itions. The result, inevitably, was chaos. (Detzer 76)The U.S. did not fight for Vietnam right away. Instead it sent military advisors and goods to Vietnam. By November 1963 there were 16,000 military advisors in Vietnam and the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) was mostly helicopters and armored personnel carriers (Detzer 68-69). The help provided by the U.S. seemed to help the South, but eventually the Vietcong learned how to counter them (Detzer 69). The U.S. government wanted an excuse for going to war and in 1964 they got one.In the Tonkin Gulf the U.S. was running two operations. OPLAN 34A was a secret operation, supervised by the CIA, in which small speed boats carrying South Vietnamese went up the coast of Vietnam and attacked coastal installations in North Vietnam (Detzer 74). Desoto was an operation in which destroyers with technical equipment sailed near the coast of North Vietnam and spied (Detzer 74). On July 31, 1964, the coast of Vietnam was attacked by 4 boats part of OPLAN 34A. The Maddox, a ship part of Desoto, was only a few miles away and was attacked by the North Vietnamese since they believed it was part of the operation (Detzer 74). Although little damage was done to the Maddox, Lyndon Johnson sent a second destroyer, the U.S.S. Turner Joy to accompany the Maddox (Detzer 74-75). Several days after the first incident, the crews of both destroyers believed they were being fired at by the North Vietnamese (Detzer 75). Evidence seems to show that the attack was just a misreading of some confusing sonar and radar signals, yet Johnson was informed of this second attack within minutes (Detzer 75). Johnson ordered an immediate bombing raid of some North Vietnamese torpedo-boat bases and asked Congress to support this action and any similar actions in the future (Detzer 75). Three days after the Tonkin Gulf incident Congress almost unanimously voted for the Tonkin Gulf incident which let the president ...
