Auburn, Massachusetts · March 16, 1926 On this date in 1926 in Auburn, Massachusetts, Dr. Robert Goddard (1882–1945) conducted his first successful rocket flight. His liquid-propellant rocket rose 41 ft, traveled 184 ft, and burned no more than 3 seconds, but it proved the concept of rocket flight worked. Goddard, who received limited support for his research and…
Prague, Czechoslovakia · March 15, 1939 From the ruins of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in November 1918 a half-dozen new states emerged. Among them were Austria and Czechoslovakia. When Austria was incorporated into Adolf Hitler’s Greater German Reich in March 1938, Czechoslovakia found itself inside a German pincer. On October 1, 1938, following the Munich Agreement signed…
Iwo Jima, Volcano Islands · March 14, 1945 On this date in 1945 the U.S. flag was raised over the 10‑sq‑mile island of Iwo Jima in a formal flag-raising ceremony. The battle for the barren Japanese-held island lying some 760 miles southeast of Tokyo was the most bitterly contested of the war. Its capture was a…
U-852 in Mid-Atlantic Ocean · March 13, 1944 On this date in 1944 German U‑boat 852, skippered by 28‑year‑old Heinz-Wilhelm Eck, torpedoed the British-chartered Greek freighter SS Peleus as it steamed from Freetown, Sierra Leone, to Buenos Aires, Argentina. After the Peleus sank, U‑852 patrolled the large debris field for five hours. Crew members used…
Linz, Austria · March 12, 1938 After abolishing the Ministry of War on February 4, 1938, and creating in its place the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW, or Supreme Command of the Armed Forces) with himself at its helm, Adolf Hitler now focused on a peaceful takeover of Europe beginning with his native Austria. (Hitler was…
Aboard the USS Pollack in Pacific Ocean · March 11, 1942 On this date in 1942 the USS Pollack made the first submarine attack using only its deck guns. Its targets were two Japanese fishing boats. During 1942 U.S. submarines reported 34 gun attacks on sampans and trawlers. The number of attacks increased to 64 in…
Bridgend, South Wales · March 10, 1945 Twenty-two miles west of the Welch capital, Cardiff, was a British prisoner-of-war camp built to house mainly German but also some Italian prisoners. Capable of accommodating 2,000 inmates, the camp was called Island Farm. On this date in 1945, 67 POWs (one source says as many as 84 POWs) escaped from…
Tokyo, Japan · March 9, 1945 Apart from Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle’s April 1942 raid on the Japanese capital, Tokyo, early air raids on Japan focused on military and industrial targets with disappointing results. So U.S. Army Air Forces Maj. Gen. Curtis LeMay, a veteran of the horrific air campaign over Nazi Germany, filled each…
Batavia (Jakarta), Dutch East Indies · March 8, 1942 The mineral- and oil-rich Dutch East Indies (today’s Indonesia) was Japan’s next colonial target in the Pacific Theater—this after Allied resistance had collapsed in Singapore (February 15, 1942) and all but did so in the Philippines with Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s forces holed up on the rocky, jungle-covered Bataan…
Cairo, Egypt · March 7, 1941 On this date in 1941 in Greece, a British expeditionary force from Egypt arrived just two days before the army of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini started its last unsuccessful campaign against Greek forces. The previous October the Italian army had crossed Greece’s northwestern frontier from neighboring Albania, launching the…
