TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
17 July
◆1453 Battle of Châtillon: French defeat the English.
◆1461 Battle of Sampierdarema: The Genovese defeat the Angevins.
◆1501 The French invest Capua (Falls the 25th).
◆1509 The Venetians recapture Padua from the French.
◆1801 The U.S. fleet arrived in Tripoli after Pasha Yusuf Karamanli declared war for being refused tribute.
◆1815 Napoleon surrenders to the British at Rochefort.
◆1821 Spain ceded Florida to the United States.
◆1821 Andrew Jackson became the governor of Florida.
◆1858 U.S. sloop Niagara departs Queenstown, Ireland, to assist in laying first trans-Atlantic telegraph cable.
◆1861 At Manassas, VA, Gen Beauregard requested reinforcements for his 22,000 men and Gen Johnston was ordered to Manassas.
◆1862 Congress passed an act which established that "every officer, seaman, or marine, disabled in the line of duty, shall be intitled to receive for life, or during his disability, a pension from the United States." Gradations were set according to the nature and degree of disability, and monthly pay.
◆1862 Twenty Marines from U.S.S. Potomac participated in an expedition up Pascagoula Rivet, Mississippi.
◆1863 The combined attack on Fort Wagner, Charleston harbor, was renewed. Rear Admiral Dahlgren's force consisted of U.S.S. Montauk, New Ironsides, Catskill, Nantucket, Weehauken, and Patapsco. The gunboats U.S.S. Paul Jones, Ottawa, Seneca, Chipewa, and Wissahickon provided long-range support with effect. The heavy fire from the ironclads commenced shortly after noon, the range closing as the tide permitted to 300 yards. The naval bombardment at this distance silenced the fort "so that for this day not a shot was fired afterwards at the vessels. . . ." At sunset Gillmore ordered his troops to attack the fort. "To this moment," Dahlgren reported, an incessant and accurate fire had been maintained by the vessels, but now it was impossible [in the dim light to distinguish whether it took effect on friend or foe, and of necessity was suspended.'' Deprived of naval gunfire support, the Union assault ashore was repulsed with heavy losses.
◆1864 Confederate President Jefferson Davis replaces General Joseph Johnston with John Bell Hood as commander of the Army of Tennessee.
◆1870 A drunken brawl turns deadly when "Wild Bill" Hickok shoots two soldiers in self-defense, mortally wounding one of them.★
◆1897 The Steamer Portland arrived into Seattle from Alaska with 68 prospectors carrying more than a ton of gold. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer announced that men with gold from Alaska were landing. This unleashed the Klondike gold rush and tens of thousands headed for the Yukon. The Klondike gold rush gave America and Canada a psychological boost in getting the economy moving again after the terrible depression that followed the 1893 crash.
◆1898 U.S. troops under General William R. Shafter took Santiago de Cuba during the Spanish-American War.
◆1927 First organized dive bombing attack in combat by Marine Corps pilots against Nicaraguan bandits who were surrounding U.S. Marine garrison at Ocotal, Nicaragua.
◆1943 Americans conduct a large air raid on Bougainville. Shipping offshore and airfields between Buin and Faisi are targeted. One Japanese destroyer is sunk.
◆1943 Elements of the Australian 3rd and American 41st Divisions move toward Salamaua in a holding action against the Japanese.
◆1943 RAF bombs German rocket research base at Pennemunde, on the Baltic
◆1943 US forces capture Agrigento and Porto Empedocle
◆1944 Forces of US 1st Army penetrate into the town of St. Lo.
◆1944 An explosion at Port Chicago, now the Concord Naval Weapons Station in Ca., killed 320 seamen when a pair of ammunition ships exploded. 10,000 tons of ammunition exploded.★
◆1944 The 31st Infantry Division, nicknamed “Dixie” because its Guard units came from Alabama, Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi, lands here relieving the Regular Army’s 6th Infantry Division.The 31st engages in limited combat with the few remaining Japanese defenders. Mostly the division provided security for engineers, including their own 106th Engineer Battalion (MS), to build roads, bridges and dock facilities so the island can be used as a staging base for the attack on Morotai Island in September.
◆1945 The final "Big Three" meeting between the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain takes place towards the end of World War II.
◆1945 The first Anglo-American carrier air strike on the Tokyo area is conducted by the forces of the British Pacific Fleet (Admiral Sir Bernard Rawlings), designated Task Force 37, and the US 3rd Fleet (Admiral Halsey). During the night (July 17-18), the HMS King George V and 5 US battleships bombard Hitachi on Honshu. The Allied battleships fire some 2000 tons of shells on Hitachi in fifty minutes.
◆1952 The U.S. 2nd Infantry Division's 23rd Infantry Regiment sustained heavy casualties, including 39 killed and 84 missing in action, during the Battle for Old Baldy.
◆1953 Lieutenant Guy P. "Lucky Pierre" Bordelon scored his fifth aerial victory and qualified as the only U.S. Navy ace of the Korean War and the only Korean War ace who did not fly an F-86 Sabre jet. Bordelon, detached to K-6 airfield from the carrier USS Princeton, flew an F4U-5N Corsair named "Annie Mo." All his victories were the so-called "Bedcheck Charlies" engaged on nighttime harassment bombing missions.
◆1960 Francis Gary Powers pleaded guilty to spying charges in a Moscow court after his U-2 spy plane was shot down over the Soviet Union.
◆1966 Ho Chi Minh ordered a partial mobilization of North Vietnam to defend against American airstrikes.
◆1972 South Vietnamese paratroopers fight their way to within 200 yards of the Citadel in Quang Tri City, which was described by reporters who accompanied the troops as a city of rubble and ash.
◆1975 As part of a mission aimed at developing space rescue capability, the U.S. spacecraft Apollo 18 and the Soviet spacecraft Soyuz 19 rendezvous and dock in space.
◆1987 Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North and rear Admiral John Poindexter began testifying to Congress at the "Iran-Contra" hearings.
◆1989 The controversial B-2 Stealth bomber underwent its first test flight at Edwards Air Force Base in California, two days after a technical problem forced a postponement.
◆1998 The Clinton administration sought approval to use funds for covert operations against Iraqi Pres. Saddam Hussein.
◆2002 Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa reported that some 200 Army personnel had used government charge cards to get cash to spend at strip clubs near military bases. Soldiers ran up a $38,000 bill.
◆2003 The US combat death toll in Iraq hit a milestone as the Pentagon acknowledged its casualties from hostile fire reached 147, the same number of troops who died at enemy hands in the first Gulf War. Gen. John Abizaid, head of central command, said loyalists are fighting an increasingly organized "guerrilla-type campaign."