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Warfare Through the AgesRoman, Greek, Japanese, etc. Topics cover all manner of pre-modern warfare and empire-building and crushing.
Faith and Treason: The Story of the Gunpowder Plot by Antonia Fraser
Book Review:
In addition to being a great account of an historical incident from the early C17, this book lays a foundation for understanding English history into the 20th Century.
The first chapters deal with the succession of James IV of Scotland to the English crown (the start of union between England and Scotland), and how this was engineered to avoid a catholic monarch. The book clearly articulates how the rights of the Roman Catholic minority were suppressed (Fraser's other books, recounting the lives of Mary and Elizabeth put this in context. Catholic suppression of Protestants under Mary was far more brutal and resulted in more executions).
The policy of religious intolerance resulted in the emergence of a complex terrorist plot. The book leaves a fascinating question unresolved - was the plot portrayed from within?
The end of the plotters is recounted in gruesome detail, from their initial interrogation (the impact of torture on Guy Fawkes is clearly evidenced by the degeneration of his flowing signature to a mere scrawl) to ritual execution.
This text also provides an excellent backdrop to understanding some of the events that lead to the English Civil war. Further suppression of religion (this time the Puritans, who resented any hint of a return to catholic practices (the pilgrim farthers immigrated to America), and ongoing resentment of the Catholic faith in England.
The actions of the plotters had a lasting impact on Catholics in the UK. Catholic men could not hold office (even an army commission) and were not given the vote until the 19th Century. Edward VIII had to abdicate (in part) for marrying a catholic in the 20th century!
This book covers a key period of English history (transition from Tudor to Stuart) in an exciting way and provides a foundation for a better understanding of the next several hundred years.
1494 Sultan Suleiman I the Great of Turkey (1520-66)
1661 Charles II, last Habsburg king of Spain (1665-1700)
1754 King Frederick I of Wurttemberg (1806-16)
1822 Gordon Granger, Maj Gen, U.S., d. 1876
1838 John Grant Mitchell, Brig Gen, U.S., d. 1894
1854 John Phillip Sousa, "The March King," Soldier, Sailor, and Marine
1856 Tsar Nicholas I of Russia, murdered 1918
1900 Heinrich Himmler, Nazi SS leader & mass murderer
1921 James Jones, soldier, novelist ("From Here to Eternity")
Died...
1632 King Gustavus Aldophus of Sweden, in battle
1656 Jao IV, Duke of Braganca, King of Portugal (1640-56)
1836 King Charles X of France (1824-30)
1944 Hannah Senesh, Jewish poet, executed by Nazis in Budapest
Event...
1789 Following the American Revolution, Father John Carroll, 54, was appointed the first Roman Catholic bishop in the newly organized and independent United States of America.
1813 Congress of Chilpancingo declared Mexico independent of Spain
1827 US Marines prepared to fight pirates at Andros, Greece.
1844 Spain grants Dominican Rep independence
1850 Yerba Buena & Angel Islands in San Francisco Bay were reserved for military use.
1851 U.S. Navy expedition under command of LT William Lewis Herndon, on a mission to explore the valley of the Amazon and its tributaries, reaches Iquitos in the jungle region of the upper Amazon after their departure from Lima, Peru.
1854 The morning report showed the United States Marine Corps totaled 63 officers and 1,389 enlisted men.
1860 Abraham Lincoln elected 16th President
1861 Jefferson Davis elected to a six year term as Confederate President
1862 New York - San Francisco direct telegraphic link established.
1863 Battle of Rogersville, TN
1864 Battle of Cane Hill, AK
1864 Battle of Droop Mountain, WV (Averell's Raid)
1884 British protectorate proclaimed over southeast New Guinea.
1888 Benjamin Harrison beat President Grover Cleveland, 233 electoral votes to 168.
1900 President William McKinley re-elected, beating William Jennings Bryan.
1911 Francisco Madeiro inaugurated President of Mexico.
1913 Mohandas K Gandhi arrested for leading Indian miners march in South Africa.
1917 The Canadian attack on Passchendaele was renewed after a 5 day pause. In less than 3 hours the village of Passchendaele, so long an unobtainable objective for the Allies, was in Canadian hands.
1917 Bolshevik Revolution began with the capture of the Winter Palace.
1918 Republic of Poland proclaimed.
1923 USSR adopted an experimental calendar, with 5-day "weeks". It flopped.
1924 Stanley Baldwin became PM of England.
1928 Herbert Hoover beat Alfred E Smith for President.
1935 Maiden flight of the British Hawker Hurricane at Brooklands. Hawker Hurricane I: Production initiated March 1936 and initial contract for 600 confirmed July 1936, to Specification 15/36. First production aircraft flown October 12, 1937, with 1,030 hp Merlin II. Subsequent orders brought total Hawker Hurricane I production to 3,774 in Britain by Hawker (1,924) and Gloster (1,850), plus 160 for RAF by Canadian Car and Foundry in Canada. Canadian Car and Foundry manufactured 1 451 Hurricanes between 1938 and 1943.
1939 U.S. freighter Exeter is detained at Gibraltar by British authorities. She is released the same day after 700 bags of U.S. mail are removed from the ship. Freighter Exminster, detained at Gibraltar by the British since 1 November, is released without any confiscation of cargo.
1940 HMCS Ottawa and HMS Harvester engaged in a depth charge attack against the Italian submarine, FS Faa di Bruno off the coast of Ireland. Nine attacks were delivered against the Italian submarine which blew up and sank, making it the RCN's first submarine kill in the Second World War.
1941 Unsuccessful search for German raider reported by British RFA oiler Olwen on 4 November is not entirely fruitless: TG 3.6, light cruiser USS Omaha and destroyer USS Somers, en route to Recife, Brazil, returning from the 3,023-mile patrol, captures German blockade runner Odenwald, disguised as U.S. freighter Willmoto, in Atlantic equatorial waters, 00°40'N, 28°04'W. Boarding party from USS Omaha reaches Odenwald as Germans explode charges to scuttle the ship. USS Omaha's sailors, however, joined by a diesel engine specialist from USS Somers, prevent Odenwald's loss while the cruiser's SOCs and her accompanying destroyer screen the operation. The three ships then proceed to Trinidad because of possible complications with the Brazilian government; in view of the precarious fuel state in the American ships, USS Somers's crew ingeniously rigs a sail that cuts fuel consumption and allows her to reach her destination with fuel to spare. British RFA oiler Olwen subsequently reports that she had made the "raider" signal when what was probably a surfaced submarine had fired upon her at dawn on 4 November. Ten U.S. and British warships had searched for two days for a phantom enemy.
1941 Destroyer USS Madison, on the flank of convoy ON 39, carries out depth charge attack at 45°50'N, 40°40'W; investigation later proves their quarry to have been a whale.
1942 Submarine USS Grayling is damaged by Japanese aerial bombs off Truk, 06°44'N, 151°25'E.
1942 Submarine USS Haddock damages Japanese army cargo ship France Maru, 33°46'N, 127°28'E.
1942 First officer and enlisted women from training schools report for shore duty around the USA.
1943 Japanese torpedo planes attack infantry landing craft(gunboat) LCI(G)-70 and motor torpedo boat PT-167 as the U.S. ships retire from Cape Torokina to the Treasury Islands. Dud torpedoes both LCI(G)-70 and PT-167.
1943 Japanese troops, transported by destroyers, land near Cape Torokina, Bougainville, Solomons.
1943 Submarine USS Haddock attacks Japanese Truk-to-Singapore convoy consisting of fleet tankers Gen'yo Maru and Hoyo Maru and escorting destroyer IJN Yakaze, 08°04'N, 150°04'E. USS Haddock torpedoes Hoyo Maru at 08°08'N, 149°45'E, and during evasive maneuvers IJN Yakaze is damaged when she accidentally rams Gen'yo Maru. Despite the damage, IJN Yakaze counterattacks USS Haddock.
1943 USAAF B-25s hit Japanese shipping west of Buka, Solomons, sinking submarine chaser Ch 11, auxiliary submarine chaser No.9 Asahi Maru,water tanker Chozan Maru, and cargo vessel Asayama Maru. Japanese auxiliary submarine chaser Cha 30 and small cargo vessel No. 3 Nissen Maru are sunk in the same general area.
1943 German planes attack Naples-bound convoy KMF 25A; destroyer USS Beatty is sunk by aerial torpedo 32 miles northwest of Phillippeville, Tunisia, 37°10'N, 06°00'E. Troop transport Santa Elena is also torpedoed about 27 miles off Phillippeville, 37°13'N, 06°21'E, and abandoned. Transport Monterey takes on board the 1,870 Canadian troops (and nurses) traveling in Santa Elena; the crew and Armed Guard returns to the ship.
1943 Soviet forces recapture Kiev
1944 TF 38 resumes strikes against Luzon; TG 38.3 planes sink Japanese transport T.139, Silanguin Bay, 14°35'N, 120°55'E. Planes from carrier USS Ticonderoga, in TG 38.3, sink tanker Marifu Maru, previously damaged by submarine USS Flier on 13 June 1944, in Mariveles harbor, 14°26'N, 120°29'E.
1944 Submarines USS Guitarro, USS Bream, and USS Raton each torpedo Japanese heavy cruiser IJN Kumano west of Lingayen, 16°11N, 119°44'E. IJN Kumano is towed to Santa Cruz, Luzon. USS Guitarro is damaged by depth charges, 15°54'N, 119°44'E, but remains on patrol.
1944 Submarine USS Gurnard lays mines off western Borneo.
1944 The blockading of the Nanpo Shoto region, by mining, begins as PROJECT MIKE commences. USAAF B-24s (42d Bomb Squadron), fly from Guam and stage through Isely Field, Saipan, where the mines are loaded and fuel tanks topped off. The B-24s lay 10 mines off Chichi Jima.
1944 RAAF Mitchells sink Japanese auxiliary submarine chaser Cha 118 off Soemba Island, N.E.I., 09°38'S, 120°17'E.
1944 Destroyer USS Plunkett shells German troop concentrations and pillboxes. She carries out shore bombardment against gun emplacement south of Ventimiglia.
1945 First jet carrier landing: a Ryan FR "Fireball" on USS Wake Island.
1951 Soviet aircraft shoot at Neptune Patrol bomber (VP-6) on weather reconnaissance mission near Siberia. U.S. aircraft fails to return.
1952 1st hydrogen bomb exploded by United States at Eniwetok Atoll.
1956 Holland & Spain withdrew from Olympics, protest Soviets in Hungary.
1956 President Eisenhower re-elected defeating Adlai E Stevenson.
1957 Felix Gaillard becomes premier of France.
1967 Helicopter from USS Coral Sea rescues 37-man crew of Liberian freighter Royal Fortunes aground on reef in Tonkin Gulf.
1967 US launched Surveyor 6; for a soft landing on Moon Nov 9
1978 The Shah places Iran under military rule.
1984 President Ronald Reagan landslide (won 49 states) re-election over Walter Mondale.
1985 Challenger 9, lands at Edwards AFB, completing 22nd Space Shuttle Mission.
1985 General Jaruzelski elected Poland's head of state.
By Cap. Teancum:
1914 - Combined Japanese-British night assault on German held city of Tsingtao. The Germans surrendered in the morning.
1963 - General Minh takes over leadership of South Vietnam. In the aftermath of the November 1 coup that resulted in the murder of President Ngo Dinh Diem, Gen. Duong Van Minh, leading the Revolutionary Military Committee of the dissident generals who had conducted the coup, takes over leadership of South Vietnam.
U.S. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge cabled President Kennedy, "We could neither manage nor stop [the coup] once it got started...It is equally certain that the ground in which the coup seed grew into a robust plant was prepared by us, and that the coup would not have happened [as] it did without our permission." Lodge's words were more than a little disingenuous since he had long been a proponent of removing Diem from power.
Following Diem's death, a Buddhist named Nguyen Ngoc Tho became premier, but the real power was held by the Revolutionary Military Committee headed by General Minh. The new government earned U.S. approval in part by pledging not to become a dictatorship and announcing, "The best weapon to fight communism is democracy and liberty." However, Minh was unable to form a viable government and he himself was overthrown in a bloodless coup led by Gen. Nguyen Khanh in January 1964.
1970 - South Vietnamese forces attack into Cambodia. South Vietnamese forces launch a new offensive into Cambodia, advancing across a 100-mile-wide front in southeastern Cambodia. The new offensive was aimed at cleaning out border sanctuaries and blocking North Vietnamese forces from moving through Cambodia into South Vietnam. The 6,000-man South Vietnamese task force pulled out on November 11 after failing to find new Communist troop sanctuaries. Forty-one enemy soldiers were reportedly killed in the operation.
__________________ All warfare is based on deception. Sun Tzu - Art of war - Chapter One - Laying Plans
1917 Bolshevik Revolution began with the capture of the Winter Palace.
Today's book:
The Bolshevik Revolution, 1917-1923 by Edward Hallett Carr
Book Review:
This is the definitive source for an unbiased account of the Russian Revolution. Volume one of a three volume series, it covers the origins of the Bolshevik party to and through the taking of power in 1917. The most immediately apparent attribute to this work is its even handedness; this is the place to go if you want an account of what really happened, not the traditional right-wing or left-wing spin.
