TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
22 March
◆1621 The Plymouth Pilgrims and the Wampanoag tribe lead by Chief Massassoit reach a treaty agreement. They form a defensive alliance. Squanto, who speaks English because he had been captured by the English in 1615 and spent two years in England, brokers the pact.
◆1622 The Powhattan Confederacy massacred 347 colonists in Virginia, a quarter of the population.★
◆1765 Hoping to scrounge up funds to maintain a military presence in the colonies, the British government passed the notorious Stamp Act.★
◆1778 Captain Cook sighted Cape Flattery in Washington state.
◆1817 Confederate General Braxton Bragg is born in Warrenton, North Carolina.
◆1820 U.S. Navy officer Stephen Decatur, hero of the Barbary Wars, is mortally wounded in a duel with disgraced Navy Commodore James Barron at Bladensburg, Maryland. ★
◆1907 James Gavin, U.S. Army General, was born. He commanded the 82nd Airborne Division on D-Day, Operation Market-Garden and the Battle of the Bulge.★
◆1915 The term “Naval Aviator” replaces former “Navy Air Pilot” for officers qualified as aviators.
◆1917 The U.S. became the first to recognize the Kerensky Government in Russia.
◆1929 Navy ships protect Americans and their property during Mexican revolution.
◆1934 Philippine independence was granted by the US and was guaranteed to begin in 1945.
◆1942 Italo-German air raids on Malta.
◆1942 Jimmy Stewart enlists in the USAAF.★
◆1944 Admiral Doenitz orders all U-boats to disperse from groups and work singly.★
◆1944 The forces of the New Zealand Corps (part of US 5th Army) makes a final attack on German-held Cassino. It fails. General Freyberg, commanding the corps, then calls off the attack. Allied troops are withdrawn from the most advance positions and the remainder consolidate recent agains.
◆1945 The US 5th Division (an element of US 3rd Army) establishes a bridgehead over the Rhine River near Nierstein. Other US 3rd Army units are completing the mopping up west of the Rhine and preparing to make crossings of their own.
◆1945 The carriers of US Task Force 58 (Admiral Mitscher) are attacked by Japanese Kamikaze aircraft that fail to achieve significant success. However, it is noted that many of the attacks are made by manned rocket bombs. Admiral Spruance, commanding the US 5th Fleet, is present for the operations.
◆1946 First U.S. built rocket to leave the earth’s atmosphere reached a 50-mile height.
◆1946 USS Missouri departs U.S. to return body of deceased Turkish ambassador to the U.S. back to Turkey for burial. Missouri arrived in Istanbul on 5 April.
◆1951 Eighth Army reached the 38th parallel, as it had in fall 1950, after the Inchon invasion.
◆1952 Six new Marine battalions and Marine air groups were activated on the West Coast, giving the Corps the full authorized limit of three divisions and three wings.
◆1953 Chinese forces, supported by artillery and mortar fire, assaulted Hill Hedy and Bunker Hill. Hand-to-hand combat ensued before the enemy was finally forced to disengage.
◆1968 President Lyndon B. Johnson announces the appointment of Gen. William Westmoreland as Army Chief of Staff; Gen. Creighton Abrams replaced him as commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam.
◆1989 Fawn Hall, Oliver North’s former secretary, began two days of testimony at North’s Iran-Contra trial in Washington.★
◆2003 U.S. forces reported seizing a large weapons cache in Afghanistan.
◆2003 In the 4th day of Operation Iraqi Freedom intermittent explosions were heard throughout the day in Baghdad and by late afternoon at least 12 huge columns of smoke could be seen rising from all along the southern horizon of the city.★
◆2003 Turkey opens its air space to US warplanes for operations against Iraq.