1918 – America’s WWI Ace of Aces, Eddie Rickenbacker, scored his first victory with the help of Captain James Norman Hall. He eventually racked up 26 victories before the end of the war.
1942 – Despite a desperate defense, the Japanese take Lashio, terminus of the Burma Road. All supplies to China must now go by air as China has been cut off by land. General Alexander decides to remove his troops to new position in the Chinwin and Irrawaddy Valley.
1942 – On Mindanao, Filipino resistance continues but they are pushed back from their positions when the invading Japanese receive reinforcements and greater air support. The Japanese continue to bomb the remaining American troops who have retreated to Corregidor.
1944 – Fast carrier task force (12 carriers) commence 2 day bombing of Truk.
1945 – U.S. Seventh Army’s 45th Infantry Division liberates Dachau, the first concentration camp established by Germany’s Nazi regime. A major Dachau subcamp was liberated the same day by the 42nd Rainbow Division. Established five weeks after Adolf Hitler took power as German chancellor in 1933, Dachau was situated on the outskirts of the town of Dachau, about 10 miles northwest of Munich. During its first year, the camp held about 5,000 political prisoners, consisting primarily of German communists, Social Democrats, and other political opponents of the Nazi regime. During the next few years, the number of prisoners grew dramatically, and other groups were interned at Dachau, including Jehovah’s Witnesses, Gypsies, homosexuals, and repeat criminals. Beginning in 1938, Jews began to comprise a major portion of camp internees. Prisoners at Dachau were used as forced laborers, initially in the construction and expansion of the camp and later for German armaments production. The camp served as the training center for SS concentration camp guards and was a model for other Nazi concentration camps. Dachau was also the first Nazi camp to use prisoners as human guinea pigs in medical experiments. At Dachau, Nazi scientists tested the effects of freezing and changes to atmospheric pressure on inmates, infected them with malaria and tuberculosis and treated them with experimental drugs, and forced them to test methods of making seawater potable and of halting excessive bleeding. Hundreds of prisoners died or were crippled as a result of these experiments. Thousands of inmates died or were executed at Dachau, and thousands more were transferred to a Nazi extermination center near Linz, Austria, when they became too sick or weak to work. In 1944, to increase war production, the main camp was supplemented by dozens of satellite camps established near armaments factories in southern Germany and Austria. These camps were administered by the main camp and collectively called Dachau. With the advance of Allied forces against Germany in April 1945, the Germans transferred prisoners from concentration camps near the front to Dachau, leading to a general deterioration of conditions and typhus epidemics. On April 27, 1945, approximately 7,000 prisoners, mostly Jews, were forced to begin a death march from Dachau to Tegernsee, far to the south. The next day, many of the SS guards abandoned the camp. On April 29, the Dachau main camp was liberated by units of the 45th Infantry after a brief battle with the camp’s remaining guards. As they neared the camp, the Americans found more than 30 railroad cars filled with bodies in various states of decomposition. Inside the camp there were more bodies and 30,000 survivors, most severely emaciated. Some of the American troops who liberated Dachau were so appalled by conditions at the camp that they machine-gunned at least two groups of captured German guards. It is officially reported that 30 SS guards were killed in this fashion, but conspiracy theorists have alleged that more than 10 times that number were executed by the American liberators. The German citizens of the town of Dachau were later forced to bury the 9,000 dead inmates found at the camp. In the course of Dachau’s history, at least 160,000 prisoners passed through the main camp, and 90,000 through the subcamps. Incomplete records indicate that at least 32,000 of the inmates perished at Dachau and its subcamps, but countless more were shipped to extermination camps elsewhere.
1945 – The unofficial surrender of German forces in Italy is signed at Caserta. The German representatives are present here because of a secret negotiation between the head of the OSS mission in Switzerland, Allan Dulles, and SS General Wolff. These talks have been going on since much earlier in the year, but because of their clandestine nature, the German representatives at Caserta cannot guarantee that the surrender will be ratified by Vietinghoff, commanding German forces in Italy.
1945 – Adolf Hitler marries his longtime partner Eva Braun in a Berlin bunker and designates Admiral Karl Dönitz as his successor. Both Hitler and Braun commit suicide the following day. Eva Braun met Hitler while employed as an assistant to Hitler’s official photographer. Of a middle-class Catholic background, Braun spent her time with Hitler out of public view, entertaining herself by skiing and swimming. She had no discernible influence on Hitler’s political career but provided a certain domesticity to the life of the dictator. Loyal to the end, she refused to leave the Berlin bunker buried beneath the chancellery as the Russians closed in. The couple was married only hours before they both committed suicide.
1945 – The US 185th Regiment (General Brush) lands near Padan Point with naval support by a destroyer force commanded by Admiral Struble. There is little Japanese resistance.
1945 – The last convoy battle of the Second World War begins as 14 German U-boats attack convoy RA-66 which consists of 24 ships with an escort including 2 escort carriers, 1 cruiser, 9 destroyers and 13 other ships.
