1913 – Naval Radio Station, Arlington, VA begins operations.
1920 – The League of Nations recognized the perpetual neutrality of Switzerland.
1923 – Chuck Yeager is born. Charles E. “Chuck” Yeager grew up in Myra, on the Mud River in West Virgina. His dirt-poor youth was filled with hillbilly themes that sound romantic today, but probably weren’t much fun at the time: making moonshine, eating cornmeal mush three times a day, shooting squirels for dinner, chasing rats out of the kitchen, going barefoot all summer, butchering hogs, and stealing watermelons. At an early age Chuck could do well at anything requiring manual dexterity or math: ping-pong, shooting, auto mechanics. He enlisted in the Army Air Corps when he graduated from Hamlin High School in 1941, and became an airplane mechanic. He hated flying, after throwing up his first time in the air. But when the chance came to become a “Flying Sergeant,” with three stripes and no K.P., he applied, and was accepted. His good cordination, mechanical abilities, and excellent memory enabled him to impress his instructors in flight training. Assigned to the 363rd Fighter Squadron, of the 357th Fighter Group, he moved up to P-39s with the squadron at Tonopah, Nevada. The 357th FG shipped out for Europe in winter of 1943-44, and began operations in February, 1944, the first P-51 equipped unit in the Eighth Air Force. Yeager shot down his first Messerschmitt on his seventh mission (one of the early Mustang missions over Berlin), and the next day, March 5, three FW-190s caught him and shot him down. He bailed out over occupied France, being careful to delay pulling his ripcord until he had fallen far enough to avoid getting strafed by the German fighters. Ike decided to allow Yeager to return to combat in the summer of 1944, which he did with a vengence, now flying a P-51D nicknamed Gorgeous Glennis, gaudily decorated in the red-and-yellow trim of the 357th. At first, the pickings were slim, as the German fliers seemed to be laying low. He flew in a four plane division with Bud Anderson and Don Bochkay, two other double aces. On September 18, he flew in support of the Market Garden glider drops over Arnhem, but couldn’t do much to stop the appalling slaughter of the C-47s. By this time, he had been promoted to Lieutenant, a commissioned officer. Yeager became an ‘ace-in-a-day’ on October 12, leading a bomber escort over Bremen. As he closed in on one Bf-109, the pilot broke left and collided with his wingman; both bailed out, giving Yeager credit for two victories without firing a shot. In a sharp dogfight, Yeager’s vision, flying skills, and gunnery gave him three more quick kills. He flew his last “combat” mission in January, 14 1945. After WW2, Chuck Yeager was assigned to be a test pilot at Muroc Field in California. The Army had developed a small, bullet-shaped aircraft, the Bell X-1, to challenge the sound barrier. A civilian pilot, Slick Goodlin, had taken the Bell X-1 to .7 Mach, when Yeager started to fly it. He pushed the small plane up to .8, .85, and then to .9 Mach. The date of Oct. 14, 1947 was set for the attempt to do Mach 1. Only a slight problem developed. Two nights before, after an evening at Pancho’s, Chuck and Glennis went out horseback riding, Chuck was thrown, and broke two ribs on his right side. He couldn’t have reported this to the Army doctors; they might have given the flight to someone else. So Yeager taped up his ribs and did his best to keep up appearances. On the day of the flight, it became apparent that, with his injured right side, he wouldn’t be able to shut the door of the Bell X-1. In the plane’s tiny cockpit; he could only use his (useless) right hand. He confessed his problem to Ridley, the flight engineer. In a stroke of genius, Ridley sawed off a short piece of broomstick handle; using it with his left hand, Yeager was able to get enough leverage to slam the door shut. And that day, Chuck Yeager became the first man to fly faster than the speed of sound. Through the 1950’s and 60’s, Yeager continued his successful career as an Air Force officer and test pilot. One of the planes he tested in 1963 was the NF-104, an F-104 with a rocket over the tailpipe, an airplane which theoretically could climb to over 120,000 feet. Yeager made the first three flights of the NF-104. On the fourth, he planned to exceed the magic 100,000 foot level. He cut in the rocket boosters at 60,000 feet and it roared upwards. He gets up to 104,000 feet before trouble set in. The NF-104’s nose wouldn’t go down. It went into a flat spin and tumbled down uncontrollably. At 21,000 feet, Yeager desperately popped the tail parachute rig, which briefly righted the attitude of the plane. But the nose promptly rose back up and the NF-104 began spinning again. It was hopeless. At 7,000 feet Yeager ejected. He got tangled up with his seat and leftover rocket fuel, which burnt him horribly. He hit the ground in great pain and his face blackened and burned, but standing upright with his chute rolled up and his helmet in his arm when the rescue helicopter arrived. He went to Vietnam as commander of the 405th Fighter Wing in 1966 and flew 127 combat missions, and eventually rose to the rank of Brigadier General. In February 1968, he took command of the 4th Tactical Fighter Wing at Seymour Johnson Air Force Base, N.C., and in February 1968, led its deployment to Korea during the Pueblo crisis. In July 1969, he became vice commander of the 17th Air Force, at Ramstein Air Base, Germany, and then, in January 1971, he was assigned as U.S. defense representative to Pakistan. On June 1, 1973, he commenced his final active duty assignment as director of the AF Safety and Inspection Center at Norton Air Force Base, Calif. After a 34-year military career, he retired on March 1, 1975. At the time of his retirement, he had flown more than 10,000 hours in more than 330 different types and models of aircraft. In 1986, Yeager was appointed to the Presidential Commission investigating the Challenger accident.
