TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
6 August
◆761 Battle of Aedwiresclif: King Moll of Northumbria defeats King Oswine of Deira.
◆910 Battle of Tettenhall: King Edward the Elder of Wessex defeats the Danes.
◆1187 Saladin takes Beirut from the Crusaders.
◆1284 Naval Battle of Meloria: Genoese defeat the Pisans.
◆1534 Turkish corsair Khairaidin Barbarossa sacks Fondi.
◆1623 Battle of Stadtlohn: Tilly's Imperials defeat Christian of Brunswick.
◆1734 Austrian-held Gaeta (invested July 15), surrenders to Carlo IV of Naples.
◆1780 Battle of Hanging Rock: Tarleton's dragoons annihilate an American column -Andrew Jackson (13) becomes a POW.
◆1787 In Philadelphia, delegates to the Constitutional Convention begin debating the first complete draft of the proposed Constitution of the United States.
◆1813 Battle of Caracas: Columbian patriots under Bolivar defeat the Spanish.
◆1847 LTC S. E. Watson's Marines commenced their march on the "Halls of Montezuma" in Mexico.
◆1862 C.S.S. Arkansas, Lieutenant Henry Stevens temporarily in command, having become unmanageable due to engine failure while advancing to support a Confederate attack on Baton Rouge, was engaged by U.S.S. Essex, Commander W. D. Porter.
◆1864 Rebels evacuated Ft. Powell, Mobile Bay.
◆1870 Battle of Spicheren: Prussians force French to retreat.
◆1870 Battle of Worth: taking heavy casualties, the Prussians defeat outnumbered French troops in an eight-hour fight.
◆1889 Major General George Kenney, commander of the U.S. Fifth Air Force in New Guinea and the Solomons during World War II, was born.
◆1914 Austria-Hungary declared war against Russia and Serbia declared war against Germany.
◆1918 The 2nd battle of the Marne ended.
◆1918 The first American lightship to be sunk by enemy action, Lightship No. 71, was lost on her Diamond Shoals station. LS 71 had reported by radio the presence of a German submarine which had sunk a passing freighter. That message was intercepted by the submarine U-104, which then located the lightship and, after giving the crew opportunity to abandon ship in the boats, LS 71 was sunk by surface gunfire. The lightship's crew took to their lifeboats and reached shore without injury.
◆1941 Konoye's government presents proposals involving some concessions in China and Indochina to the US, asking in return for the end of the freeze on Japanese assets. The proposals are not acceptable to the US and when the rejection is made known to the Japanese they propose that Konoye and Roosevelt meet to the discuss the issues at stake.
◆1943 In Vela Gulf there is an encounter engagement between 6 American destroyers and 4 Japanese destoyers carrying troops and supplies to Kolombangara. Three of the Japanese vessels are sunk.
◆1943 The US 1st Division takes Troina, Sicily after several days of heavy fighting.
◆1944 Elements of US 12th Army Group continue advancing. The US 3rd Army advances in Brittany. The US 4th Armored Division (part of US 8th Corps) approaches Loreint. Forces of US 15th Corps capture Laval and advance toward Le Mans. Elements of US 1st Army capture Vire.
◆1944 On Guam, a regiment of US 77th Division suffers heavy casualties during a Japanese counterattack.
◆1945 Hiroshima, Japan, was struck with the uranium bomb, Little Boy, from the B-29 airplane, Enola Gay, piloted by Col. Paul Tibbets of the US Air Force along with 11 other men.★★
◆1945 On Guam, British Admiral Fraser, commanding the British Pacific Fleet, invests American Admiral Nimitz with the Order of Bath.
◆1945 The American aircraft carrier Intrepid attacks Japanese positions on Wake Island.
◆1945 Major Richard I. Bong, the top-scoring American fighter ace of World War II (with 40 victories), dies while fight testing an experimental jet fighter at age 24.
◆1950 Marine Squadron VMF-323 flew its first air mission of the Korean War.
◆1966 Operation by 5th Marines in Vietnam, "COLORADO." (Concluded 22 August)
◆1971 The last remaining troops of the Fourth Battalion, 503rd Infantry of the 173rd Airborne Brigade, (the first U.S. Army ground combat unit to arrive in Vietnam in May 1965), cease combat operations and begin preparations to leave Vietnam.
◆1998 NATO set exercises in Albania for Aug 17-22 to show force against the Serb offensive in Kosovo.
◆2004 There was intense fighting in Najaf. The U.S. military said 300 militants were killed in the past two days. Assailants in Iraq killed 3 US servicemen, one in the capital and two in the south.
◆2004 Yemeni warplanes and artillery pounded mountain hideouts of an anti-U.S. leader and his followers in a major offensive aimed at ending a six-week conflict that has killed at least 500 people.
◆2011 Extortion 17 (CH-47) went down with 31 troops.
◆2012 NASA’s Mars Curiosity Rover lands on the red planet successfully.