TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
11 April
◆1241 Battle of the Sajo River, Day 2: The Mongols crush the Hungarians.
◆1471 Wars of the Roses: King Edward IV of England captures London from Henry VI.
◆1512 Battle of Ravenna: Bloody French victory over the Spanish.
◆1534 Ambush of San Andrea: The Itrani rout Khairaidin Barbarossa's Arab raiders as they advance south on the Via Appia.
◆1783 After receiving a copy of the provisional treaty on 13 March, Congress proclaimed a formal end to hostilities with Great Britain.
◆1803 In one of the great surprises in diplomatic history, French Foreign Minister Charles Maurice de Talleyrand makes an offer to sell all of Louisiana Territory to the United States.
◆1822 Turks massacre Greeks on Chios.
◆1856 Battle of Rivas; Costa Rica beat William Walker’s invading mercenaries and Nicaraguans.
◆1861 Brig. Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard ordered the Federals under the command of Major Robert Anderson to surrender Fort Sumter, but Anderson refused. Anticipating war between North and South, Confederate President Jefferson Davis had ordered Beauregard to clear the harbor forts in Charleston, South Carolina, of Union troops. For three long months, Anderson and his besieged troops had waited for reinforcements at Fort Sumter. Back in Washington, Union naval officer Gustavus Fox raced against time to organize just such a mission.
◆1862 Fort Pulaski, guarding the mouth of the Savannah River in Georgia, surrenders after a two-day Union bombardment tears great holes in the massive fort.★
◆1863 Battle of Suffolk, VA (Norfleet House).
◆1865 Battle of Mobile, AL., evacuated by Confederates.
◆1890 Ellis Island was designated as an immigration station.
◆1898 American President McKinley asked Congress for a declaration of war against Spain.
◆1899 The Treaty of Paris ending the Spanish-American War was declared in effect. Spain ceded Puerto Rico to US.
◆1900 US Navy’s 1st submarine made its debut. Navy accepted delivery of USS Holland.
◆1904 One officer and 20 enlisted men became the first Marines to garrison Midway Island.
◆1925 Morocco: Abd el-Krim's Riffian forces defeat the French.
◆1941 Roosevelt tells Churchill that the US Navy will extend the American Defense Zone up to the line of 26 degrees West. The Red Sea is declared to be no longer a “combat zone” and under the terms of American law US ships may now carry cargos to ports there including supplies for the British in Egypt.
◆1942 Detachment 101 of the OSS, a guerrilla force, was activated in Burma.
◆1945 American Third Army liberates the Buchenwald concentration camp, near Weimar, Germany, a camp that will be judged second only to Auschwitz in the horrors it imposed on its prisoners.★
◆1944 Marlene Dietrich gives the first of her many shows for U.S. servicemen overseas.★
◆1945 Leading armored units of the US 9th Army reach the Elbe River, south of Magdeburg. Forces of US 3rd Army capture Weimar. Other elements capture the Mittlewerke underground V2 factory at Nordhausen.
◆1945 Carrara is captured by the US 92nd Infantry Division (an element of US 5th Army) in its advance from Massa.
◆1945 Japanese Kamikaze attacks damage the battleship USS Missouri and the carrier Enterprise.
◆1945 Units of the Americal Division land on Bohol.
◆1951 In perhaps the most famous civilian-military confrontation in the history of the United States, President Harry S. Truman relieves General Douglas MacArthur of command of the U.S. forces in Korea.★
◆1957 The Ryan X-13 Vertijet became the 1st jet to take-off and land vertically.★
◆1963 One hundred U.S. troops of the Hawaiian-based 25th Infantry Division are ordered to temporary duty with military units in South Vietnam to serve as machine gunners aboard Army H-21 helicopters.★
◆1966 Operation “Orange” southwest of DaNang, Vietnam, ended.
◆1970 Apollo 13, the third lunar landing mission, is successfully launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, carrying astronauts James A. Lovell, John L. Swigert, and Fred W. Haise.
◆1972 B-52 strikes against communist forces attacking South Vietnamese positions in the Central Highlands near Kontum remove any immediate threat to that city.★
◆1979 Tanzanian troops take Kampala, ending Idi Amin's regime in Uganda.
◆1980 The Viking 2 Mars Lander ended communications.
◆1981 President Reagan returned to the White House from the hospital, 12 days after John W. Hinckley Jr. shot him in an assassination attempt.
◆1991 The space shuttle “Atlantis” landed safely after an extended, 93-orbit mission that included deployment of an observatory.
◆1991 U.N. Security Council issued a formal cease fire with Iraq to end the Gulf War.
◆1997 The Air Force announced that that despite an intensive nine-day search, it couldn’t find a bomb-laden A-10 warplane that had disappeared with its pilot during a training mission over Arizona. Wreckage was later found on a Colorado mountainside.★
◆1999 NATO restrained bombing over the Orthodox Easter but dropped at struck at least 50 targets in Kosovo alone.
◆1999 Albania decided to hand over control of its airspace, ports and military infrastructure to NATO and to accept more NATO troops.
◆2001 Ending a tense 11-day standoff, China released the 24 US spy plane crew members detained since April 1. US text was released with the words “sincerely regret” and translated to “chengzhi yihan.” In China the text was translated to ”shenbiao qianyi” meaning “deeply sorry.” Beijing kept the spy plane pending an investigation and more talks.
◆2003 In the 24th day of Operation Iraqi Freedom the northern city of Mosul fell into US and Kurdish hands after an entire corps of the Iraqi army surrendered. The Pentagon said no major military forces remain in the country. Defense Sec. Rumsfeld called Iraqi looting and chaos a natural “untidiness” that accompanies the transition from tyranny to freedom. The US military issued a most-wanted list in the form of a deck of 55 cards.