TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
15 May
◆1479 BCE Battle of Megiddo: Thutmose III defeats the King of Kadesh.
◆1266 Battle of Chesterfield ends England's Second Barons' War.
◆1464 Battle of Hexham: the Marques of Montague's Yorkists beat the Duke of Somerset's Lancastrians.
◆1756 THE FRENCH-INDIAN WAR in North America begins, part of the global conflict called the Seven Years War, officially begins when England declares war on France.
◆1800 CAPT Preble in Essex arrives in Batavia, Java, to escort U.S. merchant ships.
◆1862 General Benjamin F. ("Beast") Butler decreed "Woman Order," that all captured women in New Orleans were to be his whores.
◆1862 The Union ironclad Monitor, Revenue Cutter Naugatuck, and the gunboat Galena fired on Confederate troops at the Battle of Drewry's Bluff, Virginia.
◆1862 The Confederate cruiser Alabama ran aground near London.
◆1862 Corporal John Mackie became the first Marine awarded the Medal of Honor.
◆1864 BATTLE OF NEW MARKET: Students from the Virginia Military Institute take part in the Battle of New Market, part of the multipronged Union offensive in the spring of 1864 designed to take Virginia out of the war.
◆1864 As ships of Rear Admiral Porter's gunboat fleet neared the mouth of the Red River, they met continued resistance from Confederate shore batteries and riflemen.
◆1916 U.S. Marines landed in Santo Domingo to quell civil disorder.
◆1916 Austrians capture Asiago from the Italians.
◆1917 Battle of the Otranto Straits: An Austro-German squadron fails to break the Italo-Anglo-French blockade of the Adriatic.
◆1918 The U.S. Post Office and the U.S. Army began regularly scheduled airmail service between Washington and New York through Philadelphia.
◆1919 Greeks capture Smyrna, initiating an ultimately disastrous attempt to annex western Anatolia.
◆1918 Pfc. Henry Johnson and Pfc. Needham Roberts received the Croix de Guerre for their services in World War I. They were the first Americans to win France's highest military medal.
◆1942 Gasoline rationing went into effect in 17 states, limiting sales to 3 gallons a week for nonessential vehicles.
◆1942 First Naval Air Transport Service flight across Pacific.
◆1942 WAAC’S ESTABLISHED: A bill establishing a women's corps in the U.S. Army becomes law, creating the Women's Auxiliary Army Corps and granting women official military status.
◆1943 On Attu, fighting continues in the Clevesy Pass. Japanese forces hold the high ground and offer determined resistance to the American attacks. Forces of the US 5th Army assault the German-held Senger Line. The French Expeditionary Corps attacks Pico; the Canadian 1st Corps attacks Pontecorvo; and the Polish 2nd Corps attacks Piedimonte San Germano.
◆1944 American forces have eliminated the Japanese garrison on Wadke, New Guinea. On the mainland, nearby, Japanese forces conduct weak attacks near Arare.
◆1945 On Okinawa, American troops secure Chocolate Drop Hill after fighting in the interconnecting tunnels. Elements of the 1st Marine Division, part of US 3rd Amphibious Corps, capture Wana Ridge. Elements of the US 6th Marine Division, part of the same corps, begin mopping up operations in the Japanese held caves of the Horseshoe and Half Moon positions. They use flame-throwers and hollow-charge weapons and seal off some Japanese troops. Japanese forces counterattack on the Horseshoe position suffering an estimated 200 killed. To the east, the US 7th and 96th Divisions, of US 24th Corps, continue to be engaged in the capture of Yonabaru.
◆1945 On Mindanao, the US 31st Division, part of US 10th Corps, advances northward and occupies positions near the town of Malaybalay and encounter Japanese artillery fire. Other units advance north of Davao and resist nighttime counterattacks.
◆1951 After the quick rout of two South Korean divisions by an attack of some 120,000 Communist Chinese troops, the U.S. 2nd Infantry Division, supported by intense and accurate 105mm howitzer fire from Wyoming’s 300th Armored Field Artillery Battalion stemmed the enemy assault long enough for American positions to stabilize. For its determined resistance in the Battle of Soyang the 300th was awarded a Distinguished (now known as a Presidential) Unit Citation.
◆1952 Air Force First Lieutenant James H. Kasler, 4th Fighter-Interceptor Wing, became the war's 15th ace after downing two MiGs for a total of five kills.
◆1962 US marines "arrived" in Laos.
◆1963 Gordon Cooper is launched into space aboard Faith 7 on the longest American space mission to that date.
◆1967 U.S. forces just south of the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) come under heavy fire as Marine positions between Dong Ha and Con Thien are pounded by North Vietnamese artillery.
◆1968 U.S. Marines relieved army troops in Nhi Ha, South Vietnam after a fourteen-day battle.
◆1969 At approximately 8:30 P.M. (Pacific Daylight Time), the nuclear powered attack submarine Guitarro (SSN-665) sank while tied up to the dock at the Mare Island site of the San Francisco Bay Naval Shipyard. The ship had been under construction since August 1965, and was due to be commissioned in January 1970. Sinking was caused by uncontrolled flooding within the forward part of the ship. It was refloated at 11:18 A.M. (PDT), Sunday, May 18, and after inspection damages were estimated at between $15.2 million and $21.85 million. As a result of an investigation a Congressional Subcommittee concluded that, although the sinking of the USS Guitarro was accidental, the immediate cause of the sinking was the culpable negligence of certain shipyard employees.
◆1975 Merchant ship U.S. Mayaguez was recaptured from Cambodia's Khmer Rouge.
◆1988 More than eight years after they intervened in Afghanistan to support the procommunist government, Soviet troops begin their withdrawal.
◆1999 US warplanes attacked Iraqi air defense sites after being targeted by radar.
◆2002 The White House acknowledged that in the weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush was told by U.S. intelligence that Osama bin Laden's terrorist network might hijack American airplanes, but that officials did not know that suicide hijackers were plotting to use planes as missiles.
◆2003 US Army forces stormed into a village near the northern city of Tikrit before dawn, seizing more than 260 prisoners, including one man on the most-wanted list of former Iraqi officials.