This day in military history..

November 17
321st day of the year (322nd in leap years), with 44 remaining.

1796 - Napoleonic Wars: Battle of Arcole - French forces defeat the Austrians in Italy.
1863 - American Civil War: Siege of Knoxville begins - Confederate forces led by General James Longstreet place Knoxville, Tennessee under siege.
1941 - World War II: Joseph Grew, the United States ambassador to Japan, cables the State Department that Japan has plans to launch an attack against Pearl Harbor, Hawaii (his cable is ignored).
1967 - Vietnam War: Acting on optimistic reports he was given on November 13, US President Lyndon B. Johnson tells his nation that, while much remained to be done, "We are inflicting greater losses than we're taking...We are making progress." (two months later the Tet Offensive made him regret his words).
1970 - Vietnam War: Lieutenant William Calley goes on trial for the My Lai massacre.
source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/17_November
1941: Units of 11.Armee (von Manstein) capture the eastern Crimean port of Kerch.
1942: In Tunisia, the first clashes occur between the newly landed US and German forces.
source: http://www.feldgrau.com/november.html
1943 Sattleberg The Austrailian 9th Division begins its attack on Sattleberg. Sattelberg, a high peak and the key to the occupation of the Huon Peninsula, involved a hard, four-month campaign for the 9th Division.
source: http://www.awm.gov.au/atwar/thismonth/index.asp
1965 1st Cavalry unit ambushed in the Ia Drang Valley - During part of what would become known as the Battle of the Ia Drang Valley, a battalion from the 1st Cavalry Division is ambushed by the 8th Battalion of the North Vietnamese 66th Regiment. The battle started several days earlier when the 1st Battalion, 7th Cavalry engaged a large North Vietnamese force at Landing Zone X-Ray at the base of the Cheu Pong hills (Central Highlands).
source: http://www.historychannel.com/tdih/tdih.jsp?month=10272963&day=10272982&cat=10272949
 
November 18 is the 322nd day of the year (323rd in leap years), with 43 remaining.

1916 - World War I: First Battle of the Somme ends - In France, British Expeditionary Force commander Douglas Haig calls off the battle which started on July 1, 1916.
1940 - World War II: German leader Adolf Hitler and Italian Foreign Minister Galeazzo Ciano meet to discuss Benito Mussolini's disastrous invasion of Greece.
1943 - World War II: 440 Royal Air Force planes bomb Berlin causing only light damage and killing 131. The RAF lost nine aircraft and 53 air crew.
source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/18_November

1942 Popondetta captured by Australians - Popondetta, on the steamy kunai plains north of the Owen Stanley Range, became a major Allied base for the attack on the Japanese-held beachheads in Papua.
source: http://www.awm.gov.au/atwar/thismonth/index.asp
 
Nov 18th...

1913 The Irish Citizens' Army was founded by James Larkin and James Connolly

1926 The Public Safety (Emergency Powers) Act empowered the Government to declare a state of national emergency to deal with the problem posed by IRA violence.

1942 The Red Army counter-attacked and surrounded the German army at Stalingrad.

1960 The first vertical take-off aircraft (VTOL) made by the British Hawker Siddeley company was flown for the first time.

