Of what, you may ask? Welllllll ... today was the day in 1964 the destroyer USS Maddox (DD 731) and three North Vietnamese patrol boats slugged it out (well, that's overstating the action a wee bit! The Maddox did have one 14.5 mm bullet hole in it.) in the Tonkin Gulf, thereby starting the Third Southeast Asian War Games in which we won the trophy for second place.
The Maddox, in international waters, was on an intelligence gathering ops (called a DeSoto Patrol. Why, I have no idea) and was supporting ARVN raiders as well.
I assume you know the rest of the story ... if not here's an official -- and belatedly "oops, sorry 'bout that" version.
"Maddox was soon ordered to resume her patrol, this time accompanied by the larger and newer destroyer Turner Joy. On 3 August, the South Vietnamese conducted another coastal raid. Intelligence indicated that the North Vietnamese were planning to again attack the U.S. ships operating off their shores, although this intrepretation was incorrect. During the night of 4 August, while they were underway in the middle of the Tonkin Gulf, Maddox and Turner Joy detected speedy craft closing in. For some two hours the ships fired on radar targets and maneuvered vigorously amid electronic and visual reports of torpedoes.
Though information obtained well after the fact indicates that there was actually no North Vietnamese attack that night, [bold face mine — GPJ] U.S. authorities were convinced at the time that one had taken place, and reacted by sending planes from the carriers Ticonderoga and Constellation to hit North Vietnamese torpedo boat bases and fuel facilites. A few days later (August 10), the U.S. Congess passed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, which gave the Government authorization for what eventually became ..." ta-dah ... the full scale war we all recall with such fondness.
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