1946 – Also on this day in 1946, Tojo Hideki, wartime premier of Japan, is indicted by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East of war crimes. In September 1945, he tried to commit suicide by shooting himself but was saved by an American physician who gave him a transfusion of American blood. He was eventually hanged by the Americans in 1948 after having been found guilty of war crimes.
1948 – Secretary of the Army and the Secretary of the Air Force authorized a medal pendant to be established for the Commendation Ribbon. The design was approved by both Secretaries on 8 July 1948 and on 20 March 1950, the Secretary of the Navy approved the Navy Commendation Ribbon, and authorized use of the same pendant with a different ribbon on 6 April 1950. DA General Order No. 10 renamed the Commendation Ribbon with Medal Pendant to the Army Commendation Medal. President Kennedy, in a memorandum to the Secretary of Defense authorized the award of the Army Commendation Medal to members of the Armed Forces of friendly foreign nations who, after 1 June 1962, distinguished themselves by an act of heroic, extraordinary achievement, or meritorious service.
1950 – In response to Senator Joseph McCarthy’s charge that former State Department consultant and university professor Owen Lattimore was a top Soviet spy in the United States, Secretary of State Dean Acheson and three former secretaries of state deny that Lattimore had any influence on U.S. foreign policy. The Lattimore case was one of the most famous episodes of the “red scare” in the United States. In February 1950, Senator McCarthy gave a speech in which he charged that there were over 200 “known communists” in the Department of State. McCarthy was asked to appear before a subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to provide details about his accusation. During the course of the hearing, the senator charged that Owen Lattimore was a top spy for the Soviet Union and had been “the principal architect of our Far Eastern policy.” The implication of McCarthy’s testimony was clear: Lattimore, acting as a virtual Soviet agent, had helped design a policy that resulted in the loss of China to the communists in 1949. In fact, Lattimore, a well-known specialist in the field of Chinese history, had merely served as a consultant to the Department of State during and after World War II. Like many others, he had come to the conclusion that the Nationalist Chinese government of Chiang Kai-Shek was hopelessly inefficient and corrupt, and that continued U.S. support of such a government was useless. In the harsh Cold War atmosphere of America, though, the “loss” of China to the communists encouraged suspicion that spies and sympathizers were to blame. In response to McCarthy’s charge, the chair of the subcommittee, Senator Millard Tydings, wrote to Secretary of State Dean Acheson and three former secretaries of state, Cordell Hull, James Byrnes, and George C. Marshall, asking whether the accusations were true. The men answered that Lattimore had absolutely no impact on U.S. foreign policy toward Asia. Indeed, each of them went to great lengths to make clear that they had never even met Lattimore. Byrnes and Marshall went further, declaring McCarthy’s charges were particularly harmful to America’s foreign relations. Lattimore was cleared by a congressional investigation in 1950, but in 1951-1952 the attacks against the professor were renewed and he was charged with perjury in connection with his 1950 testimony. These charges were eventually dismissed, but not before Lattimore’s academic career in the United States had been destroyed.
1953 – Marine Corps Colonel Katherine A. Towle, Director of Women Marines, became the first woman line officer to retire from U.S. military service upon reaching the mandatory retirement age of 55.
1954 – At a press conference, President Eisenhower denies US plans for massive air strikes or other intervention in Vietnam. “You certainly cannot hope…for a completely satisfactory answer with the Communists. The most you can work out is a practical way of getting along.”
1957 – The 1st military nuclear power plant was dedicated at Fort Belvoir, Va.
1966 – An article in the Soviet newspaper Pravda assets that the television program Batman is brainwashing American children into becoming ‘murderers’ in Vietnam.
1967 – After refusing induction into the United States Army the day before (citing religious reasons), Muhammad Ali is stripped of his boxing title.
1970 – U.S. and South Vietnamese forces launch a limited “incursion” into Cambodia. The campaign included 13 major ground operations to clear North Vietnamese sanctuaries 20 miles inside the Cambodian border. Some 50,000 South Vietnamese soldiers and 30,000 U.S. troops were involved, making it the largest operation of the war since Operation Junction City in 1967. The operation began with South Vietnamese forces attacking into the “Parrot’s Beak” area of Cambodia that projects into South Vietnam above the Mekong Delta. During the first two days, an 8,000-man South Vietnamese task force, including two infantry divisions, four ranger battalions, and four armored cavalry squadrons, killed 84 communist soldiers while suffering 16 dead and 157 wounded. The second stage of the campaign began on May 2 with a series of joint U.S.-South Vietnamese operations. These operations were aimed at clearing communist sanctuaries located in the densely vegetated “Fishhook” area of Cambodia (across the border from South Vietnam, immediately north of Tay Ninh Province and west of Binh Long Province, 70 miles from Saigon). The U.S. 1st Cavalry Division and 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, along with the South Vietnamese 3rd Airborne Brigade, killed 3,190 communists in the action and captured massive amounts of war booty, including 2,000 individual and crew-served weapons, 300 trucks, and 40 tons of foodstuffs. By the time all U.S. ground forces had departed Cambodia on June 30, the Allied forces had discovered and captured or destroyed 10 times more enemy supplies and equipment than they had captured inside South Vietnam during the entire previous year. Many intelligence analysts at the time believed that the Cambodian incursion dealt a stunning blow to the communists, driving main force units away from the border and damaging their morale, and in the process buying as much as a year for South Vietnam’s survival. However, the incursion gave the antiwar movement in the United States a new rallying point. News of the incursion set off a wave of antiwar demonstrations, including one at Kent State University that resulted in the killing of four students by Army National Guard troops and another at Jackson State in Mississippi that resulted in the shooting of two students when police opened fire on a women’s dormitory. The incursion also angered many in Congress, who felt that Nixon was illegally widening the scope of the war; this resulted in a series of congressional resolutions and legislative initiatives that would severely limit the executive power of the president.
