TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
26 January
◆1316 Battle of Ardscull/Skerries: King Edward Bruce of Ireland defeats the English.
◆1316 Llywelyn Bren initiates a Welch revolt against England with a surprise attack on Caerphilly Castle.
◆1500 Vicente Yáñez Pinzón discovers Brazil.
◆1565 Battle of Talikota: the Deccan Sultanate defeats the Vijayanagara Empire, initiating Islamic domination of India.
◆1654 Capitulation of Taborda: the Dutch cede Recife, Brazil, to Portugal.
◆1666 France declares war on England.
◆1748 England, Netherlands, Austria, & Sardinia conclude an anti-French alliance.
◆1763 British surrender Mangalore to Tippoo Sahib after a protracted siege.
◆1784 In a letter to his daughter, Benjamin Franklin expressed unhappiness over the eagle as the symbol of America. He wanted the turkey.
◆1787 Daniel Shays leads his rebel force in an unsuccessful attack against the Federal arsenal at Springfield, Massachusetts.
◆1788 Capt Arthur Phillip founds a penal colony at Sydney, Australia.
◆1808 Australia's "Rum Rebellion": Armed colonists unseat Gov. William Bligh (of Bounty fame), and install a provisional government.
◆1861 Louisiana becomes the sixth state to secede from the Union when a state convention votes 113 to 17 in favor of the measure.
◆1871 US income tax repealed.
◆1880 Douglas MacArthur, the son of the high-ranking military figure, Arthur MacArthur, was born in Little Rock, Arkansas.★
◆1893 Captain Abner Doubleday was born at Ballston Spa, New York, in 1819, and attended schools at Auburn and Cooperstown.
◆1904 The emperor of Addis Ababa, Abyssinia, decorated Marine Captain G. C. Thorpe for escorting diplomats 500 miles through the desert.
◆1911 Glenn Curtiss piloted the 1st successful hydroplane in San Diego to and from the battleship USS Pennsylvania.
◆1913 The body of John Paul Jones is laid in its final resting place in the Chapel of Naval Academy, Annapolis, MD.
◆1939 During the Spanish Civil War, Barcelona, the Republican capital of Spain, falls to the Nationalist forces of General Francisco Franco.
◆1942 The first American expeditionary force to go to Europe during World War II went ashore in Northern Ireland.
◆1942 The Board of Inquiry established to investigate Pearl Harbor find Admiral Kimmel, (then Commander in Chief, US Fleet) and General Short (then Commander in Chief, Hawaii Department) guilty of dereliction of duty. Both have already been dismissed.
◆1943 The first OSS (Office of Strategic Services) agent parachutes behind Japanese lines in Burma. OSS's Detachment 101 came perhaps the closest to realizing General Willaim "Wild Bill" Donovan's original vision of "strategic" support to regular combat operations. Under the initial leadership of "the most dangerous colonel," Carl Eifler, Detachment 101 took time to develop its capabilities and relationships with native guides and agents. Within a year, however, the Detachment and its thousands of cooperating Kachin tribesmen were gleaning valuable intelligence from jungle sites behind Japanese lines. With barely 120 Americans at any one time, the unit eventually recruited almost 11,000 native Kachins to fight the Japanese occupiers. When Allied troops invaded Burma in 1944, Detachment 101 teams advanced well ahead of the combat formations, gathering intelligence, sowing rumors, sabotaging key installations, rescuing downed Allied fliers, and snuffing out isolated Japanese positions. Detachment 101 received the Presidential Distinguished Unit Citation for its service in the 1945 offensive that liberated Rangoon.
◆1944 The forces of US 5th Army continue their offensive. The Free French Corps captures Colle Belvedere and advance toward Monte Abate. The US 2nd Corps establishes a bridgehead over the Rapido River.
◆1944 On New Britain, there is a heavy bombing raid on the Japanese base at Rabaul, by US aircraft. Many Japanese planes are claimed to be shot down.
◆1945 Units of US 3rd Army in the Ardennes have now crossed the Clerf River in several areas and are attacking all along the front of US 3rd and 12th Corps.
◆1945 American Lt. Audie Murphy, is wounded in France.★
◆1949 USS Norton Sound, first guided-missile ship, launches first guided missile, Loon.
◆1951 U.S. warships bombarded Inchon for the second time during the war. The first was during the initial allied invasion, Sept. 15, 1950.
◆1951 Far East Air Forces flew its first C-47 "control aircraft", loaded with enough communications equipment to connect by radio all T-6 Mosquitoes, tactical air control parties, and the Tactical Air Control Center. This was the harbinger of today's warning and control aircraft.
◆1952 A rescue helicopter, behind enemy lines near the coastline of the Yellow Sea, received small arms fire while rescuing an F-84 pilot, Capt. A.T.Thawley.
◆1953 Surface ships blasted coastal targets as the USS Missouri completed a 46-hour bombardment of Songjin.
◆1953 The last F4U Corsair rolled off the Chance Vought Aircraft Company production line.Despite the dawning of the jet age, this World War II fighter remained in production due to its vital close-air support role in the Korean War. Almost 12,000 Corsairs were produced in various models.
◆1954 The Senate consents to a defense treaty between the US and South Korea.
◆1962 The United States launched Ranger 3 to land scientific instruments on the moon, but the probe missed its target by some 22,000 miles.
◆1970 U.S. Navy Lt. Everett Alvarez Jr. spends his 2,000th day in captivity in Southeast Asia.
◆1980 At the request of President Jimmy Carter, the U.S. Olympic Committee votes to ask the International Olympic Committee to cancel or move the upcoming Moscow Olympics.