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The U.S. President, Dwight D. Eisenhower, first uses the "domino theory" in a speech. He says the fall of French Indochina to communism could lead to other countries in Southeast Asia falling to communism, causing a domino effect. This gets the U.S. thinking of Vietnam. -
The U.S. is supplying soldiers to help South Vietnam fight. In this time, the first U.S. soldiers are killed in South Vietnam after guerrillas raided their living quarters near Saigon. -
In May of 1961, President John F. Kennedy sends helicopters and 400 Green Berets to South Vietnam to authorize secretive operations against the Viet Cong. -
During Operation Ranch Hand, U.S. aircrafts would start spraying "Agent Orange", a powerful herbicide, over rural areas of South Vietnam in order to kill vegetation that would provide cover and food to the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese guerrilla forces. -
The U.S. backs the military coup by South Vietnam against Ngo Dinh Diem, ending in the killing of him and his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu. In the next 2 years, 12 different governments take over South Vietnam as the military coups one after another. -
There were two alleged attacks on U.S. military boats on August 2 and 4. President Johnson calls for air strikes on North Vietnamese patrol boat bases after these attacks. Later it is found that the North Vietnam had never unprovokingly attacked the U.S. boats. -
President Johnson orders the bombing of targets in North Vietnam in the Operation Flaming Dart in retaliation for a Viet Cong raid at the U.S. base in the city of Pleiku and also at a nearby helicopter base. -
President Johnson launches a three-year campaign of bombing targets in North Vietnam and on the Ho Chi Minh Trail, that was used to transport North Vietnamese supplies into neutral countries, in order for them to not get destroyed. Also, U.S. Marines land on beaches near Da Nang, South Vietnam as the first American combat troops to enter Vietnam. -
President Johnson calls for 50,000 more ground troops to be set to Vietnam. This increasing the draft to 35,000 each month. -
Nearly 300 Americans are killed and hundreds more injured in the first big battle of the Vietnam War, the Battle of la Drang Valley. U.S. ground troops are dropped onto and withdrawn from the battlefield by helicopter, which would become a common strategy. Both sides declared victory. -
Huge Vietnam War protests occur in Washington, D.C., New York City, and San Francisco. U.S. troop numbers stationed in Vietnam rise to 500,000. -
The Nixon administration gradually reduces the number of U.S. forces in South Vietnam. U.S. troops in Vietnam are reduced from a peak of 549,000 in 1969 to 69,000 in 1972.