Portal:Military of the United States/Featured article
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Following the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, the German army opened the Western Front by first invading Luxembourg and Belgium, then gaining military control of important industrial regions in France. The tide of the advance was dramatically turned with the Battle of the Marne. Both sides then dug in along a meandering line of fortified trenches, stretching from the North Sea to the Swiss frontier with France. This line remained essentially unchanged for most of the war.
Between 1915 and 1917 there were several major offensives along this front. The attacks employed massive artillery bombardments and massed infantry advances. However, a combination of entrenchments, machine gun nests, barbed wire, and artillery repeatedly inflicted severe casualties on the attackers and counter attacking defenders. As a result, no significant advances were made. In an effort to break the deadlock, this front saw the introduction of new military technology, including poison gas and tanks. But it was only after the adoption of improved tactics that some degree of mobility was restored.
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The Imperial Japanese Navy made its attack on Pearl Harbor on the morning of Sunday, December 7, 1941. The surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Oahu, Hawaii, was aimed at the Pacific Fleet of the United States Navy and its defending Army Air Corps and Marine defensive squadrons.
The attack severely damaged or destroyed twelve American warships, destroyed 188 aircraft, and killed 2,403 American servicemen and 68 civilians. However, the Pacific Fleet's three aircraft carriers were not in port and so were undamaged, as were the base's vital oil tank farms, submarine pens, and machine shops. Using these resources, the United States was able to rebound within a year.
This attack has also been called the "bombing of Pearl Harbor" and the "Battle of Pearl Harbor" but, most commonly, the "attack on Pearl Harbor" or simply "Pearl Harbor".
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USS Wisconsin (BB-64) is an Iowa-class battleship, and is the second ship of the United States Navy named in honor of the U.S. state of Wisconsin. She was built at the Philadelphia Navy Yard, and launched on December 7, 1943.
During her career Wisconsin served in World War II, where she shelled Japanese fortifications at Ulithi and Leyte Gulf. During the Korean War where she shelled North Korean targets in support of UN and South Korean ground operations, after which she was decommissioned into the United States Navy reserve fleets. She was reactivated and modernized in 1986 as part of the "600-ship Navy" plan, and participated in the 1991 Gulf War. Wisconsin was last decommissioned in September 1991, having earned a total of six battle stars for war service, and a Navy Unit Commendation for service during the 1991 Gulf War.
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The Ardennes Offensive, officially named the Battle of the Ardennes and known to the general public as the Battle of the Bulge, started on December 16, 1944. It was supported by subordinate operations known as Hermann, Greif, and Währung, by the Germans. The goal of these operations were to split the Allied line in half, capturing Antwerp and then proceeding to encircle and destroy four Allied armies, forcing the Western Allies to negotiate a peace treaty in the Axis' favour. The "bulge" refers to the extension of the German lines in this battle, forming a growing salient into Allied controlled territory, seen clearly in maps presented in newspapers of the time.
Although the German objective was ultimately unrealized, the Allies' slow response to the penetration set their own offensive timetable back by months. The offensive was also counter-productive as many experienced units of the German army were left depleted and in a poor state of supply outside the defenses of the Siegfried Line. In numerical terms, the Battle of the Ardennes was the largest land battle in the history of the U.S. Army.
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The McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II is a two-seat supersonic long-range all-weather fighter-bomber developed for the U.S. Navy by McDonnell Douglas. The Phantom flew in U.S. service from 1960 to 1996; it also served with the armed forces of eleven other nations. As of 2001, more than 1,000 F-4s remained in service around the world.
The F-4 was designed as the first modern fleet defense fighter for the U.S. Navy. By 1963, it was adopted by the U.S. Air Force for the fighter-bomber role. When production ended in 1981, 5,195 Phantom IIs had been built, making it the most numerous American supersonic military aircraft. Innovations in the F-4 included an advanced pulse-doppler radar and extensive use of titanium in the airframe. The F-4 was capable of reaching a top speed of Mach 2.23, and set 16 world records.
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The Battle of Midway was a naval battle of the Pacific Theater of World War II. It took place from June 4 to June 7, 1942, only one month after the inconclusive Battle of the Coral Sea, and six months after the Japanese Empire's attack on Pearl Harbor that had led to the entry of the United States into World War II. During the battle, the United States Navy defeated a Japanese attack against Midway Atoll, and destroyed four Japanese aircraft carriers in the process. By putting an end to early-war Japanese expansion, permanently damaging Japan's elite carrier force, and allowing the U.S. Navy to seize the strategic initiative, it represented the turning point in the Pacific War, and is widely seen as the most important naval battle of the war.
The Japanese plan of attack on Midway, which also included a secondary attack against points in the Aleutian Islands by a smaller fleet, was a ploy by the Japanese to lure America's few remaining carriers into a trap and destroy them. Doing so would effectively finish off the U.S. Pacific Fleet, and guarantee Japanese naval supremacy in the Pacific until at least late 1943.
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The Iowa-class battleships were the biggest, the most powerful, and the last battleships built for the United States Navy. Four were built in the early 1940s for World War II. All were decommissioned, then recommissioned in the 1980s and decommissioned again in the 1990s. Built with cost as no object, "The Iowa class fast-battleships were arguably the ultimate capital ship in the evolution of the battleship." Their true rival, however, was the aircraft carrier, which proved its title as the most important naval vessel during World War II naval battles in the Pacific.
The Iowa-class battleships improved upon the earlier South Dakota class with more powerful engines, longer caliber guns giving greater range and an additional 200 feet of length for improved seakeeping. The Iowas are widely considered to be amongst the most attractive battleships ever built, with a long, narrow, elegant bow and three powerful gun turrets. While excellent sea boats, the ships are quite wet forward due to the long bow, and the narrow forecastle made armoring No. 1 turret difficult. Like all American battleships of her generation, her armament was laid out in two turrets before the superstructure and one after ("2-A-1"), with the 5-inch dual-purpose secondaries (anti-ship and anti-aircraft) flanking the superstructure.
