Timeline, August 4th

[David]

PREBELLUM:
August 1945 (Year of the Rooster [At Dau]): The Viet Minh's chief of Cochin China, Tran Van Giau, forms an alliance against the French with the Binh Xuyen gangsters, who under the Japanese have all been given amnesty.

SECOND INDOCHINA WAR:
August 4, 1964 (Year of the Dragon [Giap Thin]) (US Advisory): Master Sergeant Dennis Kidd, is killed in a well-planned Viet Cong ambush after a reward has been placed on his head.

August 4, 1964 (Year of the Dragon [Giap Thin]) (US Advisory): Having spent a routine night out in the gulf, Maddox and Turner Joy change course to the west and head for North Vietnamese coastal waters at 0700. All afternoon the destroyers cruise to the north and south of Hon Me along a track that comes no closer than 16 miles to the North Vietnamese coast, and at nightfall, as they had the previous night, Maddox and Turner Joy retire to an area in the middle of the gulf to await the dawn. Beginning at 2041, the ships pick up fast approaching contacts on their radars. Captain Herrick on the Maddox orders his destroyers to change course in order to avoid what he believes are hostile surface craft. At 2239, when one of the contacts closes to 7,000 yards, Captain Herrick directs Turner Joy to open fire. For the next two hours the American destroyers, covered overhead by carrier aircraft, evade what lookouts and sonar rate as torpedoes and fire on contacts, visually identified by Turner Joy crewmen as P-4 motor torpedo boats. Thereafter, the ships head for the Ticonderoga carrier task group steaming around the entrance to the gulf.

A second North Vietnamese attack is reported to Washington along with a message from Captain Herrick that the circumstances--including darkness, stormy seas and nervous, inexperienced crewmen--warrant a "thorough investigation" of the validity of the events. Since 1964, several other witnesses, including later Vice Admiral James B. Stockdale, will express their belief that no North Vietnamese attack actually took place on the night of August 4, although there is no doubt about the August 2 attack. At various times after the war, the Communist Vietnamese will at one point claim responsibility for the initial attack on August 2 and label the August 4th incident as an American fabrication, and at another point not only claim responsibility for the second attack as well, but also declare August 4 as an official Navy "tradition day," the day "when one of our torpedo squadrons chased the destroyer Maddox from our coastal waters, our first victory over the U.S. Navy."

August 4, 1965 (Year of the Snake [At Ti]) (US Defense): US petroleum storage facilities at Da Nang are attacked.

August 4, 1967 (Year of the Goat [Dinh Mui]) (US Counteroffensive Phase III): Operation Greeley update: 1/503 of the 173rd Airborne is lifted out of the jungle near Hill 830 and sent to Dak Pek.

August 4, 1968 (Year of the Monkey [Mau Than]) (US Counteroffensive Phase V) (PS&S): The first UH-34D Sea Horse helicopter purchased by the Marines in 1957 ends her 11-year career in a small clearing just south of the DMZ.

August 4, 1968 (Year of the Monkey [Mau Than]) (US Counteroffensive Phase V) : Allied forces begin a sweep of the A Shau Valley.

August 4, 1969 (Year of the Rooster [Ky Dau]) (US Summer-Fall 1969): Henry Kissinger conducts his first secret meeting in Paris with representatives from Hanoi.

August 4, 1973 (Year of the Ox [Quy Suu]): South Vietnamese troops repulse an attack on Kontum in the Central Highlands.

THIRD INDOCHINA WAR:
August 1978 (Year of the Horse [Mau Ngo]): It is learned that General Vang Pao has left the US to travel to Peking.