May 15 in Military History

Confederate forces including 257 cadets from the Virginia Military Institute defeated a Union force at New Market in the Shenandoah Valley. The teenage cadets, some as young as 15, charged across a muddy field under fire, an action commemorated annually at VMI as one of the most famous episodes in American military education.

The U.S. Army Signal Corps flew the first airmail route between Washington D.C. and New York. The flight, using military pilots and Curtiss Jenny biplanes, demonstrated the practical application of military aviation technology to civilian purposes and accelerated development of the air transportation infrastructure.

The Netherlands surrendered after five days of resistance, following the devastating bombing of Rotterdam. Queen Wilhelmina had escaped to London the previous day, establishing a government-in-exile. Dutch colonial forces would continue fighting in the East Indies, and the Dutch Resistance became one of the most effective in occupied Europe.

Congress established the WAAC, allowing women to serve in the U.S. Army in non-nursing roles for the first time. Over 150,000 women would serve during WWII.

On the same day that President Roosevelt signed the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps into law, the War Department authorized WAAC personnel into motor transport and signals intelligence billets, unlocking tens of thousands of male soldiers for combat assignment.

Egyptian, Transjordanian, Syrian, Lebanese, and Iraqi armed forces crossed into the newly declared State of Israel, beginning the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and the first operational use of Arab Legion armored columns and Egyptian Spitfires against a new state.

The United States completed the first fully successful end-to-end test of the Atlas intercontinental ballistic missile, placing an instrumented reentry vehicle on target in the South Atlantic after a 6,300-mile flight from Cape Canaveral.

Mississippi Highway Patrol and Jackson city police fired approximately 150 rounds into a women's dormitory at Jackson State College, killing two students and wounding twelve. The shootings, occurring 11 days after Kent State, received far less national attention despite similar circumstances.

U.S. Marines from the 2nd Battalion, 9th Marines assaulted Koh Tang island in the Gulf of Thailand while Navy aircraft struck Cambodian vessels, forcing the release of the merchant ship SS Mayaguez and its crew in the last combat action of the Vietnam era.

The Soviet Union began its formal withdrawal from Afghanistan after nine years of war, as mandated by the Geneva Accords. The withdrawal of 100,000 troops was completed in February 1989. The war had cost approximately 15,000 Soviet soldiers killed and contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union.