TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
8 June
◆218 Battle of Antioch: Roman Emperor Macrinus is defeated by Legion III Gallica, giving the empire to Elagabalus.
◆452 Attila and the Huns invade northern Italy.
◆793 The Vikings raid Northumbria.
◆1813 David D. Porter, Union Admiral, was born.
◆1830 Sloop-of-war Vincennes becomes first U.S. warship to circle the globe.
◆1845 Seventh President Andrew Jackson dies.
◆1853 Commodore Matthew Perry arrives at Uraga, Japan to begin negotiations for a treaty with Japan.
◆1859 Battle of Malegnano: French defeat the Austrians.
◆1861 Tennessee voted to secede from the Union and joined the Confederacy.
◆1861 U.S.S. Mississippi, Flag Officer Mervine, set blockade at Key West.
◆1862 Confederate General Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson's notches another victory during the campaign in the Shenandoah Valley.
◆1862 U.S.S. Monitor, Dacotah, Naugatuck, Seminole, and Susquehanna by direction of the President"-shelled Confederate batteries at Sewell's Point, Virginia, as Flag Officer L. M. Goldsborough reported, ''mainly with the view of ascertaining the practicability of landing a body of troops thereabouts" to move on Norfolk.
◆1862 Landing party from U.S.S. Iroquois, Commander James S. Palmer, seized arsenal and took possession of Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
◆1863 Residents of Vicksburg, Miss., fled into caves as Grant’s army began shelling the town.
◆1863 Crew from a Confederate launch commanded by Master James Duke, CSN, boarded and captured steam tug Boston at Pass a l'Outre, Mississippi River, and put to sea, then capturing and burning Union barks Lenox and Texana. Duke carried Boston safely into Mobile on 11 June.
◆1874 Chief Cochise, one of the great leaders of the Apache Indians in their battles with the Anglo-Americans, dies on the Chiricahua reservation in southeastern Arizona.
◆1880 Captain W. B. Remey was the first Marine appointed Judge Advocate of the Navy.
◆1904 U.S. Marines landed in Tangiers, Morocco, to protect U.S. citizens.
◆1944 A second wave of Allied troops has landed. Elements of the US 7th Corps, from Utah beach, advance toward Cherbourg. The 4th Division engages in heavy fighting near Azeville. Elements of the US 5th Corps, on Omaha beach, capture Isigny but cannot establish a link with the American forces on Utah. A link is established between Omaha and Gold beach once British Marines, part of the 30th Corps, take Port-en-Bessin.
◆1944 German rearguards slow the advance of the US 5th Army and British 8th Army.
◆1944 Fighting continues on Biak Island. A Japanese attempt to ship reinforcements to Biak is intercepted by the cruiser squadron commanded by Admiral Crutchley. It is forced to retreat. On the mainland, at the American beachhead around Aitape, US forces begin counterattacking.
◆1945 There are reports that every able bodied Japanese man, woman and child is being given instructions in the fighting of tanks, paratroops and other invading forces.
◆1945 On Okinawa, in the north heavy fighting continues on the Oroku peninsula. In the south, the US 24th Corps prepares to attack Mount Yaeju.
◆1945 On Luzon, patrols of the US 37th Division reach the Magat river. The US 145th Infantry Regiment (US 37th Division) takes Solano and advances as far as Bagabag, towards the Cagayan valley.
◆1953 U.N. and communist delegates at the peace talks signed an agreement on the exchange of prisoners. South Korea refused to accept the truce terms.
◆1958 Navy and Post Office deliver first official missile mail when USS Barbero (SS-317) fired Regulus II missile with 3000 letters 100 miles east of Jacksonville, FL to Mayport, FL.
◆1967 During the Six-Day War, Israeli aircraft and torpedo boats attack the USS Liberty in international waters off Egypt's Gaza Strip. The intelligence ship, well-marked as an American vessel and only lightly armed, was attacked first by Israeli aircraft that fired napalm and rockets at the ship.
◆1969 President Nixon and South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu meet at Midway Island in the Pacific. At the meeting, Nixon announced that 25,000 U.S. troops would be withdrawn by the end of August. Nixon and Thieu emphasized that South Vietnamese forces would replace U.S. forces. Along with this announcement of the first U.S. troop withdrawal, Nixon discussed what would become known as "Vietnamization." Under this new policy, Nixon intended to initiate steps to increase the combat capability of the Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces so that the South Vietnamese would eventually be able to assume full responsibility for the war. After the initial withdrawal was accomplished in August, 14 more increments departed between late 1969 and 1972. By the time the Paris Peace Accords were signed in January 1973, there were only 27,000 U.S. troops left in South Vietnam (down from a high of over 540,000 in April 1969). These remaining personnel were withdrawn in March 1973 in accordance with the provisions of the Paris Peace Accords.
◆1982 President Reagan became the first American chief executive to address a joint session of the British Parliament.
◆1987 Fawn Hall began testifying at the Iran-Contra hearings, describing how, as secretary to National Security aide Oliver L. North, she helped to shred some documents and spirit away others.
◆1988 The judge in the Iran-Contra conspiracy case ruled that Oliver North, John Poindexter, Richard Secord and Albert Hakim had to be tried separately.
◆1990 CDR Rosemary Mariner becomes first Navy women to command fleet jet aircraft squadron.
◆1991 General Norman Schwarzkopf, commander of Allied forces in Operation “Desert Storm” leads the National Victory Parade up Pennsylvania Avenue past the reviewing stand holding President George H.W. Bush and other dignitaries in the first such military parade held in the nation’s capital since the end of World War I. Among the contingents of military units are composite battalions of Air and Army Guard personnel who served in theater.
◆1995 A Marine tactical recovery team from the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit stationed on board the USS Kearsarge rescued a downed U.S. pilot, Captain Scott O'Grady, USAF, from Bosnian-Serb territory in Bosnia.