1962 in the Vietnam War
| 1962 in the Vietnam War | |||
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← 1961
1963 →
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| Belligerents | |||
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Anti-Communist forces:  South Vietnam United States Kingdom of Laos
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Communist forces:  North Vietnam Viet Cong Pathet Lao
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| Casualties and losses | |||
| US: 53 killed South Vietnam: 4,457 killed |
North Vietnam: casualties | ||
Anti-Communist forces:
Communist forces:
The Viet Cong insurgency expanded in South Vietnam in 1962. U.S. military personnel flew combat missions and accompanied South Vietnamese soldiers in ground operations to find and defeat the insurgents. Secrecy was the official U.S. policy concerning the extent of U.S. military involvement in South Vietnam. The U.S.'s commanding general of MACV, Paul D. Harkins, projected optimism that progress was being made in the war, but that optimism was refuted by the concerns expressed by a large number of more junior officers and civilians. Several prominent magazines, newspapers, and politicians in the U.S. questioned the military strategy the U.S. was pursuing in support of the South Vietnamese government of President Ngô Đình Diệm. Diệm created the Strategic Hamlet Program as his top priority to defeat the Viet Cong. The program intended to cluster South Vietnam's rural dwellers into defended villages where they would be provided with government social services.
North Vietnam increased its support to the Viet Cong, infiltrating men and supplies into South Vietnam via the Ho Chi Minh trail. North Vietnam proposed negotiations to neutralize South Vietnam as had been done in neighboring Laos and Cambodia, but the failure of the Laotian neutrality agreement doomed that initiative.
US analyses and statements about progress and problems with the war often conflicted or contradicted each other which is reflected in this article.
The first U.S. military transport aircraft arrived in South Vietnam. The aircraft would be used to transport South Vietnamese soldiers.
Deputy Secretary of Defense Roswell Gilpatric recommended to General Lyman Lemnitzer, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that for military operations involving Americans in South Vietnam The Pentagon develop a "suitable cover story, or stories, a public explanation, a statement of no comment...for approval of the Secretary of Defense."
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