US Military History Throughout The Years

Short bits of history you know and some you may not!

• U-2: Saturday, February 10, 1962 – U-2 Spy Plane pilot Francis Gary Powers is released by the USSR after being held prisoner for nearly 2 years. He was shot down during the first attempt to fly across the length of Soviet Russia, a feat that was considered worth the gamble. After being shot down the CIA would initially deny the existence of the plane, claiming that it was just a weather plane that had gone off course. Powers would be convicted of espionage and held in prison in the USSR, with his cellmate being a Latvian political prisoner. At first the CIA did not want to try and get Powers back, believing he had defected to the USSR and told them secrets making his value little to them. After sometime it was decided that a Soviet spy captured in America, Rudolf Abel, would be exchanged for his release. He would return to a cold welcome with the government even holding hearings as to what happened and the CIA holding the fact that he did not destroy the plane and then commit suicide against him.
• Eagle Fury: Sunday, February 9, 2003 – Operation Eagle Fury. Members of 7th Special Forces Group, US Navy SEALs and a 82nd Airborne Division QRF accompanied by Afghan fighters begin operations in Helmand province. The purpose of the operation was to corner Taliban fighters in the area and capture or kill them. The majority of the fighting that took place was in the village of Lejay, with the battle there spanning 43 hours. This nearly two day fire fight is one of the longest fire fights that US Special Forces have been involved in during the entire war. During the operation the first combat fuel drop since the Vietnam War took place by the 82nd Airborne. 38,088 gallons of fuel were dropped in support of the operation. Dozens of Taliban fighters were rounded up during by the end of the fighting with almost no civilian causalities occurring.
• The Stars & Stripes: Friday, February 8, 1918 – The unofficial newspaper, Stars and Stripes, of the US Armed Forces begins publication for the second time near the end of WW1. The paper began in 1861 during the Civil War as Union troops occupying Bloomfield, Missouri found all the newspaper shops in the town empty. The paper went out of print during the war and would begin publication again when Americans were heavily involved in WW1. Many of the papers reporters and correspondents during this time would find success outside the Stars and Stripes, including Harold Ross who would found The New Yorker. By 1919 the paper would again go out of print. During WW2 the paper would again come back, being printed across all theaters Americans were fighting in. The paper continues to be in print to this day, available across the military.

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