4 January
Medal of Honor Citations for Actions taken This Day
MANNING, HENRY J. Rank and organization: Quartermaster, U.S. Navy. Born: 1859, New Haven, Conn. Accredited to: Connecticut. G.O. No.: 326, 18 October 1884. Citation: Serving on board the U.S. Training Ship New Hampshire, off Newport, R.I., 4 January 1882. Jumping overboard, Manning endeavored to rescue Jabez Smith, second class musician, from drowning.
McCARTON, JOHN Rank and organization: Ship's Printer, U.S. Navy. Born: 1847, Brooklyn, N.Y. Accredited to: New York. G.O. No.: 326, 18 October 1884. Citation: For jumping overboard from the U.S. Training Ship New Hampshire off Coasters Harbor Island, near Newport, R.l., 4 January 1882, and endeavoring to rescue Jabez Smith, second class musician, from drowning.
SNYDER, WILLIAM E. Rank and organization: Chief Electrician, U.S. Navy. Born: 24 February 1883, South Bethlehem, Pa. Accredited to: Pennsylvania. G.O. No.: 58, 2 March 1910. Citation: Serving on board the U.S.S. Birmingham, for extraordinary heroism, rescuing G.H. Kephart seaman, from drowning at Hampton Roads, Va., 4 January 1910.
*JACHMAN, ISADORE S. Rank and organization: Staff Sergeant, U.S. Army, Company B, 513th Parachute Infantry Regiment. Place and date: Flamierge, Belgium, 4 January 1945. Entered service at: Baltimore, Md. Birth: Berlin, Germany. G.O. No.: 25, 9 June 1950. Citation: For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity above and beyond the call of duty at Flamierge, Belgium, on 4 January 1945, when his company was pinned down by enemy artillery, mortar, and small arms fire, 2 hostile tanks attacked the unit, inflicting heavy. casualties. S/Sgt. Jachman, seeing the desperate plight of his comrades, left his place of cover and with total disregard for his own safety dashed across open ground through a hail of fire and seizing a bazooka from a fallen comrade advanced on the tanks, which concentrated their fire on him. Firing the weapon alone, he damaged one and forced both to retire. S/Sgt. Jachman's heroic action, in which he suffered fatal wounds, disrupted the entire enemy attack, reflecting the highest credit upon himself and the parachute infantry.4 January 1989
LIBYA
Second Gulf of Sidra Incident: Aircraft (VF-32) from USS John F. Kennedy shoot down two hostile Libyan MiGs over the Mediterranean.
4 January 1847
Samuel Coltrescues the future of his faltering gun company by winning a contract to provide the U.S. government with 1,000 of his .44 caliber revolvers. Before Colt began mass-producing his popular revolvers in 1847, handguns had not played a significant role in the history of either the American West or the nation as a whole.
Expensive and inaccurate, short-barreled handguns were impractical for the majority of Americans, though a handful of elite still insisted on using dueling pistols to solve disputes in highly formalized combat. When choosing a practical weapon for self-defense and close-quarter fighting, most Americans preferred knives, and western pioneers especially favored the deadly and versatile Bowie knife.
That began to change when Samuel Colt patented his percussion-repeating revolver in 1836. The heart of Colt's invention was a mechanism that combined a single rifled barrel with a revolving chamber that held five or six shots. When the weapon was cocked for firing, the chamber revolved automatically to bring the next shot into line with the barrel.
Though still far less accurate than a well-made hunting rifle, the Colt revolver could be aimed with reasonable precision at a short distance (30 to 40 yards in the hands of an expert), because the interior bore was "rifled"--cut with a series of grooves spiraling down its length. The spiral grooves caused the slug to spin rapidly as it left the bbarrel, giving it gyroscopic stability.
The five or six-shoot capacity also made accuracy less important, since a missed shot could quickly be followed with others. Yet most cowboys, gamblers, and gunslingers could never have afforded such a revolver if not for the de facto subsidy the federal government provided to Colt by purchasing his revolvers in such great quantities. After the first batch of revolvers proved popular with soldiers, the federal government became one of Colt's biggest customers, providing him with the much-needed capital to improve his production facilities.
