Newsletter & Updates

Military History

On 1 Nov 1952, the US detonated the world’s first thermonuclear weapon, the hydrogen bomb, on Eniwetok atoll in the Pacific. The test gave us a short-lived advantage in the nuclear arms race with the Soviet Union. Following the successful Soviet detonation of an atomic device in September 1949, we accelerated its program to develop the next stage in atomic weaponry, a thermonuclear bomb. Popularly known as the hydrogen bomb, this new weapon was about 1,000 times more powerful than conventional nuclear devices.

On 2 Nov 1777, the USS Ranger, with a crew of 140 men under the command of John Paul Jones, left Portsmouth, New Hampshire, for the naval port at Brest, France, where it will stop before heading toward the Irish Sea to begin raids on British warships. This was the first mission of its kind during the Revolutionary War.

On 3 Nov 1941, the Combine Japanese Fleet received Top-Secret Order No. 1: In 34 days time, Pearl Harbor was to be bombed.

On 4 Nov 1979, Student followers of the Ayatollah Khomeini send shock waves across America when they storm the US embassy in Tehran. The radical Islamic fundamentalists took 90 hostages. The students were enraged that the deposed Shah had been allowed to enter the US for medical treatment, and they threatened to murder hostages if any rescue was attempted. Days later, Iran’s provincial leader resigned, and the Ayatollah Khomeini, the leader of Iran’s fundamentalist revolutionaries, took full control of the country–and the fate of the hostages. Two weeks after the storming of the embassy, the Ayatollah began to release all non-US captives, and all female and minority Americans, citing these groups as among the people oppressed by the United States government. The remaining 52 captives were left at the mercy of the Ayatollah for the next 14 months. President Jimmy Carter was unable to diplomatically resolve the crisis, and on April 24, 1980, he ordered a disastrous rescue mission in which eight US military personnel were killed and no hostages rescued. Three months later, the former shah died of cancer in Egypt, but the crisis continued.

On November 1980, Carter lost the presidential election to Republican Ronald Reagan. Soon after, with the assistance of Algerian intermediaries, successful negotiations finally began between the US and Iran. On January 20, 1981–the day of Reagan’s inauguration–the US freed almost $3 billion in frozen Iranian assets and promised $5 billion more in financial aid. Minutes after Reagan was sworn in, the hostages flew out of Iran on an Algerian airliner, ending their 444-day ordeal. The next day, Jimmy Carter flew to West Germany to greet them on their way home.

On 4 Nov 2000, President Clinton vetoed a bill that would have criminalized the leaking of government secrets. Huh? How could it not be a crime?

On 5 Nov 1915, In AB-2 flying boat, LCDR Henry Mustin made the first underway catapult launch from a ship, USS North Carolina, at Pensacola Bay, FL.

On 5 Nov 1915, Marines under Major Smedley Butler captured the stronghold at Fort Capois, Haiti. Butler led a reconnaissance force of 26 volunteers in pursuit of a Caco force that had killed 10 Marines. Like the Cacos in the mountains, he and his men lived for days off the orange groves. For over a 100 miles they followed a trail of peels, estimating how long before the Cacos had passed by the dryness of the peels. A native guide they picked up helped them locate the Cacos’ headquarters, a secret fort called Capois, deep in the mountain range. Studying the mountaintop fort through field glasses, Butler made out thick stone walls, with enough activity to suggest they were defended by at least a regiment. He decided to return to Cape Haitien for reinforcements and capture it. On the way back they were ambushed by a force of Cacos that outnumbered them twenty to one. Fortunately it was a pitch-black night, and Butler was able to save his men by splitting them up to crawl past the Cacos’ lines through high grass. Just before dawn he reorganized them into 3 squads of 9 men each. Charging from 3 directions as they yelled wildly and fired from the hip, they created such a fearful din that the Cacos panicked and fled, leaving 75 killed. The only Marine casualty was one man wounded. When he was able to return with reinforcements, spies had alerted the Cacos, and Butler took a deserted Fort Capois without firing a shot.

On 5 Nov 1923, Tests designed to prove the feasibility of launching a small seaplane from a submarine occur at Hampton Roads Naval Base. A Martin MS-1, stored disassembled in a tank on board USS S-1, was removed and assembled. Then the submarine submerged allowing the plane to float free and take off.

