MILITARY HISTORY FOR THE MONTH

1964: Two months prior to the Gulf of Tonkin incident, a North Vietnamese frogman plants an explosive charge on USNS Card - a reactivated World War II escort carrier ferrying helicopters and American soldiers to South Vietnam as the ship sits at a dock in Saigon. The blast kills five civilian crew members and Card sinks. The vessel is patched, raised, and will return to service in December.

May 5

1862: Disappointed in the lack of progress of Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan's Peninsula Campaign, President Abraham Lincoln departs for Hampton Roads, Va. on the Treasury Department revenue cutter Miami to personally oversee operations. Over five days, the president - a former militia rifle company commander - directs the bombardment of Confederate positions and lands to conduct reconnaissance of the area with Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton and Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase.

1917: Eugene J. Bullard becomes the first black combat aviator, earning his wings with the French Air Service. The Columbus, Ga. native's father came toAmerica from the Caribbean island of Martinique and his mother was a Creek indian. Bullard fled to Europe to escape racism in the United States and joined the French Foreign Legion as a machine gunner, seeing action in the Somme, Champagne, and Verdun campaigns before being wounded. After recovering, he joined the air service and earned his pilot's license. The "Black Swallow of

Death" would fly 20 combat missions for the French - claiming two aerial kills - before war's end. He volunteered for the infantry when Germany invaded France again in 1940 and was wounded.

1945: A Japanese balloon bomb explodes in Bly, Oregon, killing a pastor, his wife, and five Sunday schoolchildren on the way to a picnic. The Japanese sent over 9,000 of these incendiary devices into the jet stream, hoping some would land in America and the small explosives would start forest fires or cause casualties. A few hundred of the world's first "intercontinental weapon" were observed in the United States, going as far inland as Iowa and Michigan, but the only casualties are the one explosion in Bly. The highly

technical devices use altimeters and valves to control the hydrogen-filled balloons during the three-day, 8,000-mile flight from the east coast of Japan's Honshu island.

1961: At 9:34 am, U.S. Navy Commander (future rear admiral) Alan B. Shepard Jr.'s Mercury-Redstone rocket blasts off from Cape Canaveral, Fla. Shepard becomes the first American in space as his "Freedom 7" capsule

carries him 116 miles above the Earth's surface. NASA's first manned space flight tests the ability of humans to withstand the intense g-forces during liftoff and re-entry as Shepard encounters 11.6 g's as he plummets to the surface during his 15 minute flight.

May 7

1915: Just off the coast of southern Ireland, the submarine U-20 spots the massive ocean liner RMS Lusitania, steaming from New York and hoping to sneak through Germany's blockade of the British Isles . The U-boat fires a single torpedo at the ship and Lusitania sinks in just 18 minutes, taking 1,198 people including 128 Americans with her to the bottom. While the British government maintained for years that Lusitania was purely a passenger liner, the secondary explosions which caused the vessel to sink so quickly may have been from the tons of ammunition secretly being transported from an allegedly neutral United States. The sinking of Lusitania will be a major factor in the United States declaring war on Germany two years later.

May 9

1941: 40 Allied ships steam west across the Atlantic, right into the jaws of a waiting wolfpack of German U-boats. U-110 and U-201 make a coordinated attack on the convoy, sinking three freighters. British escort vessels score hits on both subs, sending U-201 back to German pens for repair. U-110 is forced to surface, and the captain orders his crew to abandon ship as it appears the destroyer HMS Bulldog is preparing to ram the sub. British sailors quickly seize the opportunity to board the fatally wounded submarine instead, grabbing the Enigma cipher machine and German code book. The British can now read the German Navy's traffic - a secret so closely guarded that the United States isn't informed until 1943.

May 15

1918: Privates Henry Johnson and Needham Roberts of the all-black "Harlem Hellfighters" become the first American soldiers to be awarded the Croix de Guerre - France's highest decoration for military valor. When a German raiding party attacks their outpost and captures Roberts, Johnson fights back with grenades, gun fire, his rifle butt, knife, and fists, rescuing his fellow soldier and forcing the Germans to retreat. Johnson is wounded 21 times in the fight, but is not awarded the Purple Heart until 1996 - decades after his passing - and is finally awarded the Medal of Honor in 2015.

1963: U.S. Air Force Maj. (future Col.) Leroy Gordon "Gordo" Cooper, Jr. blasts off aboard "Faith 7", the final Mercury mission. Cooper will spend over 34 hours in space - circling the globe 22 times - before a short circuit kills the capsule's automated control system. Cooper has to use the constellations and his watch to manually fly the capsule back to Earth, splashing down just four miles from the recovery ship in the Pacific Ocean.

The former U.S. Marine private (serving in the Presidential Honor Guard in Washington, D.C.) ultimately was commissioned an Army second lieutenant, before his days as an Air Force fighter jock and test pilot.

May 30

1866: "Decoration Day" — the predecessor to Memorial Day is first observed by order of U.S. Army Gen. John A. Logan, who designated the day "for the purpose of strewing with flowers or otherwise decorating the graves of comrades who died in defense of their country." Maj. Gen. (future U.S. pres.) James A. Garfield presides over ceremonies at Arlington Cemetery (the former estate of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee), and approximately 5,000 participants decorate the graves of both Union and Confederate dead about 20,000 of them buried on the grounds.

Past Month's Military History