Some messages were sent, that acted as early warnings of Torpedo attacks.
The wellspring of the data was a U.S. field-site cautioning dispatched precisely one hour sooner, at 7:40 Saigon time, by streak priority to Maddox, its kindred destroyer Turner Joy, and different addressees. In part declassified in March 2003, the message peruses: Haiphong educated Vessel T142 (Swatow Class) to prepare for military activities the evening of 04 August. The sister transport, T-146 has likewise gotten comparable requests. Message trades show that all endeavors are being made to incorporate MTB (Motor Torpedo Boat) T333 right now, soon as extra oil can be acquired for that vessel.
Only three minutes after the fact a similar unit transmitted another admonition to Maddox: At 0910Z [Zulu, or Greenwich Mean, time], Haiphong educated Vessel T142 of DeSoto destroyers area: Time 1345 (Golf [Hanoi time]) 106-19-30E/19-36-23N. Haiphong's following was exact.
On board Maddox, Captain John J. Herrick, leader of the two-destroyer task bunch CTG 72.1, and the destroyer's captain, Commander Herbert L. Ogier, had reason to worry. Swatows were Chinese-fabricated engine gunboats equipped for making twenty-eight bunches. The eighty-three-foot-long vessels conveyed a team of thirty men furnished with 37mm and 14.5mm firearms, just as surface hunt radar and profundity charges. P-4s were Soviet-constructed engine torpedo pontoons that could surpass fifty bunches. In spite of the fact that littler and with an eleven-man group, the P-4 conveyed two torpedoes with a scope of forty-500 yards. The admonition was even more foreboding since one of the North Vietnamese naval force vessels recognized in the message — T-333, doled out to Division 3 of PT Squadron 135 — had assaulted Maddox thirty miles off the North Vietnamese coast two days sooner.
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