TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
4 October
◆1189 Siege of Acre: Crusaders defeat an Ayyubid assault.
◆1636 Battle of Wittsok: The Swedes defeat the Imperialists.
◆1674 Battle of Enzheim: The French defeat the Imperialists.
◆1693 Battle of Marsiglia: The French defeat the Savoyards.
◆1776 Marines participated in the USS Wasp's capture of a British ship off the coast of New England.
◆1777 George Washington's troops launched an assault on the British at Germantown, Penn., resulting in heavy American casualties.★
◆1821 LT Robert F. Stockton sails from Boston for Africa to carry out his orders to help stop the international slave trade. Stockton will be instrumental in the founding of Liberia.
◆1822 Rutherford B. Hayes, the 19th president (R) of the United States, was born in Delaware, Ohio.
◆1861 The Union ship USS South Carolina captured two Confederate blockade runners outside of New Orleans, La.
◆1862 Battle of Corinth, Mississippi, ended in a Union victory, though failing to destroy Van Dorn’s Confederate force.
◆1874 Kiowa leader Santanta, known as "the Orator of the Plains," surrendered in Darlington, Texas. He was later sent to the state penitentiary, where he committed suicide October 11, 1878.
◆1906 Marines protected Americans during revolution in Cuba. Revolution broke out in Cuba in 1906, and a Marine expeditionary force was sent to the island to establish and maintain law and order. In mid-1906 Cuban internal strife caused the United States to invoke the Platt Amendment and send troops to the island nation in an attempt to restore order. William Howard Taft, now Secretary-of-War, sent his Philippine Insurrection veterans.
◆1912 Gen. Zeledon, Nicaraguan opponent of US occupation, was killed by his troops as he attempted to desert them at the conclusion of the Battle of Coyotepe.
◆1940 Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini conferred at Brenner Pass in the Alps, where the Nazi leader sought Italy's help in fighting the British.
◆1943 Aircraft from USS Ranger sink 5 German ships and damage 3 in Operation Leader, the only U.S. Navy carrier operation in northern European waters during World War II. Ranger returned to Scapa Flow 6 October.
◆1952 Task Force 77 aircraft encounter MIG-15 aircraft for the first time.
◆1952 Flying an F-86 Sabre, future jet ace Captain Manuel J. Fernandez, Jr., 4th Fighter-Interceptor Wing, scored his first aerial victory of the war.
◆1957 The Space Age and "space race" began as the Soviet Union launched Sputnik (traveler), the first man-made space satellite.★
◆1993 Last US KIA in Somalia. A Green Beret is killed during a mortar attack at the Mogadishu Airport. 12 GIs are WIA. Three Marines are WIA elsewhere. In Somalia US troops blasted their way out of Bakara Market in Mogadishu and left an estimated 500 Somalis dead. Dozens of cheering, dancing Somalis dragged the body of an American soldier through the streets of Mogadishu.
◆1997 From Bosnia it was reported that an Egyptian ship loaded with Soviet-made T-55 tanks was sitting at anchor in the Croatian port of Ploce. The shipment was registered with officials of the foreign peace force. An error on the manifest said the tanks were intended for the Bosnian Army.
◆1997 In Columbia rebels of the Revolutionary Armed Forces killed 17 policemen near San Juan de Arama. The rebels were staging a growing campaign to disrupt municipal elections. They had already killed 26 candidates and forced more than 1,500 to withdraw.
◆1998U.S. and Algierian Navies conduct first bilateral exercise since Algerian independence in 1962. It was a search and rescue operation involving USS Mitscher.
◆2002 Pakistan said it successfully test-fired a medium-range surface-to-surface ballistic missile. It was named Hatf-IV (Shaheen-1) and had a range of 700 km (430 miles).
◆2004 Gordon "Gordo" Cooper, one of the original Mercury astronauts who pioneered human space exploration, died.
◆2004 US and Iraqi forces conclude a 3 day fight to reclaim Samarra from Sunni insurgents.
◆2006 The US announces reformulation of Counterinsurgency doctrine. GEN David Petraeus will lead a joint Army-Marine team in rewriting the Counterinsurgency manual. This new doctrine is heavily influenced by the success of COL McMaster's clear/hold/build strategy.