1797 Silas Horton Stringham, naval officer, U.S., d. 1876.
1879 Leon Davidovitz Trotsky, revolutionary, who got what he deserved.
Died...
1225 St. Engelbert I, Archbishop of Cologne, murdered.
1837 Elijah P Lovejoy, publisher, murdered at 34, by a pro-slavery mob.
1944 Richard Sorge & Ozaki, Soviet spies, hanged in Tokyo.
1962 Eleanor Roosevelt, 1st Lady (1933-1945), at 78.
1980 Steve McQueen, actor ("The Sand Pebbles", "The Great Escape"), at 50.
Event...
1519 University of Leuven convicted teaching of Luther.
1581 Queen Elizabeth I and Francois of Anjou wed.
1637 Anne Hutchinson is banished from Massachusetts for heresy.
1659 Peace of Pyreneeen: French King Louis XIV and Spanish King Philip IV.
1775 Lord Dunmore, promised freedom to male slaves who joined British army.
1793 French Revolution abolishes Christianity in favor of "Reason".
1794 French troops conquered Nijmegen.
1805 Lewis and Clark 1st sights Pacific Ocean
1811 Battle of Tippecanoe, William Henry Harrison defeaed Tecumseh.
1820 President Rutherford B Hayes and Samuel J Tilden claim presidential victory Tilden wins election but Electoral college selects Hayes
1861 Battle of Port Royal Bay/Ft Walker/Ft Beauregard, SC, Naval forces under Rear Admiral Samuel F. DuPont capture Port Royal Sound, SC.
1861 Grant's First Battle: Belmont, Mo.
1863 Battle of Rappahannock Station & Kelly's Ford, VA.
1872 Ship Mary Celeste sails from New York, bound for mystery. Found abandoned 4 weeks later.
1876 President Rutherford B Hayes and Samuel J Tilden both claim presidential victory. Tilden won the popular vote, but the Electoral college selected Hayes
1881 Naval Advisory Board submits report recommending the new ships in U.S. Navy be constructed of steel instead of iron.
1900 Members of the Royal Canadian Dragoons engage two large Boer commandos at Liliefontein in South African. Three Canadians win the Victoria Cross in this action.
1908 Dutch captured the Venezuelan Navy.
1914 Japan attacks German concession at Tsing-tao, China.
1916 Woodrow Wilson re-elected President.
1917 Battle of Beersheba: British take Gaza from the Turks, on the third try.
1917 Canadian troops are consolidating their new trench lines after capturing Passchendaele and all other objectives yesterday. Although the Canadians have achieved what the other Allied armies could not, the casualty roll will be enormous: 15,654 dead and wounded for the war-weary Dominion.
1918 Robert Goddard demonstrated tube-launched solid propellant rockets
1918 United Press erroneously reports an armistice had been signed
1931 Chinese People's Republic proclaimed by Mao Tse Tung
1936 Spanish Civil War: Battle for Madrid began.
1939 US Naval Attaché, Berlin, was informed by an official of the German Navy Ministry that it had been "definitely established that no German U-boat had torpedoed the Athenia." The German Navy considered the incident "closed as far as the Navy was concerned" and possessed only "an academic interest in how the ship was sunk."
1940 British freighter Cambridge is sunk by mine (laid by German auxiliary minelayer Passat on 31 October-1 November) off Wilson's Promontory, Australia.
1941 Destroyers USS Lansdale, USS Charles F. Hughes, and USS Gleaves, while in TU 4.1.2 escorting convoy ON 30, make depth charge attacks on sound contact. Destroyer USS Madison sights bleeding whale soon thereafter, leading to the conclusion that the warships had attacked a large marine mammal.
1941 The Marine Corps Reserve of 23 battalions completed its mobilization.
1942 FDR broadcasts to the French, first presidential address in a foreign language.
1942 Women's Reserve Reestablished. (US)
1942 SBDs (VMSB 132), TBFs (VT 8), Marine F4Fs, and USAAF P-39s from Henderson Field, Guadalcanal, attack Japanese convoy, damaging destroyers IJN Naganami and IJN Takanami.
1942 Off Guadalcanal, miscellaneous auxiliary Majaba is torpedoed by Japanese midget submarine Ha.11 (launched from submarine I-20) off Lunga Point. Destroyers USS Lansdowne and USS Lardner depth charge I-20, but the submarine escapes destruction. Ha.11, her mission completed, is scuttled.
1942 Transport Thomas Stone is torpedoed by German submarine U-205, western Mediterranean, 37°32'N, 00°01'E.
1942 Italian submarine DMB Antonio Sciesa is sunk by USAAF aircraft off coast of Libya, 32°05'N, 23°59'E.
1942 U.S. freighter La Salle is torpedoed and sunk with all hands (including 13 Armed Guard) by German submarine U-159 about 350 miles southeast of the Cape of Good Hope, South Africa, 40°00'S, 21°30'E. When the merchantman, which is carrying ammunition, explodes, the cataclysmic blast rains debris on her assailant's decks nearby, wounding three German submariners.
1942 U.S. freighter West Humhaw, en route from Freetown, Sierra Leone, to Takoradi, Gold Coast, is torpedoed and sunk by German submarine U-161 at 04°21'N, 02°42'W. There are no casualties among the 39-man merchant crew, the 16-man Armed Guard, and the five passengers. British ML 281 rescues all hands and transports them to Takoradi.
1942 U.S. freighter Nathaniel Hawthorne, enroute to New York in convoy TAG 19, is torpedoed and sunk by German submarine U-508 at 11°34'N, 63°26'W; the merchantman sinks with a rapidity that does not allow lifeboats to be launched. For his bravery as he directs his men to safety, Lieutenant Kenneth Muir, the Armed Guard commander, is awarded the Navy Cross (posthumously).
1942 British trawlers rescue two boatloads of survivors from U.S. freighter William Clark, sunk by German submarine U-354 on 4 November; HMS St. Elstan rescues 26; HMS Cape Palliser 15. The third boat, with 23 men, is never seen again; 18 of 41 merchant seamen are lost, as are 13 of the 30-man Armed Guard.
1943 USAAF aircraft (14th Air Force) bomb Japanese shipping in Amoy, China, harbor, sinking army cargo ships No.28 Nagata Maru and No.6 Inushima Maru, and auxiliary sailing vessel Kanlu.
1943 Troop transport Santa Elena, struck by aerial torpedo while in convoy KMF 25A the previous afternoon, suffers further damage when accidentally rammed by damaged Dutch transport Marnix Van St. Aldegonde (then under tow). The cumulative damage from the torpedo and the collision nullifies the efforts to tow the crippled Santa Elena to port and she sinks that morning. Four of the 133-man merchant crew perish in the abandonment, but the 44-man Armed Guard survives intact.
1944 President Roosevelt won an unprecedented fourth term in the White House, defeating Wendell Willkie for the second time.
1944 Motor torpedo boat PT-301 is damaged by accidental explosion off western New Guinea, 01°15'S, 136°23'E.
1944 Submarine USS Albacore is sunk by mine off the northern tip of Honshu, 41°49'N, 141°11'E.
1944 Submarine USS Greenling sinks Japanese transport No.8 Kiri Maru and merchant tanker K_tai Maru, 34°34'N, 138°35'E.
1944 British motor vessel Ernebank rescues 16 survivors of U.S. tanker Fort Lee, torpedoed and sunk by German submarine U-181 on 2 November 1944.
1944 Chinese New 22nd Div takes Shwego in northern Burma.
1949 King Faruk disbanded Egyptian parliament.
1951 Constitution of Jordan passed.
1954 US spy plane shot down by Russians over Sea of Japan.
1961 France performed an underground nuclear test at Ecker Algeria
1966 Lunar Orbiter 2 launched by US.
1967 Surveyor 6 launched for soft landing on Moon.
1968 U.S.S.R. performs nuclear test at Novaya Zemlya U.S.S.R.
1972 President Nixon re-elected defeating George McGovern.
1973 The War Powers Act becomes law. (US)
1981 France performed a nuclear test
1982 Turkey adopted its constitution.
1983 Bomb explodes in US Capitol, causing heavy damage but no injuries.
1985 Colombian troops end 27-hr siege of Bogota's Palace of Justice.
By Cap. Teancum:
1861 - Battle of Belmont, Missouri. Union forces under Ulysses S. Grant overrun a Confederate camp at Belmont, Missouri, but are forced to flee when additional Confederate troops arrive. Although Grant claimed victory, the Union gained no ground and left the Confederates in firm control of that section of the Mississippi.
This engagement was part of Grant's plan to capture the Confederate stronghold at Columbus, Kentucky, just across the river from Belmont, by first driving away the Confederate garrison at Belmont. General Leonidas Polk, Confederate commander at Columbus, had posted about 1,000 men around Belmont to protect both sides of the river. On the evening of November 6, Grant sailed 3,000 troops down the Mississippi River from Cairo, Illinois. They landed early on November 7, just three miles above the Belmont, and proceeded to attack. Upon hearing noise from the battle, Polk sent another 2,500 troops across the river to provide relief for his beleaguered Rebels. The Yankees routed the arriving reinforcements and scattered them along the river. At that point, the Union troops began to celebrate their victory and loot the Confederate camp.
Grant had ordered a small Union force under General Charles Smith to advance from Paducah, which lay to the northeast, to provide a diversion and keep Polk from sending any more reinforcements to Belmont. Grant hoped that Polk would believe that Smith's advance was the primary attack and that Belmont was the diversion. Polk did not buy it, and he dispatched additional reinforcements to Belmont. Five Confederate regiments arrived as Grant ordered his men to return to the boats. Grant himself narrowly escaped capture, but he was able to get most of his force back on the river. The Yankees retreated to Cairo.
Grant lost 120 dead and 487 wounded or captured, while the Confederates lost 105 dead and 536 wounded or captured. Although he gained no ground, Grant demonstrated that, unlike many other Union generals, he was willing to mount a campaign using the resources at hand rather than calling for reinforcements. This trait served Grant well during the war, and it eventually carried him to the top of the Union army.
1944 - Soviet master spy is hanged by the Japanese. On this day in 1944, Richard Sorge, a half-Russian, half-German Soviet spy, who had used the cover of a German journalist to report on Germany and Japan for the Soviet Union, is hanged by his Japanese captors.
Sorge fought in World War I in the German army, and then earned his doctorate in political science at the University of Hamburg. He joined Germany's Communist Party in 1919, traveling to the USSR in 1924. His first major assignment for Soviet intelligence was in the late 1920s, when he was sent to China to organize a spy ring. Returning to Germany, he joined the Nazi Party in 1933 to perfect his cover as a loyal German. He proceeded to develop a reputation as a respected journalist working for the Frankfurter Zeitung, finally convincing his editors to send him to Tokyo as a foreign correspondent in the mid-1930s. Once in Japan, Sorge proceeded once again to create a spy ring, which included an adviser to the Japanese cabinet and an American communist, who was also working for Soviet intelligence as Sorge's interpreter.
Sorge had so successfully ingratiated himself with the German diplomatic community in Japan that he was allowed to work out of the German embassy, giving him access to confidential files. At the same time, he also befriended Japanese government officials, attempting to convince them not to go to war with the Soviet Union.
In May 1941, Sorge reported back to Moscow that Hitler was planning an invasion of the Soviet Union, and that 170 divisions were preparing to invade on June 20, but Stalin ignored the warning. Sorge was also able to report, in August 1941, that Japan had plans to attack targets in the South Pacific, not in the Soviet Union. This enabled Stalin to remove troops from the Manchurian border, freeing them up for when the Germans finally invaded, as there would be no "eastern front."
But Sorge's brilliant spy career came to an end on October 18, 1941, when Japanese counterintelligence exposed his operation and he was arrested, along with 34 members of his ring. He was finally hanged in 1944. Twenty years later, he was officially declared a Hero of the Soviet Union.
1957 - Gaither Report calls for more U.S. missiles and fallout shelters. The final report from a special committee called by President Dwight D. Eisenhower to review the nation's defense readiness indicates that the United States is falling far behind the Soviets in missile capabilities, and urges a vigorous campaign to build fallout shelters to protect American citizens.
The special committee had been called together shortly after the stunning news of the success of the Soviet Sputnik I in October 1957. Headed by Ford Foundation Chairman H. Rowan Gaither, the committee concluded that the United States was in danger of losing a war against the Soviets. Only massive increases in the military budget, particularly an accelerated program of missile construction, could hope to deter Soviet aggression. It also suggested that American citizens were completely unprotected from nuclear attack and proposed a $30 billion program to construct nationwide fallout shelters.
