Shulinkou Air Station – Part 3: Taiwan and the Gulf of Tonkin – S5-E39
We end our Shulinkou trilogy by tying together the surprisingly interconnected Taiwan–U.S.–Vietnam story. It’s July 1964, and two U.S. Navy destroyers are in Taiwan preparing for an intelligence-gathering mission off the coast of North Vietnam. Shulinkou Air Station provided intel, specialized equipment, and trained personnel for the USS Maddox and USS Turner Joy – ships about to play starring roles in the controversial incident that helped draw the United States fully into the Vietnam War.
Amid this geopolitical drama, we follow the story of a young Navy intelligence specialist, Joe Miller. A forbidden romance costs him his posting at Shulinkou. But his reassignment to the aircraft carrier USS Ticonderoga will give him a front-row seat to the Tonkin crisis, and change the course of his life.
Cover images via U.S. Naval History Magazine/Wikimedia Commons.
Below: Images of Shulinkou Air Station via Facebook.
The aircraft carrier USS Ticonderoga.
The aircraft carrier was commissioned in May, 1944, and scrapped in 1973. On Jan. 21, 1944, the Ticonderoga launched an air raid -- with many targets being on Taiwan or what's now called Penghu -- vulnerable without enough planes, the aircraft carrier was hit by Japanese kamikaze planes (photos below). In 1974, this ship would pick up the crew of Apollo 17. Apollo 17 (December 7–19, 1972) was the eleventh and final mission of NASA's Apollo program, the sixth and most recent time humans have set foot on the Moon.
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