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The newer arms and the oldest: the birth of military aviation and the independent air forces, the amphibious marine corps, and the royal and palace guards...
The newer arms and the oldest: the birth of military aviation and the independent air forces, the amphibious marine corps, and the royal and palace guards, from the Praetorians who auctioned the empire and the Swiss Guard to the Janissaries who made and unmade sultans.
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Emperor Augustus formally organized the Praetorian Guard as a standing bodyguard for the Roman emperor, drawing on the older tradition of a general's personal cohort. Nine cohorts were stationed in and around Rome, eventually barracked at the Castra Praetoria. The guard became the most privileged unit in the Roman army, with higher pay and shorter service terms than legionaries.
After murdering Emperor Pertinax, the Praetorian Guard openly auctioned the imperial throne to the highest bidder. The wealthy senator Didius Julianus won the bidding and was proclaimed emperor, but he was despised by the public and executed within nine weeks. The episode became the classic symbol of the guard's power to make and unmake emperors by force.
After backing his rival Maxentius, who died at the Battle of the Milvian Bridge, Emperor Constantine I dissolved the Praetorian Guard and demolished its barracks, the Castra Praetoria. The guard had a long history of assassinating and installing emperors, and Constantine wanted no rival power base in the capital. Its role was replaced by new imperial escort units loyal directly to him.
Byzantine Emperor Basil II received several thousand Scandinavian and Rus warriors from Kievan Rus and formed them into an elite personal guard, later known as the Varangian Guard. Composed largely of Norse and, from the 11th century, Anglo-Saxon warriors, the unit was famed for its loyalty since its foreign members had no local political ties. It served as the Byzantine emperors' bodyguard for several centuries.
The Ottoman sultans built the Janissary corps as an elite infantry force recruited through the devshirme system, which conscripted Christian boys from the Balkans, converted them to Islam, and trained them as soldiers personally loyal to the sultan. For centuries the Janissaries were the core of Ottoman military power and among the first standing armies in Europe to use firearms extensively. Over time they gained enormous political influence, repeatedly deposing sultans who threatened their privileges.
King Henry VII created the Yeomen of the Guard as the English monarch's personal bodyguard shortly after his victory at Bosworth Field. It is the oldest surviving royal bodyguard in the world and the oldest military corps still in existence in Britain. Members still wear Tudor-style ceremonial uniforms at state occasions.
Pope Julius II formally established the Pontifical Swiss Guard, recruiting soldiers from Switzerland renowned for their discipline and combat skill as mercenaries across Europe. The corps became the pope's personal protection force and still guards the Vatican today, making it one of the oldest continuously operating military units in the world. Recruits must be Swiss, Catholic, unmarried men who have completed Swiss military training.
During the Sack of Rome by mutinous troops of Charles V, 147 of the 189 Swiss Guards were killed defending Pope Clement VII on the steps of St. Peter's Basilica, buying him time to escape to Castel Sant'Angelo. The surviving 42 guards escorted the pope to safety. The Swiss Guard still commemorates the anniversary each May 6 by swearing in new recruits.
The regiment that became the Coldstream Guards was raised by General George Monck as part of the New Model Army and later helped restore Charles II to the throne in 1660. It is the oldest continuously serving regular regiment in the British Army. Today it remains part of the Household Division, providing ceremonial guard duties at royal palaces.
A regiment of English royalist exiles was formed to guard the future Charles II during his exile, later becoming the Grenadier Guards after 1660 when the king returned to the throne. The regiment earned its name after defeating the French Grenadier Guard at Waterloo in 1815. It remains part of the Household Division that guards the sovereign's palaces today.
England raised twelve hundred soldiers as the Duke of York and Albany's Maritime Regiment of Foot, a land force intended to serve aboard ships of the Royal Navy. This regiment is regarded as the founding unit of what became the Royal Marines, making it one of the oldest marine forces in the world. Marines fought alongside sailors and provided shipboard security and boarding parties.
The British Admiralty took direct administrative control of the marine companies and organized them as fifty independent companies, laying the groundwork for the modern Royal Marines. The corps was granted the title 'Royal' in 1802 for its service during the French Revolutionary Wars. Royal Marines went on to serve in nearly every major British naval and amphibious operation since.
The Continental Congress passed a resolution creating two battalions of Continental Marines to serve as landing forces for the fledgling Continental Navy during the American Revolutionary War. This date is celebrated annually as the birthday of the United States Marine Corps. The original force was disbanded after the war and not permanently reestablished until 1798.