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The Battle of Leyte Gulf was one of the largest naval battles in history. It was fought during the Pacific War of World War II, in the seas surrounding the Philippine island of Leyte from 23 October to 26 October 1944 between the Allies and the Empire of Japan, and was an attempt by the Japanese to repel or destroy the Allied forces stationed on Leyte after the preceding Allied invasion in the Battle of Leyte. Instead, the Allied navies inflicted a major defeat on the outnumbered Imperial Japanese Navy which took away Japan's strategic force in the Pacific War. The battle was the last major naval engagement of World War II.
Leyte Gulf also saw the first use of kamikaze aircraft by the Japanese. The Australian heavy cruiser HMAS Australia was hit on 21 October, and organized suicide attacks by the "Special Attack Force" began on 25 October.
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The U.S. Navy Marine Mammal Program is a program administered by the U.S. Navy which studies the military use of marine mammals — principally Bottlenose Dolphins and California Sea Lions — and trains animals to perform tasks such as ship and harbour protection, mine detection and clearance, and equipment recovery. The program is based in San Diego, California, where animals are housed and trained on an ongoing basis. NMMP animal teams have been deployed for use in combat zones, such as during the Vietnam War and the Iraq War.
The program has been dogged by controversy over the treatment of the animals and speculation as to the nature of its mission and training. This has been due at least in part to the secrecy of the program, which was de-classified in the early 1990s. The Navy cites external oversight, including ongoing monitoring, in defence of its animal care standards.
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The Battle of Inchon (code name: Operation Chromite) was a decisive invasion and battle during the Korean War. The battle began on September 15, 1950, and ended around September 28. During the amphibious operation, United Nations (UN) forces secured Inchon, and broke out of the Pusan region through a series of landings in enemy territory. The UN ground forces were predominantly U.S. Marines, and were commanded by U.S. Army General Douglas MacArthur. The Battle of Inchon ended a string of victories by the invading North Korean People's Army (NKPA) and began a counterattack by United Nations forces that led to the recapture of Seoul. The northwards advance ended when, near the Yalu River, China's People's Volunteer Army entered the conflict in support of North Korea, and defeated UN forces along the Ch'ongch'on River and at the Battle of Chosin Reservoir, forcing them to retreat all the way back to South Korea.
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The United States Marine Corps (USMC) is a branch of the U.S. military, responsible for providing power projection from the sea, utilizing the mobility of the U.S. Navy to rapidly deliver combined-arms task forces to global crises. Along with the U.S. Navy, it falls under the United States Department of the Navy.
Originally organized as the Continental Marines in 1775 as naval infantry, the Marine Corps would evolve its mission with changing military doctrine and American foreign policy. Owing to the availability of Marines at sea, the Marine Corps has served in every American conflict. It attained prominence in the 20th century when its theories and practice of amphibious warfare proved prescient, and ultimately formed a cornerstone of the Pacific campaign of World War II.
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The Toledo War (1835–1836) was the largely bloodless outcome of a boundary dispute between the U.S. state of Ohio and the adjoining territory of Michigan. The dispute originated from conflicting state and federal legislation, passed between 1787 and 1805, which left Ohio's northern border uncertain. The governments of Ohio and Michigan both claimed sovereignty over a 468-square-mile (1,210 km2) region along the border, now known as the Toledo Strip. When Michigan pressed for statehood in the early 1830s, it sought to include the disputed territory within its boundaries, but Ohio's Congressional delegation was able to halt Michigan's admission to the Union.
Beginning in 1835, both sides passed legislation meant to force the other side's capitulation. Ohio's governor Robert Lucas and Michigan's then 24-year-old "boy governor" Stevens T. Mason raised militias and helped institute criminal penalties for citizens submitting to the other state's authority. Both militias were mobilized and sent to positions on opposite sides of the Maumee River, but there was little interaction between the two sides besides mutual taunting.
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The Battle of Normandy was fought in 1944 between Nazi Germany in Western Europe and the invading Allied forces as part of the larger conflict of World War II. Over sixty years later, the Normandy invasion, codenamed Operation Overlord, still remains the largest seaborne invasion in history, involving almost three million troops crossing the English Channel from England to Normandy in then German-occupied France.
The primary Allied formations that saw combat in Normandy came from the United States of America, United Kingdom and Canada. Substantial Free French and Polish forces also participated in the battle after the assault phase, and there were also contingents from Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Greece, the Netherlands, and Norway.
The Normandy invasion began with overnight parachute and glider landings, massive air attacks and naval bombardments, and an early morning amphibious assault on June 6, “D-Day.” The battle for Normandy continued for more than two months, with campaigns to establish, expand, and eventually break out of the Allied beachheads, and concluded with the liberation of Paris and the fall of the Falaise pocket in late August 1944.
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The Convair B-36 was a strategic bomber built by Convair for the United States Air Force, the first to have truly intercontinental range. Unofficially nicknamed the "Peacemaker", the B-36 was the first thermonuclear weapon delivery vehicle, the largest piston aircraft ever to be mass-produced, and the largest warplane of any kind.
The B-36 was the only American aircraft with the range and payload to carry such bombs from airfields on American soil to targets in the USSR, as storing nuclear weapons in foreign countries was diplomatically delicate. The nuclear deterrent the B-36 afforded may have kept the Soviet Army from fighting alongside the North Korean and Chinese armies during the Korean War. Convair touted the B-36 as an "aluminum overcast," a "long rifle" to give SAC a global reach. When General Curtis LeMay headed SAC (1949-57) and turned it into an effective nuclear delivery force, the B-36 formed the heart of his command. Its maximum payload was more than four times that of the B-29, even exceeding that of the B-52.