Although the committee's report was supposed to be secret, many of its conclusions soon leaked out to the press, causing a minor panic among the American people. President Eisenhower was less impressed. Intelligence provided by U-2 spy plane flights over Russia indicated that the Soviets were not the mortal threat suggested by the Gaither Report. Eisenhower, a fiscal conservative, was also reluctant to commit to the tremendously increased military budget called for by the committee. He did increase funding for the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles and for civil defense programs, but ignored most of the other recommendations made in the report. Democrats instantly went on the attack, charging that Eisenhower was leaving the United States open to Soviet attack. By 1960, Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kennedy was still hammering away at the supposed "missile gap" between the United States and much stronger Soviet stockpiles.
1964 - U.S. intelligence asserts numbers of North Vietnamese in South Vietnam growing. The latest U.S. intelligence analysis claims that Communist forces in South Vietnam now include about 30,000 professional full-time soldiers, many of whom are North Vietnamese. Before this, it was largely reported that the war was merely an internal insurgent movement in South Vietnam opposed to the government in Saigon. This information discredited that theory and indicated that the situation involves North and South Vietnam.
In Saigon, the South Vietnamese government banned the sale of the current issue of Newsweek because it carried a photograph showing a Viet Cong prisoner being tortured by South Vietnamese army personnel.
1966 - McNamara shouted down at Harvard speech. Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara faces a storm of student protest when he visits Harvard University to address a small group of students. As he left a dormitory, about 100 demonstrators shouted at him and demanded a debate. When McNamara tried to speak, supporters of the Students for a Democratic Society shouted him down. McNamara then attempted to leave, but 25 demonstrators crowded around his automobile so that it could not move. Police intervened and escorted McNamara from the campus.
__________________ All warfare is based on deception. Sun Tzu - Art of war - Chapter One - Laying Plans
The Battle of Belmont: Grant Strikes South by Nathaniel Cheairs, Jr. Hughes
Book Description:
The battle of Belmont was the first battle in the western theater of the Civil War and, more importantly, the first battle of the war fought by Ulysses S. Grant. It set a pattern for warfare not only in the Mississippi Valley but at Fort Donelson and Shiloh as well. Grant's 7 November 1861 strike against the Southern forces at Belmont, in southeastern Missouri on the Mississippi River, made use of the newly outfitted Yankee timberclads and all the infantry available at the staging area in Cairo, Illinois.
The Confederates, led by Leonidas Polk and Gideon Pillow, had the advantages of position and superior numbers. They hoped to smash Grant's expeditionary force on the Missouri shore and cut off the escape of the Illinois and Iowa troops from their boats. The confrontation was a bloody, all-day fight that a veteran of a dozen major battles would later call "frightful to contemplate." At first successful, the Federals were eventually driven from the field and withdrew up the Mississippi to safety. The battle cost some twenty percent of his troops, but as a result of this engagement he became known as an audacious fighting general.
Using diaries and letters of participants, official documents, and contemporary newspaper accounts, Nathaniel Hughes provides the only full-length tactical study of the battle that catapulted Grant into prominence. Throughout the narrative, Hughes draws sketches of the lives and fates of individual soldiers who fought on both sides, especially of the colorful and enormously dissimilar principal actors, Grant and Polk.
1900 Margaret Mitchell ("GWTW"), who had a grandfather at Gettysburg.
1948 Dale A Gardner, Cmdr USN/Astronaut (STS 8, STS 51A)
Died...
1226 King Louis VIII the Lion of France (1223-26).
1308 Duns Scotus, coined the word "dunce"
1933 King Mohammed Nadir, Shah of Afghanistan, assassinated by Abdul Khallig
1945 FM August von Mackensen, Conqueror of Romania in 1916, Nazi stooge .
1978 Norman Rockwell, artist, died in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, at 84.
1986 Vyacheslav M. Molotov, a genuine Old Bohlshevik, at 96.
Event...
392 Emperor Theodosius declare Christian religion, state religion
911 Duke Koenraad I chosen German King
1494 Uprising against Piero de' Medici in Florence Italy.
1519 Aztec Emperor Montezuma and Spanish Conquistador Hernan Cortez meet in Tenochtitlan.
1576 Pacificatie of Gent: 17 Dutch provinces signed anti-Spanish covenant.
1598 Spanish troops under Bernardino de Mendoza conquered Doetinchem.
1620 Battle of White Mountain, Prague.
1627 English fleet under George Villiers leaves Rhe.
1658 Battle of Sont: Swedish fleet beats Dutch.
1775 An American invasion force of 1100 men, led by General Benedict Arnold, arrived at Pointe Lévis in view of capturing Quebec.
1789 Elijah Craig brews the first bourbon whiskey from corn, Bourbon County, Ky.
1805 Lewis and Clark reach Pacific Ocean.
1838 Patriote forces engage Loyalist militia at Odelltown. Fifty patriotes are killed in the action for the loss of five Loyalists, prompting a hasty retreat of the rebels.
1861 Battle of Mount Ivy, KY.
1861 The Trent Affair; Capt Charles Wilkes seizes two Confederate diplomats from the British steamer Trent, causing an international controversy with Great Britain.
1864 Abraham Lincoln elected to his 2nd term as US President.
1884 German government recognized King Leopold II's Congo Free State
1892 Grover Cleveland elected US President
1904 President Theodore Roosevelt defeated Alton B Parker.
1917 Telephone Company (US) runs 1st ad for Army operators, gets 7,000 applicants.
1917 People's Commissars gives authority to Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin.
1918 Canadian troops cross into Belgian territory, liberating towns as they continue their pursuit of the retreating Germans towards Mons..
1923 Hitler's "Beer Hall Putsch" in Munich.
1924 Austria chancellor Ignaz Seipel, resigns after assassination attempt.
1932 Franklin Delano Roosevelt elected US President for 1st time.
1933 Franklin D. Roosevelt created the Civil Works Administration.
1939 Failed assassination attempt on Hitler in Burgerbraukeller, Munich.
1939 U.S. freighter Exeter is detained by French authorities.
1939 U.S. freighter Express is detained by British authorities at Gibraltar but is released the same day after her cargo is examined; freighter Tulsa, detained at London by the British since 23 October, is released; freighter Wacosta, detained by the British since 24 October, is released after cargo billed for delivery to Rotterdam, Holland, is seized as contraband.
1940 Admiral Kichasaburo Nomura is appointed Japanese Ambassador to the United States.
1940 U.S. freighter City of Rayville was sunk by mine (laid by German auxiliary minelayer Passat on 31 October-1 November) east of Cape Otway, Bass Strait, Australia; City of Rayville was first U.S. merchant ship sunk in World War II. Third Engineer Mack B. Bryan, who drown during the abandonment, was the first merchant marine casualty of World War II. The other 37 crewmen (one of whom is injured) reach safety at Apollo Bay.
1940 RAF bombed Munich.
1941 Destroyer USS Niblack damages Norwegian freighter Astra in collision, Reykjavik, Iceland.
1941 Naval Operating Base, Iceland, was established.
1942 Vichy-France dropped diplomatic relations with US
1942 The 2nd Raider Battalion (USMC) began its 150-mile perimeter patrol on Guadalcanal.
1942 Motor torpedo boats PT-61, PT-39, and PT-37 engage two Japanese destroyers south of Savo Island, Guadalcanal; PT-61 and PT-39 and IJN Mochizuki are damaged in the encounter.
1942 Submarine USS Seawolf sinks Japanese gunboat Keiko Maru off Cape San Augustin, Mindanao, P.I., 06°22'N, 126°03'E.
1942 U.S. freighter Edgar Allen Poe is torpedoed by Japanese submarine I-21 in a spirited fight 56 miles southeast of Amadee Light, Nouméa, New Caledonia, 22°14'S, 166°30'E, during which two crewmen are killed. A part of the crew (including the 14-man Armed Guard) remains on board while New Zealand minesweeper HMNZS Matai and corvette HMNZS Kiwi tow the vessel to Nouméa, where she will be declared a total loss.
1942 French North Africa is invaded in Operation TORCH. Allied Expeditionary Force under the supreme command of Lieutenant General Dwight D. Eisenhower, USA, lands at Casablanca, Oran, and Algiers. Allied Naval Force (Admiral Sir Andrew B. Cunningham, RN) is composed of three principal parts: Western Naval Task Force (Rear Admiral H. Kent Hewitt) lands troops (Major General George S. Patton, USA) near Casablanca; Center Naval Task Force (Commodore Thomas H. Troubridge, RN) lands troops (Major General Lloyd R. Fredendall, USA) at Oran; and Eastern Naval Task Force (Rear Admiral Sir Harold M. Burrough, RN) put troops (Major General Charles W. Ryder, USA) ashore at Algiers.
1942 U.S. naval vessels and carrier aircraft engage French naval forces at Casablanca, Morocco. On the morning of 8 November, French force (Rear Admiral Gervais de Lafonde in destroyer leader FS Milan) makes a valiant attempt to disrupt the landings off Casablanca, but is overwhelmed by gunfire from covering American ships. U.S. ships damaged at Casablanca are battleship USS Massachusetts, heavy cruiser USS Wichita, light cruiser USS Brooklyn, destroyers USS Ludlow and USS Murphy, and high speed minesweeper USS Palmer by French shore batteries off North Africa; high speed minesweeper USS Stansbury by mine; and transport USS Leedstown by German aerial torpedo.
1942 French ships sunk at Casablanca are merchant passenger liner Savoie Marseille and cargo ship Ile de Edienruder by USS Massachusetts; destroyer FS Fougeux by USS Massachusetts and heavy cruiser USS Tuscaloosa; destroyer FS Boulonnais by light cruiser USS Brooklyn at 33°40'N, 07°34'W; destroyers FS Brestois and FS Frondeur by U.S. ships; submarines FS Oréade, FS Amphitrite, and FS Psyché by U.S. Navy carrier-based planes; submarine FS Sidi-Ferruch by planes (VGS-27) from aircraft escort vessel USS Suwannee; and merchant passenger liner Porthos, tanker Ouessant, and cargo ship Lipari. French ships damaged are battleship FS Jean Bart by battleship USS Massachusetts; submarine FS Le Tonnant by U.S. Navy ships; submarine FS Meduse by aircraft (VGS 29) from aircraft escort vessel USS Santee; and light cruiser FS Primaguet, destroyer leader FS Milan, and destroyers FS Albatros and FS Alcyon by naval aircraft.
1942 French sloops FS Grandiere, FS Commandant Delage, and FS Gracieuse sortie on the afternoon of 8 November and pick up survivors from the French warships sunk in battle that morning. The latter two sloops will repeat the operation on 10 November.
1942 French submarine FS Amazone makes unsuccessful attack upon light cruiser USS Brooklyn.
1942 Submarine USS Herring damages French cargo ship Ville du Havre off French Morocco, 33°34'N, 07°52'W.
1942 German planes bomb Allied shipping off Algiers. U.S. freighter Exceller is damaged by near-misses; there are no casualties to the 32 merchant seamen and the 19-man Armed Guard.
1942 British patrol boat rescues 34 survivors of U.S. freighter West Kebar, sunk on 29 October by German submarine U-129, and transports them to Barbados, British West Indies.
1942 Hitler proclaimed fall of Stalingrad.
1943 Japanese dive bombers attack U.S. ships off Cape Torokina, Bougainville, damaging light cruiser USS Birmingham, 06°00'S, 154°00'E, and attack transports Fuller and President Jackson, 06°15'S, 155°05'E.
1943 Destroyers USS Anthony and USS Hudson accidentally engage motor torpedo boats PT-163, PT-169, and PT-170; fortunately, neither side suffers any damage in the mistaken encounter.
1943 Submarine USS Bluefish sinks Japanese army tanker Kyokuei Maru, 17°00'N, 116°19'E. Although USS Bluefish claims to destroy five more ships, none are damaged; escort vessel IJN Tsushima counterattacks unsuccessfully.
1943 Submarine USS Rasher sinks Japanese merchant tanker Tango Maru, 00°25'N, 119°45'E, and escapes attacks by auxiliary submarine chaser Cha 41.
1943 Advanced Amphibious Training Base, Plymouth, England, is established. It will be one of the bases used in the buildup for the cross-channel invasions that will begin in June 1944; the command will not be disestablished until 7 December 1945.
1944 25,000 Hungarian Jews are "loaned" to the Nazis for forced labor.
1944 Japanese party, armed with automatic weapons and light mortars, lands on Ngeregong Island five miles northeast of Peleliu, under cover of typhoon, and forces evacuation (without loss) of men from medium infantry landing craft LCI(M)-740 that had been landed there three days before to provide protection for ships utilizing Denges passage.
1944 Submarine USS Growler is sunk, probably by Japanese destroyer IJN Shigure, patrol-escort vessel Chiburi, and Coast Defense Vessel No.19 off Mindoro.
1944 Submarine USS Gunnel attacks Japanese convoy off west coast of Luzon, and sinks torpedo boat Sagi about 60 miles west of Lingayen Gulf, 16°09'N, 118°56'E.
