Home»History and Legacy»Timeline»1945-1964: The Road to War»President Kennedy is Assassinated

President Kennedy is Assassinated

November 22, 1963

1963-11-22_LBJ_SwearingIn
1963-11-22_LBJ_SwearingIn
Judge Sarah T. Hughes swears in President Lyndon B. Johnson after President Kennedy is assassinated, November 22, 1963. (Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library)

President Kennedy is assassinated in Dallas, Texas. Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson is sworn in as President of the United States aboard Air Force One. At the end of Kennedy’s presidency, there are approximately 16,300 military personnel in Vietnam, mainly military advisers, and about 200 Americans have been killed.1

1Lawrence S. Kaplan, Ronald D. Landa, and Edward J. Drea, The McNamara Ascendancy, 1961–1965, History of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Volume V (Washington, D.C.: Historical Office of the Secretary of Defense, 2006), 290; Spencer C. Tucker, ed., Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War: A Political, Social, and Military History (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 1998), 334, 727; Joseph M. Heiser, Jr., Logistic Support, Vietnam Studies (Washington, D.C.: Department of the Army, 1991), 14; National Archives, “Statistical Information about Fatal Casualties of the Vietnam War,” http://www.archives.gov/research/military/vietnam-war/casualty-statistics.html (link is external) (accessed 3/18/14); Graham A. Cosmas, MACV: The Joint Command in the Years of Escalation, 1962–1967, United States Army in Vietnam (Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, 2006), 117–125.