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The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration awarded by the United States. It is often referred to as the Congressional Medal of Honor because the President presents the award "in the name of the Congress". It is bestowed on a member of the United States armed forces who distinguishes himself or herself "... conspicuously by gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty while engaged in an action against an enemy of the United States ..."
The Medal of Honor is one of only two American military awards worn around the neck; the other is the Commander's Degree of the Legion of Merit. Whereas the Medal of Honor is a military award for valor—actions taken during combat operations at risk of one's own life that are above and beyond the call of duty—the Legion of Merit is a merit award.
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The F-35 Lightning II is a single-seat, single-engined military strike fighter, a multi-role aircraft that can perform close air support, tactical bombing, and air-to-air combat. It is being designed and built by an aerospace industry team led by Lockheed Martin and major partners BAE Systems and Northrop Grumman. Demonstrator aircraft flew in 2000; first flight of production models is expected in late 2006. The JSF evolved from a DARPA program to develop an STOVL Strike Fighter (SSF) for the US Marine Corps. In 1992 the Marines and US Air Force agreed to jointly develop a Common, Lightweight Strike Fighter, based on the SSF.
The primary customers and financial backers are the United States and the United Kingdom. Eight other nations are also funding the aircraft's development and will decide in 2006 whether or not to purchase it. Total program development costs, less procurement, are estimated at over US$40 billion, of which the bulk has been underwritten by the United States.
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The First Battle of the Stronghold (January 17, 1873) was the second battle in the Modoc War of 1872–1873. The battle was fought between the United States Army under Lieutenant Colonel Frank Wheaton and a band of the Native American Modoc tribe from Oregon and California, led by Captain Jack. The United States Army was attempting to remove the Modoc from the natural fortress, Captain Jack's Stronghold, in the lava beds on the south shore of Tule Lake in northeastern California, and return them to the Klamath Reservation in Oregon. The Modocs soundly defeated the Army, forcing it to retreat. The Modoc victory was due to their excellent defensive position and tactics, the terrain, and poor visibility.
The Modocs were encamped at a natural fortress of caves and trenches 300 yards wide and 2 miles long in the lava beds, now known as "Captain Jack's Stronghold". The Modoc had also captured about 100 head of cattle that they were using as a food supply. The Army moved units from all across the Department of the Columbia to the south end of Tule Lake, where the units established two encampments, the larger at Van Brimmer's Ranch, about 10 miles west of the Stronghold, and a smaller force at Louis Land's Ranch, 12 miles to the east.
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The Battle of Hampton Roads, often called the Battle of the Monitor and the Merrimack, was a naval battle of the American Civil War, famous for being the first fight between two powered iron-covered warships, or "ironclads", the USS Monitor, an entirely new design, and the CSS Virginia . The principal confrontations took place on March 8 and March 9, 1862 off Sewell's Point, a narrow place near the mouth of Hampton Roads, Virginia.
The naval battle lasted two days. The first day saw the debut of the Virginia and was fought without the Monitor. Havoc was wreaked upon the wooden Union ships and the day ended with the Confederate side at a decided advantage. However, on the second day the Monitor arrived and initiated the famous action known as the duel of the ironclads. Although the battle was inconclusive, it is significant in naval history. Prior to then, nearly all warships were made primarily of wood. After the battle, design of ships and naval warfare changed dramatically, as nations around the world raced to convert their fleets to iron, as ironclads had shown themselves to be clearly superior to wooden ships in their ability to withstand enemy fire.
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Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima is an iconic photograph taken on February 23, 1945 by Joe Rosenthal. It depicts five United States Marines and a U.S. Navy corpsman raising the Flag of the United States atop Mount Suribachi during the Battle of Iwo Jima in World War II. The photograph was instantly popular, being reprinted in hundreds of publications. Later, it became the only photograph to win the Pulitzer Prize for Photography in the same year as its publication, and ultimately came to be regarded as one of the most significant and recognizable images in history, and possibly the most reproduced photograph of all time. Of the six men depicted in the picture, three (Franklin Sousley, Harlon Block, and Michael Strank) did not survive the battle; the three survivors (John Bradley, Rene Gagnon, and Ira Hayes) became suddenly famous. The photograph was later used by Felix de Weldon to sculpt the USMC War Memorial, located just outside Washington, D.C.
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USS Missouri (BB-63) ("Mighty Mo" or "Big Mo") is a U.S. Navy battleship, and was the third ship of the United States Navy to be named in honor of the U.S. state of Missouri. Among the Iowa-class battleships, Missouri is the final battleship to be built by the United States, and was the site of the Japanese surrender at the end of World War II. Missouri was ordered on 12 June 1940 and her keel was laid at the New York Navy Yard in the New York City borough of Brooklyn on 6 January 1941.
During her career Missouri saw action in World War II during the Battle of Iwo Jima and the Battle of Okinawa, and shelled the Japanese home islands of Hokkaidō and Honshū. After World War II she returned to the United States before being called up and dispatched to fight in the Korean War. Upon her return to the United States she was decommissioned into the United States Navy reserve fleets, better known as the "Mothball Fleet" in 1955. She was reactivated and modernized in 1984 as part of the 600-ship Navy plan, and participated in the 1991 Gulf War.
Missouri was decommissioned a final time on 31 March 1992, having received a total of eleven battle stars for service in World War II, Korea, and the Persian Gulf. She was maintained on the Naval Vessel Register until January 1995, when her name was struck. In 1998 she was donated to the Missouri Memorial Association, and is presently a museum ship at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
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The Crawford expedition, also known as the Sandusky expedition and Crawford's Defeat, was a 1782 campaign on the western front of the American Revolutionary War, and one of the final operations of the conflict. Led by Colonel William Crawford, the campaign's goal was to destroy enemy American Indian towns along the Sandusky River in the Ohio Country, with the hope of ending Indian attacks on American settlers. The expedition was one in a long series of raids against enemy settlements which both sides had conducted throughout the war.