1944 Submarine USS Hardhead, despite proximity of two escorts, sinks Japanese tanker Manei Maru about 90 miles southwest of Manila, 13°30'N, 119°25'E.
1944 Submarine USS Queenfish attacks Japanese convoy off southern Kyushu, and sinks cargo ship Hakko Maru and auxiliary submarine chaser Ryusei Maru near Uji Gunto, 31°10'N, 129°39'E.
1944 Submarine USS Redfin attacks Japanese convoy in South China Sea, and sinks merchant tanker No.2 Nichinan Maru, 14°00'N, 116°48'E.
1944 Submarine USS Sea Fox sinks Japanese merchant cargo ship Keijo Maru, 29°05'N, 127°40'E.
1944 25,000 Hungarian Jews are "loaned" to Nazis for forced labor.
1944 Last German troops at Walcheren surrendered.
1956 UN demands the USSR leave Hungary, and is ignored.
1956 Navy Stratolab balloon (LCDRs Malcolm D. Ross and M. Lee Lewis) betters world height record soaring to 76,000 feet over Black Hills, SD, on flight to gather meteorological, cosmic ray, and other scientific data.
1957 Great Britain performed atmospheric nuclear test at Christmas Island.
1960 John F Kennedy beat VP Richard M Nixon to become US President
1965 British Indian Ocean Territory formed.
1967 U.S. performed nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
1975 Over 100 Sailors and Marines from USS Inchon and USS Bagley fight a fire aboard a Spanish merchant vessel at Palma.
1980 Voyager 1 space probe revealed 15th moon of Saturn.
1984 Anna Fisher became the 1st "mom" to go into orbit. (They must not have known my mother...)
1987 11 died as a bomb planted by the Irish Republican Army exploded at Ulster Remembrance Day Service
1988 VP George HW Bush beat Mike Dukakis for US Presidency.
1990 Saddam fired his army chief & threatend to destroy the Arabian peninsula.
1990 President GHW Bush orders 100,000 additional US troops to the Persian Gulf.
__________________ All warfare is based on deception. Sun Tzu - Art of war - Chapter One - Laying Plans
Battles of the Thirty Years War: From White Mountain to Nordlingen, 1618-1635 by William P. Guthrie
Book Description:
This is the first complete detailed study of the military aspects of the first half of this important conflict (1618-1635). Each chapter deals with a particular battle, but Guthrie also examines wider questions of strategy, leadership, armaments, organization, logistics, and war finances. The main emphasis is on the unique character and aspects of the Thirty Years War, with attention to the evolution of warfare and weapons, the impact of this evolution on actual operations, and the replacement of the previously dominant "tercio" style of warfare by the nascent linear system. The Thirty Years War is considered within its own context, rather than merely as a poor relation to the linear or Napoleonic periods. The campaigns covered in this volume include the defeat of the Bohemian and German Protestants (1618-1623), the Danish War (1625-1629), the victories of the Swedes under Gustavus Adolphus (1630-1632), and the final defeat of the Swedes at Nordlingen in 1634. Guthrie also pays particular notice to the important battle of Breitenfeld. With the inclusion of many secondary theaters and minor actions, the whole of this work constitutes a complete military history of the German War.
1600 King Charles I of England (1625-1649), executed 1649, at 48
1823 William Henry Forney, Brig Gen, C.S.A., d. 1894
1825 Ambrose P Hill, Lt Gen, C.S.A.,
1841 King Edward VII of England (1901-10)
Died...
959 Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus, Byzantine Emperor. (913-59)
1888 Mary Kelly, 25, Jack the Ripper's last victim.
1952 Chaim Weizmann, first President of Israel (1948-1952), at 57.
1953 Abdul-Aziz ibn Sa'ud, founder of Saudi Arabia, at about 73 .
Event...
694 Spanish King Egica accuses Jews of aiding Moslems/sentenced to slavery
1492 Peace of Etaples between Henry VII of England and Charles VIII of France.
1526 Maria of Hapsburg expels the Jews from Pressburg.
1653 After 12 years of war and guerrilla raids, the Iroquois sign a peace treaty with France. The peace will last only five years.
1729 Treaty of Seville: Spain makes peace with Anglo-French alliance.
1799 "Coup de 18 de Brumaire" -- Nepoleon Bonaparte seized power in France for the first time.
1806 Fra Diavolo hanged by the French in the Piazza del Mercato at Naples.
1835 Battle of Lipantitlan: Texians defeat Mexican.
1860 Piedmontese Army invests Gaeta, held by Neapolitan Royalists.
1861 Combat at Piketown/Fry Mountain, Ky.
1861 Gauley Bridge, WVa.
1862 Gen Grant issues orders to bar Jews from serving under him.
1864 Gen Sherman issued preliminary plans for his "March to the Sea"
1915 Italian liner Ancona sinks by German torpedoes, killing 272
1916 Sir Sam Hughes, Canada's Minister of Militia, is fired from his portfolio by Prime Minister Sir Robert Borden, thus ending a 2 1/2 year reign of patronage and mismanagement.
1917 Twelfth Battle of the Isonzo (Caporetto) ends (from Oct 24).
1918 Bavarian radicals proclaim a republic.
1918 Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicates after German defeat in WW I.
1921 Mussolini forms the Partito Nazionalista Fascista.
1921 The Unknown Soldier arrives at Washington aboard USS Olympia.
1923 March of the Beer Hall Putsch. The Putsch ends this day in the failure of Adolph Hitler and the National Socialists to overthrow the German government.
1925 Hitler's Nazi Party forms the SS within the Brown Shirts.
1938 "Kristallnacht" (Crystal Night) Major anti-Jewish pogrom in Germany. Nazi stormtroopers attacked Jews.
1939 Netherlands: Germans illegally capture two British officers at Venlo.
1941 Hitler threatened bishop Clemens earl von Galen of Munster.
1941 TU 4.1.4 departs Argentia, Newfoundland, to screen 31-ship convoy HX 159. It is the first escort task unit that includes in its composition a Coast Guard cutter, USCG Campbell. The convoy will not be attacked by U-boats although the presence of whales and blackfish result in attacks on sound contacts on five occasions.
1942 German occupiers put Erik Scavenius as Danish Premier.
1942 Transport number 44 departed with French Jews to nazi-Germany.
1942 Transport Leedstown. bombed and torpedoed by German planes, is torpedoed and sunk by German submarine U-173 near Algiers.
Indian Ocean
1942 U.S. freighter Marcus Whitman, proceeding independently to Dutch Guiana from Cape Town, South Africa, is torpedoed by Italian submarine DMB Leonardo da Vinci at 05°45'S, 32°40'W, and abandoned without loss. DMB Leonardo da Vinci then finishes off the merchantman with gunfire.
1942 Destroyer USS Biddle rescues survivors (3 of 10 Armed Guard sailors, 10 of the 40-man merchant crew and 1 of the 2 passengers) from U.S. freighter Nathanael Hawthorne, sunk by German submarine U-508 on 7 November.
1942 Destroyer USS Russell rescues that portion of the crew of U.S. freighter Edgar Allen Poe who abandoned ship after she was torpedoed by I-21 the night before.
1943 Submarine USS Rasher unsuccessfully attacks Balikpapan-bound Japanese fleet oiler Toa Maru, 00°34'N, 118°59'E.
1943 Submarine USS Sargo sinks Japanese army cargo ship Taga Maru, 21°40'N, 131°12'E.
1943 Submarine USS Seawolf unsuccessfully attacks Japanese cargo vessel Hokuriku Maru, 20°38'N, 118°33'E
1944 Marine fighter aircraft based on Peleliu commence air strikes on Japanese on Ngeregong Island. These strikes, together with bombardment by vessels of LCI(L)-Flotilla 13, will continue on 10 November, rendering it untenable for the invaders.
1944 PROJECT MIKE continues as USAAF B-24s (42d Bomb Squadron) lay 10 mines in Futami Ko, Chichi Jima.
1944 Submarine USS Barbero attacks Japanese convoy and sinks merchant tanker Shimotsu Maru about 250 miles west of Manila, 14°32'N, 116°53'E.
1944 Submarine USS Haddo sinks Japanese fleet tanker No.2 Hishi Maru in Mindoro Straits, 12°24'N, 120°45'E.
1944 Submarine USS Queenfish attacks Japanese convoy TAMA-28 in East China Sea, and sinks gunboat Chojusan Maru about 50 miles west of Kyushu, 31°15'N, 129°10'E.
1944 Japanese cruiser IJN Kumano, damaged by U.S. submarines on 6 November 1944, breaks her anchor and drifts aground off Santa Cruz, Luzon.
1944 Japanese TA Operation (fourth phase) convoy reaches Ormoc Bay and unloads men and materiel brought from Manila.
1944 USAAF B-25s and P-38s (13th Air Force) and motor torpedo boats PT-492, PT-497, PT-524, and PT-525 begin attacks against Japanese convoy in Ormoc Bay, the former damaging escort vessels IJN Okinawa and IJN Shimushu.
1944 U.S. tanker Tumacacori rescues 17 survivors of U.S. tanker Fort Lee, torpedoed and sunk by German submarine U-181 on 2 November 1944.
1944 German resistance south of the Maas River generally ends. The Canadian Army had cleared the enemy from the Scheldt estuary and Allied supply ships were then free to enter the waterway and open a new supply base for the advancing forces.
1944 Red Cross wins Nobel peace prize.
1944 Walcheren of nazi troops purged.
1946 President Truman ended war time wage/price freeze.
1950 Task Force 77 conducted first attack on the Yalu River bridges. During a mission from the USS Philippine Sea, two MiGs attacked the strike aircraft group. The propeller driven aircraft turned into the enemy and broke up their attack. The leader of the covering group, VF-111 commander Lieutenant Commander William Amen, spotted one MiG climbing from 4,000 to 15,000 feet (1,200 to 4,570 meters), where he spotted a returning aircraft and began to head "earthward" for the aircraft lining up on their attacks. But at the same time, the Panthers got on his tail, where they gave him several bursts of 20mm fire and saw several strikes appear on his aircraft. The MiG went over into a dive, but Amen did not break off and continued to fire into the MiG, making some good hits. At low altitude the Panther became hard to control due to rudder reversal as it approached its critical Mach number. At 3,000 feet (915 meters) the MiG, still totally committed to its dive, rolled over on its back. "He was either pyscho or could not leave the aircraft," thought Amen, and, pulling out his dive at 200 feet, began to gain altitude. Amen's wingman reported that the MiG struck the ground on the wooded slope of a hill and burned at once."(Thanx, Andy)
1953 Cambodia (now Kampuchea) gained independence within French Union
1961 USAF Major Robert M White takes X-15 to 30,970 m.
1967 1st unmanned Saturn V flight to test Apollo 4 reentry module.
1967 Surveyor 6 soft landed on the Moon
1970 Trial of Seattle 8 anti-war protesters began.
1972 U.S. performed a nuclear test at Nevada Test Site
1976 UN General Assembly condemns apartheid in South Africa.
1980 Iraqi President Saddam Hussein declared holy war against Iran.
1984 "Three Servicemen" Statue added to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
1989 East Berlin opened its borders.
1990 US President George HW Bush announces doubling of US forces in the Persian Gulf.
1993 Serbian army fired upon school in Sarajevo, 9 children died.
By Cap. Teancum:
1862 - General Ambrose Burnside assumes command of the Union Army of the Potomac following the removal of George B. McClellan.
This was a difficult time in the army. McClellan was beloved by many soldiers, and he had a loyal following among some in the command structure. But others detested him, and his successor would have a difficult time reconciling the pro- and anti-McClellan factions within the army's leadership. Furthermore, Ambrose Burnside was not the obvious choice for his replacement. Many favored General Joseph Hooker, who, like Burnside, commanded a corps in the army. Hooker had a strong reputation as a battlefield commander but had several liabilities: a reputation for drinking and cavorting with prostitutes and an acrimonious history with Henry Halleck, the general in chief of the Union armies. Halleck urged President Lincoln to name Burnside to head the Union's premier fighting force.
Burnside was a solid corps commander, but by his own admission was not fit to command an army. The Indiana native graduated from West Point in 1847, 18th in a class of 20. After serving for five years in the military, Burnside entered private business. He worked to develop a new rifle, but his firm went bankrupt when he refused to pay a bribe to secure a contract to sell his weapon to the U.S. army. Burnside then worked as treasurer for the Illinois Central Railroad under McClellan, who was president of the line.
When the war erupted, Burnside became a colonel in charge of the First Rhode Island volunteers. He fought without distinction at First Bull Run but then headed an expeditionary force that captured Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, in February 1862. Burnside returned to the Army of the Potomac and was given command of the Ninth Corps, which fought hard at Antietam in September. Now, he was tapped for the top position in the army over his own protestations. He reluctantly assumed command and proceeded to plan an attack on Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. In December, his army moved toward Lee at Fredericksburg. Several delays did not, unfortunately, deter Burnside from his plan. He attacked Lee's entrenched troops on December 13 and suffered horrendous loses.
