The USS Curtis Wilbur, an Arleigh Burke class guided missile destroyer, will spend as many as six days in the city where US Marines landed in March 1965, becoming the first American combat troops in Vietnam.

Previously, US military personnel, who had been in the country since 1955, were only authorised to act as advisors to the South Vietnamese army and not participate in fighting communist forces.

Senior officers from the USS Curtis Wilbur, which has a crew of around 340, will meet with regional Vietnamese Navy commanders and local authorities, according to the foreign ministry.

The ship is scheduled to depart Monday, but neither the ministry nor the US embassy would confirm the exact timetable.

US-Vietnam military relations were kickstarted in November last year with a landmark trip by Vietnamese Defence Minister Pham Van Tra to Washington for talks with his US counterpart Donald Rumsfeld.

Three years in the making, it was the first visit by the head of the communist nation's military since the US-backed Saigon regime capitulated on April 30, 1975 to the North Vietnamese onslaught.

Less than two weeks after Tra's Washington foray, the frigate USS Vandegrift made an historic port call in the former South Vietnamese capital, now called Ho Chi Minh City.

More than 58,000 Americans and about three million Vietnamese died during the Vietnam War.

US-Vietnam diplomatic relations were only formalised in 1995 and five years later the two countries signed a trade pact. Relations between the former foes remain strained, however, in particular over Washington's criticism of Hanoi's human rights record.

WAR.WIRE