MILITARY HISTORY FOR THE MONTH

Health, wellness, veterans, hearing, audiology...VA Audiology Fact Sheet AUDIOLOGY SERVICES The Department of Veterans Affairs... Consistent with the VA mission, Audiology is inv...

VHA Audiology - Rehabilitation and Prosthetic Services https://www.prosthetics.va.gov/audiology/index.asp

Hearing Aids - Rehabilitation and Prosthetic Services https://www.prosthetics.va.gov/psas/Hearing_Aids.asp

VHA Directive 1034 Prescribing and Providing Eyeglasses, Contact Lenses, and Hearing Aids

https://www.va.gov/OPTOMETRY/docs/VHA_Directive_1034_Prescribing_and_Providing_Eyeglasses_Contact_Lenses_and_Hearing_Aids_10-24-19.pdf

Columbus Day October 09 https://nationaldaycalendar.com/columbus-day-second-monday-in-october/ Also Italian Heritage Day which goes along with the Month.

General Pulaski Memorial Day October 11 https://nationaldaycalendar.com/general-pulaski-memorial-day-october-11/ This may be why this is also Polish-American Heritage Month. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKEbBR4ekMQ&pp=ygUQR2VuZXJhbCBQdWxhc2tpIA%3D%3D

Navy Birthday October 13 https://nationaldaycalendar.com/navy-birthday-october-13/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YohR1TbMk_k&pp=ygUSbmF2eSBiaXJ0aGRheSAyMDIz

National Day Of The Deployed October 26 https://nationaldaycalendar.com/national-day-of-the-deployed-october-26/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pV4NtVaYgLM&pp=ygUcbmF0aW9uYWwgZGF5IG9mIHRoZSBkZXBsb3llZA%3D%3D

Navy Day October 27 https://nationaldaycalendar.com/navy-day-october-27/

Theodore Roosevelt and the Navy

Between 1922 and 1972, the Navy celebrated its birthday on October 27th in honor of President Theodore Roosevelt’s birth. He elevated the U.S. Navy to a premier fighting force. During his term as Assistant Secretary of the Navy, he built up the power and strength of the U.S. Navy. Roosevelt’s pursuit of the naval aircraft advanced the U.S. Navy. As president, Roosevelt was the first president to submerge in a submarine and also the first to fly. His support of the Navy led the former Secretary of the Navy, John F. Lehman, to say, Theodore Roosevelt, “was one of the architects of our modern Navy.”

Halloween October 31 https://nationaldaycalendar.com/halloween-october-31/

Military History Notes: (Mostly Navy Theme for the US Navy Birthday Month)

Oct. 1

1955: America's first "supercarrier," the USS Forrestal (CVA-59), is commissioned. Forrestal, with its angled flight deck and steam catapults, is the first flattop designed to operate jet aircraft. (She is also the symbol of Naval Firefighting due to a weapons mishap on her deck while preparing for an operation off of Vietnam.)

Oct. 3

1950: Major League Baseball rules that Philadelphia Phillies' 17-game winner Curt Simmons, whose National Guard unit had just been activated during the Korean War, would not be eligible to pitch in the World Series, despite the fact that he was on furlough. The Phillies were swept by a New York Yankee team managed by World War I veteran Casey Stengel (USN), and featuring Joe DiMaggio (USA), Whitey Ford (soon-to-be USA), Hank Bauer (USMC), Jerry Coleman (USMC), and Yogi Berra (USN).

1962: Cmdr. Walter M. "Wally" Schirra, Jr. (USN) becomes the fifth American in space when he orbits the earth six times in his Sigma 7 capsule. After a nine-hour flight, he splashes down just half a mile from the recovery

ship USS Kearsarge (CVS-33), joking that his target was the carrier's "number three elevator."

1993: Special operations forces board several Army Black Hawk helicopters and set out to capture the Somali warlord Mohamed Farrah Aidid. The snatch-and-grab operation was supposed to take only one hour, but when a rocket propelled-grenade takes out one of the helicopters, Operation GOTHIC SERPENT begins to spin out of control. As the vehicle convoy, originally intended to haul the captured leaders of the Habr Gidr clan, races through barricaded streets to establish a security perimeter around the first Black Hawk, another Black Hawk is shot down.

With resources stretched to the maximum and the vehicle convoy unable to ,reach the crash sites, Delta Force snipers Master Sgt. Gary I. Gordon and Sgt. 1st Class Randall D. Shughart volunteer to land and provide cover fire for the second downed helicopter. Both are overrun and killed while protecting the four wounded crew members in the face of overwhelming numbers, and will be awarded the Medal of Honor posthumously.

