TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
23 January
◆1565 Battle of Talkota: The Moslem Deccans defeat the Hindu Vijayanagar.
◆1579 Union of Utrecht: The Dutch Republic is established.
◆1737 John Hancock (d.1793), American statesman, was born.
◆1775 The Georgia Colony adopts a revised version of the Continental Association which mandates a nonimportation policy and a trade embargo against Britain to force a repeal of the Coercive Acts of 1774.
◆1790 Pitcairn's Island: the Mutineers burn HMS 'Bounty’.
◆1863 Confederate General John Bell Hood is officially removed as commander of the Army of Tennessee.
◆1865 Battle of City Point, VA (James River, Trent's Reach). The Confederate James River squadron sortied from Richmond in hopes of disrupting Grant's supply line and raising the siege of Petersburg. The result was almost a non-battle, as the squadron had a comic propensity to run aground as they came down the river. One ship would run aground; another ship would come up to help and ground itself in the process, etc. The delays in getting back underway forfeited the advantage of surprise, allowing the dilatory Union squadron commander to come up and, in combination with shore batteries, chase the Confederates back up the river.
◆1870 The Marias Massacre: 173 Blackfoot, including 140 women and children, were killed in Montana by US Army.★
◆1900 Battle of Spion Kop: Boers defeat the British; Winston Chruchill & Mohandas Ghandi are both present, but do not meet.
◆1920 The Dutch government refused demands from the victorious Allies to hand over Kaiser Wilhelm II, the dethroned German monarch who had fled to the Netherlands. 1932 El Salvador's army kills 4,000 protesting farmers.
◆1940 Britain and France warn that they will attack German shipping encountered by their navies in the Pan-American neutral zone.
◆1942 Japanese troops land at Rabaul in New Britain, at Balikpapan in Borneo, near Kavieng on New Ireland and on Bougainville in the Solomons.
◆1943 On Guadalcanal, American forces begin to make rapid gains because of the Japanese withdrawal toward the Cape Esperance positions. The Americans fail to realize the significance. The Gifu strongpoint falls.
◆1944 There are now about 50,000 Allied troops concentrated in the Anzio beachhead. General Lucas commands. German resistance is light but the Allied forces advance slowly. Meanwhile, Kesselring believes it is possible to maintain the Gustav Line defenses at the same time as containing the Anzio landings. The commander of the German 10th Army, von Vietinghoff favors a withdrawal from the southern defensive line. The German High Command allots German reserves from France, northern Italy and the Balkans as well as the German 14th Army headquarters to organize defenses around Anzio. Within a week a total of 8 German divisions are concentrated in the area.
◆1945 In the Philippines, elements of US 14th Corps take Bamban in their continuing southward attacks and almost reach Clark Field.
◆1945 St. Vith falls to the attack of tank units from US 18th Corps. The German forces are falling back over the River Our from throughout the Ardennes salient but are losing heavily to Allied air attacks.
◆1951 Thirty-three F-84s of the U.S. Air Force's 27th Fighter-Escort Wing engaged 30 MiG-15s in a dogfight over the skies of Sinuiju. In less than a minute Captains Allen McGuire and William Slaughter each destroyed a MiG while First Lieutenant Jacob Kratt scored two kills, the first double MiG kill of the war.
◆1951 U.S. First Marine Division elements attacked guerrilla concentrations in the vicinity of Andong.
◆1953 The U.S. Air Force's 18th Fighter-Bomber Wing flew the last F-51 Mustang mission of the war.
◆1968 The U.S. intelligence-gathering ship Pueblo is seized by North Korean naval vessels and charged with spying and violating North Korean territorial waters.★
◆1969 NASA unveiled a moon-landing craft.
◆1986 U.S. began maneuvers off the Libyan coast.★
◆1991 After some 12,000 sorties in the Gulf War, General Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said allied forces had achieved air superiority, and would focus air fire on Iraqi ground forces around Kuwait.
◆1996 The US Army disclosed that it had 30,000 tons of chemical weapons stored in Utah, Alabama, Maryland, Kentucky, Indiana, Arkansas, Colorado and Oregon.
◆1999 US jets attacked 2 Iraqi surface-to-air missile batteries after encountering anti-aircraft fire and MiG jets in the southern no-fly
◆2002 US soldiers captured 27 Taliban fighters in Hazar Qadam, north of Kandahar.