TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
16 August
◆480 BCE Leonidas reaches Thermopylae with 300 Spartans and 700 Allies [Trad].
◆1153 Crusaders invest Ascalon.
◆1298 Battle of Castello di Caprona: the Florentines (including Dante) defeat the Pisans.
◆1513 Battle of the Spurs: Henry VIII routs the French.
◆1691 Yorktown, Va., was founded.
◆1717 Austrians break Turkish siege of Belgrade against enormous odds.
◆1777 American forces won the Revolutionary War Battle of Bennington, Vt.
◆1778 French surrender Pondicherry to the British.
◆1780 American troops under Gen. Horatio Gates were badly defeated by the British at the Battle of Camden, South Carolina.
◆1812 During the War of 1812, American General William Hull surrenders Fort Detroit and his army to the British without a fight.★
◆1812 USS Constitution recaptures American merchant brig Adeline.
◆1854 Anglo-French forces capture Bomarsund, on the Baltic, from the Russians.
◆1855 Battle of the Tchernaya: Russians fail to break Franco-Sardinian lines.
◆1858 A telegraphed message from Britain’s Queen Victoria to President Buchanan was transmitted over the recently laid trans-Atlantic cable. The cable linked Ireland and Canada and failed after a few weeks.
◆1861 President Lincoln prohibited the states of the Union from trading with the seceding states of the Confederacy.
◆1861 Union and Confederate forces clashed near Fredericktown and Kirkville, Missouri.
◆1863 Chickamauga campaign took place in GA. Union General William S. Rosecrans moved his army south from Tullahoma, Tennessee to attack Confederate forces in Chattanooga.
◆1864 Battle of Front Royal, VA. (Guard Hill).
◆1864 Boat expedition by Commander Colvocoresses, U.S.S. Saratoga, consisting of men from that ship and T. A. Ward, Acting Master Babcock, captured some 100 prisoners and a quantity of arms on a daring raid into Mcintosh County, Georgia. Commander Colvocoresses also destroyed a salt works and a strategic bridge across the South Newport River on the main road to Savannah.
◆1864 Confederate General John Chambliss is killed during a cavalry charge at Deep Bottom, Virginia—one of the sieges of Petersburg. 1866 Battle of Condino: The Garibaldini defeat the Austrians.
◆1896 Sometime prospector George Carmack stumbles across gold while salmon fishing along the Klondike River in the Yukon.
◆1918 US troops overthrew Archangel (Russia).
◆1924 Conference about German recovery payments opened in London.
◆1934 US ended its occupation of Haiti (begun in 1915).
◆1937 The American Adviser on Political Relations asked the Secretary of State for reinforcements for the 4th Marine Regiment in Shanghai, China; two officers and 102 enlisted from Cavite, Philippines, responded.
◆1940 Roosevelt announces that there have been conversations with the UK on the acquisition of bases for western hemisphere defense. He does not disclose as yet that Britain wants some old US destroyers in return.
◆1940 First official US Army parachute jump.
◆1945 The Emperor issues an Imperial Rescript (decree) at 1600 hours (local time) ordering all Japanese forces to cease fire. The Cabinet resigns. General Prince Higashikumi becomes the prime minister of Japan and forms a new government. He orders the Imperial Army to obey the Emperor's call and lay down their arms.
◆1945 Lt. Gen. Jonathan Wainwright, (captured by the Japanese on the island of Corregidor, in the Philippines), is freed by Russian forces from a POW camp in Manchuria, China.
◆1942 The US Navy L-8 patrol blimp crash-landed at 419 Bellevue St., Daly City, Ca., after drifting in from the ocean. The ship’s crew, Lt. Ernest Dewitt Cody (27) and Ensign Charles E. Adams (38), were missing and no trace of them was ever found.
◆1943 British forces attempt a small amphibious operation on the east coast but fail to cut off any of the retreating Axis forces. In the evening US patrols reach Messina.
◆1943 Japanese airfields around Wewak are attacked by planes of the US 5th Air Force, based in Australia.
◆1944 US 20th Corps (part of Us 3rd Army) captures Chartres.
◆1944 The French 2nd Corps (de Lattre), part of US 7th Army, comes ashore and moves forward.
◆1945 Lieutenant General Jonathan Wainwright, who was taken prisoner by the Japanese on Corregidor on May 6, 1942, was released from a POW camp in Manchuria by U.S. troops.
◆1950 The first 313 KATUSA (Korean Augmentation to the U.S. Army) recruits left Pusan by ship to join the badly under strength U.S. 7th Infantry Division in Japan. Once started, the flow of Koreans reached nearly 2,000 per day until a total of 8,625 Korean officers and men joined the division.★
◆1954 Beginning of Operation Passage to Freedom, transport of refugees from Haiphong to Saigon, Vietnam.
◆1959 William F. Halsey (Bull Halsey), US vice-admiral (WW II Pacific), died.
◆1967 President Johnson's broad interpretation of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution is attacked in the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee by the Chairman, Senator William Fulbright of Arkansas, who feels that Johnson has no mandate to conduct the war on the present scale.
◆1972 U.S. fighter-bombers fly 370 air strikes against North Vietnam, the highest daily total of the year; additionally, there are eight B-52 strikes in the North. Meanwhile, U.S. warplanes flew 321 missions (including 27 B-52 strikes) in South Vietnam, mostly in Quang Tri province.★
◆1977 Elvis Aaron Presley died, 42, sometime sergeant, 3rd Armored Division.