TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
15 October
◆533 Belisarius captures Carthage from the Vandals.
◆1080 Battle of Saale: Rudolf of Swabia defeats Henry IV of Germany.
◆1575 Battle of Dormans: French Catholics defeat the Huguenots.
◆1813 During the land defeat of the British on the Thames River in Canada, the Indian chief Tecumseh, now a brigadier general with the British Army (War of 1812), was killed.
◆1817 Tadeusz AB Kosciusko (b.1746), Polish Lt-Gen. and American Revolution freedom fighter, died.
◆1818 Irvin McDowell (d.1985), Major General (Union volunteers), was born.
◆1861 The British steamship Fingal, purchased by James D. Bulloch for the US Southern Confederacy, ran into the Austrian brig Siccardi, which sank with her load of coal in England’s Holyhead harbor. The Fingal quickly sailed for Savannah. The Fingal was later converted to an ironclad and renamed Atlanta.
◆1863 For the second time, the Confederate submarine H L Hunley sank during a practice dive in Charleston Harbor, S.C, this time drowning its inventor along with seven crew members.
◆1864 Confederate troops occupied Glasgow, Missouri.★
◆1892 US government convinced the Crow Indians to give up 1.8 million acres of their reservation (in the mountainous area of western Montana) for 50 cents per acre. Presidential proclamation opened this land to settlers.
◆1917 Mata Hari, 41, shot as a spy by the French.
◆1917 USS Cassin (DD-43) torpedoed by German submarine U-61 off coast of Ireland. In trying to save the ship, Gunner's Mate Osmond Kelly Ingram becomes first American sailor killed in World War I and later is awarded the Medal of Honor for his heroism. He becomes the first enlisted man to have a ship named for him, in 1919.
◆1918 Lieutenant Colonel William “Wild Bill” Donovan earned the Medal of Honor while leading his regiment, the 165th Infantry (formerly the 69th New York, the “Fighting 69th” of Civil War fame), 42nd “Rainbow” Division, in an attack to capture a German strongpoint.★
◆1935 Germany activates three panzer divisions.
◆1940 Major General Commandant Thomas Holcomb issued orders to mobilize the Marine Reserve for WW II.
◆1943 In the US 5th Army offensive, the attack has moved beyond the Volturno River but the Germans have skillfully maintained their defensive front while being pushed back.
◆1944 Around Aachen, elements of US 5th Army (part of US 12th Army Group) continue efforts to capture the city. To the south, the US 6th Corps, part of US 7th Army (part of US 12th Army Group), begins an offensive to the west of Epinal.
◆1944 In the west, elements of US 5th Army gain ground near Livergnano and Grizzana. In the east, forces of British 8th Army also make progress.
◆1944 US Task Group 38.4 conducts air strikes on targets north of Manila, on Luzon.
◆1946 Nazi war criminal Hermann Goering poisoned himself hours before he was to have been executed.
◆1948 First women officers on active duty sworn in as commissioned officers in regular Navy under Women's Service Integration Act of June 1948 by Secretary of the Navy John L. Sullivan: CAPT Joy B. Hancock, USN; LCDR Winifred R. Quick, USN; LCDR Anne King, USN; LCDR Frances L. Willoughby, MC, USN; LT Ellen Ford, SC, USN; LT Doris Cranmore, MSC, USN; LTJG Doris A. Defenderfer, USN; and LTJG Betty Rae Tennant, USN.
◆1950 - General MacArthur, in a meeting with President Truman on Wake Island, predicted that the war would be over by Christmas and China would not intervene.
◆1951 Operation DECOY, a mock amphibious landing near Kojo designed as a feint, was led by the battleship USS Iowa along with six carriers, four cruisers and more than 30 destroyers. ★
◆1960 USS Patrick Henry (SSBN-599) begins successful firing of four Polaris test vehicles under operational rather than test conditions. Tests are completed on 18 October.
◆1964 It was announced that Soviet leader Nikita S. Khrushchev had been removed from office. He was succeeded as premier by Alexei N. Kosygin and as Communist Party secretary by Leonid I. Brezhnev.
◆1983 US Marine sharpshooters killed 5 snipers at Beirut International Airport.1993 President Clinton sent six warships to the waters off Haiti to enforce trade sanctions in the face of defiant Haitian military rulers.
◆1997 NASA's plutonium-powered Cassini spacecraft rocketed flawlessly toward Saturn. It was destined to arrive at Saturn on July 1, 2004.
◆1999 In Kosovo Some 100 people were injured as they tried to force their way against NATO forces across a bridge in Mitrovica to the Serb half of town.
◆2001 US warplanes carried out their heaviest bombings in 9 days over Afghanistan. The Pentagon called in the slow moving AC-130 Spectre gunships to targets around Kandahar.
◆2002 Allied planes bombed a military command facility in the southern no-fly zone over Iraq after taking fire from Iraqi forces.
◆2003 In China Shenzhou 5 launched into orbit with air force Lt. Col. Yang Liwei (38) aboard, making China the third nation to put a human in space on its own, after the former Soviet Union and the United States.
◆2003 NATO launched its elite rapid-reaction force, a prototype unit that will eventually become a 20,000-member force able to deploy in short notice anywhere in the world.
◆2004 US Marines launched air and ground attacks on the insurgent bastion Fallujah after city representatives suspended peace talks with the government over PM Ayad Allawi's demand to hand over terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.