Tonkin Gulf Yacht Club

Tonkin Gulf Yacht Club was a tongue-in-cheek nickname for the United States Seventh Fleet during the Vietnam War.

The Navy sought to bring electronic warfare "DeSoto missions" to identify these installations and sent the USS Maddox (DD-731), leading to the Tonkin Gulf Incident.

Two years later, ships and aircraft of the Fleet evacuated thousands of US citizens and refugees from South Vietnam and Cambodia as those countries fell to opposing forces.

[2] The qualifications for membership broadly construed to any service-member assigned to 7th Fleet, from the ships on the gun line, to aircraft sorties from the carriers, to riverine units, and Marines on the shore.

[3] Although unofficial, the term became popular enough to be found in a declassified 1966 command history of the USS Enterprise, one of the vessels of Seventh Fleet.