Crawford led about 500 volunteer militiamen, mostly from Pennsylvania, deep into American Indian territory, with the intention of surprising the Indians. The Indians and their British allies from Detroit had already learned of the expedition, however, and gathered a force to oppose the Americans. After a day of indecisive fighting near the Sandusky towns, the Americans found themselves surrounded and attempted to retreat. The retreat turned into a rout, but most of the Americans managed to find their way back to Pennsylvania. About 70 Americans were killed; Indian and British losses were minimal.
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The Battle of Edson's Ridge took place September 12–14, 1942 and was a land battle of the Pacific campaign of World War II between Imperial Japanese Army and Allied (mainly United States Marine Corps) ground forces. The battle took place on Guadalcanal Island in the Solomon Islands and was the second of three separate major Japanese ground offensives in the Guadalcanal campaign.
In the battle, U.S. Marines, under the overall command of U.S. Major General Alexander Vandegrift, repulsed an attack by the Japanese 35th Infantry Brigade, under the command of Japanese Major General Kiyotaki Kawaguchi. The Marines were defending the Lunga perimeter, that guarded Henderson Field on Guadalcanal, which was captured from the Japanese by the Allies in landings on Guadalcanal on August 7, 1942. Kawaguchi's unit was sent to Guadalcanal in response to the Allied landings with the mission of recapturing the airfield and driving the Allied forces from the island. Underestimating the strength of Allied forces on Guadalcanal, which at that time numbered about 12,000 personnel, Kawaguchi's 6,000 soldiers conducted several nighttime frontal assaults on the U.S. defenses. The main Japanese assault occurred on an unnamed ridge south of Henderson Field that was manned by troops from several U.S. Marine Corps units, although primarily troops from the 1st Raider and 1st Parachute Battalions under U.S. Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel Merritt A. Edson. Although the U.S. Marine Corps defenses were almost overrun, Kawaguchi's attack was defeated with heavy losses for the Japanese attackers.
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The Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress is an American four-engine heavy bomber aircraft developed for the U.S. Army Air Corps (USAAC). Competing against Douglas and Martin for a contract to build 200 planes, the airplane outperformed both the other entries and the Air Corps' expectations. Although losing the contract due to an accident, the Air Corps was so in favor of the B-17 that they ordered 13 B-17s regardless. Evolving through numerous design stages, from B-17A to G, the Flying Fortress is considered the first truly mass-produced large aircraft. From its pre-war inception, the USAAC touted the aircraft as a strategic weapon; it was a high-flying, long-ranging potent bomber capable of defending itself. With the ability to return home despite extensive battle damage, its durability, especially in belly-landings and ditchings, quickly took on mythical proportions.
The B-17 was primarily involved in the daylight precision strategic bombing campaign of World War II against German industrial targets. The United States Eighth Air Force based in England and the Fifteenth Air Force based in Italy complemented the RAF Bomber Command's night-time area bombing in Operation Pointblank, which helped secure air superiority over the cities, factories and battlefields of Western Europe in preparation for Operation Overlord. The B-17 also participated, to a lesser extent, in the War in the Pacific.
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A "military brat" is a person whose parent(s) served full-time in the armed forces during the person's childhood. In conventional usage, the word brat is derogatory; in a military context, however, it is neither a subjective nor a judgmental term. It is a term in which the military community takes pride. Although the term military brat is used in other English speaking countries, only the United States has studied their military brats as an identifiable demographic. This group is shaped by frequent moves, absence of a parent, authoritarian family dynamics, strong patriarchal authority, the threat of parental loss in war, and the militarization of the family unit.
As adults, military brats share many of the same positive and negative traits developed from their mobile childhoods. Having had the opportunity to live around the world, military brats often have a breadth of experiences unmatched by most teenagers. Many are typically highly educated, outgoing, and patriotic. They have been raised in a culture that emphasizes loyalty, honesty, discipline, and responsibility.
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The armament of the Iowa-class battleships has undergone a massive evolution since the first Iowa-class ship was laid down in June of 1940; The Iowas remain among the most heavily-armed ships the United States ever put to sea. The main battery of 16 inch guns could hit targets nearly 24 miles away with a variety of artillery shells, from standard armor piercing rounds to tactical nuclear charges called "Katies" (from "kt" for kiloton). The secondary battery of 5 inch guns could hit targets nearly 9 miles away with solid projectiles or proximity fused shells, and were equally adept in an anti-aircraft role and for damaging smaller ships. When commissioned these battleships carried a fearsome array of 20 mm and 40 mm anti-aircraft guns, which were gradually replaced with Tomahawk and Harpoon missiles, Phalanx anti-aircraft/anti-missile gatling gun systems, and electronic warfare suites. By the time the last Iowa-class battleship was decommissioned in 1992 the Iowas had set a new record for battleship weaponry: No other battleship class in history has had so many weapons at its disposal for use against an opponent.
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The Battle of Shiloh, also known as the Battle of Pittsburg Landing, was a major battle in the Western Theater of the American Civil War, fought on April 6 and April 7, 1862 in southwestern Tennessee. Confederate forces under Generals Albert Sidney Johnston and P. G. T. Beauregard launched a surprise attack against the Union Army of Maj. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant and came close to defeating his army.
On the first day of battle, the Confederates struck with the intention of driving the Union defenders away from the Tennessee River and into the swamps of Owl Creek to the west, hoping to defeat Grant's Army of the Tennessee before it could link up with Maj. Gen. Don Carlos Buell's Army of the Ohio. The Confederate battle lines became confused during the fierce fighting, and Grant's men instead fell back in the direction of Pittsburg Landing to the northeast. A position on a slightly sunken road, nicknamed the "Hornet's Nest", defended by the men of Brig. Gens. Benjamin M. Prentiss's and W. H. L. Wallace's divisions, provided critical time for the rest of the Union line to stabilize under the protection of numerous artillery batteries.
