TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
25 February
◆1450 Francesco Sforza captures Milan, ending the "Ambrosian Republic" (1447-1450).
◆1497 Neapolitan/Aragonese troops liberate Taranto from the French.
◆1545 Battle of Ancrum Moor: The Scots defeat the English.
◆1605 Portuguese-held Ambon, in the East Indies, surrenders to a Dutch fleet.
◆1643 Dutch settlers slaughtered lower Hudson Valley Indians in New Netherland, North America, who sought refuge from Mohawk attackers.
◆1779 Fort Sackville, originally named Fort Vincennes, was captured by Colonel George Rogers Clark.★
◆1781 American General Nathanael Greene crossed the Dan River on his way to his March 15th confrontation with Lord Charles Cornwallis at Guilford Court House, N.C.
◆1793 The department heads of the U.S. government met with President Washington at his Mt. Vernon home for the first Cabinet meeting on record.
◆1799 President Adams authorized by Congress to place revenue cutters in the naval establishment.
◆1811 Congress authorizes first naval hospital.
◆1836 Samuel Colt patented the first revolving barrel multi-shot firearm.★
◆1861 The Confederate Marine Corps was organized in Richmond, Virginia.
◆1862 U.S.S. Monitor commissioned in New York, Lieutenant John L. Worden commanding. Captain Dahlgren described Monitor as, “a mere speck, like a hat on the surface.”
◆1865 General Joseph E. Johnston replaced John Bell Hood as Commander of the Confederate Army of Tennessee. Arthur Fremantle made a breathtaking tour of the Confederacy. Within three months he had met most of the top Confederate leaders, including Robert E. Lee, James Longstreet, Joseph Johnston and Jefferson Davis.
◆1885 US Congress condemned barbed wire around government grounds.1896 Battle of Mai Maret: Italians defeat the Abyssinians.
◆1898 Continuing his preparation for war, Assistant Secretary of the navy, Theodore Roosevelt sends a highly confidential order to Commodore George Dewey, leader of the Asiatic Squadron, to go to Hong Kong. Dewey is to be prepared to attack the Spanish fleet in the Philippines should war be declared.
◆1916 Verdun: The Germans capture Fort Douaumont.★
◆1925 Congress empowers Revenue Marine to enforce state quarantine laws.
◆1933 The USS Ranger becomes the US’ first aircraft carrier, built to be a carrier.★
◆1940 The American envoy Sumner Welles arrives at the start of his European peace mission.
◆1942 Wartime port security delegated to Coast Guard by Executive Order 9074.
◆1942 The American, British, Dutch, Australian Command (ABDA) is dissolved. General Wavell again becomes the Commander in Chief, India. The Dutch General Ter Poorten takes command in Java.
◆1943 U.S. troops retook the Kasserine Pass in Tunisia, where they had been defeated five days before.
◆1944 U.S. forces destroyed 135 Japanese planes in Marianas and Guam.
◆1944 Sue Sophia Dauser, Superintendent of the Navy’s Nurse Corps is first woman in Navy to receive rank of Captain.
◆1944 In the climax of the “Big Week” bombing campaign, aircraft of the US 8th Air Force (830 bombers) and the US 15th Air Force (150 bombers), with fighter escorts, conduct a daylight raid of the Messerschmitt works at Regensburg and Augsburg. Losses are reported at 30 and 35 bombers, of the 8th and 15th Air Forces respectively, as well as 8 escort fighters. The Americans claim to shoot down 142 German fighters as well as destroying 1000 German fighters on the assembly lines and 1000 more lost to the disruption of production. During the night, RAF Bomber Command attacks Augsburg in a two waves.
◆1945 Duren is taken by the US 7th Corps (part of US 1st Army). Other bridgeheads over the Roer River have been captured to north and south of Duren and they are rapidly being extended. To the south, on the right flank of US 3rd Army, crossings over the Saar have also been made near Saarburg.
◆1945 On Iwo Jima, the advance of US 5th Amphibious Corps continues but there are heavy losses in the area around the second airfield. The US 3rd Marine Division is committed to the battle.
◆1945 Aircraft from the carriers of US Task Force 58 again raid Tokyo. Poor weather conditions hinders the effectiveness of the attacks.
◆1948 Under pressure from the Czechoslovakian Communist Party, President Eduard Benes allows a communist-dominated government to be organized.
◆1949 The US launches the WAC-Corporal at White Sands, New Mexico, achieving a record missile altitude of 250 miles.
◆1951 Air attacks on enemy supply lines prevented a superior number of communist ground forces from winning their objectives. Lieutenant General George E. Stratemeyer, Far East Forces Commander, said “Our interdiction from the air of the main enemy resupply lines, plus our continued and systematic destruction of such supply caches as he had been able to build up in his immediate rear areas, not only prevented the Communist from exploiting his initial momentum but also enabled our ground forces to resume the offensive.”
◆1959 USS Galveston fires first Talos surface-to-air missile.
◆1971 In both houses of Congress, legislation is initiated to forbid U.S. military support of any South Vietnamese invasion of North Vietnam without congressional approval.
◆1972 U.S. troops clash with North Vietnamese forces in a major battle 42 miles east of Saigon, the biggest single U.S. engagement with an enemy force in nearly a year. The five-hour action around a communist bunker line resulted in four dead and 47 wounded, almost half the U.S. weekly casualties.
◆1991 During the Persian Gulf War, 28 Americans were killed when an Iraqi Scud missile hit a U.S. barracks in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia.
◆1991 In the most decisive actions of the Gulf War, VII Corps, moving directly east with three heavy divisions abreast, attacked the elite Iraqi Republican Guard units.★
◆1993 President Clinton ordered the Pentagon to mount an airdrop of relief supplies into Bosnia-Herzegovina.
◆2002 NATO offered Russia a modified membership, with no veto power over political or military policies.
◆2003 The US military says that warplanes have conducted strikes at five missile systems, including four surface-to-surface rocket launchers in the north and south of Iraq.
◆2003 6,000 US Marines have arrived in Kuwait, bringing the Marine force there to nearly full strength.