MCU Timeline: Captain America: The Winter Soldier
This one is even worse than Iron Man 2.
1942 - James Barnes joins the US Army.
Winter 1942-1943 - Barnes undergoes military training at Camp McCoy, Wisconsin.
As you can see, Bucky was born twice: in 1916 and 1917. Let's move on to the next exhibit.
Winter 1943-1944 - Steve Rogers saves more than 1,000 people by breaking Hydra's blockade. Peggy's future husband is among them.
Early 1945 - Sergeant Barnes fell from Zola's train, lost his left arm, but somehow survived. He is found by Red Army soldiers and taken to Hydra's lab.
Before March 5, 1945 - Rogers disappears in the Arctic.
Note: As you may have noticed, this movie made a mistake where it said it happened in 1944 and also in 1945 (Bucky's "death" and Zola's capture + ~2 days later). To avoid this mistake, I assumed it was December 31, 1944 - January 1, 1945. But I forgot about this newspaper that says "March 5, 1945". The title can be interpreted in many ways, but one thing is for sure - the event did not happen on March 5, because that is the date the newspaper was published. We need to go back at least one day.
March 1945? - Hydra branch in the Ukrainian SSR replaces James Barnes' lost arm and puts him into cryogenic sleep.
Note: These flashbacks of Zola talking about "new fist of Hydra" and "putting him on ice" make no sense since Zola was captured by SSR and imprisoned at the time. Either this took place years after the fall (was Barnes kept on ice this whole time?) and Zola was left alone at some point and somehow made his way to the USSR, or these parts of his memories with Zola are fake (and he's not in the room during the procedures) and were implanted in his brain by Hydra. Or was it just his imagination that created these memories to replace the lost ones? This movie gives more questions than I can get answers from it.
~August 14, 1945 - The US recruits German scientists, including Arnim Zola.
"After WW2" - S.H.I.E.L.D. is founded. SSR's federal functions and responsibilities are consolidated into the new organization.
1953 - Peggy Carter gives an interview about The Howling Commandos in New York.
Before 1970 - some recruited German scientists of strategic value (including Zola) are transferred to S.H.I.E.L.D.
1972 - Arnim Zola receives a terminal diagnosis and uploads his consciousness on 200,000 feet of databanks.
December 8, 1973 - Jasper Sitwell is born in Norfolk, Virginia.
1984 - Natalia Alianovna Romanova is born.
Note: In Black Widow we see a different year and a more precise date of "December 3, 1983". At this point I don't know which date is correct, so I'll just leave 1984 for this movie.
December 16, 1991 - the Winter Soldier kills Howard and Maria Stark.
Between 1990 and 1992 - Nick Fury serves as the Deputy Chief of the S.H.I.E.L.D. station in Bogota, Colombia. Alexander Pierce serves there in the State Department. Fury rescues Pierce's daughter, who has been taken hostage by rebels. Following the incident, Pierce joins Hydra.
As of September 18, 1992 - Alexander Pierce serves in the US Department of Defense.
Between 1995 and 1997 (5 years after the Bogota incident) - Pierce promotes Fury to Director of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Note that Fury has both eyes here. As we know from the movie Captain Marvel, he lost one of them in 1995. Shown here is the swearing-in scene for a position that could be one of the two mentioned - Fury to Director of S.H.I.E.L.D. or Pierce to WSC Member. The latter doesn't make much sense because members of the council are higher than the director. So it's assumed that Fury becomes Director of S.H.I.E.L.D., which couldn't happen while he had both eyes.
Before 2012 - at Fury's request, Alexander Pierce becomes a member of the World Security Council.
2009 - in Odessa, Ukraine, while on a mission to escort a nuclear engineer from Iran, Natasha is wounded by the Winter Soldier.
Between April 2012 and April 2014 - Steve Rogers kisses someone.
Early 2014 (before the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D.) - Baron Strucker and Dr. List use the Scepter in experiments to create mutants. Two survive - the Maximoff twins.
The main events of the movie take place in the second half of April 2014.
Why: It's impossible to determine the dates from the ones mentioned in the movie ("04/14/13" or "10/12/2013") because they a) contradict each other; b) say it's 2013, but as we know from IM3 and Thor: The Dark World, S.H.I.E.L.D. was still operational throughout 2013. So we'll have to treat them the same way we treated the dates on screens in IM2: disregard.
Some (MCU Fandom Wiki) think it's March, which can't be true since in Washington D.C. in March you'll either see bare trees or cherry blossoms. The latter will last until mid-April. We don't see any of that in the movie, so we have to assume it's later, but not too far since some people are still wearing jackets. So we're looking at the second half of April - early May. May is definitely Marvel's favorite month.
No dates this time, kids. It's a mess, so I won't risk putting them in and will stick with "Day #".
~6:00 - 6:39 am - Rogers meets Sam Wilson. Natasha takes him on a S.H.I.E.L.D. mission.
Rogers, Romanoff and STRIKE are sent on an unmentioned mission near India.
