page_title: 1963 in the Vietnam War
section_title: January
hierarchical_section_title: 1963 in the Vietnam War / January
caption_attribution_description: English: This UH-1 gunship was one of five helicopters shot down during the Battle of Ap Bac
context_page_description: The defeat of the South Vietnamese Army of the Republic of Vietnam in a battle in January set off a furious debate in the United States on the progress being made in the war against the Viet Cong in South Vietnam. Assessments of the war flowing into the higher levels of the U.S. government in Washington, D.C. were wildly inconsistent, some citing an early victory over the VC, others a rapidly deteriorating military situation. Some senior U.S. military officers and White House officials were optimistic; civilians of the Department of State and the Central Intelligence Agency, junior military officers, and the media were decidedly less so. Near the end of the year, U.S. leaders became more pessimistic about progress in the war.
  Although the U.S. denied that it had combat soldiers in South Vietnam, U.S. soldiers routinely participated in combat operations against the VC. The number of U.S. soldiers in South Vietnam rose to more than 16,000 by year's end with 122 combat deaths in just that year.
context_section_description: January 2
  The Battle of Ap Bac was the first major combat victory by the VC against the ARVN and U.S. forces. The battle took place near the hamlet of Ap Bac, 65 km (40 mi) southwest of Saigon in the Mekong Delta. Forces of the ARVN 7th Division, equipped with M113 armored personnel carriers (APCs) and artillery and supported by U.S. helicopters, confronted entrenched elements of the VC 261st and 514th Battalions. The heavily outnumbered VC killed 83 ARVN and three American advisers and shot down five helicopters for the loss of 18 killed. The VC, after several defeats in the Delta, had devised tactics to combat American helicopters and armored vehicles.  
  U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam (MACV) Commander General Paul D. Harkins declared the battle a victory for ARVN because the VC had abandoned the battlefield. American adviser Lieutenant Colonel John Paul Vann who observed and directed the battle from a small airplane, called it a "miserable damn performance" by ARVN because the VC escaped after inflicting heavy casualties.{[rp|203-65}}
  2 January
  State Department officer Roger Hilsman, who had counterinsurgency experience in World War II, said after a visit to Vietnam that "things are going much better than they were a year ago" but "not nearly so well as [General] Harkins and others might suggest." 
  Hilsman also talked to General Edward Rowny who had accompanied the ARVN on 20 combat operations. Rowny criticized the ARVN for delaying operations while waiting for air strikes and for its indiscriminate shooting of civilians in bombed-out villages. He was also critical of the lack of United States Air Force (USAF) support for helicopter operations and the micro-management of the war by CINCPAC. He noted that many competent U.S. captains and majors "are becoming strong advocates of fewer sweep operations and more civil and political action programs."
  14 January
  In his State of the Union address to Congress President Kennedy said "the spearpoint of aggression has been blunted in South Vietnam."
  19 January
  General Harkins presented his Comprehensive Plan for the war. He envisioned an increase in South Vietnamese forces (ARVN plus Civil Guard and Self Defense Corps) to 458,500 personnel by mid-1964 and thereafter to decrease, the war presumably winding down. Harkins foresaw that U.S. military personnel in South Vietnam would be reduced to 12,200 by mid 1965 and to 1,500 in mid 1968. MACV would be abolished by 1 July 1966.
  30 January
  Army Chief of Staff General Earle Wheeler returned to Washington after heading a delegation of senior U.S. military officers to South Vietnam. Wheeler's report was highly optimistic. "The situation in South Vietnam has been reoriented, in the space of a year and a half, from a circumstance of near desperation to a condition where victory is now a hopeful prospect." Wheeler commented that press reports about the Battle of Ap Bac had caused "great harm...Public and Congressional opinion in the United States has been influenced toward thinking that the war effort in Vietnam is misguided, lacking in drive, and flouts the counsel of United States advisers. Doubts have been raised as to the courage, the training, the determination and dedication of the Vietnamese armed forces."
caption: U.S. Army UH-1B gunship shot down in the Battle of Ap Bac
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