March 19 in Military History

The Mongol Yuan Dynasty fleet under Zhang Hongfan destroyed the remnants of the Southern Song Dynasty navy at the Battle of Yamen, off the coast of Guangdong. The battle ended the Song Dynasty and completed the Mongol conquest of China. Over 100,000 people perished, many by mass suicide as officials chose death over surrender.

French explorer René-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, was murdered by mutinous members of his expedition near present-day Navasota, Texas. La Salle had been attempting to establish a French colony at the mouth of the Mississippi River but missed it by 400 miles, landing in Texas instead. His death effectively ended French efforts to colonize the Gulf Coast from the west.

Confederate General Joseph E. Johnston assembled approximately 20,000 troops, the tattered remnants of multiple commands, and launched a surprise attack against the left wing of General Sherman's army near Bentonville, North Carolina. Johnston initially drove the Federals back before reinforcements halted the advance. The battle continued through March 21 before Johnston withdrew. He surrendered his entire army at Bennett Place on April 26, the largest Confederate surrender of the war.

Eight Curtiss JN-3 "Jenny" biplanes of the 1st Aero Squadron took off from Columbus, New Mexico, on the first combat air mission in U.S. military history, supporting Brigadier General Pershing's Punitive Expedition into Mexico to capture Pancho Villa. The planes served as aerial observers, they carried no machine guns, only pistols and .22 rifles. The mission encountered severe difficulties, but it marked the birth of American combat aviation.

The U.S. War Department constituted the 99th Pursuit Squadron, the first African American fighter squadron in U.S. military history. Activated three days later at Chanute Field, Illinois, the unit became the foundation of the legendary Tuskegee Airmen, who compiled a distinguished combat record in North Africa, Sicily, and Europe. Their service was instrumental in President Truman's 1948 Executive Order 9981 desegregating the armed forces.

German Wehrmacht forces executed Operation Margarethe, the military occupation of their own Axis ally Hungary, after Hitler learned that Regent Admiral Horthy was secretly negotiating a separate peace with the Allies. The occupation was swift and bloodless. Its most devastating consequence was the arrival of Adolf Eichmann, who organized the deportation of approximately 437,000 Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz-Birkenau between May and July 1944, one of the most rapid mass deportations of the Holocaust.

Operating 70 miles off the coast of Shikoku, Japan, the Essex-class aircraft carrier USS Franklin was struck by two 550-pound bombs from a lone Japanese dive bomber. The bombs detonated among 31 fully armed and fueled aircraft, igniting aviation fuel and ordnance in a catastrophic chain of secondary explosions. Between 724 and 807 crew members were killed, the single deadliest attack on a U.S. Navy ship that survived the war. The crew's extraordinary damage control effort saved the ship, which steamed 12,000 miles home under her own power.

With Allied and Soviet forces penetrating deep into Germany, Adolf Hitler issued the "Destructive Measures on Reich Territory" order, the Nero Decree, calling for the destruction of all German factories, farms, power plants, railroads, bridges, and communications to prevent their capture. Albert Speer, Minister of Armaments, systematically sabotaged the order, convincing generals and regional leaders to preserve infrastructure that enabled Germany's postwar recovery.

Coalition forces launched the invasion of Iraq with a "decapitation strike" targeting a bunker where intelligence suggested Saddam Hussein was hiding. The ground invasion followed within hours, with U.S. and British forces advancing from Kuwait into southern Iraq. Baghdad fell on April 9, but the occupation that followed descended into insurgency and sectarian violence that lasted eight years.

French Rafale jets struck Libyan military vehicles approaching Benghazi, followed by a barrage of 110 Tomahawk cruise missiles from American and British warships targeting Libyan air defenses. The strikes marked the beginning of Operation Odyssey Dawn, the international military intervention authorized by UN Resolution 1973 two days earlier.