Gulf of Tonkin

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The Gulf of Tonkin Incident defined the beginning of large-scale involvement of U.S. armed forces in Vietnam. It was a pair of supposed attacks carried out by naval forces of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) against two American destroyers, the USS Maddox and the USS Turner Joy. The incident occurred on August 2 and 4, 1964 in the Gulf of Tonkin.

The outcome of the incident was the passage by Congress of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which granted President Lyndon Johnson the authority to assist any Southeast Asian country whose government was considered to be jeopardized by "communist aggression". The resolution served as Johnson's legal justification for escalating American involvement in the Vietnam Conflict, which lasted until 1975.

In 2005, it was revealed in an official NSA declassified report that the Maddox first fired warning shots on the August 2 incident and that there may have been no North Vietnamese boats at the August 4 incident. The report said

[I]t is not simply that there is a different story as to what happened; it is that no attack happened that night. [...] In truth, Hanoi's navy was engaged in nothing that night but the salvage of two of the boats damaged on 2 August.