TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
27 July
◆1057 Battle of Dunsinane Hill: Earl Siward defeats King MacBeth of Scotland.
◆1214 First Battle of Bouvines: King Philip II of France defeats Holy Roman Emperor Otto IV.
◆1361 Battle of Visby: Waldemar IV of Denmark defeats the Gotlanders.
◆1597 Battle of Amiens: Spanish defeat the French.★
◆1643 Cromwell defeats Royalists at Battle of Gainsborough.
◆1663 British Parliament passed a second Navigation Act, requiring all goods bound for the colonies be sent in British ships from British ports.
◆1689 Battle of Killiecrankie: Viscount Dundee defeats the Scots Jacobites under General Mackay.
◆1775 The Army Medical Department and the Medical Corps trace their origins to July 27, 1775, when the Continental Congress established the Army hospital headed by a "Director General and Chief Physician."★
◆1777 The Marquis of Lafayette arrived in New England to help the rebellious colonists fight the British.
◆1778 British and French fleets fought to a standoff in the first Battle of Ushant. The British had 30 ships of the line commanded by Admiral the Honorable Augustus Keppel in HMS Victory. The French had 29 ships commanded by Admiral the Comte d'Orvilliers. The two fleets maneuvered during shifting winds and a heavy rain squall until a battle became inevitable with the British more or less in column and the French in some confusion. However, the French managed to pass along the British line to windward with their most advanced ships. At about a quarter to twelve HMS Victory opened fire on Bretagne, 110, followed by Ville de Paris, 90. The British van escaped with little loss but Sir Hugh Palliser's rear division suffered considerably. Keppel made the signal to wear and follow the French but Palliser did not conform and the action was not resumed. Keppel was court-martialled and cleared and Palliser criticized by an enquiry before the affair turned into a squabble of party politics.
◆1789 Congress established the Department of Foreign Affairs, the forerunner of the Department of State.
◆1806 Attempting to stop a band of young Blackfoot Indians from stealing his horses, Meriwether Lewis shoots an Indian in the stomach.
◆1809 Battle of Talavera de la Reina: Wellesley's Anglo-Spanish defeat the French.
◆1813 Battle of Burnt Corn Creek: Red Stick Creek Indians carrying supplies from Spanish Florida defeat an ambush by American militiamen.
◆1816 US troops destroyed the Seminole Fort Apalachicola, to punish the Indians for harboring runaway slaves.
◆1861 President Abraham Lincoln replaced General Irwin McDowell with General George B. McClellen as head of the Army of the Potomac.
◆1861 - Battle of Mathias Point, VA. Rebel forces repelled a Federal landing.
◆1863 U.S.S. Clifton, Lieutenant Crocker, with U.S.S. Estrella, Hollyhock, and Sachem in company on a reconnaissance of the Atchafalaya River to the mouth of Bayou Teche, Louisiana, engaged Confederate batteries.
◆1864 Battle of Darbytown, VA (Deep Bottom, Newmarket Road) (Strawberry Plains).
◆1864 Pickets from U.S.S. Shokokon, Acting Master Sheldon, were attacked ashore by Confederate sharpshooters at Turkey Bend, in the James River. Shokokon, a 710–ton double-ender mounting 5 guns, supported the embattled landing party with gunfire, and succeeded in preventing its capture. Next day, Shokokon engaged a Confederate battery at the same point on the River.
◆1866 Cyrus W. Field succeeded after two failures in laying the first underwater telegraph cable between North America and Europe, 1,686 miles long.
◆1898 Marines from the USS Dixie were the first to raise the American flag over Puerto Rico.
◆1909 Orville Wright tested the U.S. Army's first airplane, flying himself and a passenger for 1 hour, 12 minutes and 40 seconds over Fort Myer, Virginia.
◆1920 A radio compass was used for 1st time for aircraft navigation.
◆1923 John Herbert Dillinger joins the Navy in order to avoid charges of auto theft in Indiana, marking the beginning of America's most notorious criminal's downfall.
◆1940 Bugs Bunny made his official debut in the Warner Bros. animated cartoon "A Wild Hare."★
◆1944 US 1st Army continues its offensive. The US 8th Corps breaks through between Lessy and Periers, capturing both towns.★
◆1944 On Guam, the US 77th Division prepares to attack Mount Tenjo. On Tinian, Americans being work on a new airfield at Ushi Point.
◆1945 British and American carriers conduct extensive air strikes. During the night (July 27-28), US B-29 bombers drop some 600,000 leaflets over 11 Japanese cities which warn inhabitants that the cities are on the target list for bombing raids.
◆1950 The 3rd Battalion, 29th Infantry Regiment, attached to the 19th Infantry Regiment, U.S. 24th Infantry Division, was ambushed at Hadong. One half of the battalion was reported killed or missing in action.
◆1950 Australia, New Zealand and Turkey all offered ground troops for Korea.
◆1953 Air Force Captain Ralph S. Parr, 4th Fighter-Interceptor Wing, achieved the last air victory of the Korean War when he destroyed an Il-12 transport plane. In addition, the victory qualified him as the 11th and last double ace of the war, with a total of 10 kills.
◆1953 After three years of a bloody and frustrating war, the United States, the People's Republic of China, North Korea, and South Korea agree to an armistice, bringing the Korean War to an end.★
◆1964 It is announced that the United States will send an additional 5,000 U.S. troops to Vietnam, bringing the total number of U.S. forces in Vietnam to 21,000.
◆1965 Forty-six U.S. F-105 fighter-bombers attack the missile installation that had fired at U.S. planes on July 24. They also attacked another missile installation 40 miles northwest of Hanoi. One missile launcher was destroyed and another was damaged, but five U.S. planes were shot down in the effort. On July 24, U.S. bombers on a raid over munitions manufacturing facilities at Kang Chi, 55 miles northwest of Hanoi, were fired at from an unknown launching site. It was the first time the enemy had launched antiaircraft missiles at U.S. aircraft. The presence of ground-to-air antiaircraft missiles represented a rapidly improving air defense capability for the North Vietnamese. As the war progressed, North Vietnam, supplied by China and the Soviet Union, would fashion a very effective and integrated air defense system, which became a formidable challenge to American flyers conducting missions over North Vietnam.
◆1976 Air Force veteran Ray Brennan became the first person to die of so-called "Legionnaire’s Disease" following an American Legion convention in Philadelphia.
◆1980 On day 267 of the Iranian hostage crisis, the deposed Shah of Iran (1941-1979) died at a military hospital outside Cairo, Egypt, at age 60.
◆1996 In Atlanta, Georgia, the XXVI Summer Olympiad is disrupted by the explosion of a nail-laden pipe bomb in Centennial Olympic Park.
◆2003 Bob Hope (b.1903), master of the one-liner and favorite comedian of servicemen and presidents alike, died at his home in Toluca Lake, Ca. He was born Leslie Townes Hope on May 29, 1903, in Eltham, England, the 5th of 7 sons of a British stonemason and a Welsh singer of light opera.