September 29 in Military History

Henry Bolingbroke accepted the abdication of King Richard II in London and was crowned Henry IV, triggering decades of dynastic warfare that culminated in the Wars of the Roses. The reign reshaped English military organization, feudal levies, and the role of professional retinues in late medieval land warfare.

The United States Congress created the first regular Army under the Constitution, authorizing a force of 1,000 men organized as one regiment of infantry and one battalion of artillery. The act replaced the remnants of the Continental Army and established the legal foundation for the U.S. Army as a permanent institution.

Black Union soldiers of the USCT (United States Colored Troops) led the assault on Confederate fortifications at New Market Heights outside Richmond, Virginia. Despite suffering devastating casualties charging into entrenched positions, the Black troops captured the fortifications. Fourteen African American soldiers received the Medal of Honor for their valor in the attack.

Italy declared war on the Ottoman Empire over Libya, opening a conflict that included the first use of aerial bombing in combat. Italian Lieutenant Giulio Gavotti dropped four grenades from an Etrich Taube monoplane over Turkish positions on November 1, 1911, inaugurating a new dimension of warfare.

British, Australian, and American forces breached the Hindenburg Line at the St. Quentin Canal. The breakthrough shattered German morale and convinced Ludendorff that the war was lost.

Bulgaria signed the Armistice of Salonika with the Allies, the first Central Powers state to exit the First World War. The collapse of the Bulgarian front opened the Danube to Allied river operations, threatened Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire with invasion from the south, and accelerated the political and military disintegration of the Central Powers coalition.

The mass shooting at Babi Yar ravine near Kyiv concluded, with 33,771 Jewish victims murdered in two days. The massacre was the largest single mass shooting of the Holocaust and demonstrated the systematic, industrial scale of Nazi genocide. The site would be used for additional mass killings throughout the German occupation.

General MacArthur formally restored the South Korean capital of Seoul to President Syngman Rhee in a ceremony at the National Capitol building, barely two weeks after the Inchon landing. The ceremony was interrupted by the sound of nearby gunfire, pockets of North Korean resistance still held out in parts of the city.

Space Shuttle Discovery launched on mission STS-26, the first U.S. shuttle flight since the January 1986 Challenger disaster. The return to flight validated 32 months of extensive redesign of the solid rocket boosters and resumed the Department of Defense classified payload program that had depended on the shuttle for national security launches.

NASA confirmed the launch readiness of the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission orbiter, a scientific spacecraft with substantial military spin-off in atmospheric modeling relevant to ballistic missile defense and high-altitude radar propagation calculations. MAVEN launched on November 18, 2013.