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U.S. Army Helicopters Arrive in Vietnam

December 11, 1961

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1961-12-11_DSC_0075
U.S. personnel strip Army CH-21 Shawnees of their protective coverings after the helicopters’ arrival in Vietnam by sealift. (National Archives)

The first U.S. Army helicopter units in Vietnam, the 8th and 57th Transportation Companies, arrive at the port of Saigon aboard the ferry carrier USNS Core. They are equipped with 32 CH-21 helicopters and 400 air and ground crewmen. Their presence is the direct result of the “limited partnership” between the Kennedy administration and Diem government.1

1Richard W. Stewart, Deepening Involvement, 1945–1965, The U.S. Army Campaigns of the Vietnam War (Washington, D.C.: Center of Military History, 2012), 42; Spencer C. Tucker, ed. Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War: A Political, Social, and Military History (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 1998), 276; Simon Dunstan, Vietnam Choppers: Helicopters in Battle, 1950–1975 (Oxford, Eng.: Osprey Publishing, 2003), 18; James R. Chiles, The God Machine (New York: Bantam Dell, 2007), 160, 285; Edward Miller, Misalliance: Ngo Dinh Diem, the United States, and the Fate of South Vietnam (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2013), 228.