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Lochry's Defeat, also known as the Lochry massacre, was a battle fought on August 24, 1781, near present-day Aurora, Indiana, in the United States. The battle was part of the American Revolutionary War, which began as a conflict between Great Britain and the Thirteen Colonies before spreading to the western frontier and bringing American Indians into the war as British allies. The battle was short and decisive: about one hundred Indians under Joseph Brant, a Mohawk war leader who was temporarily in the west, ambushed about an equal number of Pennsylvania militiamen led by Archibald Lochry. Brant and his men killed or captured all of the Pennsylvanians without suffering any casualties.
Lochry's force was part of an army being raised by George Rogers Clark for a campaign against Detroit, the British regional headquarters. In early August 1781, Clark and about 400 men left Fort Pitt in Pennsylvania by boat, floating down the Ohio River a few days ahead of Lochry and his men, who were trying to catch up.
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Pontiac's Rebellion was a war launched in 1763 by North American Indians who were dissatisfied with British rule in the Great Lakes region after the British victory in the French and Indian War/Seven Years' War. Warriors from numerous tribes joined the uprising in an effort to drive British soldiers and settlers out of the region. The war is named after the Ottawa leader Pontiac, the most prominent of many native leaders in the conflict.
The war began in May 1763 when American Indians, alarmed by policies imposed by British General Jeffrey Amherst, attacked a number of British forts and settlements. Eight forts were destroyed, and hundreds of colonists were killed or captured, with many more fleeing the region. Hostilities came to an end after British Army expeditions in 1764 led to peace negotiations over the next two years. The Indians were unable to drive away the British, but the uprising prompted the British government to modify the policies that had provoked the conflict. The ruthlessness of the conflict was a reflection of a growing racial divide between British colonists and American Indians. The British government sought to prevent further racial violence by issuing the Royal Proclamation of 1763, which created a boundary between colonists and Indians.
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The B-52 crash at Fairchild Air Force Base was a fatal air crash that occurred on June 24, 1994, killing the four crew members of a United States Air Force (USAF) B-52 Stratofortress during a training flight. In the crash, Bud Holland, who was the command pilot of the aircraft based at Fairchild Air Force Base, call sign Czar 52, flew the aircraft beyond its operational parameters and lost control. As a result, the aircraft stalled, impacted the ground, and was completely destroyed. Video of the crash was shown throughout the United States on news broadcasts.
The accident investigation concluded that the chain of events leading to the crash was primarily attributable to Holland's personality and behavior, USAF leaders' reactions to it, and the sequence of events during the mishap flight of the aircraft. Today, the crash is used in military and civilian aviation environments as a training aid in teaching crew resource management. Also, the crash is often used by the USAF during safety training as an example of the importance of compliance with safety regulations and correcting the behavior of anyone who violates safety procedures.
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Hispanic Americans in World War II fought in every major battle in the European Theatre, from North Africa to the Battle of the Bulge, and in the Pacific Theater of Operations, from Bataan to Okinawa. According to the National World War II Museum, between 250,000 and 500,000 Hispanic Americans served in the Armed Forces during WWII, out of a total of 10,420,000. Thus, Hispanic Americans comprised 2.3% to 4.7% of the Army. The exact number, however is unknown as at the time Hispanics were counted as whites. The only racial groups to have separate statistics kept were African-Americans and Asian-Americans.
On December 7, 1941, when the United States officially entered the war, Hispanic Americans were among the many American citizens who joined the ranks of the Army, Navy and Marine Corps as volunteers or through the draft. Not only did Hispanics serve as active combatants in the European and Pacific Theatres of war, but they also served on the home front as civilians. Hundreds of women joined the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAACs) and Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service (WAVES), serving as nurses and in administrative positions. Many worked in the manufacturing plants that produced munitions and material, while the men who usually performed this work were away at war.
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USS New Jersey (BB-62) ("Big J" or "Black Dragon") is an Iowa-class battleship, and was the second ship of the United States Navy to be named in honor of the U.S. state of New Jersey. Among the four completed Iowa-class battleships, New Jersey is notable for having earned the most battle stars for her combat actions, and for being the only battleship of the class to have served a tour of duty in Vietnam during the Vietnam War.
New Jersey was decommissioned for the last time in 1991, having earned a Navy Unit Commendation for service in Vietnam and a total of 19 battle and campaign stars for combat operations during World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Lebanese Civil War, and service in the Persian Gulf, and is now a museum ship at Camden, New Jersey.
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The 1994 Black Hawk shootdown incident, sometimes referred to as the Black Hawk Incident, was a "friendly fire" incident over northern Iraq that occurred on April 14, 1994 during Operation Provide Comfort (OPC). The pilots of two United States Air Force (USAF) F-15 fighter aircraft, operating under the control of a USAF airborne warning and control system (AWACS) aircraft, misidentified two United States Army UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters as Iraqi Mil Mi-24 "Hind" helicopters. The F-15 pilots fired on and destroyed both helicopters, killing 26 military service members and civilians from the United States (U.S.), United Kingdom, France, Turkey, and the Kurdish community.
A subsequent USAF investigation blamed the accident on several factors. The F-15 pilots were faulted for misidentifying the helicopters as hostile. Also, the crew members of the AWACS aircraft were blamed for their inaction in failing to exercise appropriate control and for not intervening in the situation. In addition, the identification friend or foe (IFF) systems had not functioned to identify the helicopters to the F-15 pilots. Furthermore, USAF leaders had failed to adequately integrate U.S. Army helicopter operations into overall OPC air operations. As a result of the investigation several USAF officers received administrative discipline but only one, Jim Wang, an AWACS crew member, was tried by military court-martial, in which he was acquitted.
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The Battle of Musa Qala was a military clash in Helmand Province, southern Afghanistan, launched by the Afghan National Army and the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) against the Taliban on 7 December 2007. After three days of intense fighting, the Taliban retreated into the mountains on 10 December. Musa Qala was officially reported captured on 12 December, with Afghan Army troops pushing into the town centre.
