TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
14 April
◆69 First Battle of Bedriacum: Vitellius defeats Otho to confirm his claim as Emperor (proclaimed Jan 1st).
◆1205 Battle of Adrianople: Bulgarians defeat Latin Emperor of Constantinople Baldwin I.
◆1360 Besieging Paris, Edward III's army suffers many men and horses frozen to death in an extraordinary cold snap.
◆1471 Battle of Barnet: King Edward IV defeats the Lancastrians under the Earl of Warwick in a confusing action.
◆1496 Battle of Chilone: The French defeat the Neapolitans.
◆1544 Battle of Ceresole Alba: French defeat the Spanish & Imperialists.
◆1574 Battle of Mookerheyde: Spanish defeat the Dutch.
◆1658 Battle of Dunkerque: French defeat the Spanish.
◆1775 Gen. Thomas Gage, commander of British forces in North America, received orders from Parliament authorizing him to use aggressive military force against the American rebels.
◆1777 NY adopted a new constitution as an independent state. Governeur Morris was the chief writer of the state constitution.
◆1796 Battle of Dego: Bonaparte defeats the Austro-Piedmontese.
◆1860 First Pony Express rider arrived in San Francisco with mail originating in St. Joseph, Missouri.
◆1861 Robert E. Lee resigned from Union army.
◆1862 Union mortar boats of Flag Officer Foote’s force commenced regular bombardment of Fort Pillow, Tennessee the next Army-Navy objective on the drive down the Mississippi.
◆1865 President Lincoln green-lighted a proposal to create the Secret Service.★
◆1865 John Wilkes Booth shoots President Lincoln at a play at Ford’s Theater in Washington. ★
◆1865 C.S.S. Shenandoah departed Ascension Island, Eastern Carolinas.★
◆1865 Mobile, Alabama, was captured.
◆1874 The increasingly heated battle over greenbacks, the paper notes first printed to support the Union during the Civil War, took another turn as Congress passed The Legal Tender Act.
◆1898 Commissioning of first Post Civil War hospital ship, USS Solace.
◆1918 Six days after being assigned for the first time to the western front, two American pilots from the U.S. First Aero Squadron engaged in America’s first aerial dogfight with enemy aircraft.★
◆1941 There are secret talks between Americans and the Icelandic consul. The Icelandic officials agree to do nothing to resist an American occupation to replace the present British force.
◆1942 The American destroyer Roper sinks German U-boat U-85. This is the first sinking of an German submarine by an American ship.
◆1945 US 7th Army and allies forces captured Nuremberg and Stuttgart, Germany. The US 3rd Army captures Bayreuth.
◆1945 Reichsfuhrer SS Himmler orders that no prisoners at Dachau “shall be allowed to fall into the hands of the enemy alive.”
◆1945 Allied forces conduct Operation Teardrop. Two carrier task groups carry out an extensive search for Seewolf U-boats suspected of transporting V2 rockets to be launched against New York City.
◆1945 The US 14th Corps continues its advance onto the Bicol Peninsula in the southwest of Luzon. Calauag is taken. In north Luzon, US 1st Corps continues attacking near Baguio but fails to make significant progress.
◆1945 Japanese Kamikaze attacks damage the battleship USS New York. On Okinawa, American forces attack strong Japanese defenses in the hilly Motobu Peninsula in the north.
◆1945 B-29′s damaged the Imperial Palace during firebombing raid over Tokyo.
◆1945 The Fifth Army, now under Truscott began pushing its way up the Italian peninsula.★
◆1949 The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg’s made its last judgment.
◆1950 President Harry S. Truman receives National Security Council Paper Number 68 (NSC-68).★
◆1951 U.N. Forces reached the Kansas Line as Operation DAUNTLESS continued to push the communists northward.
◆1951 Since Dec. 15, Bomber Command B-29s had destroyed 48 out of 60 assigned bridges and 27 of 39 listed marshaling yards under Interdiction Campaign No. 4, but at a loss of eight bombers and their crews from combat and operational causes.
