page_title: 1965 South Vietnamese coup
section_title: Failure to capture Bien Hoa Air Base and stalemate
hierarchical_section_title: 1965 South Vietnamese coup / Failure to capture Bien Hoa Air Base and stalemate
caption_attribution_description: General William Westmoreland, Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army.
context_page_description: On February 19, 1965, some units of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam commanded by General Lâm Văn Phát and Colonel Phạm Ngọc Thảo launched a coup against General Nguyễn Khánh, the head of South Vietnam's ruling military junta. Their aim was to install General Trần Thiện Khiêm, a Khánh rival who had been sent to Washington D.C. as Ambassador to the United States to prevent him from seizing power. The attempted coup reached a stalemate, and although the trio did not take power, a group of officers led by General Nguyễn Chánh Thi and Air Marshal Nguyễn Cao Kỳ, and hostile to both the plot and to Khánh himself, were able to force a leadership change and take control themselves with the support of American officials, who had lost confidence in Khánh.
  Although Khánh had seized power in January 1964 in alliance with Khiêm, the pair had soon fallen out over policy disputes along religious lines, and the Catholic Khiêm began to plot against Khánh. Khiêm was believed to have helped plan a failed coup in September 1964, and Khánh exiled him as a result.
context_section_description: Phát was supposed to seize Bien Hoa Air Base, the second largest air force installation in the country, located in the satellite city of Biên Hòa on the northeastern outskirts of Saigon. This was to prevent Kỳ from mobilizing air power against them, but Phát failed, as Kỳ had already flown to Biên Hòa to take control after dropping Khánh off at Vung Tau. Phát could not challenge Kỳ's fighter planes, which were already patrolling the air above Bien Hoa by the time they arrived. Kỳ then flew a short distance southwest and circled Tan Son Nhut, threatening to bomb the rebels. Kỳ had never liked Thảo or Phát and did not want them to take power. In threatening to flatten Tan Son Nhut, Kỳ appeared unconcerned about the junta members who had been captured there, nor the more than 6,000 Americans who worked there, but intervention from Westmoreland stopped any air strike. A CIA report and analysis written after the coup concluded that "Kỳ's command of the air force made him instrumental" in preventing Khánh from being overrun, "until Kỳ changed his mind" on Khánh's continued hold on power. Meanwhile, most of the forces of the III and IV Corps surrounding the capital supported neither Khánh nor the rebels, and took no decisive action.
  Taylor and Westmoreland began to lobby Kỳ and Thi, the two most powerful generals in the junta outside Khánh, hoping to enlist them in an effort to shut down Phát and Thảo while also removing Khánh. Kỳ was the most convenient outlet, as the air force along with both the American and South Vietnamese military headquarters were adjacent to one another at Tan Son Nhut, making communication easy, whereas Thi was commanding I Corps in the far north. Westmoreland communicated with Kỳ through the latter's adviser, Robert R. Rowland. Despite his inconvenient geographical location, Thi was seen as being hostile to Khánh by this point in time, and as a supporter of and commander of a region which was seen as the Buddhist heartland of Vietnam, he and his grassroots support base were strongly opposed to the Diemist pro-Catholic ideology espoused by Phát and Thảo.
  In the short term, Taylor and Westmoreland unofficially designated Kỳ the duty of moderating between the coup forces and Khánh's loyalists, preventing bloodshed and keeping them apart until some further action was decided upon after an emergency meeting of the Armed Forces Council could be convened. Late in the evening, the 7th Division led by General Trị based in the Mekong Delta town of Mỹ Tho was preparing to move north into the capital to attack Phát and Thảo's forces, after Trị had been won over by Khánh in a meeting at Phú Lâm. However this was stopped after Westmoreland told Tri's American adviser at divisional level, a Colonel Gruenther, to tell the 7th Division commander to consult Kỳ before making any moves. Tri, whom the CIA had assessed as "anti-Communist and pro-US", was shortly afterwards reported to have halted the advance of his regimental-sized task force into the capital, at least for the time being. At the same time, a brigade of Vietnamese marines was being prepared to support Khánh in his fight against the rebels, but it is not clear whether this was to be coordinated with Tri's 7th Division and whether Tri's decision to stand his ground instead of attacking had an effect on the marines. There were also reports of elements of the 9th Division from Cần Thơ in the far south, and the 25th Division from the west moving towards the capital with around 30 armored personnel carriers. They were reportedly joined by the 5th Division who were coming in from Bien Hoa in the north. During all of these moves, Kỳ's hand was strengthened by the mistaken belief of Khánh and his faction that the air force commander supported them.
  While this was happening, the Americans consulted with Thi and General Cao Văn Viên, the commander of III Corps surrounding Saigon, to assemble units hostile to both Khánh and the current coup into a Capital Liberation Force. The Americans provided Thi with a plane so he could fly in from his I Corps headquarters in Da Na
caption: William Westmoreland, the US commander in Vietnam, tried to organize some forces to stop the coup and overthrow the incumbent Khánh.
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