Path+to+Vietnam+War

VIETNAM - THE PATH TO WAR The path to the Vietnam war was a brutal one.On June 25th, 1950 North Korean Communist forces invaded the Republic of South Korea. The United Nations gets involved and called North Korea the attacker. Truman decided to send U.S. marine and air support to Korean right away.On May 7th, 1954 a 55 day long battle began. Dien Bien Phu, a French command post got occupied by vietnamese forces. This battle was very costly for France, but was even worse in Vietnam. 3,000 French troops died and 8,000 of them were wounded. Also, the Viet Minh lost 8,000 and 12,000 of them were hurt. Although there were several causalities for the Vietnamese, this victory caused France to surrender. In 1959 Group 559 was created. This was a Vietnamese Army Unit in the North. It was made to make a supply route that started in North Vietnam and ended in South Vietnam, specifically the Vietcong forces. Next Group 559 made a basic route that went along the Cambodian/Vietnamese. This included offshoots into Vietnam along its whole length. It was called the Ho Chi Minh Trail. At this time, there was still fear of communism in the United States. Next, In 1955 Ngo Dinh Diem was urged by Britain, France, and the U.S. to appreciate the Geneva accords and to come into discussions with the North. After that, in 1961 more help for the Vietnamese government in the South in the war between them and the Vietcong guerrillas by JFK. There help was fresh equipment, and around 3,000 military advisors.

As we went through several lives, the Vietnam war really heated up. In 1960, Eisenhower sent 900 U.S. advisers to Vietnam. The number of troops expanded to 11,000 by the end of 1962, after John F. Kennedy became president. Congress had not yet declared war .Thousands of the U.S. soldiers in Vietnam were advisers.The U.S. soldiers were not supposed to engage in combat. President Lyndon B. Johnson announced in August of 1964 that the USS Maddox, a United States Military ship, had been exposed to "an uncalled attack by the North Vietnamese forces in the Gulf of Tonkin." North Vietnamese boats came back to bombard the U.S, two days later! Johnson ordered U.S. war planes to attack and bomb certain marks in North Vietnam. After going to Congress and the American People to denounce "what he called 'unprovoked attacks' on U.S. Troops,", congress granted Johnson the control to do anything he needed to help defend the Armed forces of the US.

Later on, Lyndon B. Johnson and his executives decided to turn to airpower in 1965 mainly because the war was going poorly. Political Situations remained unstable, and even the "Viet Cong guerrillas" seemed close to achieving victory. So, Operation Rolling Thunder took place. Rolling Thunder was a U.S. bombing campaign that was unsuccessful in attaining it's important military and political goals,even though nearly 750,000 tons of bombs were dropped on North Vietnam by almost one million sorties. On March 8, 1965, the first U.S. Combat troops, which were Marines, were sent into South Vietnam, and they landed at Da Nag. The city of Da Nag was the headquarters of the ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam). Not to mention, the city was also the location of an important military station and resupply area for the ARVN and U.S. forces.