1900 – US Navy’s 1st submarine made its debut. Navy accepted delivery of USS Holland.
1904 – One officer and 20 enlisted men became the first Marines to garrison Midway Island.
1917 – With the outbreak of World War I, the President issued an executive order transferring 30 lighthouse tenders to the War Department. All were subsequently assigned to the Navy Department and 15 lighthouse tenders, four lightships, and 21 light stations to the Navy Department. One more tender was transferred on 31 January 1918 making a total of 50 vessels and 1,132 persons. The War Department used those assigned in laying submarine defense nets during and in removing these defenses after the war. Other duties performed by these vessels were placing practice targets, buoys to mark wrecks of torpedoed vessels and other marks for military purposes, as well as being employed on patrols and special duty assignments.
1941 – Roosevelt tells Churchill that the US Navy will extend the American Defense Zone up to the line of 26 degrees West. The Red Sea is declared to be no longer a “combat zone” and under the terms of American law US ships may now carry cargos to ports there including supplies for the British in Egypt.
1941 – During the early 1940s, President Franklin Roosevelt set about readying the nation for its entrance into World War II. Along with converting American industry to the cause of wartime production, Roosevelt also moved to safeguard the nation’s economy. Towards this end, Roosevelt issued an executive order on April 11, 1941, that created the Office of Price Administration (OPA). Charged with waging war against inflation, the OPA imposed price caps on a vast array of goods and attempted to keep a tight fist on key items with low inventories. Though under other circumstances such measures might have stirred controversy, Americans generally complied with the OPA. However, the agency could not quell the spread of black markets for certain items, including meat, gas and cigarettes. Following the close of the war, the OPA also proved impotent against the attacks of corporate leaders and business-friendly legislators who were itching to kill off price controls. Thus, in 1946, the OPA began curtailing its efforts and slashing its then sizable staff of 73,000 paid employees and 200,000 volunteers. Coupled with the demise of price controls, the closing of the OPA led to a heady spate of inflation.
1942 – Detachment 101 of the OSS, a guerrilla force, was activated in Burma.
1942 – US Army Brigadier General Ralph Royce led 10 B-25 bombers and 3 B-17 bombers from Darwin, Australia to Mindanao, Philippine Islands; they were to be used for bombing Japanese forward positions. On the Bataan peninsula on the island of Luzon, 350 Filipino prisoners of war were killed by the Japanese north of Mount Samat during the Bataan Death March.
1942 – The Battle of Yenangyaung was fought in Burma, now Myanmar, during the Burma Campaign in World War II. The battle of Yenaungyaung was fought in the vicinity of Yenangyaung and its oil fields.
1943 – 73 Zero fighters and 27 D3A carrier dive bombers attacked Oro Bay near Dobodura, Australian Papua, sinking 1 US cargo ship, sinking 1 US destroyer, damaging 1 transport, and damaging 1 Australian minesweeper.
1942 – Eight B-26 Marauder bombers took off from Port Moresby, Australian Papua at 0900 hours; one of them would return to base due to engine trouble. The remaining seven attacked Vunakanau airfield and Lakunai airfield near Rabaul, New Britain, causing minimal damage. As the bomber crews returned to base, they reported a sighting of a fleet carrier (most likely mis-identified Kasuga Maru), causing the commanders to scramble to prepare a major against the target.
1943 – USS Tunny was observed by a Japanese ship 40 kilometers off of Truk, Caroline Islands, but there was no subsequent attack. Early in the afternoon, she intercepted Japanese submarine I-9; she fired three forward torpedoes, and the Japanese submarines fired two; all torpedoes missed. Japanese aircraft arrived to hunt USS Tunny, but the bombs dropped caused no damage. USS Tunny would remain submerged until sundown. After dark, while on the surface, she made radar contact with a Japanese destroyer; as she moved to attack, the destroyer also detected her, attacking with nine depth charges; Tunny would remain submerged for hours to escape the attack.
