Assassination of John F. Kennedy President Kennedy as his motorcade continued down Elm Street. About 80% of the witnesses recalled hearing three shots. A minority of the witnesses recognized the first gunshot they heard as weapon fire, but there was hardly any reaction to the first shot from a majority of the people in the crowd or those riding in the motorcade. Many bystanders later said that they heard what they first thought to either be a firecracker or the backfire of one of the vehicles shortly after the President had begun waving. Although some close witnesses recalled seeing the limousine slow down, nearly stop,
Foreign policy of the John F. Kennedy administration presence, initially seizing the provincial capital of Phuoc Vinh. By the end of 1961 the American advisers in Vietnam numbered 3,205 and that number increased from 11,000 in 1962 to 16,000 by late 1963, but Kennedy was reluctant to order a full-scale deployment of troops. Before his assassination, Kennedy used military advisors and special forces in Vietnam almost exclusively. A year and three months later on March 8, 1965, his successor, President Lyndon Johnson, committed the first combat troops to Vietnam and greatly escalated U.S. involvement, with forces reaching 184,000 that year and 536,000 in 1968. In late 1961, President