On 5 Nov 1941, The Japanese government decided to attempt to negotiate a settlement with the US, setting a deadline of the end of November. The US rejected the offer because the Japanese would not repudiate the Tripartite Agreement with Italy and Germany and because the Japanese wished to maintain bases in China. The US code breaking service continued to intercept all Japanese diplomatic communication.

On 5 Nov 1979, Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini declared US “The Great Satan.” The next day he took over in Iran.

On 9 Nov 1938, in an event that would foreshadow the Holocaust, German Nazis launched a campaign of terror against Jewish people and their homes and businesses in Germany and Austria. The violence, which continued through November 10 and was later dubbed “Kristallnacht,” or “Night of Broken Glass,” after the countless smashed windows of Jewish-owned establishments, left approximately 100 Jews dead, 7,500 Jewish businesses damaged and hundreds of synagogues, homes, schools and graveyards vandalized. An estimated 30,000 Jewish men were arrested, many of whom were then sent to concentration camps for several months; they were released when they promised to leave Germany. Kristallnacht represented a dramatic escalation of the campaign started by Adolf Hitler in 1933 when he became chancellor to purge Germany of its Jewish population.

On 9 Nov 1989, East German officials opened the Berlin Wall, allowing travel from East to West Berlin. The following day, celebrating Germans began to tear the wall down. One of the ugliest and most infamous symbols of the Cold War was soon reduced to rubble that was quickly snatched up by souvenir hunters. A piece of it stands at the Gerald Ford Presidential Museum in Grand Rapids, MI.

On 10 Nov 1775, during the American Revolution, the Continental Congress passed a resolution stating that “two Battalions of Marines be raised” for service as landing forces for the recently formed Continental Navy. The resolution, drafted by future US president John Adams and adopted in Philadelphia, created the Continental Marines and is now observed as the birth date of the US Marine Corps.

On 11 Nov 1918, at the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, the Great War ended. At 5 am that morning, Germany, bereft of manpower and supplies and faced with imminent invasion, signed an armistice agreement with the Allies in a railroad car outside Compiégne, France. WWI left nine million soldiers dead and 21 million wounded, with Germany, Russia, Austria-Hungary, France, and Great Britain each losing nearly a million or more lives. In addition, at least five million civilians died from disease, starvation, or exposure.

On 11 Nov 1921, exactly three years after the end of WWI, the Tomb of the Unknowns was dedicated at Arlington Cemetery in Virginia during an Armistice Day ceremony presided over by President Warren Harding. Two days before, an unknown American soldier, who had fallen somewhere on a WWI battlefield, arrived at the nation’s capital from a military cemetery in France. On Armistice Day, in the presence of President Harding and other government, military, and international dignitaries, the unknown soldier was buried with highest honors beside the Memorial Amphitheater. As the soldier was lowered to his final resting place, a two-inch layer of soil brought from France was placed below his coffin so that he might rest forever atop the earth on which he died.

On 13 Nov 1982, near the end of a weeklong national salute to Americans who served in the Vietnam War, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was dedicated in Washington after a march to its site by thousands of veterans of the conflict. The long-awaited memorial was a simple V-shaped black-granite wall inscribed with the names of the 57,939 Americans who died in the conflict, arranged in order of death, not rank, as was common in other memorials.

On 14 Nov 1965, during the Vietnam war, in the first major engagement of the war between regular US and North Vietnamese forces, elements of the 3rd Brigade, 1st Cavalry Division (Airmobile) fought a pitched battle with Communist main-force units in the Ia Drang Valley of the Central Highlands. On this morning, Lt. Col. Harold Moore’s 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry conducted a heliborne assault into Landing Zone X-Ray near the Chu Pong hills. Around noon, the North Vietnamese 33rd Regiment attacked the US troopers. The fight continued all day and into the night. American soldiers received support from nearby artillery units and tactical air strikes. The next morning, the North Vietnamese 66th Regiment joined the attack against the US unit. The fighting was bitter, but the tactical air strikes and artillery support took their toll on the enemy and enabled the 1st Cavalry troopers to hold on against repeated assaults.

On 15 Nov 1777, during the Revolutionary War, after 16 months of debate, the Continental Congress, sitting in its temporary capital of York, Pennsylvania, agreed to adopt the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union. Not until March 1, 1781, would the last of the 13 states, Maryland, ratify the agreement. The Articles of Confederation were the legal document that bound the colonies into a single nation; but the Articles created a very weak central government—so weak that they were ultimately replaced by the Constitution.

The America’s Frontlines Newsletter is published twice monthly, at the beginning and middle of the month.

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