1944 – Marlene Dietrich gives the first of her many shows for U.S. servicemen overseas. Born in Berlin, Dietrich came to the United States in 1930 to make movies after considerable success on the German screen. She allegedly refused several offers to return to Germany to star in Nazi films. She became a U.S. citizen in 1939 and worked tirelessly during and after World War II to sell war bonds and entertain troops. She was awarded the Medal of Freedom and named Chevalier of the French Legion of Honor.
1945 – American Third Army liberates the Buchenwald concentration camp, near Weimar, Germany, a camp that will be judged second only to Auschwitz in the horrors it imposed on its prisoners. As American forces closed in on the Nazi concentration camp at Buchenwald, Gestapo headquarters at Weimar telephoned the camp administration to announce that it was sending explosives to blow up any evidence of the camp–including its inmates. What the Gestapo did not know was that the camp administrators had already fled in fear of the Allies. A prisoner answered the phone and informed headquarters that explosives would not be needed, as the camp had already been blown up, which, of course, was not true. The camp held thousands of prisoners, mostly slave laborers. There were no gas chambers, but hundreds, sometimes thousands, died monthly from disease, malnutrition, beatings, and executions. Doctors performed medical experiments on inmates, testing the effects of viral infections and vaccines. Among the camp’s most gruesome characters was Ilse Koch, wife of the camp commandant, who was infamous for her sadism. She often beat prisoners with a riding crop, and collected lampshades, book covers, and gloves made from the skin of camp victims. Among those saved by the Americans was Elie Wiesel, who would go on to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986.
1945 – Leading armored units of the US 9th Army reach the Elbe River, south of Magdeburg. Forces of US 3rd Army capture Weimar. Other elements capture the Mittlewerke underground V2 factory at Nordhausen.
1945 – Carrara is captured by the US 92nd Infantry Division (an element of US 5th Army) in its advance from Massa.
1945 – Japanese Kamikaze attacks damage the battleship USS Missouri and the carrier Enterprise.
1945 – Units of the Americal Division land on Bohol.
1945 – American troops captured an intact V-weapon plant in Nordhausen, Germany; top American leadership soon sent in engineers to remove as much equipment as possible ahead of the arrival of Soviet troops.
1950 – A US B-29 bomber was shot down above Latvia.
1951 – In perhaps the most famous civilian-military confrontation in the history of the United States, President Harry S. Truman relieves General Douglas MacArthur of command of the U.S. forces in Korea. The firing of MacArthur set off a brief uproar among the American public, but Truman remained committed to keeping the conflict in Korea a “limited war.” Problems with the flamboyant and egotistical General MacArthur had been brewing for months. In the early days of the war in Korea (which began in June 1950), the general had devised some brilliant strategies and military maneuvers that helped save South Korea from falling to the invading forces of communist North Korea. As U.S. and United Nations forces turned the tide of battle in Korea, MacArthur argued for a policy of pushing into North Korea to completely defeat the communist forces. Truman went along with this plan, but worried that the communist government of the People’s Republic of China might take the invasion as a hostile act and intervene in the conflict. In October 1950, MacArthur met with Truman and assured him that the chances of a Chinese intervention were slim. Then, in November and December 1950, hundreds of thousands of Chinese troops crossed into North Korea and flung themselves against the American lines, driving the U.S. troops back into South Korea. MacArthur then asked for permission to bomb communist China and use Nationalist Chinese forces from Taiwan against the People’s Republic of China. Truman flatly refused these requests and a very public argument began to develop between the two men. In April 1951, President Truman fired MacArthur and replaced him with Gen. Matthew Ridgeway. On April 11, Truman addressed the nation and explained his actions. He began by defending his overall policy in Korea, declaring, “It is right for us to be in Korea.” He excoriated the “communists in the Kremlin [who] are engaged in a monstrous conspiracy to stamp out freedom all over the world.” Nevertheless, he explained, it “would be wrong-tragically wrong-for us to take the initiative in extending the war. …Our aim is to avoid the spread of the conflict.” The president continued, “I believe that we must try to limit the war to Korea for these vital reasons: To make sure that the precious lives of our fighting men are not wasted; to see that the security of our country and the free world is not needlessly jeopardized; and to prevent a third world war.” General MacArthur had been fired “so that there would be no doubt or confusion as to the real purpose and aim of our policy.” MacArthur returned to the United States to a hero’s welcome. Parades were held in his honor, and he was asked to speak before Congress (where he gave his famous “Old soldiers never die, they just fade away” speech). Public opinion was strongly against Truman’s actions, but the president stuck to his decision without regret or apology. Eventually, MacArthur did “just fade away,” and the American people began to understand that his policies and recommendations might have led to a massively expanded war in Asia. Though the concept of a “limited war,” as opposed to the traditional American policy of unconditional victory, was new and initially unsettling to many Americans, the idea came to define the U.S. Cold War military strategy.