Within one month, officers began to mutiny against Burnside's authority, and Hooker assumed command of the Army of the Potomac on January 25. After the war, he served as Governor of Rhode Island and as a U.S. Senator before his death in 1881.
1870 - Battle of Coulmiers. At first the Prussians held against greatly superior French forces, but by the end of the day they were forced to give ground.
1944 - Canadians capture Antwerp.
1965 - Antiwar protestor sets himself afire. In the second such antiwar incident within a week, Roger Allen LaPorte, a 22-year-old member of the Catholic Worker movement, immolates himself in front of the United Nations headquarters in New York. Before dying the next day, LaPorte declared, "I'm against wars, all wars. I did this as a religious act." LaPorte's act of protest followed that of Norman Morrison, a 32-year-old Quaker from Baltimore, who immolated himself in front of the Pentagon on November 2.
1967 - Captain Lance Sijan shot down over North Vietnam. While on a mission over Laos, Capt. Lance P. Sijan ejects from his disabled McDonnell Douglas F-4C Phantom jet near Vinh, North Vietnam. Despite suffering a skull fracture, a mangled right hand, and a compound fracture of the left leg during his ejection, Sijan successfully evaded capture for more than six weeks.
Eventually Sijan's wounds and lack of sustenance overwhelmed him and he collapsed along a road, where he was found by North Vietnamese troops. After several days of captivity, Sijan gathered his strength and escaped. Still weakened and suffering from his injuries, Sijan was recaptured and tortured, and then transported to the infamous prison known as the Hanoi Hilton. While there, he contracted pneumonia and died. Throughout his ordeal, Captain Sijan never gave up his desire to escape and resisted his captors to the very end. When the American prisoners of war (POWs) were released in 1973, several of Sijan's fellow POWs immediately initiated a recommendation for Sijan to receive the Medal of Honor. On March 4, 1976, President Gerald Ford presented the medal to Captain Sijan's father in a ceremony at the White House.
1970 - Supreme Court refuses to rule on legality of Vietnam War. The Supreme Court refuses to hear a challenge by the state of Massachusetts regarding the constitutionality of the Vietnam War. By a 6-3 vote, the justices rejected the effort of the state to bring a suit in federal court in defense of Massachusetts residents claiming protection under a state law that allowed them to refuse military service in an undeclared war.
__________________ All warfare is based on deception. Sun Tzu - Art of war - Chapter One - Laying Plans
1799 "Coup de 18 de Brumaire" -- Nepoleon Bonaparte seized power in France for the first time.
Today's book:
Making Democracy in the French Revolution by James Livesey
Book Description:
This book reasserts the importance of the French Revolution to an understanding of the nature of modern European politics and social life. Scholars currently argue that the French Revolution did not significantly contribute to the development of modern political values. They no longer hold that the study of the Revolution offers any particular insight into the dynamics of historical change. James Livesey contends that contemporary historical study is devalued through this misinterpretation of the French Revolution and offers an alternative approach and a new thesis.
Livesey argues that the European model of democracy was created in the Revolution, a model with very specific commitments that differentiate it from Anglo-American liberal democracy. The fundamental argument in the book is that these democratic values were created by identifiable actors seeking to answer political, economic, and social problems. The book traces the development of this democratic idea within the structures of the French Republic and the manner in which the democratic aspiration moved beyond formal politics to become embedded in institutions of economic and cultural life. This innovative work rewrites the history of French politics between 1795 and 1799.
1982 Leonid Brezhnev, President of the USSR, heart attack at 75.
Event...
846 Lothair I's Frankish army ambushed by Moslem raiders at Itri, Italy.
911 Conrad I elected King of the Germans.
1444 Battle at Varna, Black Sea: 30,000 Crusaders were waiting to sail to Constantinople when they were attacked by 120,000 Turks. The Polish King Ladislas was killed in a bold attempt to capture the Sultan Murad. The subsequent retreat foreshadowed Christendom's general retreat before the advancing Ottomans.
1526 John I Zapolyai of Transylvania chosen King of Hungary
1567 Battle at St-Denis: French government army vs Huguenots.
1584 Willem Louis of Nassau appointed viceroy of Friesland.
1630 Failed palace revolution against Richelieu in France.
1674 Dutch formally cede New Netherlands to English, for the second time.
1696 Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville and 120 raiders reached the English fishing village of Ferryland (Newfoundland), which was summarily destroyed.
1697 English parliament accepted army reduction.
1775 Congress votes to raise two battalions of Continental Marines, establishing the Marine Corps. "Resolved, That two Battalions of Marines be raised, consisting of one Colonel, two Lieutenant Colonels, two Majors, and other officers as usual in other regiments; and that they consist of an equal number of privates with other battalions; that particular care be taken, that no persons be appointed to office, or inlisted into said Battalions, but such as are good seamen, or so acquainted with maritime affairs as to be able to serve to advantage by sea when required: that they be inlisted and commissioned to serve for and during the present war between Great Britain and the colonies, unless dismissed by order of Congress: that they be distinguished by the names of the first and second battalions of American Marines, and that they be considered part of the number which the continental Army before Boston is ordered to consist of."
1782 Chillicote, Ohio, George Rodgers Clark defeats Indians and Tories - last "battle" of the Revolutionary War.
1801 Kentucky outlaws dueling
1808 US-Osage Treaty signed
1813 In one of the first naval "actions" on Lake Ontario, an American squadron of 6 armed schooners chased the Provincial Marine corvette Royal George into Kingston harbour.
1814 Congress enacts a draft, the War of 1812 ends before it is implemented
1834 HMS Beagle/Charles Darwin sailed from Valparaiso.
1836 Louis Napoleon banished to America
1861 Skirmish at Guyandott, WVa
1864 Austrian Archduke Maximilian became Emperor of Mexico (shot in 1867)
1864 Kingston, GA, burned during Sherman's March to Sea.
1865 Henry Wirz, Commandant of Andersonville, hanged.
1871 Following seven months of searching, foreign correspondent to the "New York Herald" Henry M. Stanley succeeded at last in locating Scottish missionary David Livingstone in Ujiji, Central Africa. Stanley prefaced his encounter with these words: 'Dr. Livingstone, I presume.'
1885 Gottlieb Daimler's motorcycle, world's 1st, unveiled.
1905 Sailors revolt in Kronstadt Russia.
1911 Imperial army recaptured Nanking. (blood bath)
1915 Fourth Battle of the Isonzo began. (to Dec 2)
1917 New Soviet government suspended freedom of press.
1918 Independence of Poland proclaimed by Jozef Pilsudski.
1918 Troops from the Black Watch and the Royal Canadian Regiment enter the Belgian city of Mons amid rumours of an impending armistice.
1918 German Emperor Wilhelm II flees to the Netherlands.
1926 Belgium Crown Prince Leopold wed Princess Astrid Bernadotte of Sweden.
1939 U.S. freighter Exeter, detained by French authorities since 8 November, is released after 1,400 bales of cottonseed hulk consigned to a Swiss buyer are removed as contraband.
1941 U.S.-escorted convoy WS 12, formed around carrier USS Ranger and transporting more than 20,000 British soldiers in six U.S. Navy transports, sails from Halifax.
1941 Destroyer USS Ericsson, screening convoy HX 157, depth charges sound contact later evaluated as a "doubtful" submarine.
1941 Commander in Chief Asiatic Fleet receives permission to withdraw river gunboats from the Yangtze and USMC forces from China.
1942 Light cruiser USS Raleigh, patrolling along the 175th meridian, encounters no Japanese patrol activity estimated to be in those waters west of the Ellice Islands.
1942 High speed minesweeper USS Southard sinks Japanese submarine I-15 five miles off Hada Bay, the northwest point of San Cristobal Island, Solomons, 10°13'S, 161°09'E.
1942 Japanese army cargo ship Chiyo Maru is sunk, agent unspecified, off Akyab, Burma.
1942 Off French North Africa, aircraft escort vessel USS Chenango ferries USAAF P-40s into Port Lyautey; French submarine FS Le Tonnant unsuccessfully attacks carrier USS Ranger, submarines USS Meduse and USS Antiope conduct similarly fruitless attacks against battleship USS Massachusetts and heavy cruiser USS Tuscaloosa.
1942 German submarine U-608 lays mines off New York City, east of Ambrose Light.
1942 Minelayer USS Salem is damaged when she is accidentally rammed by British landing craft HMS LCI(L) 166, South Brooklyn, New York.
1942 Survivors (8) of U.S. freighter West Kebar, sunk on 29 October by German submarine U-129, reach Guadalupe.
1942 Naval Station, Puerto Castillo, Honduras, is established.
1942 U.S. - British troops occupied Oran Algeria
1942 French North African forces ceased resisting the Allies. U.S. troops occupied airport of Port-Lyautey Morocco
1943 Submarine USS Albacore is accidentally damaged by U.S. four-engine bomber off New Ireland, 03°08'S, 150°17'E, but remains on patrol.
1943 Submarine USS Barb engages Japanese Keelung-to-Sasebo convoy, unsuccessfully attacking cargo ships Yamahagi Maru and damaging Nishi Maru. Escorting auxiliary minesweeper No.7 Toshi Maru counterattacks, but does not damage USS Barb.
1943 Submarine USS Scamp torpedoes Japanese transport Tokyo Maru, 03°30'N, 150°10'E; transport Mitakesan Maru takes the crippled ship in tow.
1943 British submarine HMS Tally Ho sinks Japanese water carrier Kisogawa Maru, 06°12'N, 99°25'E.
1943 Japanese cargo vessel Giyu Maru, damaged on 4 November 1943, sinks in Matchin Bay, 05°33'S, 154°45'E.
1943 PB4Y-1s (VB 103, VB 105, VB 110), RAF No. 311 (Czechoslovakian) Squadron Liberator, and an RAF Wellington sink German submarine U-966 in Bay of Biscay off northwest Spain, 44°00'N, 08°30'W; Spanish fishing trawlers rescue the survivors.
1943 Fifth Air Force makes a major attack on Rabaul.
1944 Ammunition ship USS Mount Hood is destroyed by accidental ammunition explosion in Seeadler Harbor, Manus, Admiralty Islands. The cataclysmic blast damages nearby escort carriers USS Petrof Bay and USS Saginaw Bay; destroyer USS Young; destroyer escorts USS Kyne, USS Lyman, USS Walter C. Wann, and USS Oberrender; high speed transport USS Talbot; destroyer tender USS Piedmont; miscellaneous auxiliary Argonne; cargo ship Aries; attack cargo ship Alhena oiler Cacapon internal combustion engine repair ships Cebu and Mindanao repair ship Preserver; fleet tug Potawatomi; motor minesweepers YMS-1, YMS-39, YMS-49, YMS-52, YMS-71, YMS-81, YMS-140, YMS-238, YMS-243, YMS-286, YMS-293, YMS-319, YMS-335, YMS-340, YMS-341, and YMS-342; unclassified auxiliary Abarenda, covered lighter YF-681, and fuel oil barge YO-77. USS Mount Hood has an estimated 3,000 tons of explosives on board, and except for a working party from the ship that is ashore at the time, her entire ship's company perishes. The force of the explosion blasts a trough in the harbor floor longer than the length of a football field and 50 feet wide and 30 to 40 feet deep; some fragments land more than 2,000 yards from where USS Mount Hood lies. Investigators find no fragment of the ship on the ocean floor larger than 16 by 10 feet. In terms of the extent of damage, it ranges from an estimated 48,000 man-hours to repair Mindanao (which suffers 23 dead and 174 injured) to "superficial" or "insignificant." In addition to the ships listed above, nine medium landing craft (LCM) and a pontoon barge moored to USS Mount Hood are also destroyed; 13 small boats or landing craft are sunk or damaged beyond repair, 33 are damaged but repairable.
1944 Motor torpedo boat PT-321, damaged by grounding off Leyte, 11°25'N, 124°19'E, is scuttled.
1944 Submarine USS Barb sinks Japanese transport Gokoku Maru seven miles off Koshiki Jima, eastern Kyushu, 33°24'N, 129°04'E.
1944 Submarine USS Flounder sinks German submarine U-537 in Java Sea, 07°13'S, 115°17'E.
1944 Submarine USS Greenling sinks Japanese Patrol Boat No.46 (ex-destroyer IJN Fuji) southeast of Honshu, 34°30'N, 138°34'E.
1944 Submarine USS Steelhead sinks Japanese repair ship Yamabiko Maru south-southwest of Yokosuka, 31°42'N, 137°50'E.
1944 USAAF B-25s, P-47s, and P-38s (13th Air Force) attack Japanese convoy (TA Operation, third phase) in Ormoc Bay hit the previous day, sinking army cargo ships Kashii Maru and Takatsu Maru, 10°53'N, 124°25'E; and damaging destroyer IJN Akishimo, Coast Defense Vessel No.13 and army cargo ship Kinka Maru. B-25 attacks drive Coast Defense Vessel No.11 aground in Matlang Bay, where she is scuttled and abandoned, 10°54'N, 124°27'E. Nearby fast transports T.6, T.9, and T.10, however, escorted by destroyers IJN Take and IJN Kasumi, are unmolested, and rescue survivors from Kashii Maru and Takatsu Maru. On their return voyage to Manila, the convoy rescues men from Celebes Maru, which has run aground off Bondoc Point, Luzon, earlier that day.
