13.08.2006
IT HAPPENED HIS DAY AUG 16 TO 31

August 16
1972 Heavy air attacks on North Vietnam
U.S. fighter-bombers fly 370 air strikes against North Vietnam, the highest daily total of the year; additionally, there are eight B-52 strikes in the North. Meanwhile, U.S. warplanes flew 321 missions (including 27 B-52 strikes) in South Vietnam, mostly in Quang Tri province. Despite this heavy air activity, hopes for an agreement to end the war rise as Henry Kissinger leaves Paris to confer with President Thieu and his advisers.

August 16
1972 Heavy air attacks on North Vietnam
U.S. fighter-bombers fly 370 air strikes against North Vietnam, the highest daily total of the year; additionally, there are eight B-52 strikes in the North. Meanwhile, U.S. warplanes flew 321 missions (including 27 B-52 strikes) in South Vietnam, mostly in Quang Tri province. Despite this heavy air activity, hopes for an agreement to end the war rise as Henry Kissinger leaves Paris to confer with President Thieu and his advisers.

August 17
1987 Hitler's Last Living Henchman Dies
Ninety-three-year-old Rudolf Hess, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler's former deputy, was found hanged to death in Spandau Prison in Berlin, apparently the victim of suicide. In addition to being the sole prisoner in Spandau since 1966, Hess was also the last surviving member of Hitler's inner circle. Convicted at the Nuremberg war-crimes trial in 1946, he had been serving a life sentence since then. Hess, an early and devoted follower of Nazism, participated in Hitler's failed "Beer Hall Putsch" in 1923, and was imprisoned along with the Nazi party leader. While in Landsberg jail, Hitler dictated his life story--Mein Kampf--to Hess. In 1933, Hess became deputy Fuhrer, but Hitler later lost faith in his leadership ability and made him second in a line of succession after Hermann Goering. In 1941, Hess stole an airplane and landed it in Scotland. Apparently attempting to negotiate a peace agreement with Great Britain, he was arrested and held by British authorities until the war's end and his trial at Nuremberg.
August 18,
1965 Marines launch Operation Starlite
After a deserter from the First Vietcong Regiment had revealed that an attack was imminent against the U.S. base at Chu Lai, the Marines launch Operation Starlite in the Van Tuong peninsula in Quang Ngai Province.
In this, the first major U.S. ground battle of the Vietnam War, 5,500 Marines destroyed a Viet Cong stronghold, scoring a resounding victory. During the operation, which lasted six days, ground forces, artillery from Chu Lai, close air support, and naval gunfire combined to kill nearly 700 Vietcong soldiers. U.S. losses included 45 Marines dead and more than 200 wounded.
August 19
1968 SOVIETS INVADE CZECHOSLOVAKIA:
Alexander Dubcek, leader of Czechoslovakia, was forced to abandon his liberal reforms after several hundred thousand Soviet troops invaded his nation on August 20, 1968. Dubcek's efforts to establish "communism with a human face" had been celebrated across the country, and the brief period of freedom was known as the "Prague Spring." When the Soviet invasion came, Prague was not eager to give way, but scattered student resistance was no match for the Soviet tanks. Dubcek's reforms were repealed and the leader himself was replaced with the staunchly pro-Soviet Gustav Husak, who reestablished an authoritarian Communist regime in the country.
August 20
1940 Trotsky Assassinated in Mexico
Exiled Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky was fatally wounded by an ice-axe-toting assassin in Mexico City. The assassin--Ramón Mercader--was a Spanish Communist and probable agent of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Trotsky, a Marxist born of Russian-Jewish parents in 1879, was first arrested for revolutionary activities in 1898. Two years later, he was exiled to Siberia, but in 1902 he escaped to England using a forged passport under the name of Leon Trotsky (his original name was Lev Davidovich Bronstein). In London, he collaborated with fellow Russian revolutionary Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. Expelled from several countries because of his radicalism, he lived in Switzerland, Paris, and New York City before returning to Russia at the outbreak of the Revolution in 1917. Trotsky played a leading role in the Bolshevik's seizure of power, and he was appointed Lenin's secretary of foreign affairs. In 1924 Lenin died and was succeeded by Joseph Stalin, who distrusted Trotsky and his calls for a continuing revolution that would inevitably result in the dismantling of the Soviet state. In 1927, Trotsky was expelled from the Communist party, and in 1929 was ordered to leave the U.S.S.R. He lived in Turkey, France, and Norway, and in absentia was found guilty of treason during Stalin's purges of his political foes. Settling with his family in a suburb of Mexico City in 1939, he survived several assassination attempts before falling prey to a Spanish Communist on August 20, 1940. He died from his wounds the next day.
