Seabee Technical Assistance Teams Established

February 19, 1962

Seabees with Seabee Team and Vietnamese carry 300 pound 10 inch steel I beam

Overview

The Navy establishes and begins training 13-man Seabee Technical Assistance Teams (STATs) to counter Communist insurgents through civic action programs and to support CIDGs. The first STATs deploy to Vietnam in January 1963. In South Vietnam, STATs build military installations, village fortifications, houses, schools, hospitals, roads, bridges, and wells. They also fortify isolated bases held by U.S. Special Operations forces and their paramilitary troops.1

¹Edward J. Marolda, The Approaching Storm: Conflict in Asia, 1945–1965 (Washington, D.C.: Naval History and Heritage Command, 2009), 50–51; Edward J. Marolda and Oscar P. Fitzgerald, The United States Navy and the Vietnam Conflict, Volume II: From Military Assistance to Combat, 1959–1965 (Washington, D.C.: Naval Historical Center, 1986), 113, 192–95; Tucker, ed., Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War, 742 (according to this source, the STATs don’t arrive in Vietnam until 1/25/1963). Also according to Kenneth E. Bingham, Seabee Teams in Vietnam, 1963–1968 (COMCBPAC REPORTS, 2013), 24, 40, first STATs didn’t arrive in Vietnam until January 1963. They began training in early 1962 in California.