1944 USAAF B-24s attack Surabaya-bound Japanese ships off Soembawa, sinking No.21 Tachibana Maru, Fuji Maru, and Tsukushi Maru and damaging Benten Maru.
1944 Japanese finally capture the U.S. air bases at Kweilin and Liuchow.
1944 U.S. 9th Army takes Margraten cemetery.
1945 General Enver Hoxha becomes leader of Albania.
1945 Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald liberated by US.
1950 Spanish dictator Franco ends war in Gibraltar.
1954 USMC (Iwo Jima) Memorial dedicated in Arlington.
1954 Lt Col John Strapp travels 632 MPH in a rocket sled.
1960 US Senate passed landmark Civil Rights Bill.
1966 Lunar Orbiter 2 reaches 196-1871 km around Moon.
1968 Launch of Zond 6, 2nd unmanned circumlunar and return flight.
1970 Luna 17, with unmanned self-propelled Lunokhod 1, was launched.
1975 U.N. General Assembly approves resolution equating Zionism with racism.
1975 PLO leader Yasser Arafat addresses United Nations in New York City.
1978 Israel's top negotiators broke away from Middle East peace talks.
1983 US Federal government shut down over budget impass.
1986 Bangladesh Constitution restored.
1989 Germans began demolishing the Berlin Wall.
1992 Flags were lowered at Marine Barracks, Guam for the last time. It was established on 1 August 1899.
By Cap. Teancum:
1357 - Battle of Cadsand during the Hundred Years War.
1808 - Battle of Espinosa. French veterans easily route Spanish irregulars.
1813 - Battle of Nivelle. Wellington defeated French under Soult taking 1,200 prisoners, and 51 guns.
1942 - On this day in 1942, German troops occupy Vichy France, which had previously been free of an Axis military presence.
Since July 1940, upon being invaded and defeated by Nazi German forces, the autonomous French state had been split into two regions. One was occupied by German troops, and the other was unoccupied, governed by a more or less puppet regime centered in Vichy, a spa region about 200 miles southeast of Paris, and led by Gen. Philippe Petain, a World War I hero. Publicly, Petain declared that Germany and France had a common goal, "the defeat of England." Privately, the French general hoped that by playing mediator between the Axis power and his fellow countrymen, he could keep German troops out of Vichy France while surreptitiously aiding the antifascist Resistance movement.
Petain's compromises became irrelevant within two years. When Allied forces arrived in North Africa to team up with the Free French Forces to beat back the Axis occupiers, and French naval crews, emboldened by the Allied initiative, scuttled the French fleet off Toulon, in southeastern France, to keep it from being used by those same Axis powers, Hitler retaliated. In violation of the 1940 armistice agreement, German troops moved into southeastern-Vichy--France. From that point forward, Petain became virtually useless, and France merely a future gateway for the Allied counteroffensive in Western Europe, namely, D-Day.
1964 - At a news conference, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara says that the United States has no plans to send combat troops into Vietnam. When asked whether the United States intended to increase its activities in Vietnam, he replied, "Wait and see." By 1969, more than 500,000 American troops were in South Vietnam.
1970 - For the first time in five years, no U.S. combat fatalities in Southeast Asia are reported for the previous week. This was a direct result of President Richard Nixon's Vietnamization program, whereby the responsibility for the war was slowly shifted from U.S. combat forces to the South Vietnamese. This effort began in 1969 and was accompanied by U.S. troop withdrawals that began in the fall of that year. Although American casualties were down, U.S. forces were still involved in significant combat operations at this time.
1971 - Communist forces bombard the airport at the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, killing 25 persons and wounding 30. This attack was another chapter in the Communist Khmer Rouge war against the government troops of Prime Minister Lon Nol. Nine airplanes were damaged in the attack. At the same time, another Khmer Rouge unit attacked a government radio transmission facility nine miles to the northwest of the city, leaving 19 Cambodians dead. This assault left Phnom Penh without access to international communications networks for several hours.
__________________ All warfare is based on deception. Sun Tzu - Art of war - Chapter One - Laying Plans
1945 Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald liberated by US.
Today's book:
The Buchenwald Report by David A. Hackett
Book Review:
With the publication of this official report after some fifty years, the Allied attempt to comprehensively document the damning specifics of life in a German concentration camp has finally reached the public as was originally intended. Buchenwald was among the first of the camps to be liberated by the Allies in the final days of the war in Europe, and the authorities wanted to have firm and indisputable proof of the atrocities and barbarism perpetrated on the defenseless and noncombatant prisoners of the camp by the Nazi regime. Thus, an amazing and almost protean attempt was made by the Allies to capture, for the record, every conceivable aspect of life within the concentration camp before the prisoners, guards and other witnesses to the horrors vanished into the mists and confusion of post-war Germany.
This is truly a startling document to read. There is frank and open discussion about mind-boggling horrors, from the crematoriums and execution rooms to gruesome and bizarre medial experiments carried out at the medical facility within the confines of the camp. Treatment of the prisoners by guards, capos and other officials is described in detail. Little is left to the imagination, for the ultimate purpose of the documentation was to use as evidence against the Nazis in the planned war crime trials at Nuremberg. The report is in two principal parts; Part One presents the findings of the Allied investigation team and consists of a complete history and description of the camp and its nefarious activities. Part Two consists of the eye-witness reports of the prisoners, describing a plethora of experiences ranging from starvation, slave labor, mistreatment in the way of denial of medical treatment, exposure to the elements, denial of sleep, torture, medical experimentation, and wanton murder.
The history of the report itself is also quite interesting. Evidently most of the copies were lost in the chaos and confusion of Allied postwar activities. Not until the middle 1980s did one badly faded carbon copy emerge and come to the attention of English scholar David Hackett, who had it translated, edited, and reorganized to prepare it for publication. This is not easy reading, and it takes some effort to exercise the patience required to muddle through some rather dry and seemingly endless coverage of tangential materials, but it provides the serious reader an opportunity to take a first-hand look at a quite unique eye-witness report on absolute madness and insanity as practiced in this century by a supposedly sane, sophisticated and civilized culture. Truly this is a look over the edge of the chasm into evil incarnate.
1657 Count Guido von Starhemberg, Austrian Field Marshal.
1748 King Charles IV of Spain (1788-1808), d. 1821.
1811 Ben McCulloch, Brig Gen, C.S.A., KIA, 1862.
1864 Alfred Hermann Fried, German pacifist, Nobel Peace Prize, 1911.
1869 King Victor Emmanual III of Italy (1900-46), d. 1947.
1885 Gen George S. Patton, Jr., d. 1945.
1904 Alger Hiss, State Department official and spy.
1911 King Hussein of Jordan.
1920 James Bond, 007, fictional British agent.
Died...
1154 King Sancho I of Portugal
1331 King Stefanus VIII of Serbia (1322-31)
1831 Nat Turner, leader of the Great Southampton Slave Revolt, hanged
1861 King Pedro V d'Alcantara of Portugal (1853-61), at 24
Event...
887 Parliament in Tribur: King Charles III resignd.
1158 Emperor Frederik I Barbarossa declareed himself ruler of North Italy.
1208 Otto van Wittelsbach chosen German King.
1500 Louis XII of France and Ferdinand of Spain agree to divide Naples.
1606 Turkey and Austria signed Treaty of Zsitva-Torok
1620 41 pilgrims land in Massachusetts, sign Mayflower Compact (just & equal laws).
1648 Dutch & French agree to divide St Maarten, Leeward Islands.
1671 Dutch States-General forbid importation of French wine.
1688 Prince Willem III's invasion fleet sailed to England.
1745 Bonnie Prince Charlies army entered England.
1752 Theresianische Military Academy opened in Vienna.
1778 Cherry Valley Massacre, N.Y.: Pro-British Iroquois slay 40
1811 Cartagena Colombia declares independence from Spain.
1813 Dresden surrendered to allied armies.
1813 Battle of Crysler's Farm. British and Canadian troops engage and defeat the rearguard of a larger American invasion force near modern-day Morrisburg, Ontario. The outcome prompts the Americans to retire back across the border, thereby saving Montreal.
1836 Chile declared war on Bolivia and Peru.
1861 Skirmish at Little Blue, Mo.
1864 Sherman's troops destroy Rome, Georgia.
1864 Skirmish at Shoal Creek, Al.
1865 Surgeon Mary Edward Walker awarded Medal of Honor, for some reason
1870 Navy expedition to explore the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, southern Mexico, commanded by CAPT Robert W. Shufeldt, enters the Coatzacoalcos River to begin a survey for possible interoceanic canal. Support provided by USS Kansas and USS Mayflower.
1909 U.S.Navy began construction of a base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
1918 The guns fall silent on the Western Front. At the 11th hour, on the 11th day, of the 11th month the Armistice between Britain, France, and Germany goes into effect, bringing an end to the First World War.
1920 Lenah S. Higbee became the first woman awarded the Navy Cross for service in the influenza pandemic during World War I
1921 Washington Naval Conference begins. Many could argue that it was the beginning of the beginning of World War II.
1921 The Unknown Soldier is laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery
1923 Eternal flame lit at the Tomb of the Unknown Solder, the Arc de Triomphe
1937 Messerschmidt ME-109V13 flew world record 610.4 kph
1939 U.S. freighter Nishmaha is detained by British authorities at Gibraltar; freighter Yaka is detained by the British and her cargo examined.
1940 Twenty-one FAA Swordfish TSR (torpedo spotting reconnaissance) planes, flown by 16 crews from carrier HMS Illustrious (No. 815 and No. 819 Squadrons) and five crews from HMS Eagle (No. 813 and No. 824 Squadrons), launched from Illustrious, began night attack against Italian fleet at Taranto, Italy (Operation Judgment).
1940 Willys unveiled its General Purpose vehicle - Jeep
1940 Raider Atlantis captured liner Automedon, with Singapore defense plans.
1941 Czech Premier general Eliasj arrested by nazis.
1941 Destroyer USS Edison, en route to rendezvous with convoy ON 34, depth charges sound contact.
1941 Destroyer USS Decatur, screening convoy HX 159, depth charges sound contact off the Grand Banks; it is later evaluated as a "doubtful" submarine.
1942 Small reconnaissance seaplane from Japanese submarine I-7 reconnoiters Vanikoro, Solomons; small reconnaissance seaplane from I-21 reconnoiters Nouméa, New Caledonia; and small reconnaissance seaplane from I-9 reconnoiters Espiritu Santo.
1942 Transport Zeilin is damaged by dive bombers off Lunga Point, Guadalcanal, 09°24'S, 160°02'E.
1942 Submarine USS Haddock sinks Japanese merchant cargo ship Venice Maru in center of Yellow Sea, between China and Korea, 35°36'N, 123°44'E.
1942 Submarine USS Tautog is damaged by depth charges in Makassar Strait, 01°22'N, 119°31'E, and is forced to terminate her patrol.
1942 Japanese armed merchant cruiser Hokoku Maru is sunk by Indian Navy minesweeper RINS Bengal and Dutch merchant tanker Ondina south-southwest of Cocos Islands, 20°00'S, 93°00'E.
1942 Japanese transport Kobe Maru is sunk in collision with army cargo ship Tenzan Maru 87 miles off the Yangtze River estuary; Tenzan Maru then founders and sinks, too.
1942 Casablanca surrenders to U.S. forces. Allied-French armistice is signed.
1942 Mechanized artillery transport Lakehurst is damaged when accidentally rammed by cargo ship Titania in Safi harbor, French Morocco.
1942 German submarine U-173 torpedoes and sinks transport Joseph Hewes and torpedoes destroyer USS Hambleton and oiler Winooski off Fedala Roads, North Africa.
1942 German troops occupy Vichy France, south to the Mediterranean Sea.
1942 Italian troops land on Corsica and move into France.
1942 Naval Operating Base, Oran, is established.
1942 First survivors from U.S. freighter Marcus Whitman, sunk by Italian submarine DMB Leonardo da Vinci on 9 November, reach coast of Natal, South Africa, in the merchantman's motor lifeboat; the remainder will arrive within the next few hours. All hands (41-man merchant complement and the 11-man Armed Guard) reach safety.
1942 Japanese aircraft raid Henderson Field.
1943 Aircraft from TF 38 and TG 50.3, which include three carriers and two small carriers, attack Japanese ships at Rabaul, sinking destroyer IJN Suzunami and damaging light cruisers IJN Yubari and IJN Agano, and destroyers IJN Naganami, IJN Urakaze, and IJN Wakatsuki. Raid was first use of SB2C Curtiss Helldivers in combat.
