TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
15 July
◆496 BCE Battle of Lake Regillius: Romans defeat the Tarquins.
◆111 BCE Double Triumph of the Metelli Brothers: Marcus for the conquest of Sardinia, Gaius for Thrace.
◆1099 Crusaders capture Jerusalem, some 40,000 of the cities inhabitants are slaughtered.★
◆1240 Battle of the Neva: Prince Alexander of Novgorod defeats a Swedish-German invasion.
◆1410 Battle of Tannenburg: Poles and Lithuanians trounce Teutonic Knights.
◆1741 Vitus Bering, a Danish mariner working for Russia, landed on the Alaskan coast.
◆1761 Battle of Vellinghuasen: Austrian night attack defeats the French by the 16th.
◆1779 "Mad" Anthony Wayne captures Stony Point, NY, at bayonet point.★
◆1806 Zebulon Pike, the U.S. Army officer who in 1805 led an exploring party in search of the source of the Mississippi River, sets off with a new expedition to explore the American Southwest.
◆1830 Three Indian tribes, Sioux, Sak & Fox, signed a treaty giving the US most of Minnesota, Iowa & Missouri.
◆1862 U.S.S. Carondelet, Commander Walke, U.S.S. Tyler, Lieutenant Gwin, and ram Queen of the West, carrying Army sharp shooters on reconnaissance of the Yazoo River, engaged Confederate ironclad ram Arkansas, Lieutenant Isaac N. Brown.★
◆1870 Georgia became the last of the Confederate states to be readmitted to the Union.
◆1870 Act of Congress establishes Navy Pay Corps, which later becomes the Navy Supply Corps.
◆1918 Second Battle of the Marne began during World War I.★
◆1942 The first supply flight from India to China over the 'Hump' was flown to help China's war effort.
◆1942 First photographic interpretation unit set up in the Pacific.
◆1943 General Patton forms a provisional corps to advance on the west of the island while US 2nd Corps (Bradley) drives northward. In Catania the Axis forces retreat behind the Simeto River.
◆1943 General Griswold replaces General Hester in command of operation in New Georgia. There is an air battle over Rendova in which the Americans lose 3 aircraft and claim to shoot down more than 40 Japanese planes.
◆1943 President Roosevelt creates a new office of economic warfare, headed by Leo Crowley. It replaces the previous board.
◆1944 Elements of the US 1st Army reach the outskirts of Lessay. From here to the Taute River, the advance is halted for regrouping. Heavy fighting takes place near St. Lo.
◆1944 US 5th Army advances toward Leghorn. The French Expeditionary Corps capture Castellina.
◆1944 Greenwich Observatory was damaged by German V1 rocket.
◆1945 American naval vessels bombard Muroran, the second biggest steel center in Japan, lying in Volcano Bay on the east side of the island of Hokkaido. Three battleships bombarded the Muroran and some 1000 carrier planes bombed the cities of Hakodati, Otaru, Abashiri, Kushiro, Asahigawa and Obihiro, all on Hokkaido.
◆1945 American B-29 Superfortress bombers, based in the Marianna Islands, raided an oil refinery at Kudamatsu on Honshu Island while fighters and bombers from Okinawa attacked objectives on Kyushu and southern Honshu.
◆1948 - John J. Pershing (87), [Black Jack], US general (Mexico, WW I), died.
◆1950 The North Koreans penetrated the U.S. 24th Infantry Division's defense and crossed the Kum River. The 19th Infantry Regiment lost 20 percent of its fighting force, the 1st Battalion alone losing 338 out of 785. The 63rd Field Artillery Battalion was overrun and sustained heavy casualties.
◆1950 F-80s accounted for 85 percent of the enemy's losses to air attack. Far East Air Forces Commander, Lieutenant General George E. Stratemeyer, stated that he wouldn't trade the F-80 for all the F-47s and F-51s he could get. "It does a wonderful job in ground support and can take care of the top-side job if enemy jets appear."
◆1950 Republic of Korea President Syngman Rhee transferred operational control of the ROK Army to the United Nations Command.
◆1953 U.S. Air Force Captain James Jabara, 4th Fighter-Interceptor Wing, qualified as the second and last "triple ace" of the war -- 15 kills. He also was the second ranking jet ace of the war.
◆1958 President Eisenhower ordered 5,000 U.S. Marines to Lebanon, at the request of that country's president, Camille Chamoun, in the face of a perceived threat by Muslim rebels; to help end a short-lived civil war.
◆1965 The unmanned spacecraft Mariner 4 passes over Mars at an altitude of 6,000 feet and sends back to Earth the first close-up images of the red planet. Launched in November 1964, Mariner 4 carried a television camera and six other science instruments to study Mars and interplanetary space within the solar system.★
◆1975 Three American astronauts blasted off aboard an Apollo spaceship hours after two Soviet cosmonauts were launched aboard a Soyuz spacecraft for a mission that included a linkup of the two ships in orbit.
◆1990 Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev and visiting West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl held talks on the issue of a united Germany’s membership in NATO.
◆2000 Iran test-fired an upgraded version of its 800-mile range, Shabab-3 missile.