Initially providing limited assistance to France, President Eisenhower met with the leader of South Vietnam in 1957. Now free of French control, President Ngo Dinh Diem was seeking more aid for his recently split, newly independent country.

America provided expanded aid when President Kennedy first sent Army and Air Force advisors to South Vietnam in 1961. The U.S. plan was NOT to stay in Vietnam. The initial plan was to simply advise Diem and his military how to ward off their neighbors to the north.

But those plans changed, somewhat, between 1962-1964 and very dramatically in early 1965.