1943 Submarine USS Capelin sinks Japanese army cargo ship Kunitama Maru northwest of Ambon, 03°08'S, 127°30'E.
1943 Submarine USS Drum engages Japanese Truk-to-Rabaul convoy, unsuccessfully attacking submarine depot ship Hie Maru, 00°19'N, 149°40'E. Later that day, a USAAF B-24 bombs the same convoy, damaging Hie Maru. Despite those attacks, the enemy ships reach Rabaul the following day.
1943 Submarine USS Sargo sinks Japanese transport Kosei Maru east of the Nansei Shoto, 27°40'N, 130°24'E.
1943 U.S. freighter Cape San Juan, bound for Townsville, Australia, is torpedoed by Japanese submarine I-21 at 28°08'S, 178°06'W; 16 of the 1,348 embarked troop passengers are killed in the initial explosion and a further 114 drown during the abandonment. Liberty ship Edwin T. Meredith begins picking up survivors, joined later by Allied planes, destroyer USS McCalla, destroyer escort USS Dempsey and motor minesweeper YMS-241. Edwin T. Meredith attempts to scuttle Cape San Juan with gunfire but the ship will remain afloat for another two days.
1943 41 Japanese a/c from Rabaul attack U.S. carriers, only 8 return to base.
1944 Japan commissioned the aircraft carrier IJN Shinano. Before conversion in building, she was to be the 3rd of the Yamato class battleships.
1944 Aircraft from TG 38.1, TG 38.3, TG 38.4 set upon Japanese convoy (fourth phase of TA Operation) as it enters Ormoc Bay, sinking destroyers IJN Hamanami, IJN Naganami, IJN Shimakaze, and IJN Wakatsuki; minesweeper W.30; army cargo ships Mikasa Maru, Seiho Maru, and Tensho Maru; and merchant cargo ship Taizan Maru, 10°50'N, 124°35'E.
1944 TG 30.2 (three heavy cruisers and five destroyers) bombards airfields and other Japanese shore installations on Iwo Jima; shelling commences shortly before midnight and continues into 12 November. PB4Ys screen the group's approach, spot gunfire, and cover the retirement.
1944 U.S. submarines begin series of attacks on Japanese convoy MOMA-07; USS Queenfish damages transport Miho Maru off Miike harbor, 32°20'N, 128°00'E.
1944 Submarine USS Scamp is sunk, probably by Japanese Coast Defense Vessel No.4 and naval aircraft off Tokyo Bay, 33°38'N, 141°00'E.
1944 Japanese minesweeper W.22 is sunk by mine off Babelthuap, Palau.
1944 U.S. freighter Lee S. Overman is mined off Le Havre, France; outside of one merchant sailor injured, there are no casualties among the 39-man civilian complement and the 27-man Armed Guard. The ship is later written off as a total loss.
1961 Molotov, Malenkov and Kaganovitsj kicked out of Russia's Communist Party.
1961 Congolese soldiers murder 13 Italian UN airmen.
1961 Stalingrad renamed Volgograd.
1965 Rhodesia proclaimed independence from Britain.
1966 Launch of Gemini 12, with CDR James A. Lovell, Jr., USN the command Pilot. Mission lasted 3 days, 22 hours and 34 minutes and included 59 orbits at an altitude of 162.7 nautical miles. Recovery by HS-11 helicopter from USS Wasp.
1972 US Army turned over Long Bihn base to South Vietnamese army
1975 Angola gained independence from Portugal.
1980 Crew of Soyuz 35 returned to Earth aboard Soyuz 37.
1981 Commissioning of first Trident-class Nuclear Powered Fleet Ballistic Missile Submarine, USS Ohio.
1982 Solidarity leader Lech Walesa was let out of jail in Poland.
1983 US cruise missiles arrive in Great Britain.
By Cap. Teancum:
1924 - Palace of Legion of Honor dedicated.
1942 - On this day in 1942, Congress approves lowering the draft age to 18 and raising the upper limit to age 37.
In September 1940, Congress, by wide margins in both houses, passed the Burke-Wadsworth Act, and the first peacetime draft was imposed in the history of the United States. The registration of men between the ages of 21 and 36 began exactly one month later. There were some 20 million eligible young men-50 percent were rejected the very first year, either for health reasons or because 20 percent of those who registered were illiterate.
But by November 1942, with the United States now a participant in the war, and not merely a neutral bystander, the draft ages had to be expanded; men 18 to 37 were now eligible. Blacks were passed over for the draft because of racist assumptions about their abilities and the viability of a mixed-race military. But this changed in 1943, when a "quota" was imposed, meant to limit the numbers of blacks drafted to reflect their numbers in the overall population, roughly 10.6 percent of the whole. Initially, blacks were restricted to "labor units," but this too ended as the war progressed, when they were finally used in combat.
By war's end, approximately 34 million men had registered; 10 million had been inducted into the military.
1967 - Three U.S. prisoners of war, two of them African American, are released by the Viet Cong in a ceremony in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The three men were turned over to Tom Hayden, a "new left" antiwar activist. U.S. officials in Saigon said that the released prisoners had been "brainwashed," but the State Department denied it. The Viet Cong said that the release was a response to antiwar protests in the U.S. and a gesture towards the "courageous struggle" of blacks in the United States.
Also on this day: In Vietnam, the Americal (formerly Task Force Oregon) and 1st Cavalry Divisions combine to form Operation Wheeler/Wallowa in Quang Nam and Quang Tin Provinces, I Corps. The purpose of the operation was to relieve enemy pressure and to reinforce the III Marine Amphibious Force in the area, thus permitting Marines to be deployed further north. The operation lasted more than 12 months and resulted in 10,000 enemy casualties.
1968 - U.S. joint-service Operation Commando Hunt is launched. This operation was designed to interdict Communist routes of infiltration along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, through Laos into South Vietnam. The aerial campaign involved a series of intensive air operations by U.S. Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps aircraft and lasted until April 1972. During the course of the operation, nearly 3 million tons of bombs fell on Laos. While Communist infiltration was slowed by this campaign, it was not seriously disrupted. Commando Hunt was ultimately considered a failure.
1972 - The massive Long Binh military base, once the largest U.S. installation outside the continental United States, is handed over to the South Vietnamese. This logistical complex, which had been constructed on the outskirts of Bien Hoa near the outskirts of Saigon, included numerous ammunition depots, supply depots, and other logistics installations. It served as the headquarters for U.S. Army Vietnam, 1st Logistical Command, and several other related activities. The handing-over of the base effectively marked the end--after seven years--of direct U.S. participation in the war. After the Long Binh base was turned over, about 29,000 U.S. soldiers remained in South Vietnam, most them advisors with South Vietnamese units, or helicopter crewmen, and maintenance, supply, and office staff.
__________________ All warfare is based on deception. Sun Tzu - Art of war - Chapter One - Laying Plans
1909 U.S.Navy began construction of a base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
Today's book:
Remembering Pearl Harbor: Eyewitness Accounts by U.S. Military Men and Women by Robert S. La Forte, Ronald E. Marcello
Book Review:
Remembering Pearl Harbor is, I believe, one of the best oral histories I have ever read. The book is composed of personal memories of the military men and women who were there when the attack began. It is their story, in their words.
The book relates their stories from several different areas at or near Pearl Harbor: battleship row, Schofield Barracks, Wheeler and Hickham Fields, Ford Island and other locales. Each narration begins with a one to two page introduction of the person relating the story, followed by their narrative of that eventful day. The stories conclude with a followup of their WWII service followed by what they did after the war. The authors indicated that some of the veterans later died from cancer or other illness in the 70s and 80s; it is absolutely heartbreaking to read these finales - to have survived one of the greatest attacks and then die from cancer.
I was quite touched by all of the stories. One should add this book to their WWII library as it is one of the greatest stories ever told!
Born...
1866 Sun Yat-sen, father of modern China (ROC & PRC) (traditional)
1937 Richard H Truly, Rear Adm USN/Astronaut (STS T-2, T-4, 2, 8)
Died...
1035 Canute the Great, King of the Danes (1016-1035), at 41.
1989 Dolores Ibarruri, La Pasionaria, Communist stooge, at 93.
Event...
954 Lotharius became King of France.
1591 Castiliaans army occupies Zaragoza.
1614 Treaty of Xanten: Guliks-Kleefse War victory ends.
1673 Dutch troops under Willem III occupy Bonn.
1682 Swedish King Karel XI established absolute monarchy.
1727 France and Bavaria renew secret treaty.
1781 Jessop's Rangers are authorized to serve as a provincial corps. It is one of several Loyalist corps raised in northern New York. Those willing to serve with any troop designated as "Rangers" are expected to be in excellent physical health and able to endure considerable hardships in the wilderness.
1813 Allied troops occupied Zwolle Neth.
1824 Marines landed at Fajardo, Puerto Rico to protect Americans.
1860 Piedontese-Italian troops skirmish with Neapolitans before Gaeta.
1861 Skirmish at Occoquan Creek, Va.
1899 British troops reach Durban Natal.
1912 Robert Scott's diary and dead body found in Antarctica.
1914 Turks sultan Jamal Pasja declared a German holy war.
1915 Britain annexes Gilbert & Ellice Islands.
1918 The Canadian Corps begins to consolidate its battalions around the Mons area, in preparation for the march to the Rhine.
1918 Emperor Karl of Austria-Hungary abdicated, Austria became a republic.
1921 Washington Conference for Limitation of Armaments convenes.
1923 Adolf Hitler was arrested for attempt to sieze power.
1925 U.S. and Italy sign peace accord about war debts.
1927 LeonTrotsky expelled from Soviet CP; Stalin becomes undisputed dictator.
1933 Nazis receive 92% of the vote in Germany.
1938 Hermann Göring proposes Madagascar as the Jewish homeland.
1939 Jews of Lodz, Poland, are ordered to wear yellow armbands.
1939 U.S. freighter Express, with cargo earmarked for Greece, Turkey, and Rumania, is detained by British authorities at Malta.
1940 CNO Admiral Stark submits memorandum to Secretary of the Navy on 4 plans if U.S. enters war. He favors the fourth one, Plan Dog, calling for strong offensive in the Atlantic and defense in the Pacific.
1940 British attack (Operation Judgment) against Italian fleet at Taranto concludes. At the cost of two Swordfish lost (one crew is captured), battleships DMB Littorio and DMB Caio Duilio are damaged and DMB Conte de Cavour sunk; heavy cruiser DMB Trento and destroyer DMB Libeccio are hit by dud bombs. Battleships DMB Vittorio Veneto, DMB Andrea Doria, and DMB Julio Cesare sail for Naples; heavy units of the Italian Fleet will not base at Taranto until May 1941. Word of the Taranto raid is received in the US Navy Department with "great satisfaction." Secretary of the Navy Knox asks the Special Naval Observer in London, Rear Admiral Robert L. Ghormley, to "learn more details of how the attack was carried out, especially as to what extent aerial torpedoes were used." Knox tells Ghormley the successful operation "did not a little to promote an most optimistic attitude hereabouts." DMB Littorio returned to service by 9 March 1941, DMB Caio Duilio by 15 May 1941. Only DMB Conte de Cavour is never again operational.
1940 Heavy cruiser USS Louisville departs Buenos Aires, Argentina, for Santos, Brazil, as she continues her goodwill cruise in Latin American waters.
1941 TU 4.1.3 assumed escort duty for convoy ON 34.
1941 Destroyer USS Decatur, screening convoy HX 159, twice depth charges sound contacts that are later evaluated as "non-submarine." Destroyer USS Badger, depth charges sound contact that is later evaluated as perhaps USS Decatur's wake. Coast Guard cutter USCG Campbell reports sound contact and conducts search; she is joined by destroyer USS Livermore.
1941 Battle of Moscow: Germans halted.
1942 Naval Battle of Guadalcanal opens: TF 67 unloading troops in Lunga Roads, Guadalcanal, under the protection of air and surface forces, is attacked by Japanese land attack planes. Heavy cruiser USS San Francisco is damaged when hit by a crashing bomber; destroyer USS Buchanan is hit by friendly fire.
1942 Submarine USS Grenadier damages Japanese army cargo vessel Hokkai Maru off the south coast of French Indochina, 11°18'N, 109°02'E.
1942 Japanese oiler Naruto is damaged by aircraft (nationality unspecified) off Shortland Island.
1942 Naval Operating Base, Casablanca, Morocco, is established.
1942 Transports Tasker H. Bliss, Hugh L. Scott, and Edward Rutledge are torpedoed and sunk by German submarine U-130 off French Morocco.
1942 Gunboat Erie is torpedoed by German submarine U-163, Caribbean Sea, 12°03'N, 68°58'W, and is beached northwest of Willemstad, Curacao, N.W.I., to prevent sinking.
1942 Submarine chaser SC-330 accidentally collides with, and sinks, merchant vessel Rogist seven miles southeast of Cape Charles, Virginia, Lighthouse.
