that, as far as the U.S. was concerned, Maddox was always within international waters...
Shortly before Maddox arrived on station, South Vietnamese patrol boats (the night of July 30-31) shelled the Northern islands of Hon Me and Hon Nieu, staging points for Northern infiltration to the South. Did Maddox help the Southerners by diverting Northern attention from the attack? McNamara says no, but he acknowledges that the U.S. was aware that the islands would be bombarded...
...morning of Aug. 2, Maddox saw three North Vietnamese torpedo boats near Hon Me. Later that day, three PT boats closed on Maddox within clear sight of her lookouts, and kept closing, despite warning shots. The battle was on. By the time it was over, one boat was dead in the water and presumed sinking; two others were damaged by F-8 Crusader jets, called in from the U.S. aircraft carrier Ticonderoga. Maddox suffered minimal damage. The Pentagon has pictures of the action, and no one questions this part of the story. The destroyer Turner Joy, a 2,850-tonner...
...Maddox radarmen spotted what they reckoned to be five torpedo boats 36 miles to northeast. Task Group 72.1 began preparing for action...