[Featured image: A South Carolina Air National Guard F-16-C “Fighting Falcon,” similar to the F-16Cs used to shoot down four Serbian Air Force aircraft in 1994. (U.S. Air Force photo)]
1844: As the screw steamship USS Princeton carries President John Tyler, members of his Cabinet, and some 400 other guests on a demonstration cruise up the Potomac River, Capt. Robert F. Stockton fires the massive 12″ gun, nicknamed “Peacemaker,” which explodes. Shrapnel flies through the crowd killing seven onlookers, including Secretary of State Abel P. Upshur and Secretary of the Navy Thomas W. Gilmer.
1864: Brig. Gen. Hugh Judson Kilpatrick leads 3,500 Union cavalry troopers around Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee’s flank and heads south towards Richmond (Va.). His mission is to free Union prisoners of war, but despite supporting raids to distract Lee’s troops, including one by a detachment of cavalry led by Brig. Gen. George A. Custer, Kilpatrick finds the area too heavily defended and a detachment of his men are ambushed. Confederates doctor a captured set of orders taken from a dead Union officer to read that the Union men intended to burn Richmond and kill President Jefferson Davis and his Cabinet.
Rather than hang the captured Union troopers, Gen. Lee urges calm and contacts his counterpart Gen. Robert Meade under a flag of truce, who confirms the orders were merely to rescue POWs. 324 of Kilpatrick’s soldiers are killed or wounded in the raid and another 1,000 are taken prisoner.
The battleship USS Indiana (BB-1)
1893: The U.S. Navy launches its first “true battleship,” USS Indiana (BB-1). The 350-foot-long vessel required a crew of 32 officers and 441 men, and featured two twin 13″/35 cal. Mark 1 guns, four twin 8″/35 cal. guns, and dozens of batteries of smaller calibers. Indiana was designed to be used in close proximity to the coasts, and quickly became obsolete after the Spanish-American War.
USS Indiana‘s 13″/35 cal. guns (foreground) and 8″/35 cal. guns. (U.S. Navy photo)
1994: Two pairs of U.S. Air Force F-16 “Fighting Falcons” conduct the first combat operation in NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) history, when the fighters engage a flight of Serbian Air Force attack aircraft on a bombing mission in the no-fly zone. Capt. Robert G. “Wilbur” Wright (whose wingman was Capt. Scott O’Grady – who is shot down and rescued the following year) shoots down three enemy aircraft, and Capt. Stephen L. “Yogi” Allen claims one.