The operation was codenamed Mar Kardad (Pashto: "snakepit"). Senior ISAF officers, including US general Dan K. McNeill, the overall ISAF commander, agreed to the assault on 17 November 2007. It followed more than nine months of Taliban occupation of the town, the largest the insurgents controlled at the time of the battle. ISAF forces had previously occupied the town, until a controversial withdrawal in late 2006.
It was the first battle in the war in Afghanistan in which Afghan army units were the principal fighting force. Statements from the British Ministry of Defence (MOD) emphasised that the operation was Afghan-led, although the ability of Afghan units to function without NATO control was questioned during the battle. Military engagement over Musa Qala is part of a wider conflict between coalition forces and the Taliban in Helmand. Both before and after the battle, related fighting was reported across a larger area, particularly in Sangin district to the south of Musa Qala.
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The Matanikau Offensive, from November 1 – November 4, 1942, sometimes referred to as the Fourth Battle of the Matanikau, was an engagement between United States (U.S.) Marine and Army and Imperial Japanese Army forces around the Matanikau River and Point Cruz area on Guadalcanal during the Guadalcanal campaign of World War II. The action was one of the last of a series of engagements between U.S. and Japanese forces near the Matanikau River during the campaign.
In the engagement, seven battalions of U.S. Marine and Army troops under the overall command of Alexander Vandegrift and tactical command of Merritt A. Edson, following up on the U.S. victory in the Battle for Henderson Field, crossed the Matanikau River and attacked Japanese Army units between the river and Point Cruz, on the northern Guadalcanal coast. The area was defended by the Japanese Army's 4th Infantry Regiment under Nomasu Nakaguma along with various other support troops, under the overall command of Harukichi Hyakutake. After inflicting heavy casualties on the Japanese defenders, U.S. forces halted the offensive and temporarily withdrew because of a perceived threat from Japanese forces elsewhere in the Guadalcanal area.
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USS Illinois (BB-65) was to be the fifth Iowa-class battleship constructed for the United States Navy; she was the fourth ship to be named in honor of the 21st state.
Hull BB-65 was originally to be the first ship of the Montana-class battleships, but changes during the Second World War resulted in her being reordered as an Iowa-class battleship midway through the war. Adherence to the Iowa-class layout rather than the Montana-class layout allowed BB-65 to gain eight knots in speed, carry more 20 mm and 40 mm anti-aircraft guns, and transit the locks of the Panama Canal; however, the move away from the Montana-class layout left BB-65 with a reduction in the heavier armaments and without the additional armor that were to have been added to BB-65 during her time on the drawing board as USS Montana.
Like her sister ship USS Kentucky (BB-66), Illinois was still under construction at the end of World War II. Her construction was canceled in August 1945, but her hull remained until 1958 when it was broken up.
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The 2007 United States Air Force nuclear weapons incident occurred at Minot Air Force Base and Barksdale Air Force Base on August 29–30, 2007. Six AGM-129 ACM cruise missiles, each loaded with a W80-1 variable yield nuclear warhead, were mistakenly loaded on a United States Air Force (USAF) B-52H heavy bomber at Minot and transported to Barksdale. The nuclear warheads in the missiles were supposed to have been removed before taking the missiles from their storage bunker. The missiles with the nuclear warheads were not reported missing and remained mounted to the aircraft at both Minot and Barksdale for a period of 36 hours. During this period, the warheads were not protected by the various mandatory security precautions required for nuclear weapons.
The incident was reported to the top levels of the United States military and referred to by observers as a Bent Spear incident, which indicates a nuclear weapon incident that is of significant concern, but does not involve the immediate threat of nuclear war. The USAF, however, has yet to officially classify the incident.
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Carlson's patrol, also known as The Long Patrol or Carlson's long patrol, was an operation by the 2nd Marine Raider Battalion under the command of Evans Carlson during the Guadalcanal Campaign against the Imperial Japanese Army from November 6 to December 4, 1942. In the operation, the 2nd Raiders attacked forces under the command of Toshinari Shōji, which were escaping from an attempted encirclement in the Koli Point area on Guadalcanal and attempting to rejoin other Japanese army units on the opposite side of the U.S. Lunga perimeter.
In a series of small unit engagements over 29 days, the 2nd Raiders killed almost 500 Japanese soldiers while suffering only 16 killed. The raiders also captured a Japanese artillery cannon that was delivering harassing gunfire on Henderson Field, the Allied airfield at Lunga Point on Guadalcanal.
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The Koli Point action, from November 3 – November 12, 1942, was an engagement between United States Marine Corps and United States Army forces and Imperial Japanese Army forces around Koli Point on Guadalcanal during the Guadalcanal campaign. The United States (US) forces were under the overall command of Alexander Vandegrift while the Japanese forces were under the overall command of Harukichi Hyakutake.
In the engagement, US Marines from the 7th Marine Regiment and US Army soldiers from the 164th Infantry Regiment under the tactical command of William H. Rupertus and Edmund B. Sebree, attacked a concentration of Japanese Army troops, most of whom belonged to the 230th Infantry Regiment, commanded by Toshinari Shōji. Shōji's troops had marched to the Koli Point area after the failed Japanese assaults on US defenses during the Battle for Henderson Field in late October, 1942.
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USS Bridgeport (AD-10/ID-3009) was a destroyer tender in the United States Navy during World War I and the years after. She was a twin-screw, steel-hulled passenger and cargo steamship built in 1901 at Vegesack, Germany as SS Breslau of the North German Lloyd line. Breslau was one of the seven ships of the Köln class of ships built for the Bremen to Baltimore and Galveston route.
