Hero Found: The Greatest POW Escape of the Vietnam War by Bruce Henderson Page B

destroyers, Griffith switched to the radio frequency for Maddox , the flagship of Captain John J. Herrick, commander of the two-ship task force operating in the gulf, and checked in with the ship’s air controller. For the next two hours the Skyraiders circled into and out of a thin cloud layer between 3,000 and 4,000 feet, waiting to be directed by ship radar or sonar to “water targets,” but they never were.
    For two hours preceding the arrival of Griffith’s flight, the destroyers had reported countless surface contacts on radar and sonar. There were also urgent reports of torpedoes in the water, causing the destroyers to take “wild evasive maneuvers,” which themselves caused sonar reports as sound waves reflected off the turbulence of the ships’ own propellers. Turner Joy had fired 300 rounds at elusive targets, but Maddox had not fired a single round; Maddox ’s gunnery officer was unconvinced there were any targets. Jets from Ticonderoga , arriving well before Griffith’s Spads, had been vectored repeatedly to reported surface contacts, and each time dropped flares and searched the ocean for torpedo boats. “No boats,” the Ticonderoga flight leader, Commander James Stockdale (a future POW, admiral, and vice presidential candidate), reported upon returning to the aircraft carrier, “no boat wakes, no ricochets off boats, no boat gunfire, no torpedo wakes—nothing but black sea and American firepower.” At 11:35 P.M ., the reported contacts stopped. Stockdale’s jets, low on fuel, left as Griffith’s Spads arrived.
    For the two hours they orbited above, Griffith, like Stockdale, saw only the U.S. ships. The reported North Vietnamese attack this far out in the gulf struck Griffith as odd. After nightfall, the two destroyers had moved from twenty or so miles off North Vietnam’s coast to some sixty miles into the gulf. A torpedo boat capable of thirty to forty miles per hour would take two hours to reach the U.S. ships, and equal time to return to shore. Why would such boats risk it, given the presence of carrier-based airpower that could blow them out of the water? Coming that far out, in Griffith’s opinion, would have been foolish. The daytime attack on Maddox two days earlier—verified visually by the U.S. pilots from Ticonderoga and confirmed by the minor damage to Maddox caused by enemy gunfire—had taken place closer to shore. And if the torpedo boats did venture this far out to engage U.S. warships this night, why had the planes found no sign of them?
    Unbeknownst to Griffith, Captain Herrick, aboard Maddox , was also having misgivings about what had happened that night. Shortly before 12:30 A.M ., Herrick, after reviewing the communications log and radar and sonar data, wired Admiral U. S. Grant Sharp Jr., commander-in-chief of the Pacific Fleet, Pearl Harbor, stating: “ ENTIRE ACTION LEAVES MANY DOUBTS…NEVER POSITIVELY IDENTIFIED A [ENEMY] BOAT AS SUCH .” Herrick recommended aerial reconnaissance in daylight and a “ COMPLETE EVALUATION BEFORE ANY FURTHER ACTION .” Sharp immediately called the Pentagon, and relayed his own concerns to Admiral Thomas Moorer, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Robert S. McNamara, Secretary of Defense. Sharp, the top admiral in the Pacific, surmised that “over-eager sonar [and radar] operators” and “freak weather” could have caused false contacts, and emphasized the absence of visual confirmation of any hostile activity against U.S. forces in the gulf on the night of August 4.
    As Griffith led his flight back, he had everyone drop the full rocket pods into the water, which planes carrying unused bombs and rockets routinely did before coming back aboard ship to prevent accidental explosions. About then, Griffith realized they had entered an electrical weather phenomenon known as Saint Elmo’s fire, which he had heard about but had never experienced. This static-electric phenomenon, named after the patron saint of sailors, lit up the