1929 – Congress passes the Cruiser Act authorizing the construction of 19 new cruisers and 1 aircraft carrier.
1936 – The first social security checks were put in the mail.
1942 – The official cancellation of Operation Sea Lion– the invasion of Britain — is announced. Previously it had merely been postponed.
1943 – The U.S. Marine Corps Women’s Reserve was formed. On June 7, 1946, Commandant of the Marine Corps General Alexander A. Vandegrift approved the retention of a small number of women on active duty. They would serve as a trained nucleus for possible mobilization emergencies. The demobilization of the Marine Corps Womens Reserve, 17,640 enlisted and 820 officers, was to be completed by Sept. 1, 1946. Of the 20,000 women who joined the Marine Corps during World War II, only 1,000 remained in the Marine Corps Women’s Reserve by July 1, 1946. Colonel Ruth Cheney Streeter recommended the position of director of the Marine Corps Women’s Reserve be strengthened and placed directly under the office of the commandant. On June 12, 1948, Congress passed legislation giving women regular military status, placing them on a par with their male counterparts in the U.S. armed forces.
1945 – First naval units enter Manila Bay since 1942. US Navy forces begin operations in Manila Bay, clearing minefields and shelling landing grounds. Corregidor is bombarded. In the ground fighting, the US 11th Airborne Division takes Cavite and completes the capture of Nichols Field.
1945 – American USAAF B-24 and B-29 bombers raid Iwo Jima in preparation for the landings later in the month. They drop a daily average of 450 tons of bombs over the course of 15 days (6800 tons).
1945 – Hundreds of British bombers loaded with incendiaries and high-explosive bombs descend on Dresden, a historic city located in eastern Germany. Before the massive air raid of February 1945 it had not suffered a major Allied attack. By February 15, the city was a smoldering ruin and an unknown number of civilians–somewhere between 35,000 and 135,000–were dead. At Yalta. Churchill and Roosevelt, promised Stalin the bombing campaign against eastern Germany in preparation for the advancing Soviet forces would continue. Before World War II, Dresden was called “the Florence of the Elbe” and was regarded as one the world’s most beautiful cities for its architecture and museums. Although no German city remained isolated from Hitler’s war machine, Dresden’s contribution to the war effort was minimal compared with other German cities. In February 1945, refugees fleeing the Russian advance in the east took refuge there. As Hitler had thrown much of his surviving forces into a defense of Berlin in the north, city defenses were minimal, and the Russians would have had little trouble capturing Dresden. It seemed an unlikely target for a major Allied air attack. On the night of February 13, hundreds of RAF bombers descended on Dresden in two waves, dropping their lethal cargo indiscriminately over the city. The city’s air defenses were so weak that only six Lancaster bombers were shot down. By the morning, some 800 British bombers had dropped 1,478 tons of high-explosive bombs and 1,182 tons of incendiaries on Dresden, creating a great firestorm that destroyed most of the city and killed numerous civilians. Later that day, as survivors made their way out of the smoldering city, over 300 U.S. bombers began bombing Dresden’s railways, bridges, and transportation facilities, killing thousands more. On February 15, another 200 U.S. bombers continued their assault on the city’s infrastructure. All told, the bombers of the U.S. Eighth Air Force dropped 954 tons of high-explosive bombs and 294 tons of incendiaries on Dresden. Later, the Eighth Air Force would drop 2,800 more tons of bombs on Dresden in three other attacks before the war’s end. The Allies claimed that by bombing Dresden, they were disrupting important lines of communication that would have hindered the Soviet offensive. Because there were an unknown number of refugees in Dresden at the time of the Allied attack, it is impossible to know exactly how many civilians perished. After the war, investigators from various countries, and with varying political motives, calculated the number of civilians killed to be as little as 8,000 to more than 200,000. Estimates today range from 35,000 to 135,000.