1957 – The Ryan X-13 Vertijet became the 1st jet to take-off and land vertically.
1963 – One hundred U.S. troops of the Hawaiian-based 25th Infantry Division are ordered to temporary duty with military units in South Vietnam to serve as machine gunners aboard Army H-21 helicopters. This was the first commitment of American combat troops to the war and represented a quiet escalation of the U.S. commitment to the war in Vietnam.
1964 – A five day battle begins at Kien Long, 135 miles south of Saigon.
1966 – Operation “Orange” southwest of DaNang, Vietnam, ended.
1966 – The US Air Force announces a new policy of limiting pilots and crews in Vietnam to 12-month tours or 100 combat missions. The Marines and Navy continue their no limit policies.
1968 – President Johnson signed into law the Civil Rights Act of 1968, a week after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
1968 – The US mobilizes additional troops for Vietnam. At his first Pentagon press conference, Secretary of Defense Clark Clifford announces a call-up of 24,500 reservists and a ne troop ceiling of for US strength in Vietnam of 549,500.
1968 – The US rejects a North Vietnamese proposal to hold talks in Warsaw, expressing a desire for a neutral location.
1970 – Apollo 13, the third lunar landing mission, is successfully launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, carrying astronauts James A. Lovell, John L. Swigert, and Fred W. Haise. The spacecraft’s destination was the Fra Mauro highlands of the moon, where the astronauts were to explore the Imbrium Basin and conduct geological experiments. After an oxygen tank exploded on the evening of April 13, however, the new mission objective became to get the Apollo 13 crew home alive. At 9:00 p.m. EST on April 13, Apollo 13 was just over 200,000 miles from Earth. The crew had just completed a television broadcast and was inspecting Aquarius, the Landing Module (LM). The next day, Apollo 13 was to enter the moon’s orbit, and soon after, Lovell and Haise would become the fifth and sixth men to walk on the moon. At 9:08 p.m., these plans were shattered when an explosion rocked the spacecraft. Oxygen tank No. 2 had blown up, disabling the normal supply of oxygen, electricity, light, and water. Lovell reported to mission control: “Houston, we’ve had a problem here,” and the crew scrambled to find out what had happened. Several minutes later, Lovell looked out of the left-hand window and saw that the spacecraft was venting a gas, which turned out to be the Command Module’s (CM) oxygen. The landing mission was aborted. As the CM lost pressure, its fuel cells also died, and one hour after the explosion mission control instructed the crew to move to the LM, which had sufficient oxygen, and use it as a lifeboat. The CM was shut down but would have to be brought back on-line for Earth reentry. The LM was designed to ferry astronauts from the orbiting CM to the moon’s surface and back again; its power supply was meant to support two people for 45 hours. If the crew of Apollo 13 were to make it back to Earth alive, the LM would have to support three men for at least 90 hours and successfully navigate more than 200,000 miles of space. The crew and mission control faced a formidable task. To complete its long journey, the LM needed energy and cooling water. Both were to be conserved at the cost of the crew, who went on one-fifth water rations and would later endure cabin temperatures that hovered a few degrees above freezing. Removal of carbon dioxide was also a problem, because the square lithium hydroxide canisters from the CM were not compatible with the round openings in the LM environmental system. Mission control built an impromptu adapter out of materials known to be onboard, and the crew successfully copied their model. Navigation was also a major problem. The LM lacked a sophisticated navigational system, and the astronauts and mission control had to work out by hand the