Under the new structure, the MAAG assigned between fifty
and seventy advisers to each Vietnamese corps: ten advisers at the
corps’ headquarters, twenty at the corps’ regimental training area,
ten to twenty with the corps’ logistic command, and nine advisers
with each of the corps’ infantry divisions. The typical division
advisory detachment consisted of a senior adviser (colonel or
lieutenant colonel) and five majors or captains acting as advisers
in the areas of artillery, signals, ordnance, engineering, and staff.
Rounding out the division advisory team were three regimental
advisers (lieutenant colonels or majors), each of whom advised
one of the division’s three infantry regiments.
By the fall of 1961, despite the reorganization of the MAAG
and the increase in American advisory support, the situation in
39
Vietnam continued to deteriorate. Communist attacks were up
and government casualties, despite some isolated tactical victo
ries, were on the rise, with 477 dead in September and 539 killed
in October. The provincial capital of Kontum Province had been
overrun the night of 1–2 September by one thousand Communist
f
ighters—two battalions of khaki-clad, well-armed soldiers that
just a few days before had infiltrated into the South from Laos.
Viet Cong agents in the garrison opened the gates and the enemy
easily penetrated the security positions without firing a shot. They
mauled a Civil Guard relief force and ambushed the 1st Battalion,
40th Infantry, quick reaction force as it tried to reach Kontum the
following day. It was not until late on 4 September that two battal
ions arrived from the general reserve in Saigon, over two hundred
miles away. Only then was the government able to retake the city.
By that time the Communists had disappeared, only to strike more
outposts in Darlac, Quang Nam, Quang Ngai, Phuoc Vinh, and
along the Laotian border.
A rattled Diem, aware now of the extent of the danger, asked
for a bilateral defense treaty with the United States and requested
combat troops to assist him, a position he had refused to take for
many years. However, Washington was not ready to take these steps.
Instead, the MAAG recommended that the United States provide
additional radios to facilitate coordination between Vietnamese
units, a critical capability for units in far-flung counterinsurgency
operations or those conducting rapid reaction operations. In
addition, the United States sent a special U.S. Air Force unit, the
4400th Combat Crew Training Squadron (nicknamed Jungle Jim),
under the code name Farm Gate. Although the squadron’s initial
mission was to train the South Vietnamese Air Force, American
pilots quickly began flying combat missions, always being careful
to take along a South Vietnamese passenger to maintain the
f
iction that the planes were merely on training missions. Finally,
President Kennedy sent an interagency team led by his personal
military adviser, General Maxwell D. Taylor, to take a fresh look at
the situation in Vietnam.
General Taylor, accompanied by Walt Rostow of the National
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