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By nightfall the warships were steaming near the center of the 150-mile-wide gulf, some 65 miles from the nearest land. Yet the number of radar contacts was growing, and their tracks were converging on the destroyers. The Maddox flashed the alert to the Ticonderoga, which was prowling near the mouth of the gulf. Jet fighters snapped off the carrier's runway, soon formed a cover over the U.S. ships.
Gunfire & Gun Smells. Through the darkness, from the west and south, the intruders boldly sped. There were at least six of them, Russian-designed "Swatow" gunboats armed with 37-mm. and 28-mm. guns, and P-4s. At 9:52 they opened fire on the destroyers with automatic weapons, this time from as close as 2,000 yds.
The night glowed eerily with the nightmarish glare of air-dropped flares and boats' searchlights. For 3½ hours, the small boats attacked in pass after pass. Ten enemy torpedoes sizzled through the water. Each time the skippers, tracking the fish by radar, maneuvered to evade them. Gunfire and gun smells and shouts stung the air. Two of the enemy boats went down. Then, at 1:30 a.m., the remaining PTs ended the fight, roared off through the black night to the north.
Long before the attack was over, CINCPAC Admiral Sharp was routed out of bed (about 4 a.m., Hawaii time) by a duty officer. He hurried to the windowless war room on the third deck of his hilltop headquarters overlooking the white sands of the Oahu coast. He slipped into his green leather chair at the center of a U-shaped table, opposite a wall on which illuminated status reports could be flashed, and picked up a dialless gold telephone at his left. On the Stateside end of the circuit was Robert McNamara. Sharp seldom left that room during the next 22 hours. He made about 100 calls to Washington, even more than that to his subordinate Pacific commanders of the Air Force, Army and Navy.
There was no doubt in Sharp's mind that the U.S. would now have to answer this attack with much more than a diplomatic protest note. He recommended that the U.S. hit the North Viet Nam torpedo-boat bases. Could the carriers do the job? asked McNamara. "Hell, yes!" replied Sharp. That was all McNamara needed to know. While McNamara dealt with the problem in Washington, Sharp waited for a decision. "I was watching Saigon time to see how light it was getting, and watching Washington time to see what they were doing. You spend an awful lot of time looking at clocks."
While Sharp watched the clocks, President Johnson, McNamara, Rusk, CIA Chief John McCone and the President's adviser on national security, McGeorge Bundy, met for a luncheon conference in the White House second-floor dining room.