For those of you who come across this page and don't understand what a staging area is...I will try to explain it simply as follows:  A staging area is a coordinated and secure landing site of operations for the main thrust of an assault mission.  It is where all the helicopters, troops and necessary equipment, the ammunition, and temporary field hospital merge for the purpose of supporting and airlifting troops into the LZ, or landing zone, the actual area of the mission itself.

These are photos of a some missions involving aircraft from all the various service branches including Army Hueys, Marine UH-34s, USAF jets, and VNAF A-1s and T-28 fighters on several day long assault missions combining ARVN troops and American advisors.  At that time these were the largest combined helicopter assaults attempted, but many others were to follow as the war expanded with much larger combined helicopter assaults and troop insertions.   Everyone survived the gun ship crash in the photo at lower right, but it was a loss of important fire power that often provided other aircraft and ground troops much needed air cover going into hot LZs.