1905 – Las Vegas, is founded when 110 acres (0.45 km2), in what later would become downtown, are auctioned off.
1916 – U.S. Marines landed in Santo Domingo to quell civil disorder.
1918 – The U.S. Post Office and the U.S. Army began regularly scheduled airmail service between Washington and New York through Philadelphia. Lieutenant George L. Boyle, an inexperienced young army pilot, was chosen to make the first flight from Washington. Even with a route map stitched to his breeches, Boyle lost his way and flew south rather than north. The second leg of the Washington–Philadelphia–New York flight, however, took off and arrived in New York on schedule–without the Washington mail. The distance of the route was 218 miles, and one round trip per day was made six days a week. Army Air Service pilots flew the route until August 10, 1918, when the Post Office Department took over the entire operation with its own planes and pilots.
1918 – Pfc. Henry Johnson and Pfc. Needham Roberts received the Croix de Guerre for their services in World War I. They were the first Americans to win France’s highest military medal.
1940 – USS Sailfish is recommissioned. It was originally the USS Squalus. USS Sailfish (SS-192), a Sargo-class submarine, was originally named Squalus. Her keel was laid on 18 October 1937 by the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine, as Squalus, the only ship of the United States Navy named for the squalus. She was launched on 14 September 1938 sponsored by Mrs. Thomas C. Hart (wife of the Admiral), and commissioned on 1 March 1939, with Lieutenant Oliver F. Naquin in command. Due to mechanical failure, Squalus sank during a test dive on 23 May 1939. She was raised, renamed, and recommissioned as Sailfish.
1942 – Gasoline rationing went into effect in 17 states, limiting sales to 3 gallons a week for nonessential vehicles.
1942 – First Naval Air Transport Service flight across Pacific.
1942 – A bill establishing a women’s corps in the U.S. Army becomes law, creating the Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps (WAACs) and granting women official military status. In May 1941, Representative Edith Nourse Rogers of Massachusetts, the first congresswoman ever from New England, introduced legislation that would enable women to serve in the Army in noncombat positions. Rogers was well suited for such a task; during her husband John J. Rogers’ term as congressman, Rogers was active as a volunteer for the Red Cross, the Women’s Overseas League, and military hospitals. Because of her work inspecting field and base hospitals, President Warren G. Harding, in 1922, appointed her as his personal representative for inspections and visits to veterans’ hospitals throughout the country. She was eventually appointed to the Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, as chairwoman in the 80th and 83rd Congresses. The bill to create a Women’s Auxiliary Army Corps would not be passed into law for a year after it was introduced (the bombing of Pearl Harbor was a great incentive). But finally, the WAACs gained official status and salary-but still not all the benefits accorded to men. Thousands of women enlisted in light of this new legislation, and in July 1942, the “auxiliary” was dropped from the name, and the Women’s Army Corps, or WACs, received full Army benefits in keeping with their male counterparts. The WACs performed a wide variety of jobs, “releasing a man for combat,” as the Army, sensitive to public misgivings about women in the military, touted. But those jobs ranged from clerk to radio operator, electrician to air-traffic controller. Women served in virtually every theater of engagement, from North Africa to Asia. It would take until 1978 before the Army would become sexually integrated, and women participating as merely an “auxiliary arm” in the military would be history. And it would not be until 1980 that 16,000 women who had joined the earlier WAACs would receive veterans’ benefits.
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The women in this photo, dated Jan. 29, 1943, were bound for North Africa with the first WAAC detachment to be sent abroad.
1943 – On Attu, fighting continues in the Clevesy Pass. Japanese forces hold the high ground and offer determined resistance to the American attacks. Forces of the US 5th Army assault the German-held Senger Line. The French Expeditionary Corps attacks Pico; the Canadian 1st Corps attacks Pontecorvo; and the Polish 2nd Corps attacks Piedimonte San Germano.
1944 – American forces have eliminated the Japanese garrison on Wadke, New Guinea. On the mainland, nearby, Japanese forces conduct weak attacks near Arare.
1944 – American aircraft the carriers of Task Group 58.2 (Admiral Montgomery) conduct a raid.
