THE VIETNAM WAR 1965-75

The jungles and rice paddies of South-East Asia were among the first battlefields for the US Navy’s new special forces teams

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The newly formed Navy SEALs were first sent into Vietnam in an advisory capacity in March 1962, just a few months after their inception. US military advisors had already been in the country from the mid-1950s, training the forces of the Western-leaning South Vietnamese government as they fought the communist-supported North. When America formally entered the conflict in 1965 after the Gulf of Tonkin incident, Underwater Demolition Team (UDT) frogmen surveyed the beaches of Da Nang before the first US Marines set foot on the Vietnamese coast in March 1965.

After the swelling of the US military commitment into Vietnam, the Navy SEALs’ role in the war widened to undertake active combat missions in the country against the Vietcong and North Vietnamese Army. However, the number of active SEALs was no greater than 120 at any given time due to the clandestine nature of their operation in the country. SEAL Teams 1 and 2 were the first to see action in Vietnam, with Team 1 starting their deployment in February 1967.