TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
21 March
◆867 Battle of York: Danes defeat King Aelle of Northumbria.
◆1084 Emperor Henry IV captures Rome, and Pope Gregory VII.
◆1274 King Robert I the Bruce of Scotland was born (1306-1329).
◆1421 Battle of Beauge: The English are defeated by the French.
◆1625 Franco-Piedmontese capture Novi from the Spanish-Genoese.
◆1806 Lewis and Clark began their trip home after an 8,000 mile trek to the Pacific Coast.
◆1814 Battle of Arcis-sur-Aube, Day 2: Austro-Russians defeat Napoleon.
◆1836 Mexicans capture Copano, Texas.
◆1848 Combat at Sforzesca: Piedmontese defeat the Austrians.
◆1849 Combat at Borgo San Siro: Austrians defeat the Piedmontese.
◆1849 Combat at Gambolo: Piedmontese defeat the Austrians.
◆1849 Combat at Mortara: Austrians defeat the Piedmontese.
◆1851 Yosemite Valley was discovered (by non-Native Americans) in California.★
◆1863 Union General Edwin Vose Sumner dies while awaiting reassignment to the far West.
◆1865 The Battle of Bentonville, N.C. ended, marking the last Confederate attempt to stop Sherman. Union General William Sherman considered Judson Kilpatrick, his cavalry chief, ‘a hell of a damn fool.’ At Monroe’s Cross Roads, N.C., his carelessness and disobedience of orders proved Sherman’s point.
◆1865 The heavy guns of Union gunboats supported the landing of troops of General Canby’s command at Dannelly’s Mills on the Fish River, Alabama. This was a diversionary operation intended to prevent the movement of additional Confederate troops to Mobile during the week prior to the opening of the Federal attack against that city.
◆1866 The US Congress authorized national soldiers’ homes.
◆1885 Raoul Lufbery, French-born American fighter pilot of World War I, was born.
◆1907 Following the Roosevelt Corollary, Marines land in Honduras to protect American interests and to help quell revolution there.★
◆1917 Loretta Walsh becomes first woman Navy petty officer when sworn in as Chief Yeoman.
◆1918 During World War I, the Second Battle of the Somme, the first major German offensive in more a year, begins on the western front.★
◆1919 Navy installs and tests Sperry gyrocompass, in first instance of test of aircraft gyrocompass.
◆1928 Coolidge gave the Medal of Honor to Charles Lindbergh. The Medal of Honor was not always awarded for “courage above and beyond” the call of duty.
◆1943 The second military conspiracy plan to assassinate Hitler in a week fails to come off.
◆1944 US forces moving west from Yalau Plantation link up with Australian forces advancing north, from inland, on the Huon Peninsula.
◆1945 The US 8th Air Force targets Me262 fighter bases in western Germany.
◆1945 Bureau of Aeronautics initiates rocket-powered surface-to-air guided missile development by awarding contract to Fairchild.
◆1945 US Task Force 58 (Admiral Mitscher) is replenishing in preparation for operations around Okinawa. The Japanese 5th Air Force deploys the first Ohka piloted rocket bombs, slung under Misubishi bombers, against the American fleet. The flight of 18 aircraft is intercepted by carrier aircraft and all but one are shot down. Admiral Spruance, command the US 5th Fleet, is present for the operations.
◆1945 Most of US 3rd Army forces are engaged in clearing German resistance on the west bank of the Rhine River, to the north of Mannheim. Other elements of US 3rd and US 7th Army units are cooperating to take Annweiler, Neunkirchen, Neustadt and Homberg.
◆1945 General A. A. Vandergrift, 18th Commandant of the Marine Corps, became the first Marine four-star general on active duty.★
◆1946 The United Nations set up temporary headquarters at Hunter College in New York City.
◆1947 Pres. Truman signed Executive Order 9835 requiring all federal employees to swear allegiance to the United States.
◆1951 Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall reports that the U.S. military has doubled to 2.9 million since the start of the Korean War.
◆1951 The 1st Cavalry Division recaptured Chunchon. The Chinese 3rd Field Army appeared in combat for the first time in Korea.
◆1953 U.S. Air Force Captains Manuel J. Fernandez, Jr., 4th Fighter-Interceptor Wing, and Harold Fischer, 51st Fighter-Interceptor Wing, qualified as the fourth and fifth “double aces” of the war. An ace has shot down five enemy aircraft; a double ace, 10.★
◆1953 North Korean truce negotiators expressed their willingness to observe the provisions of the Geneva Convention and exchange sick and wounded prisoners of war. At the same time they hinted that the exchange might lead to a resolution of other issues hindering an armistice.
◆1954 Col. Benjamin O. Davis Jr., commander of the 51st Fighter Interceptor Wing, leads a three-ship F-86F Sabre formation during the Korean War in 1954. Col. Davis, a Tuskegee Airman, was one of the first African-American wing commanders.★
◆1965 The U.S. launched Ranger 9, last in a series of lunar explorations.
◆1972 In Cambodia, more than 100 civilians are killed and 280 wounded as communist artillery and rockets strike Phnom Penh and outlying areas in the heaviest attack since the beginning of the war in 1970. Following the shelling, a communist force of 500 troops attacked and entered Takh Mau, six miles southeast of Pnom Penh, killing at least 25 civilians.
◆1975 As North Vietnamese forces advanced, Hue and other northern towns in South Vietnam were evacuated.
◆1980 President Jimmy Carter informs a group of U.S. athletes that, in response to the December 1979 Soviet incursion into Afghanistan, the United States will boycott the 1980 Olympics in Moscow.
◆1984 A Soviet submarine crashed into the USS Kitty Hawk off the coast of Japan.
◆1996 The US decided to proceed with plans to deliver weapons to the Islamabad government in Pakistan. $368 mil has already been paid for a naval Orion aircraft and two types of missiles.
◆1999 It was reported that the Space Laser Energy group, SELENE, proposed to transmit energy to satellites by 2004.
◆2003 US and British troops have captured the Iraqi border town of Umm Qasr. Marines raise US flag over the port area and aim to use it as an entry point for humanitarian aid into the country.
◆2003 American troops have seized two airfields in the Iraqi desert west of Baghdad.