TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
30 June
◆1409 Battle of San Luri: The Aragonese defeat Arborea (Sardinia).
◆1422 Battle of Arbedo: The Milanese defeat the Swiss.
◆1520 La Noche Triste: Cortez evacuates Tenochtitlan amid heavy losses.
◆1596 The Earl of Essex sacks Cadiz.
◆1651 Battle of Berestechko (3rd Day): Poles defeat Tatars & Ukrainians.
◆1690 Battle of Beachy Head: Torrington's Anglo-Dutch fleet defeats Tourville's French squadron.
◆1807 Battle of Lemnos: Russian squadron defeats the Turks.
◆1815 USS Peacock takes HMS Nautilus, last action of the War of 1812.
◆1834 Congress placed the Marine Corps under Navy jurisdiction.
◆1862 The Seven Days' Battles continues at Glendale (White Oak Swamp), Virginia, as Robert E. Lee has a chance to deal a decisive blow against George B. McClellan's Army of the Potomac.✯
◆1863 Union and Confederate cavalries clashed at Hanover, Pennsylvania.
◆1876 After a slow two-day march, the wounded soldiers from the Battle of the Little Big Horn reach the steamboat Far West.
◆1908 The Tunguska Event.✯
◆1939 Heinkel He-176 rocket plane flies for 1st time, at Peenemunde.
◆1943 General Douglas MacArthur launches Operation Cartwheel, a multi-pronged assault on Rabaul and several islands in the Solomon Sea in the South Pacific.
◆1943 American forces land on several islands of the New Georgia group. Rendova island is targeted, in particular. All the landings are successful. There is heavy Japanese resistance on Vangunu. The American forces engaged for these landings are principally the 43rd Division (General Hester) with naval support by Task Force 31 (Admiral Turner) and land-based aircraft commanded by Admiral Fitch.
◆1943 A mixed Australian and American unit known as McKechnie Force lands at Nassau Bay near Salamaua from Morobe. There is heavy Japanese resistance to the landing.
◆1944 German resistance in the Cotentin Peninsula ends. The US 1st Army continues to battle on the approach to St. Lo; the British 2nd Army continues to battle toward Caen. Since D-Day, the Allies have landed 630,000 troops, 600,000 tons of supplies and 177,000 vehicles in the Normandy beachhead. They have suffered 62,000 dead and wounded.
◆1944 Elements of US 5th Army are heavily engaged in Cecina. The main advance inland is slowed by a new German defensive line south of Siena and Arezzo.
◆1944 The American 5th Amphibious Corps has captured over half of Saipan. Fighting north of Mount Tipo Pale and Mount Tapotchau continues. Death Valley and Purple Heart Ridge are cleared.
◆1945 On Okinawa, American forces complete mopping-up operations (June 23-30) in which 8975 Japanese are reported killed and 2902 captured
◆1951 Marine Corps Captain Edwin B. Long scored the first night kill of the Korean War and the first in a F7F Tigercat victory ever by downing a PO-2 near Kimpo.
◆1951 On orders from Washington, General Matthew Ridgeway broadcast that the United Nations was willing to discuss an armistice with North Korea. In 1950, as U.S. Marines tried to fight their way out of a Chinese trap, Korea suffered its worst winter of the century.
◆1951 Naval Administration of Marianas ends.
◆1953 U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Henry "Hank" Buttleman, 51st Fighter-Interceptor Wing, became the 36th and youngest ace of the Korean War, having just turned 24. He accomplished this feat only 12 days after his first kill. (An ace has five kills.) Colonel James K. Johnson, 4th Fighter-Interceptor Wing, qualified as the eighth "double ace" of the war, with 10 total kills.
◆1955 The U.S. began funding West Germany’s rearmament.
◆1957 The American occupation headquarters in Japan was dissolved.
◆1958 Congress passed a law authorizing the admission of Alaska as the 49th state in the Union, the first new state since 1912.
◆1966 End of Vietnamese Counteroffensive Campaign.
◆1991 The federal base-closing commission voted to shut down 17 military bases, including the massive Philadelphia Navy Shipyard, in addition to seven facilities ordered closed two days earlier.
◆1993 13 US helicopters attack a Somali compound.
◆1998 A US fighter jet fired a missile at an Iraqi anti-aircraft site after the site’s radar locked on a British warplane.