1990 Nato and Warsaw Pact members ended the Cold War by signing a weapons treaty in Paris.

http://breakingnews.iol.ie/news/onthisday.asp
 
November 19

1863 : Lincoln's Gettysburg Address - President Abraham Lincoln delivers one of the most famous speeches in American history at the dedication of the military cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Using just 272 words, Lincoln brilliantly and movingly articulated the meaning of the conflict for a war-weary public.
1940 Hitler urges Spain to grab Gibraltar - On this day in 1940, Adolf Hitler tells Spanish Foreign Minister Serano Suner to make good on an agreement for Spain to attack Gibraltar, a British-controlled region. This would seal off the Mediterranean and trap British troops in North Africa.
1967 Chaplain Charles Watters receives Medal of Honor
For action this date, Chaplain (Major) Charles Watters of the 173rd Airborne Brigade is awarded the Medal of Honor. Chaplain Watters was serving with the 2nd Battalion, 503rd Infantry when it conducted an attack against North Vietnamese forces entrenched on Hill 875 during the Battle of Dak To. The Catholic priest from New Jersey moved among the paratroopers during the intense fighting, giving encouragement and first aid to the wounded. At least six times he left the defensive perimeter with total disregard regard for his own personal safety to retrieve casualties and take them for medical attention. Once he was satisfied that all of the wounded were inside the perimeter, he busied himself helping the medics, applying bandages, and providing spiritual strength and support. According to reports filed by survivors of the battle, Father Watters was on his knees giving last rites to a dying soldier when an American bomber accidentally dropped a 500-pound bomb onto the group of paratroopers. Father Watters was killed instantly. He was awarded a posthumous Medal of Honor on November 4, 1969, in a ceremony at the White House.
source: http://www.historychannel.com/tdih/tdih.jsp?category=vietnamwar
1794 - The United States and the Kingdom of Great Britain sign Jay's Treaty, which attempts to clear up some of the lingering problems left over from the American Revolutionary War.
1941 - World War II: Battle between HMAS Sydney and HSK Kormoran. The two ships sink each other off the coast of Western Australia, with the loss of 645 Australians and about 77 German seamen.
1944 - World War II: US President Franklin D. Roosevelt announces the 6th War Loan Drive, aimed at selling US$14 billion in war bonds to help pay for the war effort.
source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/19_November

1942: In the East, the Red Army begins a massive counter-offensive to encircle and destroy the German forces fighting in nearly captured Stalingrad. The initial attacks by the Soviet 5th Tank Army (Romanenko) from the north and the 51st Army (Chistyakov) from the south are directed against the exposed rear flanks of 6.Armee (von Paulus) and 4.Panzerarmee (Hoth) held by the Rumanian 3rd and 4th Armies which are overrun and scattered.
source: http://www.feldgrau.com/november.html
 
The Gettysburg Address Delivered at Gettysburg on November 19,1863

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.
 
Nov 20


284 - Diocletian was chosen as Roman Emperor.

1407 - A solemn truce between John, Duke of Burgundy and Louis of Valois, Duke of Orléans is agreed under the auspicies of John, Duke of Berry. Orléans would be assassinated three days later by Burgundy.

1695 - Zumbi, the last of the leaders of Quilombo dos Palmares in early Brazil, was executed.

1700 - Great Northern War: Battle of Narva - King Charles XII of Sweden defeats the army of Tsar Peter the Great at Narva.


1910 - Mexican Revolution: Francisco I. Madero denounces President Porfirio Díaz, declares himself president, and calls for a revolution to overthrow the government of Mexico.

1917 - World War I: Battle of Cambrai begins - British forces make early progress in an attack on German positions but are later pushed back.

1940 - World War II: Hungary, Romania and Slovakia join the Axis Powers.
1943 - World War II: Battle of Tarawa begins - United States Marines land on Tarawa and Makin atolls in the Gilbert Islands and take heavy fire from Japanese shore guns.

1945 - Nuremberg Trials begin: Trials against 24 Nazi war criminals start at the Nuremberg Palace of Justice.

1962 - Cuban Missile Crisis ends: In response to the Soviet Union agreeing to remove its missiles from Cuba, US President John F. Kennedy ends the quarantine of the Caribbean nation.

1968 - Vietnam War: Eleven men comprising a Long Range Patrol team from F Company, 58th Infantry, 101st Airborne are surrounded and nearly wiped out by North Vietnamese army regulars from the 4th and 5th Regiment. The seven wounded survivors are rescued after several hours by an impromptu force made of other men from their unit.

1969 - Vietnam War: The Cleveland Plain Dealer publishes explicit photographs of dead villagers from the My Lai massacre in Vietnam.


1983 - In the US, an estimated 100 million people watch the controversial made-for-television movie The Day After, depicting the start of a nuclear war.

1989 - Velvet Revolution: The number of protestors assembled in Prague, Czechoslovakia swells from 200,000 the day before to an estimated half-million.

1994 - The Angolan government and UNITA rebels sign the Lusaka Protocol in Zambia, ending 19 years of civil war (in 1995 localized fighting resumed).

1998 - A court in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan declares accused terrorist Osama bin Laden "a man without a sin" in regards to the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.

