Operation PIERCE ARROW

August 5, 1964

Overview

President Johnson, Secretary of Defense McNamara, National Security Advisor Bundy, and others in the administration feel that they are under political pressure to react to the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. Johnson orders immediate retaliation despite the contradictory reports and without waiting for a full report or for Herrick’s statement suggesting a detailed review of the August 4 incident. The retaliation operation is codenamed PIERCE ARROW, and it marks the first time American forces directly attack North Vietnam. U.S. aircraft from the carriers USS Ticonderoga and USS Constellation strike petroleum storage facilities at Vinh, North Vietnam, as well as North Vietnamese Navy vessels at several locations.

The United States loses two aircraft during PIERCE ARROW. One pilot, Lieutenant (jg) Richard Sather, is killed and the other, Lieutenant (jg) Everett Alvarez, is captured. Alvarez becomes the first American prisoner of war captured in North Vietnam. He is held captive for over eight years, until February 1973.1

¹Edwin E. Moise, Tonkin Gulf and the Escalation of the Vietnam War (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press), 82–86, 143–220; Lawrence S. Kaplan, Ronald D. Landa, and Edward J. Drea, History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Volume V: The McNamara Ascendency, 1961–1965 (Washington, D.C.: Historical Office of the Secretary of Defense, 2006), 522; Richard W. Stewart, Deepening Involvement, 1945–1965 (Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, 2012), 60; Stuart I. Rochester and Frederick Kiley, Honor Bound: The History of American Prisoners of War in Southeast Asia, 1961–1973 (Washington, D.C.: Historical Office of the Secretary of Defense, 1998), 85, 88, 598; Ronald Bruce Frankum, Like Rolling Thunder: The Air War in Vietnam, 1964–1975 (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2005), 15; Spencer C. Tucker, ed., Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War, (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 1998), 573.