TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
7 July
◆54 BCE Caesar defeats the Britons near Bigbury.
◆1124 Tyre surrenders to the Crusaders.★
◆1191 Battle of Rudiano: Brescians defeat the Bergamesci.
◆1742 A Spanish force invading Georgia ran headlong into the colony's British defenders. A handful of British and Spanish colonial troops faced each other on a Georgia coastal island and decided the fate of a colony.
◆1778 Allied French fleet under Comte d'Estaing arrives in America.
◆1798 Hostilities began in the Quasi-War with France with Frigate Delaware capturing French privateer, Croyable. The Revenue Cutters Pickering, Virginia, Scammel, South Carolina, Governor, Jay, Eagle, General Greene, and Diligence were the first to be placed under Naval orders, comprising about one-third the U .S. Fleet.
◆1801 Toussaint L'Ouverture declares Haitian independence.
◆1846 U.S. annexation of California was proclaimed at Monterey after Commodore Sloat reached Monterey and claimed California for the US.
◆1861 Two floating torpedoes (mines) in the Potomac River were picked up by U. S. S. Resolute, Acting Master W. Budd- the earliest known use of torpedoes by the Confederates. During the course of the war a variety of ingenious torpedoes destroyed or damaged some 40 Union ships, forecasting the vast growth to come in this aspect of underwater naval warfare.
◆1863 The first military draft was called by the US. It allowed exemptions for $300.
◆1863 LONG WALK OF THE NAVAHO: Lt. Colonel Christopher "Kit" Carson leaves Santa Fe with his troops, beginning his campaign against the Indians of New Mexico and Arizona.★
◆1864 Jubal's Raid: Skirmish at Middleton, MD.
◆1898 The United States annexed Hawaii.
◆1908 Great White Fleet left SF Bay.
◆1916 Thomas A. Edison becomes head of Naval Consulting Board which screens inventions for use by the Navy.
◆1920 A device known as the radio compass was used for the first time on a U.S. Navy airplane.
◆1941 The neutral United States moves closer to war with Germany when U.S. forces land on Iceland to take over its garrisoning from the British.
◆1941 The first Marine Aircraft Wing was commissioned at Quantico.
◆1942 General Spaatz is appointed to command US air forces in Europe.
◆1942 Heinrich Himmler, in league with three others, including a physician, decides to begin experimenting on women in the Auschwitz concentration camps and to investigate extending this experimentation on males.
◆1943 Adolf Hitler made the V-2 missile program a top priority in armament planning.
◆1944 US 5th Army forces advance along the coast. The US 34th Division captures Pignano.
◆1944 The US 1st Army continues its offensive toward Coutances and St. Lo. The US 8th, 7th and 19th Corps attack along a line from La Haye du Puits to Vire. German forces resist effectively.
◆1944 On Saipan, most of the remaining Japanese garrison, about 3000 men, assault American lines south of the village of Makunsha. The Japanese are forced to retreat with heavy losses.
◆1945 US Navy Privateer patrol bombers (modified B-24 bombers) damage or sink numerous small Japanese vessels in the Sea of Japan and the Yellow Sea.
◆1948 First six enlisted women sworn into Regular Navy. The Navy WAVES in Naval Reserve, who were the first to transfer to the Regular Navy, were Kay Louise Langdon, Aviation Storekeeper First Class; Wilma Juanita Marchal, Chief Yeoman; Frances Teresa Dovaney, Storekeeper, Second Class; Edna Earle Young, Yeoman, Second Class; Doris Roberta Robertson, Teleman, Second Class; and Ruth Flora, Hospital Corpsman, First Class.
◆1950 The 1st Provisional Marine Brigade was activated at Camp Pendleton, Calif.. The brigade, formed around the 5th Marine Regiment, began embarkation for Korea within a week.
◆1966 The U.S. Marine Corps launched Operation Hasting to drive the North Vietnamese Army back across the Demilitarized Zone in Vietnam.
◆1966 Female nurses of the 150th Aeromedical Flight, New Jersey Air National Guard, receive men injured or ill from their duty in Vietnam to treat them on their return flights to stateside hospitals for convalesce. Nurses from several Air Guard units volunteered to staff these missions in a temporary duty status, usually lasting about a month for each individual. They were not allowed to enter the combat zone of Vietnam so they would link up with evacuation flights in Japan or Hawaii (staffed by Regular Air Force or Navy nurses) and rendered medical support in bringing the men back to the states, thus ‘freeing up’ the Regular nurses to return to the theater. At this point in the war no Guard units, Air or Army had yet been mobilized but the Air Guard in particular was voluntarily playing an increasing role in supporting the war effort. Besides these nurse evacuation flights other Air Guard units, mostly those equipped with long-range C-97 or C-121 transport aircraft, were flying large amounts of cargo into Vietnam. As with the Air Guard women, these men were all volunteers and could not stay in Vietnam. They landed, off-loaded their cargo and took off again (hopefully before anybody got hurt), flying back to the Philippines to rest before returning home. In January 1968 and again in May 1968 a total of thirteen Air Guard units were mobilized to support the war in Vietnam and the potential of renewed conflict in Korea. Among these units was a small number of women in Air Guard tactical dispensaries or hospitals. While four of the Air Guard fighter squadrons served in Vietnam and two more were based in Korea, as far as can be documented none of their supporting units deployed with any mobilized female nurses.
◆1969 A battalion of the U.S. 9th Infantry Division leaves Saigon in the initial withdrawal of U.S. troops. The 814 soldiers were the first of 25,000 troops that were withdrawn in the first stage of the U.S. disengagement from the war. There would be 14 more increments in the withdrawal, but the last U.S. troops did not leave until after the Paris Peace Accords were signed in January 1973.
◆1976 For the first time in history, women are enrolled into the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. On May 28, 1980, 62 of these female cadets graduated and were commissioned as second lieutenants.★
◆1987 Lt. Col. Oliver North began his long-awaited public testimony at the Iran-Contra hearing, telling Congress that he had "never carried out a single act, not one," without authorization.
◆1988 The PHOBOS 1 Orbiter and lander was launched.
◆1997 Three days after landing on Mars, the Pathfinder spacecraft yielded what scientists said was unmistakable photographic evidence that colossal floods scoured the Red Planet's now-barren landscape more than a billion years ago.
◆2000 A $100 million US test missile failed to hit a dummy warhead from another missile. It was the 2nd failure of 3 tests.
◆2003 A chunk of foam insulation fired at shuttle wing parts blew open a gaping 16-inch hole, yielding what one member of the Columbia investigation team said was the "smoking gun" proving what brought down the spaceship on Feb 1.
◆2003 NASA's 2nd Mars Lander, named Opportunity, was launched.