24 April

[Mark Sman]

April 24

1185 - Yo****sune Minamoto defeats Imperial Fleet at Dan no ura - http://www.samurai-archives.com/yo****sune.html

1778 - USS Drake Captures HMS Ranger - http://www.history.navy.mil/danfs/r/ranger.htm

1916 - Easter Rising in Ireland - http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/war/easterrising/index.shtml

1980 - Desert One - http://www.mindef.gov.sg/safti/pointer/back/journals/2002/Vol28_2/5.htm
http://www.af.mil/news/airman/0401/hostage.html

[Mark Sman]

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View of O'Connell Street Bridge in the center of Dublin in the aftermath of the 1916 Easter Rebellion.

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British soldiers survey the damage inside the GPO. The remains of a bicycle can be seen in the foreground.

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Onlookers gather to view the incredible scenes of destruction in the very centre of Dublin. (The Rebels had wondered whether the British would actually bomb a British city and destroy property in an attempt to quell the rising...) This shot was taken from O'Connell Bridge looking north.

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he Easter Rebellion left the centre of Dublin devastated. Many structures damaged by bombs and fire needed to be demolished to make way for the subsequent rebuilding.

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Note the incorrect month: the Rebellion took place in April, not May. This picture is identified in Winding the Clock: O'Rahilly and the 1916 Rising (Aodogán O'Rahilly) as the barricade at the end of Moore Street which Rebel Leader Michael O'Rahilly was trying to storm when he was fatally wounded. The shop on the corner is Number 57 'Simpson & Wallace'.

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Liberty Hall, Dublin, the Rebel Headquarters, after the storming



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by Col. J.V.O. Weaver

J.V.O. Weaver and Hal Lewis had been friends for years and had flown together countless times. But, when Weaver went to shake Lewis’ hand before the two departed Masirah, Oman, on April 24, 1980, Lewis’ words stopped Weaver dead in his tracks. “J.V.O. this is going to be bad,” Weaver remembers his friend saying. “Someone is not coming back from this.” Weaver shot this picture of a C-130 Hercules taxiing out of Masirah before boarding his own plane en route to Desert One. Lewis’ premonition proved right — five airmen and three Marines died at Desert One.

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DOD Archive Photo

Crews make final checks on three of the eight RH-53 Sea Stallion helicopters lined up on the flight deck of the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Nimitz in preparation for Operation Evening Light, the Navy code name for the rescue mission to Iran. For the mission to go forward, six of the eight RH-53s had to make it into Iran in working order. Six of them did. But just before heading out to their next staging point, one developed a hydraulic problem, and the mission was scrubbed.



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[hist2004]

SHRIVER, JERRY MICHAELName: Jerry Michael "Mad Dog" Shriver
Rank/Branch: E7/US Army Special Forces
Unit: CCS - MACV-SOG, 5th Special Forces
Date of Birth: 24 September 1941 (De Funiak Springs FL)
Home City of Record: Sacramento CA
Date of Loss: 24 April 1969
Country of Loss: Cambodia (some older records say Laos)
Loss Coordinates: 165048N 1063158E (XT441913)
Status (in 1973):
Missing In Action
Category: 4
Aircraft/Vehicle/Ground: Ground
Refno: 1431
Source: Compiled from one or more of the following: raw data from U.S.Government agency sources, correspondence with POW/MIA families, published sources, interviews.
Updated by the P.O.W. NETWORK in 1998.
Other Personnel in Incident: (none missing)
REMARKS:
SYNOPSIS: SFC Jerry M. "Mad Dog" Shriver was a legendary Green Beret. He was an exploitation platoon leader with Command and Control South, MACV-SOG (Military Assistance Command, Vietnam Studies and Observation Group). MACV-SOG was a joint service high command unconventional warfare task force engaged in highly classified operations throughout Southeast Asia. The 5th Special Forces channeled personnel into MACV-SOG (although it was not a Special Forces group) through Special Operations Augmentation (SOA), whichprovided their "cover" while under secret orders to MACV-SOG. The teams performed deep penetration missions of strategic reconnaissance andinterdiction which were called, depending on the time frame, "Shining Brass" or "Prairie Fire" missions.On the morning of April 24, 1969, Shriver's hatchet platoon was air-assaulted into Cambodia by four helicopters. Upon departing the helicopter,the team had begun moving toward its initial target point when it came under heavy volumes of enemy fire from several machine gun bunkers and entrenched enemy positions estimated to be at least a company-sized element.

Shriver was last seen by the company commander, Capt. Paul D. Cahill, as Shriver was moving against the machine gun bunkers and entering a tree line on the southwest edge of the LZ with a trusted Montagnard striker. Capt.Cahill and Sgt. Ernest C. Jamison, the platoon medical aidman, took cover in a bomb crater. Cahill continued radio contact with Shriver for four hours until his transmission was broken and Shriver was not heard from again. It was known that Shriver had been wounded 3 or 4 times. An enemy soldier was later seen picking up a weapon which appeared to be the same type carried by Shriver. Jamison left the crater to retrieve one of the wounded Montagnards who had fallen in the charge. The medic reached the soldier, but was almost torn apart by concentrated machine gun fire. At that moment Cahill was wounded in the right eye, which resulted in his total blindness for the next 30 minutes. The platoon radioman, Y-Sum Nie, desperately radioed for immediate extraction. Maj. Benjamin T. Kapp, Jr. was in the command helicopter and could see the platoon pinned down across the broken ground and rims of bomb craters. North Vietnamese machine guns were firing into the bodies in front of their positions and covering the open ground with grazing fire. The assistant platoon leader, 1Lt. Gregory M. Harrigan, reported within minutes that half the platoon was killed or wounded.