2003 - Several bombs are detonated in Istanbul, Turkey destroying the Turkish head office of HSBC Holdings and the ..


cool eh 8)
 
November 20

1942: Northeast and southwest of Stalingrad, the attacking Soviet armies are making rapid progress in the direction of Kalach on the Don, the chosen meeting-point of the two pincers. 6. and 4. Armee hurriedly dispatch mobile units to bolster the unprepared and crumbling German defenses west and south of the Don. A crisis of major proportions is in the offing.
1943: The Red Army achieves a breakthrough near Kremenchug in the Ukraine, and advances toward Kirovograd.
1944: German troops of Heeresgruppe E evacuate Tirana in Albania.
source: http://www.feldgrau.com/november.html
1968 HMAS Sydney at Vung Tau HMAS Sydney disembarks the 9th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment, at Vung Tau, Vietnam.
source: http://www.awm.gov.au/atwar/thismonth/index.asp
 
November 22 is the 326th day (327th on leap years) of the year in the Gregorian calendar. There are 39 days remaining.

1864 - American Civil War: Sherman's March to the Sea: Confederate General John Bell Hood invades Tennessee in an unsuccessful attempt to draw Union General William T. Sherman from Georgia.
1942 - World War II: Battle of Stalingrad - General Friedrich von Paulus sends Adolf Hitler a telegram saying that the German 6th army is surrounded.
1943 - World War II: War in the Pacific - U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Chinese leader Chiang Kai-Shek meet in Cairo, Egypt, to discuss ways to defeat Japan
1963 - John F. Kennedy assassination: In Dallas, Texas, US President John F. Kennedy is assassinated and Texas Governor John B. Connally is seriously wounded. Later the same day, US Vice-President Lyndon B. Johnson is sworn-in as the 36th President of the United States.
1972 - Vietnam War: The United States loses its first B-52 Stratofortress of the war.
source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/22_November

1940 HMAS Canberra rescues merchant ship survivors. The Canberra picked up 3 boatlaods of survivors from the merchant ship, Port Brisbane, which was sunk in the Indian Ocean by the German raider Pinguin. source: http://www.awm.gov.au/atwar/thismonth/index.asp

1940: Italian planes bomb Cephalonia, Corfu and Samos in Greece. Martial law is declared in European Turkey after the German ambassador, von Papen, delivers a virtual ultimatum to Turkey to join in the Axis-planned new European order.
1941: The HMS Devonshire sinks the German raider Atlantis off the West Coast of Africa. She was caught replenishing a U-Boat. The U-Boat is able to get away. In North Africa, a large tank battle rages near Sidi Rezegh in Libya. At the end of this confusing battle, British units withdraw away from Tobruk. Separately the British 4th Armored Bridage is mauled by the German 15.Panzer-Division. The initiative now passes to the Germans.
1942: Continuing their inexorable advance toward their pre-planned meeting-point west of Stalingrad, the Soviet 4th Mechanized Corps (Volsky) from the south and the 4th Tank Corps (Kravchenko) from the north, join hands at Kalach on the Don, thus ensuring the complete encirclement of the 300,000 men of 6.Armee. Its CO, Gen.Obst. von Paulus, arrives at his new HQ at Gumrak, 10 miles W of Stalingrad.
1943: German troops complete the occupation of the islands of the Dodekanes in the eastern Mediterranean.
1944: Units of the US Third Army (Patton) capture Metz in Lorraine.
source: http://www.feldgrau.com/november.html

1967 Westmoreland claims U.S. victory at Dak To - General William Westmoreland, commander of U.S. Military Assistance Command Vietnam, briefs officials at the Pentagon and says that the battle around Dak To was "the beginning of a great defeat for the enemy." source: http://www.historychannel.com/tdih/tdih.jsp?month=10272963&day=10272987&cat=10272949
 
November 23

1863 - American Civil War: Battle of Chattanooga begins - Union forces led by General Ulysses S. Grant reinforce troops at Chattanooga, Tennessee and counter-attack Confederate troops.
source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/23_November

1901 Lieutenant L.C. Maygar, 5th Victorian Mounted Rifles, originally from Kilmore, Victoria, wins the Victoria Cross at Geelhoutboom, Natal. Maygar was the sixth and last Australian to be awarded the Victoria Cross during the Boer War.
1944 Australian troops relieve Americans at Cape Torokina, Bougainville The Australian arrival opened the campaign on Bougainville that cost over 500 Australian lives by the war's end.
1948 Formation of The Australian Regiment, which became the Royal Australian Regiment (RAR) on 10 March 1949. The Royal Australian Regiment has taken a prominent role in Australia's wars and peacekeeping operations since its formation.
source: http://www.awm.gov.au/atwar/thismonth/index.asp

