The SEAL were under CIA so not all their boat movements were coordinated
with the Navy as they normally would be so some unID'd blips were likely
them banging on the NVA base to elicit a run on the DDs, also the SEALs
Funero radars looked alot like Styx targeting radars on Komar/ Ossa boats
and caused no end of confusion.

"DSK" wrote in message
...
DD730 wrote:
Proving a negative is always difficult.

Yep. That's why it's convenient to make such claims. one thing that Vito
doesn't understand, if you're going to substitute fantasy for history,
then you have to choose a version that isn't directly contradicted by
reliable witnesses. Choose something that has no witnesses, instead!


... I suppose you'll have to interview
those who were there. I haven't done any research to see if anyone has
done
so. At the time it was the talk of WestPac. All anyone saw was "blips"
on
the radar screens.

In the second attack, yes.


... Even at the time, no one could "prove" that no
gunboats were out there, nor could they prove that there were. The
concluding "scuttlebutt" was that it was bogus, but a lot of careers
were on
the line.

Right. And that's how a lot of policy gets started, unfortunately.

Anyway, having read quite a lot about the whole affair, it has been
pretty consistently said that the Tonkin Gulf incident was part of an
ongoing operation, that the North Vietnamese had fired on U.S. forces
several times during the course of it.

DSK