60, 000 was the highest number of us soldiers in south vietnam at one time.
60, 000 was the highest number of us soldiers in south vietnam at one time.
what was the highest number of us soldiers in south vietnam at one time?
60, 000
the year also saw the highest level of us troop commitment when president lyndon b. johnson signed legislation which allowed for an increased maximum number of united states troops with boots on the ground to five hundred and forty-nine thousand and five hundred troops (549,500). this did not count us forces in the south china sea, laos, cambodia,thailand, north vietnam and china with reserves in the philippines, okinawa, japan, korea, guam, hawaii the united states and worldwide totaling over three million( 3,000,000). south vietnam in the same year fielded a total force of eight hundred and twenty thousand troops (820,000). it was also the most expensive year of the war, with a cost of $77.4 billion. this may have been six times the gdp of south vietnam according to the article on economy of the republic of vietnam. united states support for south vietnam was at its' zenith. antiwar sentiment continued to grow and an increasing number of americans questioned united states involvement in vietnam, as the united states was also drafting young men to fight for south vietnam and south vietnam did not have a draft for its own citizens, the war continued despite changing us public opinion.
1968 in the united states
mcnamara became a close adviser to kennedy and advocated the use of a blockade during the cuban missile crisis. kennedy and mcnamara instituted a cold war defense strategy of flexible response, which anticipated the need for military responses short of massive retaliation. mcnamara consolidated intelligence and logistics functions of the pentagon into two centralized agencies: the defense intelligence agency and the defense supply agency. during the kennedy administration, mcnamara presided over a build-up of us soldiers in south vietnam. after the 1964 gulf of tonkin incident, the number of us soldiers in vietnam escalated dramatically. mcnamara and other us policymakers feared that the fall of south vietnam to a communist regime would lead to the fall of other governments in the region. in october 1966, he launched project 100,000, the lowering of army iq standards which allowed 354,000 additional men to be recruited, despite criticism that they were not suited to working in high stress or dangerous environments.
robert mcnamara