Bombing of USS Cole in Aden Harbor
At the dawn of a new century, American forces operating far from home faced a different kind of threat.
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At the dawn of a new century, American forces operating far from home faced a different kind of threat.
Union attacks on September 29 broke parts of Richmond’s outer defenses and brought Black troops into a costly assault at New Market Heights. The capture of Fort Harrison survived Lee’s counterattack, but the advance did not take Richmond.
The crisis in north China produced several connected operations: defense of the foreign legations, the unsuccessful Seymour expedition, fighting around Tientsin, and the August advance on Peking. Their recipients did not all fight at the same place or on the same day.
On January 1st, 1942, representatives of the United States, Britain, the Soviet Union, China, and many other Allied nations signed a joint pledge in Washington, known as the Declaration by United Nations.
In the American Civil War, control of the Mississippi River and its great port cities was central to Union strategy. On the night of April 24th, 1862, Flag Officer David Glasgow Farragut led a Union fleet past the Confederate strongholds of Fort Jackson and Fort St. Philip, which guarded the river approach to New Orleans. Under heavy fire, Union ships dodged chains, obstructions, and burning rafts while trading blows
The Second World War was over by December 5th, 1945, but military aviation remained a dangerous profession even in training.
A story of long-range precision firepower told through the crews who drive a wheeled launcher into harm’s way and the targets that suddenly find nowhere to hide.
On this day representatives of Imperial Japan signed an instrument of surrender on the deck of the battleship Missouri, anchored in Tokyo Bay and surrounded by Allied warships.
In the spring of the Revolutionary War, the Continental Navy’s most famous captain carried the fight directly to Britain’s own shores. Sailing the sloop Ranger, John Paul Jones led a small landing party into the harbor at Whitehaven on England’s west coast. His men spiked coastal guns and attempted to set several ships ablaze, causing little physical damage but a great deal of alarm.
On August 26th, 2021, as crowds of desperate Afghans pressed toward Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport, a suicide bomber struck near Abbey Gate.
The October 1944 landings restored a major Allied foothold in the Philippines. Fleet battles protected that foothold, but Japanese reinforcement and the struggle for routes toward Ormoc made the ground campaign longer and more difficult than the beach assault alone suggests.
Two days after the United States garrison at Fort Sumter surrendered, President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation calling for seventy-five thousand state militia volunteers to put down the rebellion. The call, issued on April 15th, 1861, transformed a constitutional crisis into a full-scale civil war by forcing citizens, states, and officers to choose sides.
Four years after the war’s outbreak, the nation seemed on the brink of healing when a final shock struck. On the evening of April 14th, 1865, President Lincoln attended a play at Ford’s Theatre in Washington City, only days after Confederate forces in Virginia had surrendered a major army. An assassin slipped into the presidential box and fired a pistol shot at close range, mortally wounding the commander in chief.
Off the New England coast, the nuclear-powered submarine USS Thresher was conducting deep-diving tests when something went catastrophically wrong. Communications suggested trouble with systems and attempts to surface as the boat descended beyond its safe limits. Moments later, contact was lost, and later analysis pointed to flooding and a reactor shutdown that left the submarine unable to recover.
The return to Luzon combined amphibious landings, the destruction and liberation of Manila, the recovery of the bay approaches and months of fighting in mountain defenses. Capturing the capital did not end the island campaign.
One year later to the day, another daring mission unfolded in the skies over the Pacific. On April 18th, 1943, United States forces executed a carefully planned interception of the aircraft carrying Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, the architect of the Pearl Harbor attack. Guided by intelligence that revealed his inspection tour schedule, a handpicked group of long-range P-38 Lightning fighters flew at low altitude across o
By August 7th, 1990, Iraqi forces had already invaded and occupied Kuwait, raising fears that they might drive farther south toward the oil fields of Saudi Arabia and disrupt the broader balance of power in the Persian Gulf. On that date, the United States announced Operation Desert Shield, committing air and ground forces to Saudi Arabia at the request of its government and in coordination with other nations.
On December 18th, 1972, United States bombers and supporting aircraft began a concentrated air offensive often known as the “Christmas bombing” of North Vietnam.