4 April 2020

On this date in . . .
from: http://www.scopesys.com    
1964 Beatles' "Can't Buy Me Love", single goes #1 & stays #1 for 5 weeks
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AND IN MILITARY HISTORY
from: thisdayinusmilhist.wordpress.com

1776 – The first Columbus, a 24-gun armed ship, was built at Philadelphia in 1774 as Sally; purchased for the Continental Navy in November 1775, Captain Abraham Whipple in command. Between 17 February and 8 April 1776, in company with the other ships of Commodore Esek Hopkins’ squadron, Columbus took part in the expedition to New Providence, Bahamas, where the first Navy-Marine amphibious operation seized essential military supplies. On the return passage, the squadron captured the British schooner, Hawk.
1788 – Last of the Federalist essays was published. The series of 85 letters were written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay urging ratification of the US Constitution. Defects in the Articles of Confederation became apparent, such as the lack of central authority over foreign and domestic commerce and the inability of Congress to levy taxes, leading Congress to endorse a plan to draft a new constitution.
1790 – Congress establishes the Revenue Marine Service, a forerunner of the Coast guard.
1912 – President Taft recommended abolishing Revenue Cutter Service. His actions led to the creation of the Coast Guard by merging the Revenue Cutter Service and the Life-Saving Service on 28 January 1915.
1917 – U.S. Senate voted 90-6 to enter World War I on Allied side.
1921 – The US Navy Department completes the first helium production plant in Fort Worth, Texas.
1933 – Navy airship USS Akron crashed off the Barnegat Lightship, off the New Jersey coast. The search employed over 20 Coast Guard vessels under Navy supervision. USS Akron (ZRS-4) was a helium-filled rigid airship of the U.S. Navy that was destroyed in a thunderstorm killing 73 of the 76 crewmen and passengers. This accident was the greatest loss of life in any known airship crash. During its accident-prone 18-month term of service, the Akron also served as a flying aircraft carrier for launching and recovering F9C Sparrowhawk fighter planes. With lengths of 785 ft (239 m), 20 ft (6.1 m) shorter than the German commercial airship Hindenburg, which was destroyed in 1937, the Akron and its sister airship the Macon were among the largest flying objects in the world. Although the Hindenburg was longer, it was filled with hydrogen, so the two U.S. airships still hold the world record for helium-filled airships.
1941 – Roosevelt agrees to allow Royal Navy warships to be repaired in the US. Among the first ships to benefit from this order are the battleships Malaya and Resolution. RN warships are also to be allowed to refuel in the US when on combat missions.
1949 – The United States and 11 other nations establish the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a mutual defense pact aimed at containing possible Soviet aggression against Western Europe. NATO stood as the main U.S.-led military alliance against the Soviet Union throughout the duration of the Cold War. Relations between the United States and the Soviet Union began to deteriorate rapidly in 1948. There were heated disagreements over the postwar status of Germany, with the Americans insisting on German recovery and eventual rearmament and the Soviets steadfastly opposing such actions. In June 1948, the Soviets blocked all ground travel to the American occupation zone in West Berlin, and only a massive U.S. airlift of food and other necessities sustained the population of the zone until the Soviets relented and lifted the blockade in May 1949. In January 1949, President Harry S. Truman warned in his State of the Union Address that the forces of democracy and communism were locked in a dangerous struggle, and he called for a defensive alliance of nations in the North Atlantic–NATO was the result. In April 1949, representatives from Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, and Portugal joined the United States in signing the NATO agreement. The signatories agreed, “An armed attack against one or more of them … shall be considered an attack against them all.” President Truman welcomed the organization as “a shield against aggression.” Not all Americans embraced NATO. Isolationists such as Senator Robert A. Taft declared that NATO was “not a peace program; it is a war program.” Most, however, saw the organization as a necessary response to the communist threat. The U. S. Senate ratified the treaty by a wide margin in June 1949. During the next few years, Greece, Turkey, and West Germany also joined. The Soviet Union condemned NATO as a warmongering alliance and responded by setting up the Warsaw Pact (a military alliance between the Soviet Union and its Eastern Europe satellites) in 1955. NATO lasted throughout the course of the Cold War, and continues to play an important role in post-Cold War Europe. In recent years, for example, NATO forces were active in trying to bring an end to the civil war in Bosnia.
 

NAVY LEAGUE MOTTO

1.  To enhance the morale of active-duty personnel and their families,
2.  To inform Congress and the American public on the importance of strong sea services, and
3.  To support youth through programs that expose young people to the values of our sea services.