President John Adams signed legislation reestablishing the U.S. Marine Corps as a permanent military service under the Department of the Navy, amid rising tensions with France in the Quasi-War. The act created the modern institutional Marine Corps that has existed continuously since. Marine headquarters and its commandant were based in Washington, D.C. from the start.
A small force of U.S. Marines under Lieutenant Presley O'Bannon marched across the Libyan desert with mercenaries and captured the city of Derna from Barbary forces during the First Barbary War. It was the first time the American flag was raised in victory on foreign soil. The action is commemorated in the opening line of the Marines' Hymn, 'to the shores of Tripoli'.
After centuries of Janissary revolts, corruption, and resistance to military reform, Sultan Mahmud II provoked a Janissary uprising and then crushed it with loyal troops and artillery, killing thousands of Janissaries in Constantinople. He formally abolished the corps afterward, ending an institution that had repeatedly deposed and even executed sultans. The event, known as the Auspicious Incident, cleared the way for the sultan to build a modern, Western-style army.
During the Italo-Turkish War, Italian aviator Giulio Gavotti dropped small grenades by hand from his monoplane onto Ottoman positions near Tripoli, the first aerial bombardment in the history of warfare. Italy had also used aircraft for reconnaissance earlier that year, another military first. The episode showed early European militaries that aircraft could serve as offensive weapons, not just scouts.
Britain established the Royal Flying Corps as the air arm of the British Army, absorbing the earlier Air Battalion of the Royal Engineers. It flew reconnaissance and, increasingly, combat missions on the Western Front during the First World War. In 1918 it merged with the Royal Naval Air Service to create the Royal Air Force.
German airships attacked English towns in the first strategic bombing raids against a home population, killing civilians far from the front lines. The raids, and later Gotha bomber attacks, brought the war directly to British cities for the first time and forced Britain to develop dedicated home air defenses. The psychological shock of bombing civilians from the air shaped military and public thinking about air power for decades.
Britain merged the Royal Flying Corps and Royal Naval Air Service to form the Royal Air Force, the world's first air force independent of army or navy command. Its founding was driven partly by the shock of German bombing raids on London and the belief that air power needed unified command. The RAF's structure became a model later copied by other nations building independent air services.
U.S. Marines helped halt a German advance toward Paris in brutal, weeks-long fighting through the forest at Belleau Wood, suffering heavy casualties. The battle became one of the founding legends of the modern Marine Corps and is credited with the nickname 'Devil Dogs,' allegedly given by German soldiers. It remains one of the most commemorated engagements in Marine Corps history.
Adolf Hitler publicly announced the existence of the Luftwaffe as an independent air force, openly violating the disarmament terms of the Treaty of Versailles. Germany had secretly been training pilots and developing aircraft designs for years beforehand. The Luftwaffe was rapidly built into one of the most powerful air forces in the world and became central to Nazi Germany's blitzkrieg strategy.
also in How the Second World War unfolded
The RAF denies the Luftwaffe air superiority; the planned invasion of Britain is shelved.
The Luftwaffe shifted from targeting RAF airfields to sustained night bombing of London and other British cities, killing over 40,000 civilians before the campaign wound down in mid-1941. The bombing was intended to break British morale and force surrender, but it failed to do so and instead hardened public resolve. The Blitz became a defining example of strategic bombing aimed at civilian populations.
Sixteen U.S. Army Air Forces B-25 bombers launched from the carrier USS Hornet struck Tokyo and other Japanese cities in a daring raid led by Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle. The mission caused limited physical damage but delivered a major psychological blow to Japan and boosted American morale after Pearl Harbor. Most crews had to crash-land or bail out over China after running low on fuel.
The 1st Marine Division landed on Guadalcanal, opening the first major Allied offensive of the Pacific War and a grueling six-month campaign of jungle and naval fighting. It marked the start of the island-hopping strategy that the Marine Corps would use across the Pacific. Victory at Guadalcanal came at a heavy cost but proved Japan's advance could be stopped and reversed.
On March 9, 1945, 279 stripped-down B-29s carrying fire bombs made a low-level attack on Tokyo. The result, Quigley says, was the most devastating air attack in all history, burning out sixteen square miles and killing 84,793 people.
On March 9, 1945, the Air Force tried a daring experiment.Tragedy and Hope , p. 684-686
Tokyo on the night of March 9-10, 1945The Making of the Atomic Bomb
British and American bombers firebombed the German city of Dresden over three days, creating a firestorm that killed an estimated 25,000 people, most of them civilians. The raid became one of the most controversial Allied actions of the war because Dresden had limited military-industrial significance and the city was crowded with refugees. It remains a central example cited in debates over the morality of area bombing.
