TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
7 April
◆451 Attila's Huns sack Metz.
◆1509 France declares war on Venice.
◆1528 French troops defeat Cardinal Pompeo Colonna outside Gaeta, initiating an unsuccessful siege.
◆1652 The Fronde: Battle of Bleneau: French Royalists defeat the Frondist rebels.
◆1776 Continental brig Lexington captures British Edward.
◆1818 Gen. Andrew Jackson captured St. Marks, Fla., from the Seminole Indians.★
◆1836 Skirmish between Texian rear guards and advancing Mexican troops at San Felipe Ford.
◆1855 Battle of Kaba: King Cakobau of Bau, aided by King George of Tonga, completes the unification of Fiji.
◆1862 Battle of Shiloh (Day 2) in Tennessee. Gen. Ulysses Grant after the Battle of Shiloh said: “I saw an open field… so covered with dead that it would have been possible to walk across… in any direction, stepping on dead bodies without a foot touching the ground.” More than 9,000 Americans died.
◆1863 Battle of Charleston, SC. The Federal fleet attack on Fort Sumter failed.
◆1865 Battle of Farmville, VA.
◆1917 Navy takes control of all wireless radio stations in the U.S.
◆1922 U.S. Secretary of Interior leased Naval Reserve #3, “Teapot Dome,” in Wyoming to Harry F. Sinclair.
◆1927 Philo Farnsworth (21) demonstrated a working prototype of a TV.
◆1938 Battle of Taierzhuang ends: 14 days of desperate Chinese resistance cause the Japanese to fall back - their first major defeat in the "China Incident."
◆1939 Italy invades Albania, initiating the first combat by an armored division, the Centauro.
◆1941 US naval and air bases open in Bermuda. The carrier Ranger and other ships are to be based there as the Central Atlantic Neutrality Patrol. These forces will be considerably increased by three battleships and two carriers later in April and during May and June.
◆1942 US President Roosevelt authorizes the American commanders in the Philippines to take any necessary steps. On the Bataan peninsula, the situation for the allies continues to worsen as the Japanese continue to advance, with the greatest gains on the east side of the peninsula. The American and Filipino allies are now withdrawn to a line running inland from Limao. General Wainwright in response to the President’s order withdraws as many of his men as possible to the island of Corregidor in Manilla Bay.
◆1942 Heavy Axis air attack on Malta.
◆1942 Japanese 18th Division lands at Rangoon.
◆1942 Solomons: Japanese land on Bougainville.
◆1943 British and American armies link up between Wadi Akarit and El Guettar in North Africa, forming a solid line against the German army. Axis forces are rapidly retreating from the Wadi Akarit Line.
◆1943 In an effort to disrupt the American buildup in the Solomons, Japanese Admiral Yamamoto mounts an air offensive known as Operation I. The Japanese 11th Air Fleet, based on Rabaul, Kavieng and Buin is reinforced by pilots and aircraft of the carriers Zuikaku, Shokaku, Junyo and Hiyo. This leaves the Imperial Navy with almost no trained pilots. The attacks begin with a raid against Guadalcanal and Tulagi by 180 planes in which a destroyer and two other vessels are sunk.
◆1945 In the East China Sea, the Japanese battleship Yamato is sighted by planes from the American carrier groups which attack the battleship in two waves, involving 380 aircraft. The Yamato suffers 10 torpedo hits and 5 bomb hits before sinking. Some 2498 Japanese are killed on board the battleship. The planes, from US Task Force 58, also sink the Japanese cruiser Yahagi and 4 destroyers accompanying the battleship. A total of 10 planes are lost.
◆1945 American P-51 Mustang fighters, based on Iwo Jima, escort B-29 Superfortress bombers on a raid to Tokyo.
◆1945 Japanese Kamikaze attacks damage the carrier USS Hancock and the battleship Maryland as well as other ships
◆1945 First two Navy flight nurses land on an active battlefield (Iwo Jima): ENS Jane Kendeigh, USNR, and LTJG Ann Purvis, USN.
◆1945 Most of US 1st and 9th Armies are heavily engaged around the Ruhr pocket. Among the gains in the Allied advance to the east is Gottingen. Free French paratroops are dropped north of Zuider Zee in Holland.
◆1947 Arab students, influenced by national socialist movements in Europe, founded the Baath Party. Satia al-Husri, father of Ba’athism, was a disciple of German philosopher Johann Fichte. This became a holiday in Iraq until abolished in 2003.
◆1966 The United States recovered a hydrogen bomb it had lost off the coast of Spain.
◆1979 Launching of first Trident submarine, USS Ohio (SSBN-726) at Groton, CT. ★
◆1988 Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev and Afghan leader Najibullah met in the Soviet Central Asian city of Tashkent. They later issued a joint statement, announcing an to end the civil war in Afghanistan and withdraw Soviet troops.
◆1993 European warplanes began arriving in Italy, prepared to enforce a no-fly zone over Bosnia-Herzegovina.
◆1999 Heavy NATO bombing in Pristina, Kosovo. The Provincial Executive Council Building, which housed the offices of Zoran Andjelkovic, Kosovo’s top Serbian official, were was hit by bombs.
◆2001 The $297 million Mars Odyssey was launched on a six-month, 286-million-mile journey to the Red Planet and was expected to arrive near Mars Oct 24. A 2-year orbit to map the planet’s chemistry and minerals was planned.★
◆2001 China rejected US statements of regret and continued to demand an apology for the April 1 collision between a US spy plane and Chinese jet.
◆2003 In the 19th day of Operation Iraqi Freedom US forces in tanks and armored vehicles stormed into the center of Baghdad, seizing Saddam Hussein’s Sijood and Republican palaces.★
◆2003 A US warplane dropped 4 precision-guided 2,000-pound JDAMs and left a smoking crater 60 feet deep in the upscale al-Mansour section of western Baghdad, where Saddam Hussein was believed to have been in a meeting with top officials.
◆2003 Capt. Harry Alexander Hornbuckle on the road to Baghdad led 80 US soldiers against 300 Iraqi and Syrian fighters. 200 enemy were killed with no US casualties.
◆2004 Battle of Hawijah.