Vietnam Timeline

  • War Power Act

    also known as the First War Powers Act, was an American emergency law that increased Federal power during World War II. The act was signed by US president Franklin D. Roosevelt and put into law on December 18, 1941, less than two weeks after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The act was similar to the Departmental Reorganization act of 1917 as it was signed shortly before the U.S. engaged in a large war and increased the powers of the president's US executive branch.
  • Geneva Conference

    was a conference which took place in Geneva, Switzerland. The purpose was to attempt to find a way to unify Korea and discuss the possibility of restoring peace in Indochina.
  • Vietcong Trail

    A specialized North Vietnamese Army unit, Group 559, is formed to create a supply route from North Vietnam to Vietcong forces in South Vietnam. With the approval of prince Sihanouk of Cambodia, Group 559 develops a primitive route along the Vietnamese/ Cambodian border, with offshoots into vietnam along its entire length. This eventually became known as the Ho Chi Minh Trail.
  • Tonkin Resolution

    response to a sea battle between the North Vietnamese Navy's Torpedo Squadron 10135[1] and the destroyer USS Maddox
  • Operation Rolling Thunder

    The title of a gradual and sustained US 2nd Air Division. The four objectives of the operation (which evolved over time) were to boost the sagging morale of the Saigon regime in the Republic of Vietnam, to persuade North Vietnam to cease its support for the communist insurgency in South Vietnam without actually taking any ground forces into communist North Vietnam, to destroy North Vietnamese transportation system, industrial base, and air defenses, and to cease the flow of men and material into
  • First Supply load sent to vietnam for Pro French

    First shipload of U.S. arms aid to pro-French Vietnam arrives
  • Operation Starlite

    first major action fought by only US forces. They destroyed a Viet Cong base area near Van Tuong
  • Operation Masher

    largest search and destroy mission up to that point in the war
  • Operation Pop Eye

    Later revealed in the "Pentagon Papers" that a rain-making project, was designed to reduce traffic along the Ho Chi Minh trail in Laos
  • Tet Offensive

    A military campaign launched by the People’s Army against the South allied with the U.S. The prior ceasefire established at the Tet Festivities lead way for the surprise attack that was the Tet offensive.
  • Communists start Tet Offensive

    Communists start Tet Offensive which escalates into one of the major battles of the war, including attacks on almost all of the capitals of S. Vietnam's 44 provinces
  • Vietnamization

    After Nixon's election in 1968, Vietnamization became the policy of the United States. While it was a deliberate policy, the name was rather accidental
  • Kent State

    members of the Ohio National Guard fired into a crowd of Kent State University demonstrators, killing four and wounding nine Kent State students. The event triggered a nationwide student strike that forced hundreds of colleges and universities to close.
  • 26th amendment

    On June 22, 1970, President Richard Nixon signed an extension of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that required the voting age to be 18 in all federal, state, and local elections. In his statement on signing the extension, Nixon said:
    Despite my misgivings about the constitutionality of this one provision, I have signed the bill. I have directed the Attorney General to cooperate fully in expediting a swift court test of the constitutionality of the 18-year-old provision
  • U.S Withdrawl of troops

    The US Signed a peace agreement with North Vietnam and evacuated immediately.
  • South Vienam surrenders

    More formally known as the Fall Of Saigon. Before the north Reached Saigon the united states sensed that their small presence would cause a disruption, all were evacuated and the south surrendered in order to avoid bloodshed.