1945: U.S. and Philippine forces began a month-long struggle to retake Manila from Japanese navy holdouts determined to turn the capital into a "Pacific Stalingrad," even though Japanese Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita had abandoned the city with most of his army. Read everything you would want to know about the Battle of Manila on HistoryNet.com.
Original headline from 1945: "Two Yank Infantrymen of the hard fighting 37th American division, climb through some Japanese barbed wire during street fighting in Manila in Philippines on Feb. 13, 1945."
Photo Credit: Cliff Owen/AP
Also in history on this day, in the U.S. and elsewhere:
1706
: The Swedes use a double envelopment to defeat a joint force of Saxons, Poles and Russians in the Battle of Fraustadt.
1863: Maj. Gen. Joseph Wheeler led 2,500 Confederate cavalry in an attack on Union-held Dover, Tennessee, but its 800-man garrison, commanded by Col. Abner C. Harding, fights them off, inflicting 670 casualties against 126 of its own.
1943: A German U-boat sank the SS Dorchester, from which only 230 of 902 crew and passengers survive. Among those lost were the Four Chaplains.