August 21
1965 U.S. pilots given green light to go after anti-aircraft missiles in the North
It is revealed by MACV headquarters (Headquarters Military Assistance Command Vietnam) in Saigon that U.S. pilots have received approval to destroy any Soviet-made missiles they see while raiding North Vietnam. This was a major change from previous orders that restricted them to bombing only previously approved targets.
August 22
1968 VC repudiates Johnson's peace overture
For the first time in two months, Viet Cong forces launch a rocket attack on Saigon, killing 18 and wounding 59. Administration officials denounced the attack as a direct repudiation of President Johnson's speech of August 19, in which he appealed to the North Vietnamese to respond favorably to his limitation of the air campaign north of the DMZ.
August 23
1942 Battle of Stalingrad Begins
During World War II, the German Sixth Army sighted the Russian city of Stalingrad on the banks of the Volga River, the pre-designated boundary of the Third Reich. As the Sixth Army approached Stalingrad, the German Fourth Air Fleet under General Wolfram von Richthofen reduced the city to a burning rubble, killing over forty thousand civilians. As part of the summer campaign by German forces in Russia, the Sixth Army under Field Marshall Friedrich von Paulus was to take Stalingrad, an industrial center and obstacle to Nazi control of the precious Caucasian oil wells. At the beginning of September, General Paulus ordered the first offensives into the suburbs of Stalingrad, estimating that it would take his army about ten days to capture the city. Thus began the most horrific battle of World War II, and arguably the most important because it marked the turning point in the war between Nazi Germany and the U.S.S.R. In Stalingrad, the German Sixth Army faced a bitter Red Army employing the ruined city to their advantage, transforming destroyed buildings and rubble into natural fortifications. In a method of fighting the Germans began to call the Rattenkrieg, or "Rat's War," the opposing forces broke into squads eight or ten strong, and fought each other for every house and yard of territory. The battle saw rapid advances in the technology of street fighting, such as a German machine gun that shot around corners and a light Russian plane that glided silently over German positions at night, dropping lethal bombs without warning. However, both sides lacked the necessary food, water, or medical supplies, and tens of thousands perished. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin was determined to liberate the city named after him, and in November, he ordered massive reinforcements to the area. On November 19, the Red Army under General Georgi Zhukov launched Operation Uranus, the great Soviet counter-offensive, out of the rubble of Stalingrad. German command underestimated the scale of the counterattack, and the Sixth Army was quickly overwhelmed by the offensive, which involved eleven Soviet armies, 900 tanks, and 1,400 aircraft. Within three days, the entire German force of over 200,000 men was encircled. For the next two months, the Germans desperately hung on, waiting for reinforcements that never came. Starvation and the bitter Russian winter took as many lives as the merciless Soviet troops, and when Field Marshal Friedrich Von Paulus finally surrendered on February 2, 1943, only 90,000 German soldiers were still living.
August 24
1969 U.S. unit refuses commander's order
Company A of the Third Battalion, 196th Light Infantry Brigade refuses the order of its commander, Lieutenant Eugene Schurtz, Jr., to continue an attack that had been launched to reach a downed helicopter shot down in the Que Son valley, 30 miles south of Da Nang. The unit had been in fierce combat for five days against entrenched North Vietnamese forces and had taken heavy casualties. Schurtz called his battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Robert C. Bacon, and informed him that his men had refused to follow his order to move out because they had "simply had enough" and that they were "broken." The unit eventually moved out when Bacon sent his executive officer and a sergeant to give Schurtz's troops "a pep talk," but when they reached the downed helicopter on August 25, they found all eight men aboard dead. Schurtz was relieved of his command and transferred to another assignment in the division. Neither he nor his men were disciplined. This case of "combat refusal," as the Army described it, was reported widely in U.S. newspapers.
August 25
1944 PARIS LIBERATED:
On August 25, 1944, Free French divisions marched into Paris followed by the U.S. Fourth Infantry Division. In spite of Nazi leader Adolf Hitler's orders to burn the city to the ground, German resistance was light and a quick surrender was negotiated. The next day, the triumphant French General Charles de Gaulle led a joyous liberation march down the Champs d' Elysees.
