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A generation after New Providence, the United States undertook a much larger and more complex amphibious operation on March 9th, 1847, when General Winfield Scott’s army came ashore near the Mexican port of Veracruz. Supported by a strong naval flotilla, thousands of soldiers landed by surfboat in carefully planned waves along an open beach, establishing a ring around the city with remarkably few casualties in the in
On July 7th, 1898, as the United States waged war against Spain, Congress approved a joint resolution to annex the Hawaiian Islands. American sugar interests and political figures in Hawaii had pushed for closer ties for years, but the Spanish–American War threw the strategic value of the islands into sharp relief.
With the Second World War over but tensions rising, leaders in Washington faced new questions about how far the United States should go in supporting other nations against pressure from powerful neighbors. On March 12th, 1947, President Truman addressed Congress to request aid for Greece and Turkey, framing the issue as a wider commitment to assist free peoples resisting subjugation.
In the dark hours of February 25th, 1942, only weeks after Pearl Harbor and just days after a Japanese submarine shelled an oil facility near Santa Barbara, air raid sirens wailed across the Los Angeles area. Searchlights probed the sky, and anti-aircraft batteries opened fire on what many believed were incoming Japanese bombers. For hours, crews unleashed thousands of rounds, filling the night with noise, smoke, and
The air over Balete Pass crackled with small-arms fire and the flat explosions of grenades. On the steep slope of Hill B, a narrow finger of ground jutting out above the zigzag road that threaded the Caraballo Mountains, five exhausted American infantrymen hugged the earth around a captured Japanese trench. It was 8 May 1945, deep in the Battle of Luzon, and Private First Class Anton L.
In the early Cold War, the United States joined with Australia and New Zealand to sign a mutual security pact known as the ANZUS treaty.
Although conducted by a civilian space agency, the Apollo program drew heavily on rocket, guidance, and communications technology developed alongside the United States military during the Cold War. On July 20th, 1969, the lunar module Eagle descended to the Moon’s surface while the command module Columbia orbited overhead, all under the watchful eyes of controllers on Earth.
A story of high-tech American armor meeting Soviet-designed tanks in the desert and how it reshaped modern ground warfare.
At the dawn of military aviation, the United States Army experimented with powered flight on a parade ground at Fort Myer, Virginia.
As war raged in Europe and Asia, President Franklin Roosevelt took to the radio on December 29th, 1940, to explain why events overseas mattered deeply to American security.
The January sky over eastern Belgium is the color of steel, low clouds pressing down on snow-covered fields. An American armored task force eases forward along a narrow road when the world ahead of it suddenly erupts. Antitank rounds smash into the frozen earth, machine guns rake the ditches, and rifle fire lashes out from a ridgeline roughly two hundred yards in front of the column. Inside one of the lead tank destr
Just a year later in war-time June, Union and Confederate armies were locked in the Overland Campaign, a grinding series of battles as Ulysses S. Grant tried to force Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia back toward Richmond. On June 3rd, 1864, Grant launched a massive frontal assault at Cold Harbor, where entrenched Confederate troops held strong positions behind earthworks and rifle pits.
Outside Charleston, South Carolina, a sand and earth fortification called Fort Wagner guarded the approaches to the harbor and symbolized Confederate defiance. On the evening of July 18th, 1863, the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, one of the first African American regiments raised in the Union Army, led a frontal assault across a narrow strip of beach under heavy artillery and rifle fire.
In the summer of the Revolutionary War, British forces held a fortified outpost at Stony Point on the Hudson River, threatening American communications and morale. General George Washington approved a bold plan for a nighttime assault led by General Anthony Wayne and a specially selected light infantry corps. With unloaded muskets and fixed bayonets, Wayne’s men advanced in silence, relying on discipline and surprise
On February 16th, 1945, United States forces launched a daring combined airborne and amphibious assault to retake Corregidor, the rocky island guarding the entrance to Manila Bay in the Philippines. Corregidor had become a symbol of resistance when United States and Filipino defenders held out there in 1942 before surrendering to Japanese forces. Three years later, with the liberation of the Philippines well underway
On the morning of August 6th, 1945, a B-29 bomber of the United States Army Air Forces dropped the first atomic bomb used in war over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. In seconds, a blast and firestorm devastated much of the urban area, killing tens of thousands of people outright and leaving many more injured or exposed to radiation.
Three days after Hiroshima, on August 9th, 1945, a second atomic bomb fell on the city of Nagasaki, delivered by another B-29 that had originally set out for a different target. Weather, fuel concerns, and mission decisions brought the bomber over Nagasaki, where the “Fat Man” device detonated with power even greater than the first weapon.
The same week on the calendar, but in a different year, brought one of the most searing dates in United States military history: December 7th, 1941.