Interned at New Orleans, Louisiana at the outbreak of World War I, Breslau was seized in 1917 by the United States after her entry into that conflict and commissioned into the Navy as USS Bridgeport. Originally slated to be a repair ship, she was reclassified as a destroyer tender the following year. Bridgeport completed several transatlantic convoy crossings before she was stationed at Brest, France, where she remained in a support role after the end of World War I. After returning to the United States in November 1919, she spent the next five years along the East Coast and in the Caribbean tending destroyers and conducting training missions. She was decommissioned in November 1924 and placed in reserve at the Boston Navy Yard.
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USS Orizaba (ID-1536/AP-24) was a transport ship for the United States Navy during both World War I and World War II. She was the sister ship of Siboney but the two were not part of a ship class. During her varied career, she was also known as USAT Orizaba in service for the United States Army, as SS Orizaba in interwar civilian service for the Ward Line, and as Duque de Caxias (U-11) as an auxiliary in the Brazilian Navy after World War II.
Orizaba made 15 transatlantic voyages for the Navy carrying troops to and from Europe in World War I with the second shortest average in-port turnaround time of all Navy transports. The ship was turned over to the War Department in 1919 for use as Army transport USAT Orizaba. After her World War I service ended, Orizaba reverted to the Ward Line, her previous owners. The ship was briefly engaged in transatlantic service to Spain and then engaged in New York–Cuba–Mexico service until 1939, when the ship was chartered to United States Lines. While Orizaba was in her Ward Line service, American poet Hart Crane leapt to his death from the rear deck of the liner off Florida in April 1932.
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USS Siboney (ID-2999) was a transport ship for the United States Navy during World War I. She was the sister ship of USS Orizaba but neither was part of a ship class. Launched as SS Oriente, she was soon renamed after Siboney, Cuba, a landing site of United States forces during the Spanish–American War. After her Navy service ended, she was SS Siboney for the Ward Line and American Export Lines. During World War II she served the U.S. Army as transport USAT Siboney and as hospital ship USAHS Charles A. Stafford.
As a transport during World War I, Siboney made 17 transatlantic voyages for the Navy carrying troops to and from Europe, and had the shortest average in-port turnaround time of all Navy transports. During her maiden voyage, her steering gear malfunctioned which resulted in a collision between two other troopships in the convoy.
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The Battle of Tassafaronga, sometimes referred to as the Fourth Battle of Savo Island, was a nighttime naval battle that took place November 30, 1942 between United States (US) Navy and Imperial Japanese Navy warships during the Guadalcanal campaign. The battle took place in Ironbottom Sound near the Tassafaronga area on Guadalcanal.
In the battle, a US warship force of five cruisers and four destroyers under the command of Carleton H. Wright attempted to surprise and destroy a Japanese warship force of eight destroyers under the command of Raizo Tanaka. Tanaka's warships were attempting to deliver food supplies to Japanese forces on Guadalcanal.
Using radar, the US warships opened fire and sank one of the Japanese destroyers. Tanaka and the rest of his ships, however, reacted quickly and launched numerous torpedoes at the US warships. The Japanese torpedoes hit and sank one US cruiser and heavily damaged three others, enabling the rest of Tanaka's force to escape without significant additional damage but also without completing the mission of delivering the food supplies. Although a severe tactical defeat for the US, the battle had little strategic impact as the Japanese were unable to take advantage of the victory to assist their ultimately unsuccessful efforts to drive Allied forces from Guadalcanal.
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The Krulak Mendenhall mission was a fact-finding expedition dispatched by the Kennedy administration to South Vietnam in early September 1963. The stated purpose of the expedition was to investigate the progress of the war by South Vietnam and their American military advisers against the Viet Cong insurgency. The mission was led by Victor Krulak and Joseph Mendenhall. Krulak was a Major General in the United States Marine Corps, while Mendenhall was a senior Foreign Service Officer experienced in dealing with Vietnamese affairs.
The four-day whirlwind trip was launched on September 6, 1963, the same day as a National Security Council (NSC) meeting, and came in the wake of increasingly strained relations between the US and South Vietnam. Civil unrest gripped South Vietnam as Buddhist demonstrations against the religious discrimination by President Ngo Dinh Diem escalated. Following the raids on Buddhist pagodas on August 21 that left a death toll ranging up to a few hundred, the US authorized investigations into a possible coup through a cable to US Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge Jr.. In their submissions to the NSC, Krulak presented an extremely optimistic report on the progress of the war, while Mendenhall presented an extremely bleak picture of military failure and public discontent.
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Operation Passage to Freedom was the term used by the United States Navy to describe its transportation of 310,000 Vietnamese civilians, soldiers and non-Vietnamese members of the French Army from the communist North Vietnam (the Democratic Republic of Vietnam) to South Vietnam (the State of Vietnam, later to become the Republic of Vietnam). The French military transported a further 500,000. In the wake of the French defeat at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu, the Geneva Accords of 1954 decided the fate of French Indochina after eight years of war between French Union forces and the Viet Minh, which sought Vietnamese independence. The accords resulted in the partition of Vietnam at the 17th parallel, with Ho Chi Minh's communist Viet Minh in control of the north and the French-backed State of Vietnam in the south. The agreements allowed a 300-day period of grace, ending on May 18, 1955, in which people could move freely between the two Vietnams before the border was sealed. The partition was intended to be temporary, pending elections in 1956 to reunify the country under a national government. Between 600,000 and one million northerners fled communist rule, while between 14,000 and 45,000 civilians and approximately 100,000 Viet Minh fighters moved in the opposite direction.
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The Montana-class battleships of the United States Navy were planned as successors to the Iowa class, being slower but larger, better armored, and having superior firepower. Five were approved for construction during World War II but changes in wartime building priorities resulted in their cancellation in favor of the Essex-class aircraft carriers before any Montana-class keels were laid.