◆1953 Viet Minh invaded Laos with 40,00 troops in their war against French colonial forces.
◆1960 The 1st underwater launching of Polaris missile.
◆1961 Cuban-American invasion army departed Nicaragua.
◆1961 The Soviet Union made its first live television broadcast.
◆1965 The Joint Chiefs of Staff order the deployment of the 173rd Airborne Brigade from Okinawa to South Vietnam.★
◆1967 In the Vietnam War, US planes bombed Haiphong for 1st time.
◆1969 North Korean aircraft shoots down Navy EC-121 reconnaissance aircraft from VQ-1 over the Sea of Japan.
◆1971 President Nixon ended a blockade against People’s Republic of China.
◆1973 Acting FBI director L. Patrick Gray resigned after admitting he destroyed evidence in the Watergate scandal.
◆1975 The American airlift of Vietnamese orphans to the United States ends after 2,600 children are transported to America. The operation began disastrously on April 4 when an Air Force cargo jet crashed shortly after take-off from Tan Son Nhut airbase in Saigon. More than 138 of the passengers, mostly children, were killed. Operation Baby Lift was initiated to bring South Vietnamese orphans to the United States for adoption by American parents. Baby Lift lasted 10 days and was carried out during the final, desperate phase of the war, as North Vietnamese forces were closing in on Saigon. Although the first flight ended in tragedy, all other flights took place without incident, and Baby Lift aircraft ferried orphans across the Pacific until the mission concluded on April 14, only 16 days before the fall of Saigon and the end of the war.
◆1980 Mariel Boat Lift: The second major Cuban exodus began. The Coast Guard coordinated a three-wave operation. Coast Guard high endurance cutters operated closest to Cuba. U.S. Navy ships operated in the inner-wave and Coast Guard small cutters, 95 and 82-footers, served the waters closest to Florida. Over 660 Coast Guard Reservists were called to replace boat crews, and maintenance and repair teams. The Coast Guard Auxiliary lent support in many areas, including radio communications. Over 117,000 people in more than 5,000 boats were assisted by the Coast Guard and Navy forces.
◆1981 The first test flight of America’s first operational space shuttle, the Columbia 1, ended successfully with a landing at Edwards Air Force Base in California.
◆1986 United States launches air strikes against Libya in retaliation for the Libyan sponsorship of terrorism against American troops and citizens.★
◆1988 Representatives of the USSR, Afghanistan, the United States, and Pakistan sign an agreement calling for the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan.★
◆1991 The final withdrawal of American combat troops from southern Iraq began, 88 days after the United States launched its massive offensive to drive Saddam Hussein’s forces from Kuwait.
◆1998 The Clinton administration agreed to create a Persian-language radio service to transmit anti-government propaganda into Iran. $1 million was also pledged to Voice of America for non-propaganda Persian-language programming.
◆1998 FMC Corp. was hit with a $125 million verdict for misleading the US Army about the safety of its Bradley Fighting Vehicle. A 1986 lawsuit by former employee Henry Boisvert complained that the vehicles did not pass all the tests the company claimed it did.
◆2001 The 21 men and 3 women crew of the US spy plane who were held in China for 11 days landed at their home base, Whidbey Island Naval Air Station in Washington, where they were greeted by thousands of friends, family members and other well-wishers.
◆2003 In the 27th day of Operation Iraqi Freedom US troops poured into Saddam Hussein’s hometown of Tikrit and fought pockets of hard-core defenders. Iraqis and US troops began jointly patrolling the streets of Baghdad to quell the lawlessness.
◆2004 In Iraq U.S. warplanes and helicopters hammered gunmen in Fallujah, straining a truce there. A 2,500-strong U.S. force massed on the outskirts of the holy city of Najaf for a showdown with radical cleric al-Sadr.