The Vietnam War, This Week, The Times, Chester PA
Vietnam War Weekly Front Pages
11 July 1965 – 17 July 1965
The Times, Chester PA
The Big Red One arrives.
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The first large force of US combat infantrymen, 3,900 men of the First Infantry Division, began landing in Vietnam on Monday. The first 1,000 men of the “Big Red One,” as the division was known in World War II, landed at strategic Cam Ranh Bay, 180 miles northeast of Saigon, and dug in on the sand dunes. The remainder of the famed division’s Second Brigade would land elsewhere in Vietnam on Tuesday. The landings would bring the total of US troops in Vietnam to 71,000. There had been little Viet Cong action in the area of the bay in recent months, but a big Communist buildup had been reported in the hills and mountains inland from it.
Five US Marines were killed and 17 wounded in two bloody engagements near the key US air base of Da Nang. Twenty Viet Cong were killed in one action Monday, and unconfirmed reports of 26 guerrillas died under Marine fire in the second. In the biggest of the two Marine actions Monday, leathernecks on a sweep operation only three miles southwest of Da Nang ran into a determined Viet Cong band.
The Secretary of Defense said that new US troop increases in South Vietnam would make it necessary to consider calling up military reserves, extending tours of duty, and enlarging draft calls. Robert S. McNamara and other senior officials were to leave for Saigon Wednesday on a weeklong survey which was generally expected to result in a decision to make substantial increases in US forces in Vietnam. At a news conference, McNamara said “The Viet Cong are continuing to increase in South Vietnam. They have forces in the country they have not yet assigned to combat. We can expect further increases in Viet Cong operations.” The Joint Chiefs of Staff recommended unanimously that the strength of US forces in South Vietnam be boosted to 179,000 men by the end of the year. This recommendation would be considered by top US officials in light of what the Secretary of Defense determined during his weeklong inspection visit to Vietnam.
Officials of the Boeing Company said they anticipated an increase of about 850 jobs in five Delaware County area plants as a result of a US Defense Department plan to add more Army helicopter companies in the expanding Vietnam war. The spokesman in Springfield said the company had been advised by the Air Force Aeronautical Systems Division, the Army’s procurement agency, to accelerate production of the CH-47A Chinook medium transport helicopter. Production was to be increased by 100%, the spokesman said.
(Photo courtesy newspapers.com, Chester Times)