The day itself: history has made its first move, and the next one is yours.
Briefing
2 August 1964. In the Gulf of Tonkin three North Vietnamese torpedo boats attack the US destroyer Maddox. In Saigon General Nguyen Khanh has hung on for six months since his coup; the Viet Cong hold half the countryside and the Pathet Lao have taken the Plain of Jars. Khrushchev has months left in power, China is about to test its first bomb, and Sukarno vows to 'crush Malaysia'. Escalate, negotiate or stay out – every country is playable.
Real history stays a strong tendency: what happened later is planned for its date – until your actions change the world.
You govern: the orders are the state's.
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The world on 2 August 1964
On 2 August 1964 three North Vietnamese torpedo boats attack the American destroyer USS Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin, where she is gathering intelligence off the coast of North Vietnam. The ship's guns and aircraft from the carrier Ticonderoga drive them off; the Maddox is hit by a single machine-gun bullet. A few days earlier South Vietnamese commandos raided North Vietnamese islands nearby.
Vietnam has been divided at the 17th parallel since the Geneva Accords of 1954. In the South the government in Saigon, shaken by coup after coup since President Diem was overthrown and killed in November 1963, is losing ground to the Viet Cong, supplied from the North along the Ho Chi Minh trail through Laos. More than sixteen thousand American military advisers serve in South Vietnam, but no American combat units.
President Lyndon Johnson faces an election in November against Barry Goldwater, who calls for a harder line. A resolution giving the president wide powers to use force in Southeast Asia has been drafted and waits for an occasion. The Soviet Union and China both back Hanoi but are quarrelling bitterly with each other. What Washington does now will decide whether this remains a Vietnamese war.