This photograph, taken from the deck of the destroyer USS Maddox, shows a North Vietnamese P-4 torpedo boat closing in on the American vessel. Three of these nimble craft attacked the Maddox on August 2, 1964 – the first Gulf of Tonkin Incident. The Maddox, assisted by aircraft from the carrier Ticonderoga, destroyed one torpedo boat and damaged two others.
The Maddox had been conducting electronic eavesdropping on North Vietnam to assist South Vietnamese Army (ARVN) commando raids on North Vietnamese targets, though the American public didn’t know that at the time. Historians now suspect the North Vietnamese boats had set out to attack an ARVN raid in progress when it encountered the Maddox.