Why we have to assume there was another mission before the ship was hijacked: Rumlow says the ship was hijacked by pirates 93 minutes ago. No one could get from Washington to India in 93 minutes, and I'm not even talking about reaction time and briefing. So we have to come up with this solution: Fury gave them another mission in India, then the pirates he hired hijacked the ship, and it "just so happened" that Rogers and Romanoff were nearby to be included in the response team.
Evening in DC/Night in Mumbai - The Lemurian Star mission in Indian Ocean, near Mumbai.
Fury shows Project Insight to Rogers.
Rogers goes to The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.
Morning - Rogers visits Peggy in the UK.
Note: Some people think she is shown in a nursing home in DC, but that doesn't make sense because after leaving S.H.I.E.L.D., Peggy returned to England (her S.H.I.E.L.D. file) and her funeral in CW was in London.
So we have to assume that after visiting the museum, Steve went to the airport and spent 7-8 hours flying to the UK. He arrived there in the morning, visited Peggy and returned to the States to visit Sam at the VA in the evening and be home after sunset.
Fury learns that he does not have access to the Lemurian Star files and that "he" took the access "himself". He goes to Secretary Pierce and asks to postpone the launch of Project Insight.
Fury is attacked by Hydra agents and the Winter Soldier.
Evening - Rogers visits Wilson at VA.
Night - Fury hides in Rogers' apartment. He informs Rogers that S.H.I.E.L.D. has been compromised and is then shot by the Winter Soldier. Fury manages to give Rogers the Project Insight flash drive.
Batroc is captured in Algiers.
Morning - Rogers meets Pierce.
STRIKE attacks Rogers in the Triskelion elevator.
Fury is taken to a secret location by Hill and his doctor.
Rogers throws away his S.H.I.E.L.D. uniform, returns to the hospital to retrieve the drive hidden there, and reunites with Natasha, who tells him about the Winter Soldier.
Under Pierce's manipulation, the WSC members reactivate Project Insight.
Rogers and Romanoff hack a flash drive in a mall.
Hill arranges a fake funeral for Fury, which is scheduled to take place on Friday.
Night - Steve and Natasha reach Camp Lehigh in NJ. They find Zola's servers, learn of Hydra's plot, and are attacked by a S.H.I.E.L.D./Hydra missile, but survive. Zola's servers are destroyed. Steve escapes with unconscious Natasha before STRIKE finds them. Rumlow calls in the Winter Soldier.
The Winter Soldier is at Pierce's house. He is given 10 hours to kill Natasha and Steve.
Pierce kills his housekeeper, Renata.
~7 am - Romanoff and Rogers return to Washington. They arrive at Sam Wilson's house.
Between 8 am and 2 pm - they steal an EXO-7 Falcon suit from Fort Meade, Maryland.
~3 pm - the trio capture Agent Sitwell, who tells them about Zola's algorithm and the goal of Project Insight - to kill anyone who poses or will pose a threat to Hydra (including them, Bruce Banner, Stephen Strange, Maria Hill, president Ellis and Tony Stark).
6 pm - the Winter Soldier and other Hydra agents attack the car with Rogers, Romanoff, Wilson and Sitwell. Sitwell is killed. Rogers finds out that the Winter Soldier is Bucky Barnes.
Barnes escapes. STRIKE apprehends Rogers, Romanoff and Wilson.
On the way to the execution site, the trio is rescued by Maria Hill and taken to Nick Fury.
8 pm - Pierce resets Barnes, who begins to regain his memories.
Night - Fury and Co discuss the situation and prepare a plan to stop Hydra and destroy S.H.I.E.L.D.
Project Insight launch day.
This is where the timing gets really confusing. The coordinates the characters give us are inconsistent: at night, Pierce gives Bucky 10 hours to kill Steve and Nat, and it can't be later than 3 pm. Lunch time limits us to 11 am - 3 pm, and then Natasha says there are 16 hours left until Project Insight launches, which can't be earlier than 10 am (in the scene with Rogers, before he stole his old uniform, it was already daylight, he needed time to do the heist, and when they arrived at the Triskelion, the original launch time was 2 hours later), but no later than 11 am (Pierce said it would be in the morning). And if you count 16 hours back from 10 am, you get evening, not lunch time. And Bucky's 10 hours have already passed. My solution - I would rather assume that the Winter Soldier was unable to track his targets in time and was late, plus Natasha rounded the clock so it was closer to 17 hours than 16.
~8 am - Rogers steals his World War II uniform from The Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum.
~9 am - Rogers exposes Hydra. Project Insight is launched 2 hours earlier.
The Battle at the Triskelion.
Afternoon - Brock Rumlow is taken to a hospital with serious injuries.
Senator Stern arrested by FBI.
Day 7, morning - Steve Rogers wakes up in the hospital with Sam Wilson at his bedside.
After the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D. (AFS), May 2014:
~A week AFS - Natasha is questioned at a hearing of the DoD committee.
~A week AFS - Bucky visits the Captain America museum exhibition and learns about his past (determined by the growth of his facial hair).
~2 weeks AFS - Rogers, Wilson, Fury and Romanoff meet at Fury's gravesite. Fury heads to Europe (determined by Fury not having a black eye anymore).
Maria Hill is hired by Stark Industries.
MCU Timeline: The Infinity Saga