1945 – On 12 May the Coast Guard-manned frigate USS Forsyth (PF-102) was called off her weather station to search through haze and fog for a German submarine that was attempting to surrender. Three days later Forsyth joined Sutton (DE-771) in accepting the surrender of U-234 at 46º 39′ N. x 45º 39′ W. This submarine was carrying a German technical mission and supplies, including a cargo of uranium, to Tokyo. Earlier, two Japanese passengers on board had committed suicide rather than surrender.
1945 – On Okinawa, American troops secure Chocolate Drop Hill after fighting in the interconnecting tunnels. Elements of the 1st Marine Division, part of US 3rd Amphibious Corps, capture Wana Ridge. Elements of the US 6th Marine Division, part of the same corps, begin mopping up operations in the Japanese held caves of the Horseshoe and Half Moon positions. They use flame-throwers and hollow-charge weapons and seal off some Japanese troops. Japanese forces counterattack on the Horseshoe position suffering an estimated 200 killed. To the east, the US 7th and 96th Divisions, of US 24th Corps, continue to be engaged in the capture of Yonabaru.
1945 – On Mindanao, the US 31st Division, part of US 10th Corps, advances northward and occupies positions near the town of Malaybalay and encounter Japanese artillery fire. Other units advance north of Davao and resist nighttime counterattacks.
1951 – After the quick rout of two South Korean divisions by an attack of some 120,000 Communist Chinese troops, the U.S. 2nd Infantry Division, supported by intense and accurate 105mm howitzer fire from Wyoming’s 300th Armored Field Artillery Battalion stemmed the enemy assault long enough for American positions to stabilize. For its determined resistance in the Battle of Soyang the 300th was awarded a Distinguished (now known as a Presidential) Unit Citation.
1952 – Air Force First Lieutenant James H. Kasler, 4th Fighter-Interceptor Wing, became the war’s 15th ace after downing two MiGs for a total of five kills.
1953 – Cubmaster Don Murphy organized the first pinewood derby, in Manhattan Beach, California, by Pack 280c.
1960 – Theodore Maiman operates the first optical laser (a ruby laser), at Hughes Research Laboratories in Malibu, California.
1962 – US marines “arrived” in Laos.
1963 – Gordon Cooper is launched into space aboard Faith 7 on the longest American space mission to that date. Faith 7 was the capstone of Project Mercury, the NASA program that put the first American into space in 1961 and the first astronaut into orbit in 1962. Cooper completed 22 orbits of the earth and spent 34 hours in space. He was the first American astronaut to spend more than a day in space. On the afternoon of May 16, Faith 7 landed safely in the Pacific Ocean, four miles from the recovery ship Kearsarge. Cooper was honored by parades in Hawaii and Washington, D.C., where he addressed a joint session of Congress, and in New York City, where he was greeted by a massive ticker-tape crowd. Later Shawnee, Oklahoma–Cooper’s hometown–celebrated the return of the sixth Mercury astronaut from space.
1967 – The Defense Department announces that a US F-105 Thunderchief may have crashed in Communist China after being hit during a raid on the Kep area in North Vietnam.
1967 – U.S. forces just south of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) come under heavy fire as Marine positions between Dong Ha and Con Thien are pounded by North Vietnamese artillery. At the same time, more than 100 Americans were killed or wounded during heavy fighting along the DMZ. On May 17 and 18, the Con Thien base was shelled heavily. Dong Ha, Gio Linh, Cam Lo, and Camp Carroll were also bombarded. On May 18, a force of 5,500 U.S. and South Vietnamese troops invaded the southeastern section of the DMZ to smash a communist build up in the area and to deny the use of the zone as an infiltration route into South Vietnam. On May 19, the U.S. State Department said the offensive in the DMZ was “purely a defensive measure” against a “considerable buildup of North Vietnam troops.” The North Vietnamese government on May 21 called the invasion of the zone “a brazen provocation” that “abolished the buffer character of the DMZ as provided by the Geneva agreements.”
1968 – U.S. Marines relieved army troops in Nhi Ha, South Vietnam after a fourteen-day battle.
