TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
7 March
◆1774 The British close the port of Boston to all commerce. The Boston Port Bill was intended to close down completely the Port of Boston until the East India Company was paid for their tea lost in the Boston Tea Party and Parliament was paid the tax due on the tea.
◆1774 A 2nd Boston tea party was held.
◆1776 Lead by General William Howe, the British evacuate Boston. Howe’s army and a group of 1000 loyalists will set sail for Halifax, Nova Scotia on 17 March.
◆1778 Capt. James Cook 1st sighted the Oregon coast at Yaquina Bay.
◆1779 In Palestine, Napoleon captures Jaffa and his men massacre more than 2,000 Albanian prisoners.
◆1847 U.S. General Scott occupied Veracruz, Mexico. Pres. Polk decided to attack the heart of Mexico..★
◆1862 Union forces under General Samuel Curtis defeat the army of General Earl Van Dorn at Pea Ridge, located in an extreme northwestern section of Arkansas.
◆1865 Battles were fought around Kingston, NC.
◆1904 The Japanese bomb the Russian town of Vladivostok.
◆1911 Twenty thousand US troops are sent to the Mexican border as the Mexican Revolution continues.
◆1918 President Wilson authorized the Army’s Distinguished Service Medal.★
◆1936 Adolf Hitler violates the Treaty of Versailles and the Locarno Pact by sending German military forces into the Rhineland, a demilitarized zone along the Rhine River in western Germany.
◆1942 Tuskegee flying school graduated its first cadets.
◆1943 General Patton arrived in Djebel Kouif Tunisia.
◆1944 On Bougainville the Japanese are preparing to assault the American beachhead. On the Green Islands Allied forces have completed construction of an airfield.
◆1944 US Task Force 74 (Admiral Crutchley) bombards Japanese batteries on Hauwei and Ndrilo. There are 3 cruisers and 4 destroyers involved.
◆1945 The leading tanks of US 3rd Corps (part of US 1st Army) reach the Rhine River opposite Remagen and find the Ludendorff Bridge there damaged but still standing.★
◆1945 Hitler relieves Field Marshal Rundstedt from his post as Commander in Chief of the German armies in the west because of the American capture of the bridge at Remagen. Field Marshal Kesselring is appointed to replace him.
◆1945 Forces of the US 1st Corps are engaged south of San Fernando. South of Manila, the US 14th Corps is fighting near Balayan Bay and Batangas against the defense lines of the south Luzon Shimbu Group of the Japanese forces.
◆1951 Operation RIPPER was launched in the central and eastern sectors as IX and X Corps crossed the Han River east of Seoul. A continuation of Operation KILLER, its primary purpose was to destroy enemy forces and disrupt the enemy’s attempts to conduct offensive operations.
◆1952 The U.S. signed a military aid pact with Cuba.
◆1956 President Eisenhower turns down a request by Israel to purchase military arms from the United States. It comes after the Soviet Union has provided military equipment to Egypt.
◆1958 Commissioning of USS Grayback, first submarine built from keel up with guided missile capability, to fire Regulus II missile.
◆1966 In the heaviest air raids since the bombing began in February 1965, U.S. Air Force and Navy planes fly an estimated 200 sorties against North Vietnam. The objectives of the raids included an oil storage area 60 miles southeast of Dien Bien Phu and a staging area 60 miles northwest of Vinh.
◆1966 Department of Navy reorganized into present structure under CNO.
◆1967 PBRs assists Operation Overload II in Rung Sat Zone, Vietnam.
◆1968 The Battle of Saigon, begun on the day of the Tet Offensive, ends in a resounding defeat for the communists.
◆1968 Operation Coronado XII begins in Mekong Delta, Vietnam.
◆1971 A thousand U.S. planes bombed Cambodia and Laos.
◆1972 In the biggest air battle in Southeast Asia in three years, U.S. jets battle five North Vietnamese MiGs and shoot one down 170 miles north of the Demilitarized Zone. The 86 U.S. air raids over North Vietnam in the first two months of this year equaled the total for all of 1971.
◆1979 Voyager 1 reached Jupiter.
◆1994 The U.S. Navy issued its first permanent orders assigning women to regular duty on a combat ship — in this case, the USS Eisenhower.