Where was the first battle of the Vietnam War and who was the first person to die in it?

Answer 1

The Battle of Ia Drang is the subject of We Were Soldiers, Once... And Young, by Harold Moore and Joseph Galloway and is considered to be among the first "battles" of Vietnam.

From the amazon.com description: "In November 1965, some 450 men of the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry, under the command of Lt. Col. Hal Moore, were dropped by helicopter into a small clearing in the Ia Drang Valley. They were immediately surrounded by 2,000 North Vietnamese soldiers. Three days later, only two and a half miles away, a sister battalion was chopped to pieces." Mel Gibson heroically acted out all this stuff in a movie a few years back.

The answer depends a little on when you consider that the Vietnam War began.

Some people say that the two American (civilian) pilots that were shot down & killed while resuppling French troops at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 can be considered the first American "casualties" of Vietnam, although clearly they were not official military personnel nor was American directly involved yet.

The US Military points to Dec. 1961 as their initial military deployment to Vietnam, when we sent over 400 helicopters and troops to fly & maintain them. Of course, there had been American military "advisors" in South Vietnam since the late 1950's.

The American advisors killed at Ap Bac in Jan. 1963 are often considered the first military casualities.

However, if you are talking about the first American "battle" deaths (rather than "advisors" w/ South Vietnamese troops), that would probably be during Operation Starlite in August 1965 (a few hundred Americans died). That operation was a few months before the battle at la Drang.