December 17 in Military History

France formally recognized the independence of the United States, a diplomatic triumph engineered by Benjamin Franklin that would prove decisive to the American cause. French recognition led directly to the Treaty of Alliance in February 1778, bringing French troops, naval power, and financial support that would ultimately tip the balance at Yorktown and win the war.

Major General Ulysses S. Grant issued the most notorious antisemitic order in American military history, expelling "Jews as a class" from the Department of the Tennessee. The order, motivated by Grant's frustration with cotton speculation in occupied territory, was reversed by President Lincoln within three weeks and later deeply regretted by Grant, who as president actively courted Jewish Americans and appointed them to prominent positions.

Major General Ulysses S. Grant issued General Orders No. 11 expelling all Jewish traders from the military department covering Tennessee, Mississippi, and Kentucky. President Abraham Lincoln revoked the order within three weeks after protests from Jewish community leaders including Cesar Kaskel of Paducah, who traveled to Washington to meet with the president. The episode remains one of the most controversial administrative actions of Grant's Civil War career.

Orville and Wilbur Wright achieved the first sustained, controlled flight of a powered heavier-than-air aircraft at Kill Devil Hills near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. The first flight lasted 12 seconds and covered 120 feet; by the fourth flight that day, Wilbur covered 852 feet in 59 seconds. Five witnesses watched the moment that would transform warfare, and the world, forever.

The U.S. Navy submarine S-4 was rammed by the Coast Guard destroyer Paulding during trials off Provincetown, Massachusetts, and sank in 102 feet of water with 40 men aboard. Six crew members survived in the forward torpedo room for three days before rescue divers failed to reach them in a winter storm, a disaster that forced the Navy to develop modern submarine rescue equipment including the McCann Rescue Chamber and the Momsen Lung.

The prototype Douglas DC-3, the civilian airliner that would be militarized as the C-47 Skytrain, made its first flight from Clover Field in Santa Monica, California. The DC-3 airframe became the most successful military transport of all time, with more than 10,000 C-47s built for the U.S. Army Air Forces and Allied air forces during World War II.

The German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee was scuttled by her own crew in the estuary of the Río de la Plata off Montevideo, Uruguay, following the Battle of the River Plate, the first major naval engagement of World War II. Cornered by British cruisers and believing a larger force awaited outside the harbor, Captain Hans Langsdorff chose to destroy his ship rather than risk her capture. Langsdorff committed suicide three days later.

The German pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee was scuttled by her captain Hans Langsdorff in the River Plate estuary off Montevideo, Uruguay. Damaged at the Battle of the River Plate four days earlier and misled into believing a superior Royal Navy force awaited him beyond Uruguayan territorial waters, Langsdorff chose to blow up his ship rather than risk another battle with the lives of his crew.

During the German Ardennes offensive, troops from Kampfgruppe Peiper of the 1st SS Panzer Division shot 84 unarmed American prisoners of war in a field near Malmedy, Belgium. Most of the victims were from Battery B of the 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion. The massacre became one of the most infamous war crimes on the Western Front and the basis for the postwar Malmedy trial at Dachau.

The last American military convoy crossed the border from Iraq into Kuwait, ending nearly nine years of U.S. military operations that had begun with the 2003 invasion. The withdrawal fulfilled President Obama's pledge to end the war, though the rise of ISIS three years later would draw American forces back to Iraq in an advisory and combat-support role.