INTRODUCTION
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America's involvement in the
Vietnam War began in the late 1950s,
when a handful of US military advisors were
sent to help the South Vietnamese government
fight Communist insurgents. North
Vietnamese regular army troops deployed
into South Vietnam in the 1960s, and US
ground forces arrived in 1965.
The war quickly spread to neighboring
Cambodia and Laos, and US forces in Southeast Asia increased
in number to 550,000 in mid-1969 after the fierce fighting
of 1967 and 1968.But the mounting toll of US casualties
eventually drove Lyndon Johnson from the White House
and forced Richard Nixon to seek a quick end to active
American involvement in the fighting.
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The stars mark the crash sites investigated
by MWAC personnel.
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ground troops were withdrawn following
the 1973 Paris Peace Accords. But the South Vietnamese
continued to fight on with the help of US air support
until May, 1975 when the North Vietnamese army swept
out of the Central Highlands and crushed the last
opposition in the South.
Over the past five years the US Department of
Defense has used archeologists from the Midwest
Archeological Center to investigate six separate
aircraft crash sites in Vietnam and Laos in an
attempt to resolve the fate of the aircrew who
were lost with these planes. NEXT
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The Vietnam War was the first in which the American
military made extensive use of helicopters to carry
troops to and from the battlefield, move ammunition
and supplies, and evacuate the wounded. 
3,300,000 Americans served
in the Vietnam War. 