Maj. Gen. William F. Garrison assembles a quick reaction force of 100 UN and 10th Mountain Division vehicles as the task force battles through the night. 19 American service members will be killed and 73 wounded during the intense urban combat of the Battle of Mogadishu. Chief Warrant Officer Michael J. Durant, one of the downed Black Hawk pilots, is captured and held as a prisoner for 11 days. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97OGWTfObQw&pp=ygUOYmxhY2toYXdrIGRvd24%3D

2010: 92 years after the end of World War I, Germany makes its last reparation payment demanded by the Treaty of Versailles.

Oct. 4

1777: A week after losing Philadelphia to the British, Gen. George Washington decides to surprise Gen. Sir William Howe's force encamped at Germantown (Pa.). 11,000 Continental troops and militia have marched 16

miles through the night, and begin their assault at 5:30 a.m.. Although initially successful, heavy fog, insufficiently trained troops, and stiff British resistance unravel Washington's coordinated assault and the attack falls apart. Washington's army suffers over 1,000 casualties and will have to spend the winter at Valley Forge.

1821: Lt. Robert F. Stockton, veteran of the War of 1812 who also fought the Barbary pirates, sets sail from Boston to interdict the African slave trade. Stockton will help establish the country of Liberia, where thousands of former American slaves and free blacks are resettled. He will capture several slave ships on this cruise, of which he writes, "I have great satisfaction in the reflection that I have procrastinated the slavery of some 800 Africans, and have broken off this horrible traffic to the northward of Cape Palmas for at least this season.

1943: USS Ranger conducts the only American carrier operation in the northern Atlantic, when its Dauntless and Avenger crews attack a German convoy near Bod, Norway, sinking or damaging ten enemy vessels.

Oct. 7

1941: Although the United States has not yet entered the war, a German U-boat torpedoes USS Kearny (DD-432), killing 11 sailors - the first Naval casualties of World War II.

Oct. 8

1918: The day following the relief of the "Lost Battalion," Private First Class (future U.S. Army sergeant and future colonel in the Tennessee State Guard) Alvin C. York captures "the whole damned German Army."

In the action for which he will receive both the Medal of Honor and the French Croix de Guerre, York leads a seven-man team of doughboys against a strong enemy position. The team kills at least 25 Germans and captures four officers, 128 soldiers, and over 30 machineguns. French Marshall Ferdinand Foch will tell York, "What you did was the greatest thing accomplished by any private soldier of all the armies of Europe."

Oct. 9

1861: 1,000 Confederate soldiers land on Florida's Santa Rosa Island and assault Union-held Fort Pickens. The attackers withdraw after the federal guns inflict 90 casualties. Fort Pickens sits across the bay from Naval Air Station Pensacola - the birthplace of Naval aviation - and coastal defense guns were installed at the old fort during World War II.

1940: After USS Nautilus (SS-168) conducts a successful test, Secretary of the Navy William F. Knox approves a plan for 24 submarines to each carry 20,000 gallons of aviation gasoline for refueling seaplanes at sea.

1967: Che Guevara, co-founder of Fidel Castro's Communist regime, is executed by firing squad while leading a revolution in Bolivia. While the cold-blooded murderer and terrorist remains an icon to many Americans,

many of his fans wouldn't exist had the Soviets left their ballistic missiles on Cuba: "If the nuclear missiles had remained," Che said, "we would have used them against the very heart of America, including New York City [...] We will march the path of victory even if it costs millions of atomic victims [...] We must keep our hatred alive and fan it to paroxysm."

Oct. 10

1845: Secretary of the Navy George Bancroft founds the Naval School in Annapolis, Md. - later renamed the U.S. Naval Academy. The nation's second oldest service academy (the U.S. Military Academy was established by Thomas Jefferson in 1802) is built on the grounds of Fort Severn, which traces its roots to the American Revolution.

