TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
11 March
◆1405 Battle of Grosmont: Prince Henry V defeats Welch under Rhys Gethin.
◆1778 Marines participated the action when the Continental Navy frigate Boston, enroute to France, sighted, engaged, and captured the British merchant ship Martha. As the drum of the Boston beat to arms, John Adams seized a musket and joined the Marines on deck until the frigate’s captain, Samuel Tucker, sent him below for safety.
◆1783 George Washington forbids the unauthorized meeting of officers called for in the anonymous Newburgh Address and suggests a regular meeting of officers to discuss grievances to be held 15 March.
◆1795 Battle of Kurdla, India: Mahrattas defeat the Moghuls.
◆1813 President Madison formally accepts the offer of Czar Alexander to mediate between Great Britain and the United States. The British, however, reject the Czar’s offer.
◆1824 The U.S. War Department created the Bureau of Indian Affairs. A lifelong friend and trusted aide of Ulysses S. Grant, Ely Parker rose to the top in two worlds, that of his native Seneca Indian tribe and the white man’s world at large. He went on to become the first Indian to lead the Bureau.
◆1853 Marines from the USS Cyane landed at San Juan del Norte, Nicaragua to protect American lives and interests during political disturbances. Cornelius Vanderbilt, the North American millionaire, recognizing the potential value of a canal route between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, felt that the best site for such a canal was across Nicaragua. He began transporting people (especially those prospecting for gold in the western U.S.) across Nicaragua using stagecoach and boats in 1851.1861 In Montgomery, Alabama, delegates from South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas adopt the Permanent Constitution of the Confederate States of America.
◆1862 Landing party from U.S.S. Wabash, Commander C. R. P. Rodgers, occupied St. Augustine, Florida, which had been evacuated by Confederate troops in the face of the naval threat.
◆1863 Union troops under General Ulysses S. Grant gave up their preparations to take Vicksburg after failing to pass Fort Pemberton, north of Vicksburg.
◆1863 A naval engagement occurred between the CSS Alabama and the USS Hatteras.★
◆1917 Maude's Anglo-Allied forces capture Baghdad.
◆1938 Anschluss: Germany begins occupation of Austria (completed 3/13).
◆1940 The government lifts its arms embargo to allow Britain and France to buy some P40 fighter planes.
◆1941 The Lend-Lease Bill becomes law when signed by President Roosevelt.
◆1942 After struggling against great odds to save the Philippines from Japanese conquest, U.S. General Douglas MacArthur abandons the island fortress of Corregidor under orders from President Franklin Roosevelt.★
◆1942 First deportation train left Paris for the Auschwitz Concentration Camp.
◆1942 American General Stillwell takes command of the Chinese 5th and 6th Armies (actually size of European army divisions). His first action is to concentrate forces around Mandalay and in the Shan States.
◆1943 The Americans extend the Lend-Lease agreements by one year. The value of the agreements, up to the end of February 1943, is reported to be $9,632,000,000.
◆1944 In central Burma, Chindit forces are disrupting Japanese communications with their forces facing American General Stilwell’s Sino-American forces.
◆1944 Reconnaissance forces land on Manus Island and Butjo Luo, where the Japanese garrison resists.
◆1945 The American carrier, Randolph, is damaged in a Japanese Kamikaze attack on the Pacific Fleet base at Ulithi Atoll.
◆1953 F.M. Adams became the 1st US commissioned woman army doctor.
◆1954 The U.S. Army charged that Wisconsin Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy and his subcommittee’s chief counsel, Roy Cohn, had exerted pressure to obtain favored treatment for Pvt. G. David Schine, a former consultant to the subcommittee. The confrontation culminated in the famous Senate Army-McCarthy hearings.
◆1958 A B-47 bomber accidentally drops a nuclear weapon over Mars Bluff, South Carolina. The conventional explosive trigger detonates, leaving a crater 75 feet wide and 35 feet deep.★
◆1960 Pioneer 5 was launched into solar orbit between Earth & Venus.
◆1965 Market Time patrols begin off South Vietnam coast. The American navy began inspecting Vietnamese junks in hopes of ending arms smuggling to the South.
◆1967 U.S. 1st Infantry Division troops engage in one of the heaviest battles of Operation Junction City.★
◆2003 The US military reports that US warplanes have bombed a mobile radar for a surface-to-air missile system in Iraq’s western desert.