August 26
1346 The Battle of Crécy
During the Hundred Years War, King Edward III's small English army annihilated a much larger French force under King Philip VI at the Battle of Crécy in Normandy. The battle, which saw an early use of the innovative and deadly longbow by the English, is regarded as one of the most decisive in history. On July 12, 1346, Edward landed an invasion force of about 10,000 men on the coast of Normandy. The English army marched northward, plundering the French countryside. Learning of the Englishmen's arrival, King Philip rallied an army of 12,000 men, made up of approximately 8,000 mailed horseman and 4,000 hired Genoese crossbowmen. At Crécy, Edward halted his army and prepared for the French assault. Late in the afternoon of August 26, Philip's army attacked. The Genoese crossbowmen led the assault, but they were soon overwhelmed by the English longbowmen, who could reload faster and fire much farther. In charge after charge, the French cavalry attempted to penetrate the English infantry lines, but the horses and riders were cut down in the merciless shower of arrows. At nightfall, the French finally withdrew. Nearly a third of their army lay dead on the field, including John of Luxembourg, the blind king of Bohemia. English losses were less than a hundred. The Battle of Crécy marked the decline of the mounted knight in European warfare, and also the rise of England as a world power. From Crécy, Edward marched on to Calais, which surrendered to him in 1347.
August 27
1776 The Battle of Brooklyn
During the American Revolution, British forces under General William Howe defeated Patriot forces under General George Washington at the Battle of Brooklyn in New York. On August 22, Howe's large army had landed on Long Island, hoping to capture New York City and gain control of the Hudson River, a victory that would divide the rebellious colonies in half. On August 27, the Red Coats marched against the Patriot position at Brooklyn Heights, overcoming the Americans at Gowanus Pass and then outflanking the entire Continental Army. However, Howe failed to follow the advice of his subordinates and storm the redoubts at Brooklyn Heights, and on August 29 General Washington ordered a brilliant retreat to Manhattan by boat, thus saving the Continental Army from capture. At the Battle of Brooklyn, the Americans suffered 1,000 casualties to the British loss of only 400 men. On September 15, the British captured New York City.
August 28
1879 Last Great Zulu King Captured
King Cetshwayo, the last great ruler of Zululand, was captured by the British following his defeat in the British-Zulu War. He was subsequently sent into exile. In 1843, Britain succeeded the Boers as the rulers of Natal, which administered Zululand, the neighboring kingdom of the Zulu people. Boers, also known as Afrikaners, were the descendants of the original Dutch settlers who came to South Africa in the seventeenth century. Zulus, a migrant people from the north, had also come to southern Africa during the seventeenth century, settling around the Tugela River region. In 1838, the Boers, migrating north to elude the new British dominions in the south, first came into armed conflict with the Zulus, who were under the rule of King Dingane at the time. The European migrants succeeded in overthrowing Dingane in 1840, replacing him with his son Mpande, who became a vassal of the new Boer republic of Natal. In 1843, the British took over Natal and Zululand. In 1872, King Mpande died and was succeeded by his son Cetshwayo, who was determined to resist European domination in his territory. In December 1878, King Cetshwayo rejected the British demand that he disband his troops, and in January of the next year, British forces invaded Zululand to suppress Cetshwayo. The British suffered grave defeats at Isandlwana, where 1,300 British soldiers were killed or wounded, and at Hlobane Mountain, but, on March 29, the tide turned in favor of the British at the Battle of Khambula. At Ulundi in July, Cetshwayo's forces were utterly routed and the Zulus surrendered. King Cetshwayo was subsequently captured and sent into exile, but in 1883 he was reinstated to rule over part of his former territory. However, because of his defeats he was discredited in the eyes of his subjects, and they soon drove him out of Zululand. He died in exile in the next year. In 1887, faced with continuing Zulu rebellions, Britain formally annexed Zululand and, in 1897, it became a part of Natal, which joined the Union of South Africa in 1910.