1942 Australians take Gorari, on the Kokoda Trail.
1942 Four Day Naval Battle of Guadalcanal began. (12-15)
1942 Japanese aircraft raid Henderson field.
1943 President Roosevelt embarks in battleship USS Iowa at the start of his journey that will include his presence at conferences at Teheran and Cairo.
1943 Submarine USS Harder attacked Japanese convoy, sinking auxiliary minesweeper No.11 Misago Maru, 21°40'N, 144°40'E, and damaged motor sailing vessel Hei Maru.
1943 Submarine USS Scamp torpedoes Truk-bound Japanese light cruiser IJN Agano (damaged the previous day by TF 38's strike), 01°03'N, 149°15'E.
1943 Submarine USS Thresher torpedoes and sinks Japanese transport Muko Maru north of Truk, 09°02'N, 152°46'E, but is damaged by depth charges and terminates her patrol.
1943 Transport Tokyo Maru, damaged by submarine USS Scamp, sinks while under tow between Kavieng and Truk, 03°39'N, 150°37'E. Destroyer IJN Suzutsuki rescued survivors.
1943 USAAF B-24s bomb Japanese naval base at Surabaya, Java, damaging submarine chasers Ch 6 and Ch 10.
1943 Open lighter YC-857 sinks after grounding off Cape Cod, Massachusetts.
1943 PB4Y-1 (VB 103) sinks German submarine U-508 in Bay of Biscay, 46°00'N, 07°30'W.
1944 Landing craft repair ships Egeria (ARL-8) and Achilles (ARL-41) are damaged by kamikazes off Leyte, 11°11'N, 125°05'E. U.S. freighters off Leyte come under attack from Japanese planes as well. Leonidas Merritt is crashed by two suiciders off Dulag, Leyte, but her crew controls the fires; 1 of the 28-man Armed Guard is killed, as are a merchant seaman and one of the embarked stevedores. Thomas Nelson is hit by a kamikaze, but despite ultimately successful firefighting efforts, 133 of the 578 embarked troops are killed, as are 3 of the 28-man Armed Guard; 88 men are injured. Jeremiah M. Daily is struck by a suicide plane, and the explosion and fires account for the deaths of 100 of the 557 troops on board, in addition to 2 of the 29-man Armed Guard and 4 of the 39-man merchant complement; 43 more men are injured and 50 troops jump overboard to escape the flames (they are rescued by nearby boats and craft). William A. Coulter is struck by two kamikazes, but there are no fatalities among the 41-man merchant complement, 27-man Armed Guard and four passengers. Morrison R. Waite is strafed and then crashed by a Japanese plane, and the resultant fires kill 21 troops and wound 41 (of the 600 embarked at the time); 2 of the 29-man Armed Guard are wounded in action. Alexander Majors's Armed Guard gunners deflect a kamikaze with a well-placed 5-inch round, but the plane strikes the mainmast and, along with its bomb, explodes and showers the forward part of the ship with burning gasoline that compels the Armed Guards at the forward guns to leap overboard to save themselves. Two of the merchant crew are killed and 16 injured, but there are no fatalities among the Armed Guard sailors and the Army passengers. All six of the freighters ultimately return to the west coast of the United States under their own power for repairs.
1944 Destroyer USS Nicholas sinks Japanese submarine I-37 south of Yap Island, 08°04'N, 138°03'E.
1944 Submarines USS Barb and USS Peto continue attacks against Japanese convoy MOMA-07 in the East China Sea. Barb sinks army cargo ship Naruo Maru and damages merchant cargo ship Gyokuyo Maru, 31°39'N, 125°36'E; USS Peto sinks army cargo ship Tatsuraku Maru, 31°18'N, 125°30'E.
1944 Submarine USS Redfin damages Japanese ship Asogawa Maru, 12°45'N, 118°14'E.
1944 PROJECT MIKE continues as USAAF B-24s (42d Bomb Squadron), finding cloudy weather at the primary objective, Chichi Jima, opt for the alternate, Haha Jima, and lay 15 mines in effective locations.
1944 Japanese auxiliary submarine chaser Cha 84 was sunk by aircraft off Banggi, North Borneo.
1944 PB4Y attacks Japanese convoy SIMA-04 and sinks merchant cargo ship Atsuta Maru off Malampaya Sound, 11°50'N, 119°19'E.
1944 USAAF P-51s damage Japanese auxiliary-powered sailing vessel Namikiri Maru at entrance to Haiphong River, French Indochina.
1944 German battleship DKM Tirpitz is sunk by RAF Lancasters, Tromso Fjord, Norway.
1944 Destroyer USS Woolsey shells German howitzer emplacement east of San Remo, Italy, and encounters "fairly accurate" 88-millimeter gunfire in return; shrapnel showers the ship but she suffers no casualties.
1945 Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Cordell Hull for creating the UN.
1946 Gerald C. Thomas, the first Marine to rise from private to general, rank by rank, received his second Legion of Merit.
1948 Former Japanese Premier Hideki Tojo sentenced to death by war crimes tribunal.
1955 1st West German officers sworn in.
1960 Mercury-Redstone 1 test launch failed at 10cm.
1960 Coup against South Vietnam strongman Ngo Dinh Diem fails.
1965 Venera 2 launched by Soviet Union toward Venus.
1969 U.S. Army announced investigation of William Calley for alleged massacre of civilians at Vietnamese village of My Lai in March, 19.
1977 France performed nuclear test at Muruora Island.
1979 US halts Iranian oil imports & freezes Iranian assets.
1980 US space probe Voyager I approaches 77,000-mi (124,000 km) of Saturn.
1981 Great Britain performed nuclear test.
1982 U.S. performed nuclear test at Nevada Test Site.
1982 KGB-chief Yuri V. Andropov elected General Secretary of the CPUSSR. Succeeded Leonid Brezhnev.
1986 France performs nuclear test.
1988 U.S.S.R. performs nuclear test at Eastern Kazakh/Semipalitinsk U.S.S.R.
1991 Indonesian army shoots on funeral possession: 270-520 die.
By Cap. Teancum:
1796 - Battle of Caldiero. Napoleon suffered his first defeat in the Italian campaign.
1864 - Union General William T. Sherman orders the business district of Atlanta destroyed before he embarks on his famous March to the Sea.
When Sherman captured Atlanta in early September 1864, he knew that he could not remain there for long. His tenuous supply line ran from Nashville, Tennessee, through Chattanooga, then one hundred miles through mountainous northern Georgia. The army he had just defeated, the Army of Tennessee, was still in the area and its leader, John Bell Hood, swung around Atlanta to try to damage Sherman's lifeline. Of even greater concern was the Confederate cavalry of General Nathan Bedford Forrest. Forrest was a brilliant commander who could strike quickly against the railroads and river transports on which Sherman relied.
During the fall, Sherman conceived of a plan to split his enormous army. He sent part of it, commanded by General George Thomas, back toward Nashville to deal with Hood while he prepared to take the rest of the troops across Georgia. Through October, Sherman built up a massive cache of supplies in Atlanta. He then ordered a systematic destruction of Atlanta to prevent the Confederates from recovering anything once the Yankees had abandoned the city. By one estimate, 37 percent of the city was ruined. This was the same policy Sherman would apply to the rest of Georgia as he marched to Savannah. Before leaving on November 15, Sherman's forces had burned the industrial district of Atlanta and left little but a smoking shell.
1948 - An international war crimes tribunal in Tokyo passes death sentences on seven Japanese military and government officials, including General Hideki Tojo, who served as premier of Japan from 1941 to 1944.
Eight days before, the trial ended after 30 months with all 25 Japanese defendants being found guilty of breaching the laws and customs of war. In addition to the death sentences imposed on Tojo and others principals, such as Iwane Matsui, who organized the Rape of Nanking, and Heitaro Kimura, who brutalized Allied prisoners of war, 16 others were sentenced to life imprisonment. The remaining two of the 25 defendants were sentenced to lesser terms in prison.
Unlike the Nuremberg trial of German war criminals, where there were four chief prosecutors representing Great Britain, France, the United States, and the USSR, the Tokyo trial featured only one chief prosecutor--American Joseph B. Keenan, a former assistant to the U.S. attorney general. However, other nations, especially China, contributed to the proceedings, and Australian judge William Flood Webb presided. In addition to the central Tokyo trial, various tribunals sitting outside Japan judged some 5,000 Japanese guilty of war crimes, of whom more than 900 were executed.
1969 - Seymour Hersh, an independent investigative journalist, in a cable filed through Dispatch News Service and picked up by more than 30 newspapers, reveals the extent of the U.S. Army's charges against 1st Lt. William L. Calley at My Lai. Hersh wrote: "The Army says he [Calley] deliberately murdered at least 109 Vietnamese civilians during a search-and-destroy mission in March 1968, in a Viet Cong stronghold known as 'Pinkville.'"
The incident, which became known as the My Lai Massacre, took place in March 1968. Between 200 and 500 South Vietnamese civilians were murdered by U.S. soldiers from Company C, 1st Battalion, 20th Infantry, 11th Infantry Brigade of the Americal Division. During a sweep of the cluster of hamlets known as My Lai 4, the U.S. soldiers--particularly those from Calley's first platoon--indiscriminately shot people as they ran from their huts, and then systematically rounded up the survivors, allegedly leading them to a ditch where Calley gave the order to "finish them off."
The original investigation--which had been conducted in April 1968 by members of the 11th Infantry Brigade, the unit involved in the affair--concluded that no massacre had occurred and that no further action was warranted. However, when the cover-up was discovered, the Army Criminal Investigation Division conducted a new investigation. Additionally, Army Chief of Staff William C. Westmoreland appointed Lt. Gen. William R. Peers to "explore the nature and scope" of the original investigation to determine the extent of the cover-up. He found that 30 persons either participated in the atrocity or knew of it and failed to do anything about it. In the end, only 14 were charged with crimes. All eventually had their charges dismissed or were acquitted, except Calley, who was found guilty of murdering 22 civilians and sentenced to life imprisonment. However, Calley's sentence was eventually reduced and he was released from prison in 1974.
Also on this day: In Washington, D.C., the federal government begins to assemble 9,000 troops to assist the police and National Guard with massive protests and demonstrations scheduled for November 14-15. The Defense Department announced that the troops were being made available at the request of the Justice Department and were to augment 1,200 National Guardsmen and a 3,700-man police force.
1971 - President Richard Nixon sets February 1, 1972, as the deadline for the withdrawal of an additional 45,000 U.S. troops. U.S. troop withdrawals had begun in the fall of 1969. After the February withdrawals were complete, the total U.S. force strength in South Vietnam was 139,000. Nixon said that most offensive activities were now being undertaken entirely by the South Vietnamese and that U.S. ground forces were "now in defensive positions." He further stated that 80 percent of the forces that were in Vietnam when he took office had come home, and that American casualties had dropped to less than 10 a week.
1990 - Crown Prince Akihito, the 125th Japanese monarch along an imperial line dating back to 660 B.C., is enthroned as emperor of Japan two years after the death of his father.
Akihito, the only son of the late Emperor Hirohito, was the first Japanese monarch to reign solely as an official figurehead. His father, Hirohito, began his reign in 1926 as theoretically absolute, though his powers were sharply limited in practice. After the Japanese defeat in World War II, Hirohito was formally stripped of his powers by the United States and forced to renounce his supposed divinity. With the signing by Japan of the amended constitution of 1946, the emperor became the official figurehead of Japan.
Akihito caused controversy in 1959, when as heir to the Japanese throne he broke a 1,500-year-old tradition and married a commoner, Shoda Michiko, the daughter of a wealthy businessman. Upon becoming emperor, Akihito, an amateur marine biologist and accomplished cellist, commenced a new Japanese era, known as Heisei, or "Achieving Peace." The imperial couple have three children: Crown Prince Naruhito, born in 1960; Prince Akishino, born in 1965; and Princess Nori, born in 1969.
__________________ All warfare is based on deception. Sun Tzu - Art of war - Chapter One - Laying Plans
1918 The Canadian Corps begins to consolidate its battalions around the Mons area, in preparation for the march to the Rhine.
Today's book:
First World War Canadian Corps Badges: The Charlton Standard Catalogue by W. K. Cross, Al Rosen
Book Description:
This is the second book in the Charlton series covering the World War I badges of the Canadian Army. "The Canadian Corps badges" together with "The Canadian Infantry badges" completes the badges of the Canadian Regiments in the Great War of 1914-1918. Each regiment and every battalion was issued a set of insignia, leading to the remark by a British General that the Canadian Army was the best and easiest identified army of World War I. This and the sister catalogue (First World War Canadian Infantry Badges (1st Edition) - The Charlton Standard Catalogue)covers the complete issue. This book contains over 272 pages of information listing and illustrating 500 plus insignia of the Canadian Army, from the Mounted Rifles to the Artillery and all their different companies. Other ranks and official badges, both cap, collar and shoulder, are itemized and priced.
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![Cap. Teancum is a jewel in the rough [500]](images/reputation/reputation_green.gif)
![Cap. Teancum is a jewel in the rough [500]](images/reputation/reputation_greenh.gif)
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