1968 – To break an impasse at the Paris talks, the US asks that the meeting be moved into secret session.
1969 – At approximately 8:30 P.M. (Pacific Daylight Time), the nuclear powered attack submarine Guitarro (SSN-665) sank while tied up to the dock at the Mare Island site of the San Francisco Bay Naval Shipyard. The ship had been under construction since August 1965, and was due to be commissioned in January 1970. Sinking was caused by uncontrolled flooding within the forward part of the ship. It was refloated at 11:18 A.M. (PDT), Sunday, May 18, and after inspection damages were estimated at between $15.2 million and $21.85 million. As a result of an investigation a Congressional Subcommittee concluded that, although the sinking of the USS Guitarro was accidental, the immediate cause of the sinking was the culpable negligence of certain shipyard employees.
1970 – President Richard Nixon appoints Anna Mae Hays and Elizabeth P. Hoisington the first female United States Army Generals.
1972 – Led by a platoon of 30 Soldiers flown in by helicopter, South Vietnamese troops retake Fire Base Bastogne, a matter of strategic importance, as the recapture should prevent the Communists from moving their heavy artillery to within shelling distance of Hue.
1972 – The US announces the movement of a seventh aircraft carrier, the USS Ticonderoga and six other destroyer type warships to Vietnam.
1975 – Merchant ship U.S. Mayaguez was recaptured from Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge. Some 200 Marines stormed the island of Koh Tang to rescue the crew of the Mayaguez, but the crew had been moved. The Marines fought all day against the Khmer Rouge and escaped by helicopter in the evening. Three comrades were left behind and later died under the Khmer Rouge. The crew was freed about the same time that the Marine assault began.
1988 – More than eight years after they intervened in Afghanistan to support the procommunist government, Soviet troops begin their withdrawal. The event marked the beginning of the end to a long, bloody, and fruitless Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. In December 1979, Soviet troops first entered Afghanistan in an attempt to bolster the communist, pro-Soviet government threatened by internal rebellion. In a short period of time, thousands of Russian troops and support materials poured into Afghanistan. Thus began a frustrating military conflict with Afghan Muslim rebels, who despised their own nation’s communist government and the Soviet troops supporting it. During the next eight years, the two sides battled for control in Afghanistan, with neither the Soviets nor the rebels ever able to gain a decisive victory. For the Soviet Union, the intervention proved extraordinarily costly in a number of ways. While the Soviets never released official casualty figures for the war in Afghanistan, U.S. intelligence sources estimated that as many as 15,000 Russian troops died in Afghanistan, and the economic cost to the already struggling Soviet economy ran into billions of dollars. The intervention also strained relations between the Soviet Union and the United States nearly to the breaking point. President Jimmy Carter harshly criticized the Russian action, stalled talks on arms limitations, issued economic sanctions, and even ordered a boycott of the 1980 Olympics held in Moscow. By 1988, the Soviets decided to extricate itself from the situation. Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev saw the Afghan intervention as an increasing drain on the Soviet economy, and the Russian people were tired of a war that many Westerners referred to as “Russia’s Vietnam.” For Afghanistan, the Soviet withdrawal did not mean an end to the fighting, however. The Muslim rebels eventually succeeded in establishing control over Afghanistan in 1992.
1996 – US Navy Admiral Jeremy Boorda committed suicide shortly before answering questions from Newsweek Magazine about his right to wear certain combat pins. Admiral Jeremy “Mike” Boorda, the nation’s top Navy officer, died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound after some of his military awards were called into question.
1996 – The Coast Guard formally closed Governors Island. The Army left the base in the early 1960s and the Coast Guard took it over on 3 June 1966 as a way to consolidate its operations in the New York Area. At the height of Coast Guard involvement on the island over 4,600 people lived and worked there.
1997 – Space shuttle Atlantis blasted off on a mission to deliver urgently needed repair equipment and a fresh American astronaut to Russia’s orbiting Mir station.
1997 – The United States government acknowledges the existence of the “Secret War” in Laos and dedicates the Laos Memorial in honor of Hmong and other “Secret War” veterans.
1999 – US warplanes attacked Iraqi air defense sites after being targeted by radar.
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