August 29
1949 Soviets Explode Atomic Bomb
At a remote test site at Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan, the U.S.S.R. successfully detonated its first atomic bomb, codenamed "First Lightning." In order to measure the effects of the blast, the Soviet scientists had constructed buildings, bridges, and other civilian structures in the vicinity of the bomb. They had also placed animals in cages nearby so that they could test the effects of nuclear radiation on human-like mammals. The atomic explosion, which at twenty kilotons was roughly equal to "Trinity," the first U.S. atomic explosion, destroyed these structures and incinerated the animals. According to legend, the Soviet physicists who worked on the bomb were honored for their achievement based on the penalties they would have suffered had the test failed. Those who would have been executed if the bomb failed to detonate were honored as "Heroes of Socialist Labor," and those who would have been merely imprisoned were given "the Order of Lenin," a slightly less prestigious award. On September 3, a U.S. spy plane flying off the coast of Siberia picked up the first evidence of radioactivity from the explosion. Later that month, U.S. President Harry S. Truman announced to the American people that the Soviets now too had the bomb. In late December, Klaus Fuchs, a German-born physicist who had helped the U.S. build its first atomic bombs, was arrested for passing nuclear secrets to the Soviets. While stationed at U.S. atomic development headquarters during World War II, Fuchs had given the Soviets precise information about the U.S. atomic program, including a blueprint of the "Fat Man" atomic bomb later dropped on Nagasaki, Japan, and everything that the Los Alamos scientists knew about the hypothesized hydrogen bomb. The revelations of Fuchs's espionage, coupled with the loss of U.S. atomic supremacy, led President Truman to order development of the hydrogen bomb, a weapon theorized to be hundreds of times more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped on Japan. On November 1, 1952, the United States successfully detonated "Mike," the world's first hydrogen bomb, on the Elugelab Atoll in the Pacific Marshall Islands. The 10.4-megaton thermonuclear device instantly vaporized an entire island and left behind a crater more than a mile wide. Two years later, on November 22, 1954, the Soviet Union detonated its first hydrogen bomb on the same principle of radiation implosion. Both superpowers were now in possession of the so-called "superbomb," and the world lived under the threat of thermonuclear war for the first time in history.
August 30
1945 MacArthur Lands on Japan
Just over two weeks after Japan announced its unconditional surrender in World War II, U.S. General Douglas MacArthur landed in Tokyo to inaugurate the Allied occupation of the country. MacArthur, the most highly regarded American general of the Pacific War, joined a division of U.S. Marines who had landed the previous day to pave the way for him and his staff. On September 2, aboard the U.S.S. Missouri in Tokyo Bay, MacArthur presided over the singing of the official surrender document by representatives of the Japanese government and military. According to its terms, Emperor Hirohito and the Japanese government were now subject to the authority of the Supreme Allied Commander of occupied Japan, a post subsequently filled by General MacArthur. Four days later, the Supreme Commander made his way by automobile toward the American Embassy in the heart of Tokyo, which would be his home for the next five and a half years. The occupation was officially to be an Allied enterprise, but increasing Cold War division left Japan firmly in the American sphere of influence. From his General Headquarters in the Dai Ichi Insurance Building in central Tokyo, overlooking the Imperial Palace, MacArthur oversaw an extremely productive reconstruction of Japanese industry and society along American models. MacArthur, his staff, and advisors helped a devastated Japan rebuild itself, instituted a democratic government, and charted a course that later made Japan one of the world's leading industrial powers. Although admired by the Japanese people, MacArthur never broke his promise to "never break bread" with his former enemy, and his wife and children often attended ceremonies and made goodwill journeys in his place. In 1949, MacArthur restored many responsibilities to local authorities, and in 1951, a formal peace treaty was signed in San Francisco, California, between Japan and the United States. On April 28, 1952, the treaty went into effect and Japan again assumed full sovereignty.
August 31
1939 Germany Prepares for Invasion of Poland
At noon, despite threats of British and French intervention, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler signed an order to attack Poland, and German forces moved to the frontier. That evening, Nazi S.S. troops wearing Polish uniforms staged a phony invasion of Germany, damaging several minor installations on the German side of the border. They also left behind a handful of dead German prisoners in Polish uniforms to serve as further evidence of "Polish aggression." At dawn the next morning, fifty-eight German army divisions invaded Poland all across the 1,250-mile frontier. Hitler expected appeasement from Britain and France--the same nations that had given Czechoslovakia away to German conquest in 1938 with their signing of the Munich Pact. However, neither country would allow Hitler's new desecration of Europe's borders to stand, and Germany was presented with an ultimatum: withdraw by September 3 or face war with the Western democracies. At 11:15 a.m. on September 3, a few minutes after the expiration of the British ultimatum, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain appeared on national radio to solemnly announce that Britain was at war with Germany. Australian and New Zealand immediately followed suit. Later that afternoon, the French ultimatum expired, and at 5:00 p.m. France declared war against Germany. The European phase of World War II had begun.