The pivotal U.S. decision to provide aid to the French military effort had preceded the outbreak of fighting in Korea, but the war there shaped the nature of the U.S. aid program in key ways. On the first day of the North Korean attack, June 25, 1950, President Truman ordered that assistance to Indochina be increased and accelerated; on the thirtieth, the day U.S. troops were committed to combat in Korea (as part of a UN force), eight C-47 transport planes arrived in Saigon with the first shipments of American matériel for the French.