With the help of Eli Whitney and other inventors, Colt developed a system of mass production and interchangeable parts for his pistols that greatly lowered their cost. Though never cheap, by the early 1850s, Colt revolvers were inexpensive enough to be a favorite with Americans headed westward during the California Gold Rush. Between 1850 and 1860, Colt sold 170,000 of his "pocket" revolvers and 98,000 "belt" revolvers, mostly to civilians looking for a powerful and effective means of self-defense in the Wild West.TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
4 January
◆46 BCE Battle of Ruspina, Africa: Labienus defeats Caesar, who retreats.
◆871 Battle of Reading: King Ethelred of Wessex defeated by the Danes.
◆1762 England declares war on Spain and Naples.
◆1780 A snowstorm hits Washington's army at Morristown New Jersey.
◆1846 General Mariano Paredes becomes the President of Mexico, announcing he will defend all territory he considers Mexico's.
◆1847 Samuel Colt rescues the future of his faltering gun company by winning a contract to provide the U.S. government with 1,000 of his .44 caliber revolvers.★
◆1853 USN buys Mare Is, San Francisco Bay, for a shipyard.
◆1863 Union General Henry Halleck, by direction of President Abraham Lincoln, orders General Ulysses Grant to revoke his infamous General Order No. 11 that expelled Jews from his operational area.
◆1863 Blockading ship USS Quaker City captures the sloop Mercury carrying dispatches emphasizing desperate plight of the South.
◆1902 The French offered to sell their Nicaraguan Canal rights to the U.S.
◆1910 Commissioning of USS Michigan (BB-27), the first U.S. dreadnought battleship.
◆1928 Marines participated in the Battle of Quilali during the occupation of Nicaragua.
◆1941 On the Greek-Albanian front, the Greeks launch an attack towards Valona from Berat to Klisura against the Italians.
◆1942 Japanese forces begin the evacuation of Guadalcanal. The Japanese base at Munda is bombarded by the US TF 67. A second group of cruisers and destroyers is in support.
◆1943 US Task Force 67, commanded by Admiral Ainsworth, bombards the Japanese base at Munda, on New Georgia. A second group of cruisers and destroyers is in support of the effort. Proximity fuses for antiaircraft ammunition is used for the first time by one of the vessels involved in the bombardment.
◆1944 Admiral Sherman's carrier group attacks Kavieng. The Japanese destroyer Fujimitsu is damaged.
◆1944 Fifth Army launches new attacks on a ten-mile from along the south end of the Gustav line in Italy.
◆1945 The fighting in the Ardennes continues; a German counterattack near Bastogne is repulsed by troops of US 3rd Army. There are attacks by US 8th and 3rd Corps and by the British 30th Corps. Some of the units of the 6th SS Panzer Army (Dietrich) are withdrawn and sent to the Eastern Front. In Alsace, the German attacks in the Bitche area continue.
◆1945 Americans B-24 Liberator bombers attack Clark Field in Manila, on Luzon and claim to destroy 20 Japanese aircraft. Shipping near Luzon is also attacked. It is claimed that 35 Japanese vessels have been sunk or severely damaged.
◆1945 US jeep-aircraft carrier Ommaney Bay sinks after kamikaze attack.
◆1951 For the third time in six months, Seoul changed hands as CCF troops moved in.
◆1952 The French Army in Indochina launches Operation Nenuphar in hopes of ejecting a Viet Minh division from the Ba Tai forest.
◆1953 Fifth Air Force mounted a 124-plane strike against the Huichon supply center.
◆1965 Johnson reaffirms commitment to South Vietnam: In his State of the Union message, President Lyndon B. Johnson reaffirms U.S. commitment to support South Vietnam in fighting communist aggression. In justifying the continued support to Saigon, Johnson pointed outthat U.S. presidents had been giving the South Vietnamese help for 10 years, and, he said, "Our own security is tied to the peace of Asia."
◆1975 The Khmer Rouge launches its newest assault in its five-year war in Phnom Penh. The war in Cambodia would go on until the spring of 1975.
◆1989 Second Gulf of Sidra Incident: Aircraft (VF-32) from USS John F. Kennedy shoot down 2 hostile Libyan Migs over the Mediterranean. ★
◆1991 Marines evacuated 260 U.S. and foreign citizens from the American Embassy, Mogadishu, Somalia, during Operation Eastern Exit.