Welcome to Dispatch: U.S. Military History Magazine. This is “This Week in U.S. Military History,” where we walk through key moments that share this week on the calendar. Today we’re exploring events from February tenth, two thousand twenty six through February sixteenth, two thousand twenty six.
Across these seven days on the calendar, United States military history stretches from wooden sailing ships in the Mediterranean to nuclear age questions of command and control. We see a young navy prove itself in a dangerous harbor raid, a future president born in a frontier cabin, and a Civil War fortress whose fall opens a gateway into the Deep South. We watch a battleship vanish in a Cuban harbor and see Allied leaders at a conference table try to shape a fragile postwar order. We look skyward, following bombers over a German city and paratroopers dropping onto a rocky island in the Philippines. This Week in U.S. Military History is part of Dispatch: U.S. Military History Magazine, developed by Trackpads dot com. Together these stories show how much consequence can be packed into one short span of February dates.
In February of eighteen hundred four, the First Barbary War drew the young United States Navy into the dangerous waters off North Africa. On the night of February sixteenth, eighteen hundred four, Lieutenant Stephen Decatur led a small volunteer party into Tripoli harbor on what many would later call one of the most daring raids in early naval history. Months earlier, the frigate Philadelphia had run aground and been captured, becoming a prized asset for Tripolitan forces. Disguised in a small vessel, Decatur and his men slipped alongside the captured ship, boarded her, and overwhelmed the surprised guards in brutal close quarters. They set Philadelphia ablaze under the muzzles of enemy shore batteries and then fought their way back out of the harbor in the glare of the burning frigate. The raid denied the enemy a major warship and signaled that the United States Navy was willing to accept serious risk far from home in defense of its interests.
By February of eighteen sixty two, the Civil War’s Western Theater became a testing ground for Union strategy and leadership. After the fall of Fort Henry opened the Tennessee River and shook Confederate defenses, attention shifted to nearby Fort Donelson on the Cumberland. In bitter winter weather and hard fighting, Union troops under Brigadier General Ulysses S. Grant pressed the attack while Confederate commanders attempted a breakout that ultimately failed, leaving their army trapped. When the Confederates asked for terms on February sixteenth, eighteen sixty two, Grant replied that he would accept nothing except unconditional surrender, a phrase that quickly spread through Northern newspapers. The fall of Fort Donelson forced the Confederacy to abandon much of Tennessee, opened river routes deep into the South, and delivered a badly needed boost to Union morale. It also pushed Grant into national prominence as a relentless leader of the sort Lincoln believed the conflict required.
In February of eighteen ninety eight, tensions between the United States and Spain simmered over Cuban unrest and the island’s fight against colonial rule. The armored cruiser often called a battleship, the Maine, rode at anchor in Havana Harbor as a visible symbol of American interest in the crisis. On the night of February fifteenth, eighteen ninety eight, a sudden explosion tore through the ship and sent her to the harbor bottom, killing more than two hundred American sailors. The exact cause of the blast remained unclear and remains debated, but many in the United States quickly accepted the idea of Spanish treachery. The cry “Remember the Maine!” spread through newspapers and public meetings, inflaming opinion and hardening political positions in Washington. Within months, the Spanish American War began, a short but decisive conflict that marked the arrival of the United States as a global naval and colonial power.
By February of nineteen forty five, German forces were pushed back toward their own borders, and Allied leaders had to decide how to end the war and shape the peace. In the Crimean resort city of Yalta, Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Joseph Stalin met for days, and on February eleventh, nineteen forty five, their conference came to a close with far reaching understandings. They discussed the timing of a final push into Germany, Soviet entry into the war against Japan, and the creation of a new international organization that would become the United Nations. They also agreed on occupation zones in Germany and wrestled with the political future of Eastern Europe, especially the fate of Poland. For United States military history, Yalta shows how decisions about strategy, occupation, and alliances made at a conference table can resonate on battlefields and in security plans for decades. The conference helped set both the endgame in Europe and the early outlines of the Cold War that followed victory.
Just two days later, on February thirteenth, nineteen forty five, the Allied air campaign over Germany reached Dresden, a city known for its cultural heritage as well as its role as a transportation hub. British and American planners targeted rail lines, industrial facilities, and communications networks that supported German forces on the Eastern Front. The raids that began that night and continued into the following days created intense firestorms that swept through neighborhoods, destroying large portions of the city and killing tens of thousands of civilians. United States Army Air Forces bombers flew alongside Royal Air Force crews, a stark example of the combined nature of the Allied strategic air offensive. In narrow military terms, the strikes aimed to hinder German movement and resistance as Soviet armies advanced from the east. In human and moral terms, the destruction of Dresden raised enduring questions about necessity, proportionality, and the limits of air power, showing both the reach and the terrible cost of strategic bombing at the end of the Second World War.
On February sixteenth, nineteen forty five, attention shifted to the Pacific, where United States forces moved to retake Corregidor, the rocky island that guards the entrance to Manila Bay in the Philippines. Three years earlier, United States and Filipino troops had turned Corregidor into a symbol of stubborn resistance before being forced to surrender to Japanese forces in nineteen forty two. With the liberation of the Philippines well underway, recapturing the “Rock” carried both strategic value and powerful symbolism for soldiers and citizens who remembered that earlier stand. Paratroopers from the five hundred third Parachute Regimental Combat Team dropped onto the island’s cramped plateau while amphibious units fought their way ashore under heavy fire and across unforgiving terrain. What followed was brutal combat in tunnels, concrete gun positions, and steep ravines as Japanese defenders fought to the end. Securing Corregidor restored control of the main sea approach to Manila, demonstrated effective coordination between airborne and amphibious forces, and underscored General Douglas MacArthur’s promise to return.
Finally, we move into the nuclear age and the world of constitutional safeguards. On February tenth, nineteen sixty seven, the Twenty fifth Amendment to the Constitution was ratified, addressing presidential succession and disability in a far more detailed way than before. The amendment explained what would happen if a president died, resigned, became unable to perform the duties of the office, or needed to temporarily transfer power, and it laid out how a new vice president would be selected and confirmed when that office was vacant. For the armed forces, this legal clarity mattered because it directly affected the continuity of national command authority over nuclear weapons and major military operations. Earlier Cold War crises had shown how illness, assassination, or sudden shocks could create uncertainty at the very top of the chain of command. The Twenty fifth Amendment reduced the chance of a dangerous vacuum in leadership at the exact moment when military decisions might need to be made quickly and lawfully.
Taken together, the stories from this week on the calendar carry us from wooden frigates in a Mediterranean harbor to bombers over Europe, airborne assaults in the Pacific, and quiet votes on constitutional language in statehouses. A daring night raid, a river fortress battered in winter, and a rocky island in Manila Bay each show how geography and courage combine to shape campaigns and reputations. The loss of the Maine in Havana and the firestorm over Dresden point to the tragic human cost that lies on the other side of strategic calculations and national anger. Yalta and the Twenty fifth Amendment, in their different ways, remind us that decisions made in conference rooms and legislatures can shape how armies fight and how commanders exercise authority. Lincoln’s birthday anchors the week in the story of one leader who had to grow into terrible responsibility without the benefit of hindsight. Looking at February tenth through February sixteenth as one sweep invites us to think not just about what happened, but about how choices in war and peace echo long after the original orders fade.