Posted on 05/11/2018 6:38:27 AM PDT by fugazi
[...] 1863: During the Battle of Yellow Tavern, Confederate Maj. Gen. J.E.B. Stuart is shot by a dismounted Union cavalry trooper north of Richmond, Va. "The greatest cavalry officer ever foaled in America" is mortally wounded and will die the next day.
[...] 1927: A young air mail pilot named Capt. Charles A. Lindbergh touches down at St. Louis' Lambert Field after a 14-hour flight from San Diego to pick up the custom-built Ryan NYP that will hopefully carry the U.S. Air Service Reserve Corps aviator across the Atlantic Ocean. The race to perform the first nonstop Transatlantic flight has already claimed the lives of three air crews: French colonel René Fonck (the all-time Allied "ace of aces"), the U.S. Navy's Lt. Stanton Wooster and Lt. Cmdr. Noel Davis, and French war heroes Capt. Charles Nungesser and Francois Coli.
After celebrating with his St. Louis financiers, the Spirit of St. Louis departs for New York, just nine days away from the historical flight that will make Lindbergh a national hero...
(Excerpt) Read more at victoryinstitute.net ...
McKinney fires as he charges the position, finishing off the remaining enemy with his rifle butt upon reaching the pit. As mortar and rifle fire hammers his position, he uses his rifle (the machine gun being rendered inoperable) to "cut down waves of the fanatical enemy." When the smoke clears, 40 Japanese bodies litter the battlefield. McKinney - "the Pacific War's Audie Murphy" - has single-handedly carried the day.
Audie’s movie “To Hell and Back” is beautifully filmed. Technicolor CinemaScope.
Battle of Yellow Tavern was fought in 1864, not 1863.
Yes...
I like the Spirit of St.Louis.
Was Gen. Phil Sheridan. Sorry JEB but General Sheridan never wandered off from his army on the eve of a great battle leaving it blind in enemy territory. Actually, I always thought Stuart's finest moment was not as a cavalry officer but when he took over for a wounded Stonewall Jackson and directed his corps brilliantly during the third day of the battle of Chancellorsville.
Beat me to it. Stuart was riding around southeast Pennsylvania before and during the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863.
If you have not read this already, it’s pretty amazing:
https://valor.militarytimes.com/hero/209
Murphy’s Medal of Honor citation
Here’s a little-known fact about Charles Lindbergh. During World War II Lindbergh flew 50 combat missions as a civilian. During one of those missions he shot down a Japanese plane.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Lindbergh#World_War_II
Hmmm, I might put Custer up there. Plenty of skirmishes with JEB that I believe, Custer won. Then again, how about Nathan Bedford Forrest?
Ping
See what happens when you don’t post directions to Starbucks...
Custer was audacious and aggressive. A hero in the press who got a lot of his men killed during the Civil War. A trait he repeated while finally getting himself killed too at the Little Big Horn.
During the early planning of the invasion, however, Stuart had proposed an alternative, striking for the downstream fords of the Potomac and moving east of the mountains. That would put him on the flank and rear of any federals north of the river, disrupt Union communications and supply, and mask confederate intentions by presenting a broader front of invasion. The risk was that he would be separated from the army.
In any event, the key point is that Stuart presented this plan to Lee, who approved it. Stuart was not freelancing. The plan came unglued mainly because the Army of the Potomac, in 1863, was moving a lot faster than it had in 1861/62. The command issues were getting sorted out. Stuart encountered Union infantry marching north from the Rappahannock line, and moving fast. Stuart fell behind schedule because he had to detour south and east to avoid the Federal columns. As it was, he crossed the Potomac at Rowser's Ford just hours after most of the Federals had completed crossing at Edwards Ferry, eight miles upstream opposite Leesburg. With a little better situational awareness, the Federals could have held the downstream fords and prevented Stuart from reaching Gettysburg at all.
The celebrated meeting between Lee and Stuart on July 2 at Gettysburg, in which Lee is supposed to have chastised Stuart, is probably a myth. It apparently originated with a critical piece written by Tom Rosser, who had an anti-Stuart ax to grind, years after the war. This was during the period following Lee's death, when other confederates began to (1) deify R.E. Lee and (2) construct the Lost Cause mythology. Since Lee was deemed infallible, the hagiographers had to blame his subordinates for the disaster in Pennsylvania, with Stuart, Longstreet and Dick Ewell all being targets. To his credit, Longstreet stood his ground and maintained that Lee had erred. This, of course, was correct but inadmissible in the South at that time. Along with becoming a Republican and being a constructive citizen after the war, this is what made Longstreet a turncoat in the eyes of much of the South.
Yet Longstreet was very bitter against Stuart’s disappearance at Gettysburg and criticized him strongly in his memoirs. So it wasn’t just Lee. Granted Lee gave Stuart very vague orders but Stuart was happy to interpret them in a way that would let him take another “glory” ride like he did during the peninsula campaign. Only it didn’t work out so well. I certainly am not defending Lee here, the disaster that was the Gettysburg campaign was all on him but there was plenty of blame to go around.
Back to Longstreet’s memoirs. Lee gave Stuart vague orders, but Longstreet said in his memoirs that he gave Stuart very detailed orders, and Stuart didn’t follow them.
Also at the very beginning of Longstreet’s memoirs, he thanks the staff officers who served under him during the war. One was named Payton Manning.
Custer was talented but impetuous which led to his defeat at Little Big Horn. Custer typically got the best of Stuart - so as a cavalier you'd have to give the edge to Custer. IIRC, it was Custer who stopped Stuart's frantic attempt to rejoin Lee at Gettysburg in an action which may have ultimately determined the outcome of the Civil War.
While I don’t don’t think Stuart acquitted himself very well in the Gettysburg campaign, there were worse blunders made by others. Lee takes the most blame not only for the way he conducted the campaign but for pushing so hard for the second campaign into the north in the first place. Longstreet was right - his corps should have been detached and sent to Vicksburg to reinforce Pemberton. The Gettysburg campaign should never have happened.
No. That's not right. Stuart rejoined Lee's camp on the evening of the second day. That is when Lee supposedly chewed him out (an incident a previous poster believes may not have happened.) It was on the third day that Custer and Stuart's troops engaged on the Northeast flank of the battle line somewhere near Culps' Hill. Stuart was hoping to get around the North's left flank and into their rear in a effort to exploit Pickett's charge. Custer had other ideas.
I stand corrected. I knew that the Custer and Stuart faced off at Gettysburg and that some historians considered it significant to the overall outcome.
Thanks for the tired anti-Custer talking points.
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