TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
16 May
◆1527 The Florentines drive out the Medici for a second time and Florence re-establishes itself as a republic.
◆1691 Jacob Leisler, American colonist, was hanged for treason.
◆1745 SIEGE OF LOUISBOURG, CANADA.
◆1771 The Battle of Alamance.
◆1811 Battle of Albuera.
◆1820 USS Congress becomes first U.S. warship to visit China.
◆1822 Greek War of Independence: The Turks capture the Greek town of Souli.
◆1824 Edmund Kirby-Smith, educator and soldier, was born. He was a Confederate general in the western theater.
◆1843 The first major wagon train heading for the Pacific Northwest sets out on the Oregon Trail with one thousand pioneers from Elm Grove, Missouri.
◆1861 Confederate government offered war volunteers a $10 premium.
◆1861 Commander John Rodgers ordered to report to the War Department to establish naval forces on the western rivers under the command of General John C. Fremont.
◆1861 Kentucky proclaimed its neutrality.
◆1861 Tennessee officially admitted to the Confederacy.
◆1863 The Union army seals the fate of Vicksburg by defeating the Confederates at the Battle of Champion's Hill.
◆1864 In the Atlanta Campaign, the battle of Resaca, begun May 13, ended.
◆1864 Having crossed the rapids of the Red River at Alexandria, Rear Admiral Porter next had to traverse the many bars in the River near its mouth.
◆1899 One month after the Spanish-American War began in April 1898, an expeditionary force sailed from San Francisco to capture the Spanish colonial capital of Manila, on Luzon Island, Philippines.
◆1919 Three Navy flying boats begin 1st trans-Atlantic flight from Newfoundland.
◆1927 Marines participated in the Battle of La Paz Centro in Nicaragua.
◆1940 Roosevelt asks Congress to authorize the production of 50,000 military planes per year and for a $900,000,000 extraordinary credit to finance this massive operation.
◆1943 On Attu, the Japanese are forced to pull back as the Americans continue their attacks near Holtz Bay.
◆1944 Most Allied forces of the US 5th Army meet reduced resistance to their ongoing offensive.Only the Polish 2nd Corps, at Cassino, continues to have difficulty. The British 13th Corps and the Canadian 1st Corps, in the Liri Valley, are advancing toward Pontecorvo and Piumarola. The US 2nd Corps advances along the western coast. The French Expeditionary Corps capture Monte Petrella and advance toward Monte Revole.
◆1944 American forces move from Hollandia toward Wake Island.
◆1945 The Nazi submarine U-234 surrendered.
◆1945 On Okinawa, the US 6th Marine Division (part of US 3rd Amphibious Corps) reports heavy casualties in continuing attacks on Sugar Loaf Hill. Japanese antitank guns knock out a number of American tanks supporting an advance, by US 1st Marine Division, along the valley of the Wana River. Attacks by the US 77th Division to the north of Shuri continue to be unsuccessful. The US 96th Division reaches the edge of the village of Yonabaru. Love Hill, to the west of Conical Hill, continues to be held by Japanese forces.
◆1945 On Luzon, the US 152nd Division, part of US 11th Corps, attacks Woodpecker Ridge with heavy artillery support and entrenches on the summit. The capture of the Bicol peninsula by forces of the US 14th Corps is declared to be completed. On Mindanao, Japanese forces hold the American advance along the Talomo River.
◆1951 Chinese Communist Forces launched a second step, fifth-phase offensive [in Korea] and gained up to 20 miles of territory.
◆1960 In the wake of the Soviet downing of an American U-2 spy plane on May 1, Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev lashes out at the United States and President Dwight D. Eisenhower at a Paris summit meeting between the two heads of state.
◆1963 After 22 Earth orbits Gordon Cooper returned to Earth in Friendship Seven, ending Project Mercury.
◆1965 First US gunfire support in Vietnam by USS Tucker.
◆1965 What is described by the United States government as "an accidental explosion of a bomb on one aircraft which spread to others" at the Bien Hoa air base leaves 27 U.S. servicemen and 4 South Vietnamese dead and some 95 Americans injured. More than 40 U.S. and South Vietnamese planes, including 10 B-57s, were destroyed.
◆1972 A series of air strikes over five days destroys all of North Vietnam's pumping stations in the southern panhandle, thereby cutting North Vietnam's main fuel line to South Vietnam. These strikes were part of Operation Linebacker, an air offensive against North Vietnam that had been ordered by President Richard Nixon in early April in response to a massive communist offensive launched on March 30.