Vietnam War Timeline

  • Geneva Accords

    Geneva Accords

    The Geneva Conference was a conference that was intended to settle outstanding issues resulting from the Korean War and the First Indochina War and involved several nations. It took place in Geneva, Switzerland, from 26 April to 20 July 1954.
  • Period: to

    Vietnam War

    The Vietnam War was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam and South Vietnam.
  • Diem assassinated

    Diem assassinated

    November 2, 1963. Coup that brought downfall and deaths to President Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother, Ngo Dinh Nhu in November 1963. Generals in the South Vietnamese Army depose President Ngo Dinh Diem and assassinate Diem and his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu.
  • Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

    Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

    The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution or the Southeast Asia Resolution, Pub.L. 88–408, 78 Stat. 384, enacted August 10, 1964, was a joint resolution that the United States Congress passed on August 7, 1964, in response to the Gulf of Tonkin incident.
  • LBJ ordered 1st troops to Vietnam

    President Johnson launches a three-year campaign of sustained bombing of targets in North Vietnam and the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Operation Rolling Thunder. The same month, U.S. Marines land on beaches near Da Nang, South Vietnam as the first American combat troops to enter Vietnam.
  • Tet Offensive

    Tet Offensive

    The Tet Offensive was a major escalation and one of the largest military campaigns of the Vietnam War.
  • My Lai Massacre

    My Lai Massacre

    As many as 500 unarmed villagers are killed by U.S. Army troops in the hamlet of My Lai. Groups of women, children, and elderly men are shot at close range by elements of Charlie Company of the 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry Regiment, 11th Infantry Brigade. Attempts to cover up the massacre begin almost before the shooting stops, and only one American, Charlie Company’s 1st Platoon commander, Lieu. William Calley, will be found guilty of any crime in connection with My Lai.
  • Nixon's Vietnamization policy

    Nixon's Vietnamization policy

    Vietnamization was a policy of the Richard Nixon administration to end U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War through a program to "expand, equip, and train South Vietnamese forces and assign to them an ever-increasing combat role, at the same time steadily reducing the number of U.S. combat troops".
  • Nixon sends troops to Cambodia

    Nixon sends troops to Cambodia

    ollowing months of secret U.S. bombings on Communist bases, American ground troops were deployed to northern Cambodia on April 28, 1970. When President Richard Nixon ordered U.S. ground troops to invade Cambodia on April 28, 1970, he waited two days to announce on national television the Cambodian incursion had begun.
  • Kent State shooting

    Kent State shooting

    The Kent State shootings, also known as the May 4 massacre and the Kent State massacre, were the killings of four and wounding of nine other unarmed Kent State University students by the Ohio National Guard on May 4, 1970, in Kent, Ohio, 40 mi south of Cleveland.
  • Hard Hat Riot

    Hard Hat Riot

    The Hard Hat Riot occurred on May 8, 1970, in New York City. It started around noon when around 400 construction workers and around 800 office workers attacked around 1,000 demonstrators affiliated with the student strike of 1970.
  • Nixon's Christmas bombing

    Nixon's Christmas bombing

    Operation Linebacker II was an aerial bombing campaign conducted by U.S. Seventh Air Force, Strategic Air Command and U.S. Navy Task Force 77 against targets in the Democratic Republic of Vietnam during the final period of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War.
  • Nixon's Vietnamization policy ends

    Having rebuilt their forces and upgraded their logistics system, North Vietnamese forces triggered a major offensive in the Central Highlands in March 1975. On April 30, 1975, NVA tanks rolled through the gate of the Presidential Palace in Saigon, effectively ending the war.
  • Paris Peace Accords

    Paris Peace Accords

    The Paris Peace Accords, officially the Agreement on Ending the War and Restoring Peace in Viet Nam, was a peace treaty signed on January 27, 1973, to establish peace in Vietnam and end the Vietnam War.
  • War Powers Act

    War Powers Act

    The War Powers Resolution is a federal law intended to check the U.S. president's power to commit the United States to an armed conflict without the consent of the U.S. Congress. The resolution was adopted in the form of a United States congressional joint resolution.
  • Saigon Falls

    Saigon Falls

    On April 30, 1975, the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese Army, effectively ending the Vietnam War. In the days before, U.S. forces evacuated thousands of Americans and South Vietnamese.