Operation 34A

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Operation 34A (full name, Operational Plan 34A, also known as OPLAN 34-Alpha) was a highly classified United States program of covert actions against the

Background

After the

In July 1963, the Department of Defense (DOD) and the CIA determined that operational control should be transferred to the DOD. On 1 January 1964, Military Assistance Command, Vietnam – Studies and Observations Group (MACV-SOG) took command of the operation (MACV-SOG was a cover name for a multi-service unconventional warfare task force under the direct guidance and control of the Pentagon).^[1][2]

Operation

Once the MACV-SOG took control, the Pentagon (under which MACV-SOG operated) issued an Operational Plan (OPLAN 34-63), which entailed commando raids of a similar sort to what had been happening under the CIA. Most of these raids tended to be unsuccessful, with the

Starting in mid-1962, the U.S. Navy began conducting electronic surveillance operations conducted by a division of ocean-going minesweepers (MSO) operating along the coast of North and South Vietnam. The minesweepers were equipped with portable vans containing highly sophisticated electronic surveillance equipment. The minesweepers fueled on occasion at a South Vietnamese fueling station located near the fishing port (Da Nang) and took on evidence from CIA operatives which allegedly tended to prove that China and Russia were supplying the Viet Cong with weapons and other material. Occasionally, usually between midnight and 3 a.m., DRVN gunboats would approach the minesweepers at high speed and then peel off and return to a DRVN naval base operating on an island north of the 30th parallel. The gunboats made threatening maneuvers but never actually attacked the minesweepers. The maneuvers were reported to CINCPAC and the Pentagon in nightly Top Secret cryptograph messages. The minesweepers were essentially defenseless should an attack occur. In early 1963, the minesweepers were relieved by a division of destroyers (the DESOTO patrols) which appear to have carried out the same electronic surveillance operations conducted by the minesweepers.

Although the two sets of operations were at least nominally independent of one another, the patrols often gathered intelligence that was crucial to OPLAN 34A. The attacks carried out by the patrol boats provoked responses by the North Vietnamese military that were monitored by the American destroyers, thus providing very useful intelligence on DRV military capabilities. The situation swiftly escalated as the DRV deployed heavy gunboats and torpedo equipped frigates to observe the U.S. maneuvers.

Gulf of Tonkin Incident

On the morning of 2 August 1964, the morning after OPLAN commandos raided a North Vietnamese radio transmitter located on an offshore island, one of these destroyers, the