Harrigan himself was killed 45 minutes later. Helicopter gunships and A1E aircraft bombed and rocketed the NVA defenses. The heavy ground fire peppered the aircraft in return, wounding one door gunner during low-level strafing. Several attempts to lift out survivors had to be aborted. Ten airstrikes and 1,500 rockets had been placed in the area in attempts to make a safe extraction possible. 1Lt. Walter L. Marcantel, the third in command, called for napalm only ten yards from his front line, and both he and his nine remaining commandos were burned by splashingnapalm. After seven hours of contact, three helicopters dashed in and pulled out 15 wounded troops. As the aircraft lifted off, several crewmen saw movement in a bomb crater. A fourth helicopter set down, and Lt. Daniel Hall twice raced over to the bomb crater. On the first trip he recovered the badly wounded radio operator, and on the second trip he dragged Harrigan's body back to the helicopter. The aircraft was being buffeted by shellfire and took off immediately afterwards. No further MACV-SOG insertions were made into the NVA stronghold. Jamison was declared dead and Shriver Missing in Action.

On June 12, 1970, a search and recovery element from a graves registration unit recovered human remains that were later identified as Sgt. Jamison, but no trace was found of Shriver. For every insertion like Shriver's that were detected and stopped, dozens of other commando teams safely slipped past NVA lines to strike a wide range of targets and collect vital information. The number of MACV-SOG missionsconducted with Special Forces reconnaissance teams into Laos and Cambodia was 452 in 1969. It was the most sustained American campaign of raiding, sabotage and intelligence-gathering waged on foreign soil in U.S. military history. MACV-SOG's teams earned a global reputation as one of the most combat effective deep-penetration forces ever raised. The missions Shriver and others were assigned were exceedingly dangerous and of strategic importance. The men who were put into such situations knew the chances of their recovery if captured was slim to none. They quite naturally assumed that their freedom would come by the end of the war. For 591 Americans, freedom did come at the end of the war. For another 2500,however, freedom has never come. Since the war ended, nearly 10,000 reports relating to missing Americans in Southeast Asia have been received by the U.S., convincing many authorities that hundreds remain alive in captivity. Jerry Shriver's friends claim they heard on "Hanoi Hannah" that "Mad Dog" Shriver had been captured. They wonder if he is among the hundreds said to be alive today.

Regards,
Hist2004

[digrar]

Battle of Kapyong, Korea, 24 April 1951



3rd Battalion The Royal Australian Regiment
United States Presidential Distinguished Unit Citation

3rd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment (23 and 24 April 1951).

2nd Battalion, Princess Canadian Light Infantry (24 and 25 April): Company A,

72nd Heavy Tank Battalion (United States) (24 and 25 April 1951)

The above units are cited for extraordinary heroism and outstanding performance of combat duties in action against the armed enemy near Kapyong, Korea, on the dates indicated. The enemy had broken through the main line of resistance and penetrated to the area north of Kapyong. The units listed above were deployed to stem the assault. The 3rd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment, moved to the right flank of the Sector and took up defensive positions north of the Pukhon River. The 2nd Battalion, Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry defended in the vicinity of Hill 677 on the left flank. Company A, 72nd Heavy Tank Battalion, supported all units to the full extent of its capacity and, in addition, kept the main roads open and assisted in evacuating the wounded. Troops form a retreating division passed through the sector which enabled enemy troops to infiltrate with the withdrawing forces. The enemy attacked savagely under the clangour of bugles and trumpets. The forward elements were completely surrounded going through the first day into the second. Again and again the enemy threw waves of troops at the gallant defenders, and many times succeeded in penetrating the outer defences, but each time the courageous, indomitable and determined soldiers repulsed the fanatical attacks. Ammunition ran low and there was no time for food. Critical supplies were dropped by air to the encircled troops, and they stood their ground in resolute defiance of the enemy. With serene and indefatigable persistence, the gallant soldiers held their defensive positions and took heavy tolls of the enemy. In some instances when the enemy penetrated the defences, the commanders directed friendly artillery fire on their own positions in repelling the thrusts. Towards the close of 25 April, the enemy break though have been stopped. The seriousness of the breakthrough on the central front had been changed form defeat to victory by the gallant stand of these heroic and courageous soldiers. The 3rd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment, 2nd Battalion, Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, and Company A, 72nd Heavy Tank Battalion, displayed such gallantry, determination and esprit de corps in accomplishing their mission under extremely difficult and hazardous conditions as to set them apart and above all other units participating in the campaign, and by their achievements they brought distinguished credit on themselves, their homelands and all freedom loving nations.

BY ORDER OF THE SECRETARY OF THE ARMY
OFFICIAL WM E BERLIN, Major General United States Army, Acting The Adjutant General,
and J LAWTON COLLINS, Chief of Staff, United State Army.