U.S. Marines landed on the fortified island of Iwo Jima in one of the bloodiest battles of the Pacific War, needed to secure an airfield for emergency B-29 landings and fighter escorts. The flag-raising on Mount Suribachi, photographed by Joe Rosenthal, became one of the most iconic images of the war. Nearly 7,000 Marines were killed in over a month of fighting against a deeply entrenched Japanese garrison.
also in How the Second World War unfolded
Two atomic bombs destroy two cities; the nuclear age begins.
The National Security Act of 1947 split the U.S. Army Air Forces off as a separate, independent military service, the United States Air Force. Stuart Symington became its first secretary. The move followed the Royal Air Force's earlier example and reflected the recognition that air power had become a distinct strategic domain of its own after the Second World War.
After the Soviet Union blockaded ground access to West Berlin, American and British air forces flew round-the-clock cargo missions delivering food, fuel, and supplies to the isolated city for nearly a year. The operation demonstrated that air power could sustain a besieged population and became an early Cold War symbol of Western resolve. The Soviets lifted the blockade in May 1949 after the airlift proved unbreakable.
MacArthur's amphibious landing at Inchon in September 1950 achieved tactical surprise; Marines captured Seoul on 22 September and trapped much of the North Korean force.
On September 22nd they captured Seoul and, six days later, were joined by the main United Nations offensive driving up the peninsula from Pusan.Tragedy and Hope , p. 805-807
During the Korean War, a U.S. Air Force F-80 Shooting Star pilot shot down a Soviet-built MiG-15 flown by North Korean or Chinese pilots in the first confirmed air-to-air combat between jet aircraft. The clash opened the era of jet warfare, later intensified in 'MiG Alley' where American F-86 Sabres and Soviet-supplied MiG-15s fought regularly. Jet dogfighting reshaped fighter tactics and aircraft design for the following decades.
A CIA U-2 was downed deep inside Russia and its pilot, Francis Gary Powers, was captured alive. The incident wrecked a planned summit and exposed American cover stories.
On May Day, as the president had feared, the U-2 was shot down in central Russia. The CIA’s pilot, Francis Gary Powers, was captured alive.Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
The United States began a sustained bombing campaign against North Vietnam intended to pressure Hanoi into ending its support for the insurgency in South Vietnam. The campaign ran for over three years and dropped far more tonnage than the U.S. used in the Pacific theater of World War II, without achieving its strategic goal. Rolling Thunder became a heavily debated case study in the limits of air power against a determined, dispersed adversary.
The Israeli Air Force launched a surprise preemptive strike, Operation Focus, destroying most of the Egyptian air force on the ground within hours and quickly gaining air superiority. The strikes were extended to Jordanian, Syrian, and Iraqi air bases the same day. Israeli air dominance shaped the rest of the six-day war, which ended in a decisive Israeli victory and major territorial changes in the Middle East.
Royal Marines and British Army paratroopers landed at San Carlos Water to retake the Falkland Islands after Argentina's invasion, under sustained attack from Argentine aircraft. The campaign combined amphibious assault with air and naval power in a conflict fought thousands of miles from Britain. British forces recaptured the islands within weeks, and the war reaffirmed the Royal Marines' amphibious warfare role.
U.S. Air Force F-117 Nighthawk stealth aircraft flew their first combat missions during the invasion of Panama, Operation Just Cause, though their bombing accuracy that night was later criticized. The aircraft's radar-evading design, developed in secret through the 1980s, marked a major shift in air power technology. Stealth aircraft went on to play a much larger and more effective role in the 1991 Gulf War.
A U.S.-led coalition opened the Gulf War with a five-week air campaign that destroyed Iraqi air defenses, command infrastructure, and military targets before the ground invasion began. Precision-guided munitions and stealth aircraft featured prominently and were showcased in widely broadcast gun-camera footage. The campaign was held up as a model of modern air power's ability to cripple an adversary before ground forces engaged.
Shortly after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan began, an armed MQ-1 Predator drone was used in one of the first strikes carried out by an unmanned aircraft in the history of warfare. The Predator had earlier been fitted with Hellfire missiles in 2000-2001 tests, converting a reconnaissance platform into a strike weapon. Armed drones went on to transform air power and counterterrorism operations over the following two decades, including thousands of strikes across the Middle East and South Asia.
U.S. Marines led a major offensive to retake the insurgent-held city of Fallujah, resulting in some of the heaviest urban combat American forces had faced since the Vietnam War. The battle killed dozens of Marines and thousands of insurgents and civilians, and left much of the city devastated. It became a defining, and controversial, engagement of the Iraq War for the Marine Corps.
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