1951 – At the Battle of Chipyong-ni, in Korea, U.N. troops contain the Chinese forces’ offensive in a four-day battle. Three CCF divisions surrounded UN troops, including members of the U.S. 23rd Regimental Combat Team and the French Battalion, at a crucial road junction at Chipyong-ni in central Korea. Twenty C-119s dropped supplies at night over a zone marked by burning gasoline-soaked rags. The surrounded troops held out until relieved by a friendly armored column. The 315th AD airlifted more than 800 sick and wounded U.S. troops from forward airstrips such as that at Wonju to Taegu and Pusan. This airlift used so many C-47s that they were not available for other airlift demands.
1953 – Senator Joseph McCarthy states that President Eisenhower’s foreign policy is being subverted by the Voice of America radio network.
1965 – President Lyndon B. Johnson decides to undertake the sustained bombing of North Vietnam that he and his advisers have been contemplating for a year. Earlier in the month, the president had ordered Operation Flaming Dart in response to communist attacks on U.S. installations in South Vietnam. These retaliatory raids did not have the desired effect of causing the North Vietnamese to cease support of Viet Cong forces in South Vietnam, and out of frustration, Johnson turned to a more extensive use of airpower. Called Operation Rolling Thunder, the bombing campaign was designed to interdict North Vietnamese transportation routes in the southern part of North Vietnam and slow infiltration of personnel and supplies into South Vietnam. The first Rolling Thunder mission took place on March 2, 1965, when 100 U.S. Air Force and Republic of Vietnam Air Force (VNAF) planes struck the Xom Bang ammunition dump 100 miles southeast of Hanoi. In July 1966, Rolling Thunder was expanded to include North Vietnamese ammunition dumps and oil storage facilities, and in the spring of 1967, it was further expanded to include power plants, factories, and airfields in the Hanoi-Haiphong area.Operation Rolling Thunder was closely controlled by the White House and at times targets were personally selected by President Johnson. From 1965 to 1968, about 643,000 tons of bombs were dropped on North Vietnam. A total of nearly 900 U.S. aircraft were lost during Operation Rolling Thunder. The operation continued, with occasional suspensions, until President Johnson, under increasing domestic political pressure, halted it on October 31, 1968.
1968 – As an emergency measure in response to the 1968 communist Tet Offensive, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara approves the deployment of 10,500 troops to cope with threats of a second offensive. The Joint Chiefs of Staff, who had argued against dispatching any reinforcements at the time because it would seriously deplete the strategic reserve, immediately sent McNamara a memorandum asking that 46,300 reservists and former servicemen be activated. Not wanting to test public opinion on what would no doubt be a controversial move, Johnson consigned the issue of the reservists to “study.” Ultimately, he decided against a large-scale activation of the reserve forces.
1968 – Operation Coronado XI begins in Mekong Delta.1971 – 12,000 South Vietnamese troops crossed into Laos.
1972 – “1776” closed at 46th St Theater NYC after 1,217 performances.
1972 – Enemy attacks, in Vietnam, declined for the third day as the U.S. continued its intensive bombing strategy.
1989 – The judge in the Iran-Contra trial of Oliver North sent the jury home amid a continuing disagreement between the prosecution and defense over protecting classified materials.
1990 – At a conference in Ottawa, the United States and its European allies forged agreement with the Soviet Union and East Germany on a two-stage formula to reunite Germany.
1991 – Two Coast Guard HU-25A Falcon jets from Air Station Cape Cod, equipped with AIREYE technology depart for Saudi Arabia for the Inter-agency oil spill assessment team use. They were accompanied in flight by two C-130 aircraft from Air Station Clearwater carrying parts and deployment packages.
1995 – The Hague War Crimes Tribunal indicted 21 Serbs for atrocities against Croats and Muslims interned in a Bosnian prison camp. Zeljko Meakic, Bosnian Serb police officer, was charged with commanding the Serb Omarska camp in northwest Bosnia. Dusan Tadic, Bosnian Serb cafe owner, was charged for visiting Serb-run camps to beat and kill non-Serb inmates.
1997 – Discovery’s astronauts hauled the Hubble Space Telescope aboard the shuttle for a one billion mile tune up to allow it to peer even deeper into the far reaches of the universe.
1999 – Pres. Clinton announced that he would send some 4,000 troops to Kosovo as part of a NATO peacekeeping force if warring Serbs and ethnic Albanians reached a political settlement.
https://thisdayinusmilhist.wordpress.com/2014/02/13/february-13/
