The Vietnam War

The Vietnam War. In the aftermath of World War II, France's effort to re-establish its empire in Indochina led to a protracted revolution by Vietnamese forces led by Ho Chi Minh. The 1954 Geneva Conference that ended this conflict divided Indochina into four states: North and South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Concerned that South Vietnam might fall to the Communists, leading to the fall of other "dominos", President Dwight Eisenhower directed the establishment of a U.S. advisory effort in South Vietnam. , By the early 1960s, it appeared that Communist North Vietnam would soon take control of South Vietnam. President John F. Kennedy reacted by rapidly increasing the role and numbers of U.S. advisors in South Vietnam. The Air Force responded with Operation Farmgate, which in practice operated as a combat force while training South Vietnamese pilots. Despite these measures, South Vietnam continued to lose ground against the Communist forces. In November 1963, President Ngo Dinh Diem was overthrown and assassinated in a coup. South Vietnam's political structure grew increasingly unstable as coup followed coup. On November 22, President Kennedy was assassinated, bringing Lyndon Johnson into the presidency., On the morning of 2 August 1964, North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacked the USS Maddox in the Gulf of Tonkin. Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin resolution authorizing Johnson to take any appropriate measures to protect U.S. forces in Indochina, and Johnson ordered an attack on North Vietnam in retaliation for the attacks on the Maddox. Carrier-based U.S. Navy forces executed an airstrike in retaliation. U.S. Air Force squadrons arrived in South Vietnam and Thailand in increasing numbers to support ground forces of South Vietnam and the growing U.S. Army and Marine presence. As the situation in South Vietnam continued to deteriorate, Johnson ordered a sustained, but tightly controlled, air campaign against North Vietnam, codenamed Operation Rolling Thunder. The campaign opened on 24 February 1965 and lasted until the end of October 1968., Valmore Bourque was the first cadet sworn into USAFA in 1955. He was also the Academy's first casualty in Vietnam, killed October 24, 1964 when his C-123B was struck by ground fire and crashed.