Vietnam War Timeline

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    Vietnam war Timespan

  • Pentagon Papers

    Pentagon Papers
    The Pentagon Papers was the name given to a secret Department of Defense study of U.S. political and military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967, prepared at the request of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara in 1967
  • Dien Bien Phu

    Dien Bien Phu
    The Battle of Dien Bien Phu was the decisive engagement in the first Indochina War (1946–54). After French forces occupied the Dien Bien Phu valley in late 1953, Viet Minh commander Vo Nguyen Giap amassed troops and placed heavy artillery in caves of the mountains overlooking the French camp.
  • Geneva Conference

    Geneva Conference
    The Geneva Conference (April 26 – July 20, 1954) was a conference which took place in Geneva, Switzerland, whose purpose was to attempt to find a way to settle outstanding issues in the Korean peninsula and discuss the possibility of restoring peace in Indochina.
  • Gulf of Tonkin Incident

    Gulf of Tonkin Incident
    The Gulf of Tonkin incident, also known as the USS Maddox incident, involved what were originally claimed to be two separate confrontations involving North Vietnam and the United States in the waters of the Gulf of Tonkin
  • Gulf of Tonkin Resolution

    Gulf of Tonkin Resolution
    The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution (August 7, 1964) gave broad congressional approval for expansion of the Vietnam War. During the spring of 1964, military planners had developed a detailed design for major attacks on the North, but at that time President Lyndon B. Johnson and his advisers feared that the public would not support an expansion of the war
  • Operation Rolling Thunder

    Operation Rolling Thunder
    During the Vietnam War, as part of the strategic bombing campaign known as Operation Rolling Thunder, U.S. military aircraft attacked targets throughout North Vietnam from March 1965 to October 1968.
  • Tet Offensive

    Tet Offensive
    On January 31, 1968, some 70,000 North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces launched the Tet Offensive (named for the lunar new year holiday called Tet), a coordinated series of fierce attacks on more than 100 cities and towns in South Vietnam.
  • My Lai Massacare

    My Lai Massacare
    In one of the most horrific incidents of violence against civilians during the Vietnam War, a company of American soldiers brutally killed the majority of the population of the South Vietnamese hamlet of My Lai in March 1968. Though exact numbers remain unconfirmed, it is believed that as many as 500 people including women, children and the elderly were killed in the My Lai Massacre
  • Kent State University Massacre

    Kent State University Massacre
    During an altercation on May 4, twenty-eight guardsmen opened fire on a crowd, killing four students and wounding nine. Following the killings, the unrest across the country escalated even further.
  • Last troops withdraw from south vietnam

    Last troops withdraw from south vietnam
    Two months after the signing of the Vietnam peace agreement, the last U.S. combat troops leave South Vietnam as Hanoi frees the remaining American prisoners of war held in North Vietnam
  • Wars Power Act

    Wars Power Act
    President Nixon vetoes the War Powers Resolution, which would limit presidential power to commit armed forces abroad without Congressional approval.