1939: British Armed merchant cruiser Rawalpindi (Capt. E.C. Kennedy) is sunk southwest of Iceland by the Scharnhorst as she and sister ship Gneisenau attempted to break out into the Atlantic killing 265 sailors.
1940: Rumania joins the Tripartite Pact of Germany, Italy and Japan. In the British Isles, the city of Southampton suffers a heavy night raid at the hands of German bombers.
1942: Retreating before the British 8th Army (Montgomery), Panzerarmee Afrika reaches El Agheila, the starting-point of its great counter-offensive that began on January 21, 1942.
1943: Hitler watches a demonstration flight of the ME-262 prototype jet airplane. He predicts it will be an ideal light bomber. This aircraft was first flown in July and will take until June of 1944 until it becomes operational.
1944: Units of the US Third Army reach the Rhine at Strassburg in Alsace. The German 15.Armee withdraws deeper into Holland. The German 7.Armee begins a series of attacks against the US 9th Army.
In the East, the Soviets capture Tokay in southern Hungary. They also announce that with the help of the Finns they have cleared Lapland of German forces.
source: http://www.feldgrau.com/november.html

1970 Laird discloses the details of the Son Tay Raid - Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird discloses the November 21 U.S. raid on the North Vietnamese prison camp at Son Tay. On November 21, a combined Air Force and Army team of 40 Americans--led by Army Colonel "Bull" Simons--conducted a raid on the Son Tay prison camp, 23 miles west of Hanoi, in an attempt to free between 70 and 100 American suspected of being held there. The raid was conducted almost flawlessly, but no prisoners of war were found in the camp. They had been moved earlier to other locations.
source: http://www.historychannel.com/tdih/tdih.jsp
 
November 25

1034 - Malcolm II of Scotland dies. Duncan, the son of his second daughter, inherits the throne ahead of Macbeth, the son of his eldest daughter. (Just for you MightyMacbeth)
1491 - The siege of Granada, last Moorish stronghold in Spain, begins.
1542 - Battle of Solway Moss. The English army defeats the Scottish.
1758 - French and Indian War: British forces capture Fort Duquesne from French control.
1783 - American Revolutionary War: The last British troops leave New York City three months after the signing of the Treaty of Paris.
1863 - American Civil War: Battle of Missionary Ridge - At Missionary Ridge in Tennessee, Union forces led by General Ulysses S. Grant break the Siege of Chattanooga by routing Confederate troops under General Braxton Bragg.
1876 - Indian Wars: In retaliation for the American defeat at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, United States Army troops sack Chief Dull Knife's sleeping Cheyenne village at the headwaters of the Powder River.
1944 - World War II: A German V-2 rocket hits a Woolworth's store in Deptford, UK, killing 160 shoppers.
1950 - The People's Republic of China joins the Korean War, sending thousands of troops across the Yalu river border to fight United Nations forces.
source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/25_November
1941: U-331 (Kplt. Tiesenhausen) sinks the British battleship Barham in the Mediterranean.
source: http://www.feldgrau.com/november.html
1899 Battle of Graspan, South Africa - Members of the New South Wales Lancers involved in the Battle of Graspan, South Africa. This, one of the series of defeats suffered by the British in the opening months of the Boer War, involved 29 members of the NSW Lancers, the first Australian troops to reach South Africa.
source: http://www.awm.gov.au/atwar/thismonth/index.asp
1941 A "war warning" is sent to commanders in the Pacific - Adm. Harold R. Stark, U.S. chief of naval operations, tells Adm. Husband E. Kimmel, commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, that both President Roosevelt and Secretary of State Cordell Hull think a Japanese surprise attack is a distinct possibility.
1969 Communist activity increases along Cambodian border - Communist forces step up attacks against U.S. troops shielding Allied installations near the Cambodian border. Ten Americans were killed and 70 wounded. U.S. troops reported killing 115 enemy soldiers. North Vietnamese troops destroyed more than a dozen tanks and tons of ammunition near the Cambodian border.
source: http://www.historychannel.com/tdih/tdih.jsp
 
Back
Top