changes in propulsion and direction needed to take the spacecraft home. On April 14, Apollo 13 swung around the moon. Swigert and Haise took pictures, and Lovell talked with mission control about the most difficult maneuver, a five-minute engine burn that would give the LM enough speed to return home before its energy ran out. Two hours after rounding the far side of the moon, the crew, using the sun as an alignment point, fired the LM’s small descent engine. The procedure was a success; Apollo 13 was on its way home. For the next three days, Lovell, Haise, and Swigert huddled in the freezing lunar module. Haise developed a case of the flu. Mission control spent this time frantically trying to develop a procedure that would allow the astronauts to restart the CM for reentry. On April 17, a last-minute navigational correction was made, this time using Earth as an alignment guide. Then the repressurized CM was successfully powered up after its long, cold sleep. The heavily damaged service module was shed, and one hour before re-entry the LM was disengaged from the CM. Just before 1 p.m., the spacecraft reentered Earth’s atmosphere. Mission control feared that the CM’s heat shields were damaged in the accident, but after four minutes of radio silence Apollo 13’s parachutes were spotted, and the astronauts splashed down safely into the Pacific Ocean.
1972 – B-52 strikes against communist forces attacking South Vietnamese positions in the Central Highlands near Kontum remove any immediate threat to that city. Air strikes against North Vietnam continued, but were hampered by poor weather. Also on this day, the Pentagon ordered two more squadrons of B-52s to Thailand. These actions were part of the U.S. response to the ongoing North Vietnamese Nguyen Hue Offensive, which had begun on March 30. This offensive, later more commonly known as the “Easter Offensive,” was a massive invasion by North Vietnamese forces designed to strike the blow that would win the war for the communists. The attacking force included 14 infantry divisions and 26 separate regiments, with more than 120,000 troops and approximately 1,200 tanks and other armored vehicles. The main North Vietnamese objectives, in addition to Quang Tri in the north, were Kontum in the Central Highlands, and An Loc farther to the south. The fighting, which continued into the fall, was some of the most desperate of the war. The South Vietnamese prevailed against the invaders with the help of U.S. advisors and massive American airpower.
1974 – The Judiciary committee presented a subpoena to President Richard Nixon to produce tapes for impeachment inquiry.
1976 – The Apple I is created.
1980 – “The Viking 2 Mars Lander ended communications.
1981 – President Reagan returned to the White House from the hospital, 12 days after John W. Hinckley Jr. shot him in an assassination attempt.
1991 – The space shuttle “Atlantis” landed safely after an extended, 93-orbit mission that included deployment of an observatory.
1991 – U.N. Security Council issued a formal cease fire with Iraq to end the Gulf War.
1995 – President Clinton expressed sympathy for Pakistan’s anger over the blocked sale of American fighter jets, telling visiting Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto that it was “not right” for the United States to keep the planes and refuse to give the money back.
1997 – The Air Force announced that that despite an intensive nine-day search, it couldn’t find a bomb-laden A-10 warplane that had disappeared with its pilot during a training mission over Arizona. Wreckage was later found on a Colorado mountainside.
1999 – NATO restrained bombing over the Orthodox Easter but dropped at struck at least 50 targets in Kosovo alone. 3 Serbian civilians were reported killed.
1999 – Albania decided to hand over control of its airspace, ports and military infrastructure to NATO and to accept more NATO troops.
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