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either the whole column slowed down or that the assault had to be timed so that the gun ships and troop ships rendezvoused just prior to landing. There was an immediate requirement for a faster armed escort helicopter which could maintain a speed of at least 150 knots. The urgency of this requirement was to force the Pentagon to re-examine its position on the introduction of an "interim" armed helicopter rather than wait for a totally new weapons system.^[1]

In summary, in June of 1965, the U.S. Army found itself with a large commitment of airmobile resources supporting Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces with an organization that had grown somewhat like Topsy. Tactics and techniques had been generated by the necessity of the moment, procedures had been hammered out of necessity, and equipment had been borrowed and jury-rigged. Airmobility had obviously kept the South Vietnamese forces in being, but the Viet Cong had become increasingly more sophisticated and were reinforced with large numbers of North Vietnamese regular troops. The U.S. Army aviators and crew chiefs had done a heroic job in the face of countless difficulties, but it was obviously time to develop a new order of magnitude of airmobility and regain the offensive. The President of the United States decided to commit major numbers of U.S. ground combat troops to the action.

The option open to the President in 1965 to deploy a significant U.S. airmobile force was only possible because certain events had occurred in the preceding years. To understand airmobility in Vietnam we must examine the gradual development of the concept in the United States. Before we proceed with this examination, I want to interject one important reminder. The airmobile concept had its roots in the necessity to counter a sophisticated enemy in Europe. The Howze Board had only touched on the counter-guerrilla possibilities and the Air Assault tests, which we will discuss next, centered around two conventional opposing forces. Vietnam was in the background, to be sure, but only as one of many contingencies—not the contingency.