1974 – President Nixon announced he was releasing edited transcripts of some secretly made White House tape recordings related to Watergate.
1975 – Operation Frequent Wind, the largest helicopter evacuation on record, begins removing the last Americans from Saigon. The North Vietnamese had launched their final offensive in March 1975 and the South Vietnamese forces had fallen back before their rapid advance, losing Quang Tri, Hue, Da Nang, Qui Nhon, Tuy Hoa, Nha Trang, and Xuan Loc in quick succession. With the North Vietnamese attacking the outskirts of Saigon, U.S. Ambassador Graham Martin ordered the commencement of Frequent Wind. In 19 hours, 81 helicopters carried more than 1,000 Americans and almost 6,000 Vietnamese to aircraft carriers offshore. Cpl. Charles McMahon, Jr. and Lance Cpl. Darwin Judge, USMC, were the last U.S. military personnel killed in action in Vietnam, when shrapnel from a North Vietnamese rocket struck them as they were guarding Tan Son Nhut Airbase during the evacuation. At 7:53 a.m. on April 30, the last helicopter lifted off the rook of the embassy and headed out to sea. Later that morning, North Vietnamese tanks crashed through the gates of the Presidential Palace. North Vietnamese Col. Bui Tin accepted the surrender from Gen. Duong Van Minh, who had taken over from Tran Van Huong (who only spent one day in power after President Nguyen Van Thieu fled). The Vietnam War was over.
1990 – The space shuttle Discovery landed safely at Edwards Air Force Base in California after a mission which included deploying the Hubble Space Telescope.
1990 – Wrecking cranes began tearing down Berlin Wall at Brandenburg Gate.
1991 – US troops continued airlifting Iraqi refugees from a camp in southern Iraq to Saudi Arabia.
1992 – Deadly rioting erupted in Los Angeles after a jury in Simi Valley acquitted four Los Angeles police officers of almost all state charges in the videotaped beating of Rodney King. White truck driver Reginald Denny was beaten by a mob in south Central LA angered by the acquittal of 4 police officers caught on video tape in the beating of black motorist Rodney King. Three days of violence ensued with 55 people killed, 2,300 injured and an estimated $1 billion [$717 million] in property damages. Rioters tore through the city following the not guilty verdicts on state charges for Los Angeles Police Department Sergeant Stacey C. Koon and officer Laurence M. Powell for beating Rodney King. 1093 buildings were damaged or destroyed. Of these, 764 retail stores were owned by Koreans. The US Congress later authorized $1 billion to revitalize south central Los Angeles.
1992 – The CGC Storis’ 3-inch/.50 caliber main battery was removed from the cutter. It was the last 3-inch/.50 caliber gun in service aboard any U.S. warship. The 3-inch/.50 was a dual-purpose weapon (surface and anti-aircraft) that had been in U.S. service since the 1930s. It was shipped to Curtis Bay where is was made inoperable and was then donated as a lawn ornament to a VFW club.
1997 – Staff Sgt. Delmar Simpson, a drill instructor at Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland, was convicted of raping six female trainees. Sentenced to 25 years in prison, he was dishonorably discharged.
1997 – Astronaut Jerry Linenger and cosmonaut Vasily Tsibliyev went on the first U.S.-Russian space walk.
1997 – The Chemical Weapons Convention of 1993 enters into force, outlawing the production, stockpiling and use of chemical weapons by its signatories.
1998 – The United States, Canada, and Mexico agreed to eliminate tariffs on items accounting for $1 billion in trade at a meeting in Paris of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
1998 – The US and European powers decided to impose new sanctions and agreed to freeze the assets of Yugoslavia. A ban on investments would follow in 10 days if security police was not withdrawn from Kosova.
1999 – The US decided to sell an early-warning radar system to Taiwan.
1999 – US planes bombed sites in the no-fly zone of northern Iraq after being attacked by missiles and anti-aircraft fire. Iraq said 20 civilians were injured in Mosul and 4 in separate attacks in the south.
1999 – NATO jets struck Yugoslav army headquarters in Belgrade and the federal interior ministry. A telecommunications tower was hit and knocked Serbian TV off the air.
1999 – In Bulgaria an errant NATO HARM missile hit a home in Gorna Banya on the outskirts of Sofia. There were no casualties.
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