TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
12 March
◆1212 HRE Frederick II "Stupor Mundi" lands at Gaeta, to claim Naples.
◆1470 Battle of "Losecoat Field": King Edward IV's Yorkists beat Sir Robert Welles' Lancastrians.
◆1676 Indians attack Plymouth, Massachusetts.
◆1690 In the face of the French and Indian threat, the New Hampshire colony votes to reannex itself to Massachusetts.
◆1777 Since George Washington has effectively cleared all but easternmost New Jersey of British forces, the Continental Congress returns to Philadelphia from Baltimore, where it reconvenes.
◆1799 Austria declares war on France.
◆1862 Union troops occupy Winchester, Virginia, after its evacuation by the Confederates commanded by Stonewall Jackson. Winchester will change hands 54 times during the course of the war.
◆1863 President Jefferson Davis delivered his State of the Confederacy address.
◆1863 The Battle of Raymond, Miss., was fought.
◆1864 One of the biggest military fiascos of the war begins as a combined Union force of infantry and riverboats begins moving up the Red River in Louisiana.★
◆1865 Skirmish near Lone Jack, Missouri.
◆1867 French troops abandon Mexico, and the Emperor Maximilian.
◆1889 Battle of Metema/Gallabad: Yohannes IV's Ethiopians defeated by the Mahdists.
◆1917 The US merchant ship Algonquin is sunk without warning. All American merchant ships are to be armed in war zones.
◆1918 WW I Marines landed at Scapa Flow, Great Britain.
◆1918 The British submarine 'D-3' is sunk off the French coast, by a French airship which mistook her for a U-boat.
◆1938 German troops march into Austria to annex the German-speaking nation for the Third Reich.★
◆1940 Finland surrenders to Russia, ending the 104 day "Winter War."
◆1941 President Roosevelt presents an Appropriations Bill for Lend-Lease to Congress for $7,000,000,000.
◆1942 President Franklin D. Roosevelt designates Admiral Ernest J. King to serve as the Chief of Naval Operations, as well as the Commander-in-Chief, United States Fleet to which he was appointed on 30 December 1941.
◆1942 Sumatra: Japanese troops land at Sabang.
◆1942 On New Caledonia, American troops land to garrison the island. These forces include the first operational “Seabees.”
◆1944 On Bougainville, Japanese attacks continue. US forces continue to hold.
◆1944 A small American force lands on Hauwei Island. The Japanese garrison, led by Colonel Ezaki, resists.
◆1944 Americans occupy Wotho Atoll. There is no Japanese garrison.
◆1945 There is heavy fighting in the Remagen bridgehead where elements of the German 7th Army are counterattacking.
◆1947 In a dramatic speech to a joint session of Congress, President Harry S. Truman asks for U.S. assistance for Greece and Turkey to forestall communist domination of the two nations.
◆1951 Communist troops were driven out of Seoul.
◆1952 Ten B-29s struck the Sinchang-ni choke point, ten miles east of Sunchon, with ninety-one tons of high explosives, rendering the point unpassable.
◆1956 In first overseas deployment of Navy missile squadron, VA-83 left on USS Intrepid.
◆1965 The beginning of the US Navy’s Operation Market Time to interdict resupply of Communist forces in South Vietnam by river and coastal routes.★
◆1972 The last remnants of the First Australian Task Force withdraw from Vietnam.★
◆1998 Serbian leaders proposed talks for autonomy in Kosovo, but residents dismissed the offer.
◆1999 Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic formally joined NATO in a ceremony at Independence, Mo., where Pres. Truman announced in 1949 the formation of the Atlantic alliance for defense against the Soviet bloc.
◆2003 The US Air Force tests for the first time its Massive Ordnance Air Blast (MOAB) a 9,450kg munition which is the biggest conventional bomb in the US arsenal.★