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President Truman signs NSC 64, a memorandum that recommended “that
all practicable measures be taken” to check further communist expansion
in Southeast Asia. -
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Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) is formed as a
military alliance to check communist expansion, and included
France, Great Britain, United States, Australia, New Zealand,
the Philippines, Thailand, and Pakistan. -
By 1955, France had given up its military advisory responsibilities
in South Vietnam, and the United States assumed the task. To
appropriately focus on its new role, on November 1 the United
States redesignated MAAG, Indo-china as MAAG, Vietnam and
created a MAAG, Cambodia. MAAG, Vietnam then became the
main conduit for American military assistance to South Vietnam
and the organization responsible for advising and training the South
Vietnamese military. -
During April 1956, three U.S. Army nurses deploy to Vietnam to help train South Vietnamese military nurses. They are the first U.S. service women to arrive in Vietnam. About 11,000 service women would eventually serve in Vietnam. Eight die while serving their country in Vietnam. Of these eight, seven would be Army nurses.
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In the face of South Vietnam’s failure to defeat the communist
insurgency and the increasing possibility that the insurgency
might succeed, Secretary of State Dean Rusk and Secretary of
Defense Robert McNamara recommend to President John F.
Kennedy, “to commit ourselves to the objective of preventing
the fall of South Viet-Nam to Communism and that, in so
doing so, …recognize that…the United States and other
SEATO forces may be necessary to achieve this objective.” -
Kennedy’s decision resulted in sending to South Vietnam the
USNS Core with men and materiel aboard (32 Vertol H–21C
Shawnee helicopters and 400 air and ground crewmen to
operate and maintain them). Less than two weeks later, the
helicopters, flown by U.S. pilots, would provide combat
support in an operation west of Saigon. -
On August 2, 1964, North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacked the USS Maddox, a Navy
destroyer, off the coast of North Vietnam. Two days later, a second attack was reported on
another destroyer, although it is now accepted that the
second attack did not occur. In the wake of these attacks,
President Lyndon Johnson presented a resolution to
Congress, which voted overwhelmingly in favor on August 7.
The Tonkin Gulf Resolution stated that “Congress approves
and supports the determination of the Presid -
U.S. military aircraft begin attacking targets throughout North
Vietnam in the strategic bombing campaign—Operation
ROLLING THUNDER. -
As the situation deteriorated in South Vietnam and the
United States ramped up its air war activities there, the Da
Nang air base in northern South Vietnam became both
significant to those activities and vulnerable to attack by
communist insurgents, the Viet Cong. To defend the air base,
but specifically not to carry out offensive operations against
the Viet Cong, President Johnson authorized the landing of
the 9th Marine Expeditionary Brigade, about 5,000 strong, at
Da Nang on March 8. -
By May 1965, the situation had so deteriorated in South Vietnam that General William
C. Westmoreland concluded that American combat troops had to enter the conflict as
combatants, or else South Vietnam would collapse within six months. Johnson announced his
decision at a press conference on July 28: “We will not surrender and we will not retreat…we
are going to continue to persist, if persist we must, until death
and desolation have led to the same [peace] conference table
where others could now