1985: After Palestine Liberation Front (PLF) terrorists - part of KGB-trained terrorist Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Liberation Organization - take over the Italian-flagged cruise liner MS Achille Lauro, U.S. Navy F-14 Tomcats

intercept their Boeing 737 getaway jet carrying the terrorists to Tunisia, forcing the jet to land at a NATO airbase on Sigonella, Sicily. Once on the ground, the terrorists are brought to custody following a five-hour

jurisdictional standoff between an 80-man group of Delta Force and SEAL Team SIX commandos and hundreds of Italian military police. The terrorists killed one of their hostages and threw his body overboard: wheelchair-bound American citizen Leon Klinghoffer, who flew as a navigator aboard B-24 Liberator bomber in the European Theater of World War II. After leaving Sigonella, PLF founder and the attack's ringleader Abu

Abbas flies to Italy and ultimately makes it to Iraq, where Saddam Hussein protects him from extradition to Italy. He is captured in 2003 by American forces and dies of natural causes in U.S. custody.

Oct. 11

1942: U.S. Naval forces under the command of Rear Admiral Norman Scott intercept a Japanese fleet, commanded by Rear Adm. Aritomo Goto, attempting to reinforce troops on Guadalcanal in the Battle of Cape

Esperance. Fighting begins shortly before midnight off the northwest coast of the island when the Japanese are caught by surprise. The heavy cruiser Furutaka and destroyer Fubuki are sunk during the gun battle, and Adm. Goto is mortally wounded. Planes from Henderson Field strike the retreating Japanese fleet the next morning and sink two additional Japanese destroyers the following day. Japanese sailors who jumped overboard refuse to be rescued by American ships, instead consigning themselves to a horrifying death in the shark-infested waters.

Oct. 12

1944: U.S. Army Air Force 1st Lt. Charles E. "Chuck" Yeager and his 357th Fighter Group surprise a flight of 22 Messerschmitt Bf-109 fighters near Hanover, Germany. Yeager's P-51D "Mustang", named Glamorous Glenn II,

Yeager will score five of the group's eight victories - two without firing a shot - becoming an "ace in a day." Yeager finishes World War II with 11.5 kills, and will go on to fly 127 missions during the Vietnam War. The former Army private will retire a Brigadier General in 1975, but continues flying for the Air Force and NASA.

That same day, aircraft from seven U.S. aircraft carriers of Carrier Task Force 38 attack targets on Japanese-held Formosa (modern-day Taiwan).

1945: President (and former artillery officer during World War I) Harry S. Truman awards the Medal of Honor to Cpl. Desmond Doss for saving the lives of 75 wounded soldiers on Okinawa's Hacksaw Ridge. Since Doss was a conscientious objector, the Army made him a combat medic. Prior to his service on Okinawa, where Doss was wounded four times, he also saw action on Guam and the Philippines, where he earned two Bronze Stars with "V" for valor device.

2000: While the destroyer USS Cole stops to refuel in Yemen, two suicide bombers ram an explosive-laden fiberglass boat into the warship, blowing a massive hole in the side of Cole, claiming the lives of 17 U.S. sailors and injures another 39.

Oct. 13

1775: "...[M]eeting in Philadelphia, the Continental Congress voted to fit out two sailing vessels, armed with ten carriage guns, as well as swivel guns, and manned by crews of eighty, and to send them out on a cruise of three months to intercept transports carrying munitions and stores to the British army in America." (from Naval History and Heritage Command) The U.S. Navy is born.

Oct. 14

1947: 45,000 feet over California's Mojave Desert, USAF test pilot Charles "Chuck" Yeager becomes the first human to break the sound barrier, piloting his Bell X-1 to Mach 1.07 - two days after breaking his ribs.

Oct. 17

1922: Lt. Commander Virgil C. Griffin, piloting a Vought VE-7SF bi-winged fighter, makes the first-ever "official" takeoff from a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier, USS Langley - a coaling ship (USS Jupiter) which had been converted into America's first aircraft carrier - in York River, Va. On Oct 26^th 1922: Off Cape Henry, Va., Lt. Commander Godfrey Chevalier becomes the first aviator to land on a moving ship when his Aeromarine 39B biplane

touches down on the deck of USS Langley.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkhHga6limc&pp=ygUQdXNzIGxhbmdsZXkgY3YtMQ%3D%3D

Though Griffin is indeed the first man to takeoff from a "carrier", he is not the first to takeoff from a warship. That distinction belongs to Eugene B. Ely who took-off from a platform affixed to a cruiser in 1910.

1941: When a "wolfpack" of German U-boats attacks an allied convoy, overwhelming its Canadian escort ships, USS Kearny and three other American destroyers depart their base at Iceland and begin dropping depth

charges. A German torpedo strikes Kearny, killing 11 sailors and injuring 22 - the first American casualties of World War II. Adolf Hitler will use the engagement as a reason for declaring war on the United States in December.

Past Month's Military History