Vietnam War: Dates and Timeline

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American Paratroopers in field Below Helicopters in South Vietnam(Original Caption) 5/31/1965-Bien Hoa, South Vietnam: United States paratroopers spread out after disembarking from helicopters during a co-ordinated exercise, the first in which all elements of the 173rd Airborne were used. Communist forces are reported to be making heavy attacks against units of the South Vietnamese army and have caused heavy casualties.

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Vietnam War Timeline

Vietnam Background: Uneasy French Rule • 1887: France imposes a colonial system over Vietnam, calling it French Indochina. The system includes Tonkin, Annam, Cochin China and Cambodia. Laos is added in 1893. • 1923‑25: Vietnamese nationalist Ho Chi Minh is trained in the Soviet Union as an agent of the Communist International (Comitern). • February 1930: Ho Chi […]

Weapons of the Vietnam War

Vietnam War: Weapons of the Air The war saw the U.S. Air Force and their South Vietnamese allies fly thousands of massive low‑altitude bombing missions over North and South Vietnam as well as over sites of suspected Communist activity in neighboring Laos and Cambodia. The B‑52 heavy bomber, developed by Boeing in the late 1940s, […]

Kent State Shooting

The Kent State shooting took place in 1970 when Ohio National Guard troops opened fire on Vietnam War protesters at Kent State University, killing four.

Pentagon Papers

Who Was Daniel Ellsberg? In 1967, at the request of U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, a team of analysts working for the Department of Defense prepared a highly classified study of the U.S. political and military involvement in Vietnam from the end of World War II until the present day. The official title of […]

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My Lai Massacre

In 1968, Ron Ridenhour, an infantryman in Vietnam, wrote a letter to President Nixon detailing the murder of 500 civillians by the U.S. Army in what would come to be known as the My Lai Massacre.