TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
10 July
◆1460 Battle of Northampton: Lord Grey defeats King Henry VI.★
◆1690 Battle of Beachy Head: French fleet defeats Anglo-Dutch flee.
◆1776 The statue of King George III was pulled down in New York City.
◆1778 In support of the American Revolution, Louis XVI declared war on England.
◆1780 French fleet carrying Lieutenant General Jean de Vimeur and 6,000 French troops arrives in Rhode Island.
◆1790 Second Battle of Ruotsinaslami/Svenksund: Swedish fleet beats Russians.
◆1797 First US frigate, the "United States," was launched in Philadelphia.
◆1850 Millard Fillmore (Whig) was sworn in as the 13th president following the death of Zachary Taylor.
◆1861 The new Confederate States of America and the Creek Indians conclude a treaty, one of several such alliances made during the war.
◆1863 Union troops land on Morris Island near Charleston, South Carolina, and prepare for a siege on Battery Wagner, a massive sand fortress on the island.
◆1898 The First Marine Battalion, commanded by Lt. Col. Robert W. Huntington, landed on the eastern side of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The next day, Lt Herbert L. Draper hoisted the American flag on a flag pole at Camp McCalla where it flew during the next eleven days. LtCol Huntington later sent the flag with an accompanying letter to Colonel Commandant Charles Heywood noting that "when bullets were flying, ...the sight of the flag upon the midnight sky has thrilled our hearts."
◆1913 Second Balkan War: Romania declares war on Bulgaria.
◆1919 President Wilson personally delivered the Treaty of Versailles to the Senate and urged its ratification.
◆1919 A submarine chaser was turned over to the Corps with the first all-Marine crew.
◆1940 BATTLE OF BRITAIN BEGINS: The Germans begin the first in a long series of bombing raids against Great Britain, as the Battle of Britain, which will last three and a half months, begins.★
◆1941 Roosevelt submits new appropriations measures to Congress. He asks for $4,770,000,000 for the army.
◆1943 INVASION OF SICILIY: Operation Husky, Allied landing on Sicily. The landings took place in extremely strong wind conditions, which made the landings difficult but also ensured the element of surprise. Landings were made on the southern and eastern coasts of the island, with the British forces in the East and the Americans towards the West.★
◆1943 The American attack on New Georgia is held by the Japanese. American troops are having difficulty receiving supplies.
◆1943 A further linking up of Australian and American forces cuts off the Japanese forces in Mubo from Salamaua.
◆1945 The German submarine U-530, missing since the end of April, surfaces at Mar del Plata, south of Buenos Aires, sparking off speculation that it ferried high-ranking Nazi officials to sanctuary in South America.
◆1945 US Task Force 38 aircraft, 1022 in all, raid 70 air bases in the Tokyo area, destroying 173 Japanese planes. Only light anti-aircraft fire is encountered. This is the first time that elements of the US 3rd Fleet have attacked Tokyo. Included in the task force carrying out the raids are the aircraft carriers Lexington, Essex, Independence and San Jacinto, the battleships Indiana, Massachusetts, South Dakota and Iowa, the cruisers Chicago, San Juan, Springfield and Atlanta and 14 destroyers. Tokyo radio refers to the "dark shadow of invasion" in mention of the raid.
◆1950 At Taejon, Lieutenant Harold E. Morris demonstrated a T-6 trainer aircraft to be better suited for the airborne controller mission than liaison aircraft.
◆1950 The first engagement between U.S. and North Korean tanks occurred near Chonui. One enemy T-34 was destroyed while two outclassed U.S. M-24 Chafee light tanks were lost. Near Pyongtaek, the Air Force achieved its greatest single-day destruction of enemy tanks and trucks during the war.
◆1951 Armistice negotiations began at Kaesong.
◆1953 American forces withdrew from Pork Chop Hill in Korea after heavy fighting.
◆1962 The communications satellite Telstar was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, beaming live television from Europe to the United States.
◆1965 U.S. planes continue heavy raids in South Vietnam and claim to have killed 580 guerrillas.U.S. Phantom jets, escorting fighter-bombers in a raid on the Yen Sen ammunition depot northwest of Hanoi, engaged North Vietnamese MiG-17s. Capt. Thomas S. Roberts with his backseater Capt. Ronald C. Anderson, and Capt. Kenneth E. Holcombe and his backseater Capt. Arthur C. Clark shot down two MiG-17s with Sidewinder missiles. The action marked the first U.S. Air Force air-to-air victories of the Vietnam War.
◆1967 Outnumbered South Vietnamese troops repel an attack by two battalions of the 141st North Vietnamese Regiment on a military camp five miles east of An Loc, 60 miles north of Saigon.Communist forces captured a third of the base camp before they were thrown back with the assistance of U.S. and South Vietnamese air and artillery strikes. Farther to the north, U.S. forces suffered heavy casualties in two separate battles in the Central Highlands. In the first action, about 400 men of the 173rd Airborne Brigade came under heavy fire from North Vietnamese machine guns and mortars during a sweep of the Dak To area near Kontum. Twenty-six Americans were killed and 49 were wounded. In the second area clash, 35 soldiers of the U.S. 4th Infantry Division were killed and 31 were wounded in fighting.
◆1987 Lt. Col. Oliver North told the Iran-Contra committees that the late CIA director William J. Casey had embraced a fund created by arms sales to Iran because it could be used for secret operations other than supplying the Contras.