ABSTRACT

With the exception of the activities of the Office of Strategic Services during the Second World War, direct US military involvement in Vietnam dates from 1950 when, as a result of the establishment of the Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) in Saigon, US Air Force personnel, including military advisers and aircraft maintenance experts, were sent to Indochina to aid the French. Following the Geneva Accords and the withdrawal of France from South East Asia, MAAG was to assume the training of the armed forces of the newly created South Vietnamese government.