TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
28 May
◆1539 Hernando de Soto sailed from Cuba to Florida with 13 pigs to help sustain his 700 men on his gold-hunting expedition.
◆1754 In the first engagement of the French and Indian War, a Virginia militia under 22-year-old Lieutenant Colonel George Washington defeats a French reconnaissance party in southwestern Pennsylvania.
◆1813 Frigate Essex and prize capture five British whalers.
◆1818 P.G.T. Beauregard, Confederate general, was born. He first fired on Fort Sumpter and fought at First Manassas, and Shiloh.
◆1830 The US Congress authorized Indian removal from all states to the western prairie.
◆1917 First underway fueling in U.S. Navy, USS Maumee fuels 6 destroyers in North Atlantic. LCDR Chester W. Nimitz served as Maumee's executive officer and chief engineer.
◆1942 The rest of the Japanese forces directed at Midway set out. Admiral Yamamato, commanding the operation overall, believes that, if the plan to invade the island succeeds, the American fleet can be forced into a decisive engagement and that their defeat will force a truce before American production can swamp the Japanese war effort.
◆1942 Task Force 16 sails from Oahu for Midway with the carriers Enterprise and Hornet and escorts. Admiral Fletcher's Task Force 17 follows after miraculously quick repairs to the Yorktown.
◆1943 A reported 100 B-17 Flying Fortress bombers attack the oil refinery and shipping at Livorno (Leghorn).
◆1943 American P-40 and Marauder aircraft strike four airfields and encounter heavy anti-aircraft (flak) defenses.
◆1943 The Office of War Mobilization is established to coordinated production.
◆1944 Allied forces continue the Italian offensive. The Canadian 1st Corps captures Ceprano. There is heavy fighting all along the front. However, other than rearguards from the German 14th Panzer Corps and the 51st Mountain Corps, German forces are retiring to the Caesar Line because of the threat to their rear posed by the US 6th Corps at Anzio.
◆1944 Bombers of the US 8th Air Force attack Leuna and Magdeburg.
◆1944 On Biak Island, the US 41st Infantry Division begins to expand its beachhead. There is heavy fighting near the village of Mokmer, where an airfield is located, and the American battalion pulls back.
◆1944 General MacArthur announces that, strategically, the campaign for New Guinea has been won although there is still some hard fighting to be done.
◆1945 Admiral Halsey, commanding US 3rd Fleet, takes command of American naval forces operating against targets in Japan; US Task Force 58 is assigned to US 3rd Fleet, becoming TF38.
◆1945 More than 100 Japanese planes are shot down near Okinawa. This is the last major effort against the Allied naval forces surrounding the island. One American destroyer is sunk in the otherwise unsuccessful air strikes.
◆1951 U.N. Forces drove the communists' back across the 38th parallel on most of the Korean battlefields.
◆1951 Eighth Army took Hwachon and Inje.
◆1953 The U.N. negotiating team presented its final terms and threatened to break off the talks if they were rejected.
◆1953 The Chinese attack outposts of the 25th Infantry Division. OP Carson was overrun and OPs Elko and Vegas were abandoned on order. Friendly casualties were heavy, but enemy losses were far greater.
◆1957 First of 24 detonations, Operation Plumbbob nuclear test.
◆1968 Last Monday of the month. Memorial Day, which began in 1868 as Decoration Day, was set aside to remember those who have died in the service of their country. Celebrated on May 30 for the first 100 years, Memorial Day was officially changed to the last Monday in May in 1968.
◆1969 U.S. troops abandon Ap Bia Mountain. A spokesman for the 101st Airborne Division said that the U.S. troops "have completed their search of the mountain and are now continuing their reconnaissance-in-force mission throughout the A Shau Valley."
◆1971 Audie Murphy (46), WW II hero, actor (Whispering Smiths), was killed in plane crash near Roanoke, Va.
◆1980 55 women become first women graduates from the U.S. Naval Academy.
◆1987 Matthias Rust, a 19-year-old amateur pilot from West Germany, takes off from Helsinki, Finland, travels through more than 400 miles of Soviet airspace, and lands his small Cessna aircraft in Red Square by the Kremlin.
◆1998 NATO Ministers agreed to help Albania and Macedonia strengthen their border patrols.
◆2001 The US and China tentatively agreed that the US spy plane on Hainan Island would be dismantled and possibly flown home aboard a giant Antonov-124 transport.