With an intended armament of twelve 16-inch (410 mm) guns and a greater anti-aircraft capability than the preceding Iowa class, the Montanas would have been the largest and the most heavily-armed battleships put to sea by the United States. They would have been the only US Navy battleship class to have come close to rivaling the Empire of Japan's Yamato-class battleships in terms of armor, weaponry, and displacement.
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The Battle of Mount Austen, the Galloping Horse, and the Sea Horse, part of which is sometimes called the Battle of the Gifu, took place from December 15, 1942 to January 23, 1943. It was primarily an engagement between United States and Imperial Japanese forces in the hills near the Matanikau River area on Guadalcanal during the Guadalcanal Campaign. The US forces were under the overall command of Alexander Patch and the Japanese forces were under the overall command of Harukichi Hyakutake.
In the battle, US soldiers and marines, assisted by native Solomon Islanders, attacked Japanese Army (IJA) forces defending well-fortified and entrenched positions on several hills and ridges. The most prominent hills were called Mount Austen, the Galloping Horse, and the Sea Horse by the Americans. The US was attempting to destroy the Japanese forces on Guadalcanal and the Japanese were trying to hold their defensive positions until reinforcements could arrive.
After some difficulty, the US succeeded in taking Mount Austen, in the process reducing a strongly defended position called the Gifu, as well as the Galloping Horse and the Sea Horse. In the meantime, the Japanese secretly decided to abandon Guadalcanal and withdrew to the west coast of the island. From that location most of the surviving Japanese troops were successfully evacuated during the first week of February 1943.
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Operation Varsity was a joint American–British airborne operation that took place in March 1945, towards the end of World War II. It was planned to aid the British 21st Army Group in securing a foothold across the River Rhine in western Germany by landing two airborne divisions on the eastern bank of the Rhine near the towns of Hamminkeln and Wesel. The operation took place on the morning of 24 March 1945 as a part of Operation Plunder, the overall effort by 21st Army Group under Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery to cross the river and from there enter Northern Germany. The operation involved two airborne divisions from US XVIII Airborne Corps: the British 6th Airborne Division and the US 17th Airborne Division.
The operation called for the two airborne divisions to be dropped by parachute and glider behind German lines near Wesel, with their primary objective to be the capture of key territory and to generally disrupt German defenses to aid the advance of Allied ground forces. The 6th Airborne Division was tasked with capturing the towns of Schnappenberg and Hamminkeln, as well as clearing part of the Diersfordter Wald of German forces and securing three bridges over the River Ijssel. The 17th Airborne Division was ordered to capture the town of Diersfordt and clear the rest of the Diersfordter Wald of any remaining German forces. The two divisions would then hold the territory they had captured until relieved by advancing units of 21st Army Group, and then join in the general advance into Northern Germany.
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USS Princess Matoika (ID-2290) was a transport ship for the United States Navy during World War I. Before the war, she was a Barbarossa-class ocean liner that sailed as SS Kiautschou for the Hamburg America Line and as SS Princess Alice (sometimes spelled Prinzess Alice) for North German Lloyd. After her World War I Navy service ended, she served as the United States Army transport ship USAT Princess Matoika. In post-war civilian service she was SS Princess Matoika until 1922, SS President Arthur until 1927, and SS City of Honolulu until she was scrapped in 1933.
Built in 1900 for the German Far East mail routes, SS Kiautschou traveled between Hamburg and Far East ports for most of her Hamburg America Line career. Seized by the U.S. in 1917, the newly renamed USS Princess Matoika carried over 50,000 U.S. troops to and from France in U.S. Navy service from 1918 to 1919. As an Army transport after that, she continued to return troops and repatriated the remains of Americans killed overseas in the war. In July 1920, she was a last-minute substitute to carry a large portion of the United States team to the 1920 Summer Olympics in Antwerp. From the perspective of the Olympic team, the trip was disastrous and a majority of the team members published a list of grievances and demands of the American Olympic Committee in an action known today as the Mutiny of the Matoika.
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Operation Ke (ケ号作戦?) was the largely successful withdrawal of Japanese forces from Guadalcanal at the conclusion of the Guadalcanal Campaign of World War II. The operation took place between January 14 and February 7, 1943 and involved both army and navy forces under the overall direction of the Japanese Imperial General Headquarters (IGH). Commanders of the operation included Isoroku Yamamoto and Hitoshi Imamura.
The Japanese decided to withdraw and concede Guadalcanal to Allied forces for several reasons. All attempts by the Japanese army to recapture Henderson Field, the airfield on Guadalcanal in use by Allied aircraft, had failed with heavy losses for the Japanese. Japanese naval forces in the area were also suffering heavy losses attempting to reinforce and resupply the Japanese forces on the island. These losses, plus the projected resources needed for more attempts to recapture Guadalcanal, were affecting strategic security and operations in other areas of the Japanese Empire. The decision to withdraw was endorsed by Emperor Hirohito on December 31, 1942.
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The Guadalcanal Campaign, also known as the Battle of Guadalcanal, was fought between August 7, 1942, and February 9, 1943, in the Pacific theater of World War II. Fought on the ground, at sea, and in the air, this was a strategically significant, and decisive, campaign which pitted Allied forces against Imperial Japanese forces. The fighting took place on and around the island of Guadalcanal in the southern Solomon Islands, and was the first major offensive launched by Allied forces against the Empire of Japan.[1]
On August 7, 1942, Allied forces, predominantly composed of troops from the United States, initiated landings on the islands of Guadalcanal, Tulagi, and Florida in the southern Solomons with the objective of denying their use by Japanese forces as bases to threaten supply routes between the U.S., Australia, and New Zealand. The Allies also intended to use Guadalcanal and Tulagi as bases to support a campaign to eventually capture or neutralize the major Japanese base at Rabaul on New Britain. The initial Allied landings overwhelmed the outnumbered Japanese defenders, who had occupied the islands in May 1942, and resulted in the capture of Tulagi and Florida as well as an airfield (later named Henderson Field) that was under construction by the Japanese on Guadalcanal.
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