TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
28 July
◆1148 Second Crusaders abandon the siege of Damascus (invested the 24th).
◆1233 King Jaime I of Aragon liberates Burriana from the Moors.
◆1330 Battle of Velbuzda/Kiustendil: Serbians crush the Bulgarians.
◆1402 Battle of Angora/Ankara: Tamerlane's Mongols crush the Ottomans.
◆1480 Ottoman army besieges Otranto, Naples (falls Aug 11).
◆1488 Battle of Saint Aubin/Sant Albin an Hiliber: The French defeat the Bretons.
◆1863 Confederate John Mosby began a series of attacks against General Meade's Army of the Potomac as it tried to pursue General Robert E. Lee in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley. Confederate Colonel John S. Mosby was known as "The Gray Ghost." The rather ordinary looking Mosby led his Partisan Rangers in guerilla warfare operations that continually confounded Union commanders in the Piedmont region of Virginia. Learn more about Mosby‘s Confederacy in Faquier and Loudoun counties.
◆1863 Under the command of Lieutenant Commander English, U.S.S. Beauregard and Oleander and boats from U.S.S. Sagamore and Para attacked New Smyrna, Florida.
◆1864 Confederates under General John Bell Hood make a third attempt to break General William T. Sherman's hold on Atlanta.
◆1866 Metric system became a legal measurement system in US.
◆1896 The city of Miami, Fla., was incorporated.
◆1898 Spain, through the offices of the French embassy in Washington, D.C., requested peace terms in its war with the United States.
◆1914 Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia, beginning World War I. The New York Stock Exchange closed for 4 1/2 months.
◆1915 US forces invaded Haiti and stayed until 1924.
◆1916 Navy establishes a Code and Signal Section which initially worked against German ciphers and tested the security of communications during U.S. naval training maneuvers.
◆1918 Marine Corps BGen John A. Lejeune assumed command of the 2d U.S. Army Division in France.
◆1920 Revolutionary bandit and murderer, Pancho Villa surrendered to the Mexican government.
◆1926 Team of scientists from Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) and Carnegie Institution determine height of the Ionosphere through use of radio pulse transmitter developed by NRL.
◆1931 Congress made "The Star-Spangled Banner" our 2nd national anthem.
◆1941 Japanese forces begin to occupy bases in southern Indochina. It is clear that the main use for such bases would be in an invasion of Malayasia, the East Indies or the Philippines.
◆1941 American and British assets in Japan are frozen in retaliation for similar measures in the USA and UK on July 26th. Japanese assets in the Dutch East Indies are frozen and the oil deals cancelled.
◆1943 President Roosevelt announced the end of coffee rationing.
◆1943 On New Georgia the American attack continues. The present objective is Horseshoe Hill. Two Japanese destroyers are sunk by aircraft near Rabaul.
◆1943 The Japanese evacuate most of their garrison on Kiska Island with being detected by American forces.
◆1943 Nicosia is captured by American troops and Agira is taken by Canadians.
◆1944 The first objective of "Operation Cobra" is reached by elements of US 1st Army. The US 4th Armored Division enters Coutances.
◆1944 On Guam, American marines occupy much of the Orote Peninsula. Other US forces take Mount Chachao and Mount Alutom in the continuing effort to link up the beachheads.
◆1945 Some 2000 Allied planes bomb Kure, Kobe and targets in the Inland Sea. The air strikes sink the Japanese aircraft carrier Amagi, the old cruiser Izumo, the light cruiser Oyodo and a destroyer.
◆1945 In a ringing declaration indicating that America's pre-World War II isolation was truly at an end, the U.S. Senate approves the charter establishing the United Nations.
◆1945 The Japanese attack American ships around Okinawa, in response to the Allied strikes on Japan. The American destroyer Callaghan is sunk by a Japanese suicide plane. It is the last ship to be destroyed by a Kamikaze attack.
◆1945 A twin-engine U.S. Army B-25 bomber crashed into the Empire State Building between the 78th and 79th floors and killed 14 [13] people. The plane’s propellers severed elevator cables and sent one on a 38-story fall in which the operator survived.
◆1952 Vice Admiral J. J. Clark, commander of the 7th Fleet, authorized the destroyer USS Orleck to assume the classification "DTS" - "Destroyer, Train Smasher" - after the Orleck destroyed a North Korean train with gunfire.
◆1962 Mariner I, launched to Mars, fell into the Atlantic Ocean.
◆1964 Ranger 7 was launched toward the Moon. It sent back 4308 TV pictures.
◆1965 President Lyndon B. Johnson announces that he has ordered an increase in U.S. military forces in Vietnam, from the present 75,000 to 125,000.
◆1972 In response to Soviet accusations that the United States had conducted a two-month bombing campaign intentionally to destroy the dikes and dams of the Tonkin Delta in North Vietnam, a CIA report is made public by the Nixon administration. The report revealed that U.S. bombing at 12 locations had in fact caused accidental minor damage to North Vietnam's dikes, but the damage was unintentional and the dikes were not the intended targets of the bombings. The nearly 2,000 miles of dikes on the Tonkin plain, and more than 2,000 along the sea, made civilized life possible in the Red River Delta. Had the dikes been intentionally targeted, their destruction would have destroyed centuries of patient work and caused the drowning or starvation of hundreds of thousands of peasants. Bombing the dikes had been advocated by some U.S. strategists since the beginning of U.S. involvement in the war, but had been rejected outright by U.S. presidents sitting during the war as an act of terrorism.
◆1973 - Launch of Skylab 3, the second manned mission to the first U.S. manned space station, was piloted by MAJ Jack R. Lousma, USMC with CAPT Alan L. Bean, USN as the Commander of the mission and former Navy electronics officer, Owen K. Garriott as Science Pilot. The mission lasted 59 days, 11 hours and included 858 Earth orbits. Recovery by USS New Orleans (LPH-11).
◆1995 Guard members of the “Sinai Battalion” return home having completed their six month tour of peace keeping duty along the border between Israel and Egypt. The battalion, which included 401 Guard volunteers from 24 states, was part of the on-going Multinational Force established by the 1978 Peace Accords ending the war between the two nations. The Regular Army commander of the Force praised them as the “best prepared U.S. battalion to rotate to the Sinai.”
◆1999 Defense Sec. William Cohen announced that NATO commander Army General Wesley Clark would be replaced by Air Force General Joseph Ralston.
◆2002 Aircraft from U.S.-British air patrols over southern Iraq bombed an Iraqi communications site, the sixth strike this month in retaliation for what the Pentagon says were hostile actions by Iraq.
◆2004 A fierce battle between insurgents and Iraqi soldiers fighting alongside multinational forces in the south-central city of Suwariyah left 7 Iraqi soldiers and 35 insurgents dead.