Today in Military History April 30th

30/04/1557  Mapuche leader Lautaro is killed by Spanish forces at the Battle of Mataquito in Chile.

30/04/1636   Eighty Years' War: Dutch Republic forces recapture a strategically important fort from Spain after a nine-month siege.

30/04/1863   A 65-man French Foreign Legion infantry patrol fights a force of nearly 2,000 Mexican soldiers to nearly the last man in Hacienda Camarón, Mexico.

  

30/04/1917    William Sanders’s   was awared the Victoria Cross for his actions on 30/04/1917 his body was lost at sea  the VC and DSO was presented to William Sanders’s father. His medals are now held by the Auckland War Museum, Auckland.

30/04/1943  World War II: The British submarine HMS Seraph surfaces near Huelva to cast adrift a dead man dressed as a courier and carrying false invasion plans.

30/04/1945   World War II: Führerbunker: Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun commit suicide after being married for less than 40 hours. Soviet soldiers raise the Victory Banner over the Reichstag building.

30/04/1945   World War II: Stalag Luft I prisoner-of-war camp near Barth, Germany is liberated by Soviet soldiers, freeing nearly 9000 American and British airmen.

30/04/1961   K-19, the first Soviet nuclear submarine equipped with nuclear missiles, is commissioned.