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U.S. Navy SEAL Team 1 Arrives in Vietnam

March 10, 1962

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Members of U.S. Navy SEAL Team One on the Bassac River, south of Saigon, aboard a SEAL Team Assault Boat, November 1967. (National Archives)

Members of Navy Sea-Air-Land (SEAL) Team 1 arrive in Saigon to begin training South Vietnamese naval commandos in covert maritime operations. Established only two months earlier, in January 1962, the SEALs are the Navy’s experts in special warfare—sabotage, demolition, and other clandestine activities conducted in enemy areas and from restricted seas and waterways.1

1Edward J. Marolda, The Approaching Storm: Conflict in Asia, 1945–1965 (Washington, D.C.: Naval History and Heritage Command, 2009), 49–50; Edward J. Marolda and Oscar P. Fitzgerald, The United States Navy in the Vietnam Conflict, Volume II: From Military Assistance to Combat, 1959–1965 (Washington, D.C.: Naval Historical Center, 1986), 189–90; Tucker, ed., Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War, 639–40.