TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY
28 October
◆1664 The Royal Marines were created.
◆1768 Germans and Acadians joined French Creoles in their armed revolt against Antonio de Ulloa the Spanish governor of New Orleans. This combined militia will force his resignation the next day.
◆1776 Battle of White Plains; Washington retreated to NJ.
◆1790 NY gave up claims to Vermont for $30,000.
◆1793 Eliphalet Remington, US gun maker, was born. He was an American inventor, gunsmith and arms manufacturer. Remington was trained in blacksmithing, but turned to gunsmithing at an early age. His father founded and ran a firearms firm in Ilion, N.Y., until he died in 1828. At this time, Eliphalet took over. He supplied the U.S. army with rifles in the Mexican war. In 1856 the business was expanded to include the manufacture of agricultural implements. When the firm held many government contracts, Eliphalet's son, Philo Remington, directed the business. The Remington firm later supplied the armies with several European countries with breech-loading rifles. In 1879, it began making sewing machines. The Remington Firearms Company still manufactures guns today. It is the focal point of Ilion and aids greatly in the production of their economy.
◆1864 Battle at Fair Oaks, Virginia, ended after 1554 casualties. Union forces withdraw from Fair Oaks, Virginia, after failing to breach the Confederate defenses around Richmond.★
◆1864 Battle of Wauhatchie, TN.
◆1864 Steamer General Thomas and gunboat Stone River destroy Confederate batteries on Tennessee River near Decatur, Alabama forcing the withdrawal of General Hood’s troops.
◆1882 Orders issued for first Naval Attache (LCDR French Chadwick sent to London, England).
◆1917 U.S.A. second Liberty Loan: £1,000,000,000 ($3,000,000 US) to France and Britain is approved at 5%.
◆1918 World War I was reaching its climax as Allied forces all along the Western Front continue launching attacks against the German “Hindenburg Line”.
◆1942 American diplomat Robert Murphy informs French General Mast that the Allied invasion of North Africa will take place in November. Mast protests that he will be unable to organize support for either General Giraud or the Allied cause in time.
◆1943 The US 2nd Marine Parachute Battalion is landed by sea at Voza on Choiseul Island (Operation Blissful). They engage Japanese forces. This is a diversion from the intended attack on Bougainville.
◆1944 The first B-29 Superfortress bomber mission flew from the airfields in the Mariana Islands in a strike against the Japanese base at Truk.
◆1944 On Leyte, attacks by US 24th Corps around Dagami make slow progress and suffer heavy losses. To the north, the US 1st Cavalry Division (part of US 10th Corps) encounters heavy resistance near Carigara and is held up. At sea, carrier groups under the command of Admiral Davison and Admiral Bogan conduct air strikes.
◆1951 At Panmunjom, the communists agreed generally to accept the U.N. Command concept that the battle line should be the demarcation line. Both sides thereby had an incentive to take and hold ground, a factor that perhaps prolonged the war.
◆1960 In a note to the OAS (Organization of American States), the United States charged that Cuba had been receiving substantial quantities of arms and numbers of military technicians" from the Soviet bloc.
◆1962 An 11,000-man 5th Marine Expeditionary Brigade left Camp Pendleton by sea for the Caribbean during the Cuban Missile Crisis. One week earlier, the entire 189,000-man Marine Corps had been put on alert and elements of the 1st and 2d Marine Divisions were sent to Guantanamo Bay to reinforce the defenders of the U.S. Naval Base. Other 2d Division units and squadrons from five Marine Aircraft Groups were deployed at Key West, Florida, or in Caribbean waters during the Cuban crisis.
◆1964 U.S. T-28 airplanes flown by Thai pilots bomb and strafe North Vietnamese villages in the Mugia Pass area. North Vietnam charged publicly that U.S. personnel participated in the raids, but U.S. officials denied that any Americans were involved.
◆1965 Viet Cong commandos damage and destroy a number of allied aircraft in two separate raids on U.S. air bases, including Chu Lai, on the coast of the South China Sea in Quang Tin Province, I Corps.