** TODAY IN MILITARY HISTORY **

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PostPosted: Fri Jun 17, 2016 11:34 am
June 17th ~ {continued...}

1876 – Sioux and Cheyenne Indians score a tactical victory over General Crook’s forces at the Battle of the Rosebud, foreshadowing the disaster of the Battle of Little Big Horn eight days later. General George Crook was in command of one of three columns of soldiers converging on the Big Horn country of southern Montana that June. A large band of Sioux and Cheyenne Indians under the direction of Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and several other chiefs had congregated in the area in defiance of U.S. demands that the Indians confine themselves to reservations.

The army viewed the Indians’ refusal as an opportunity to dispatch a massive three-pronged attack and win a decisive victory over the “hostile” Indians. Crook’s column, marching north from Fort Fetterman in Wyoming Territory, was to join with two others: General Gibbon’s column coming east from Fort Ellis in Montana Territory, and General Terry’s force coming west from Fort Abraham Lincoln in Dakota Territory. Terry’s force included the soon-to-be-famous 7th Cavalry under the command of George Custer. The vast distances and lack of reliable communications made it difficult to coordinate, but the three armies planned to converge on the valley of the Big Horn River and stage an assault on an enemy whose location and size was only vaguely known.

The plan quickly ran into trouble. As Crook approached the Big Horn, his Indian scouts informed him they had found signs of a major Sioux force that must still be nearby. Crook was convinced that the Sioux were encamped in a large village somewhere along the Rosebud Creek just east of the Big Horn. Like most of his fellow officers, Crook believed that Indians were more likely to flee than stand and fight, and he was determined to find the village and attack before the Sioux could escape into the wilderness. Crook’s Indian allies–262 Crow and Shoshone warriors–were less certain. They suspected the Sioux force was under the command of Crazy Horse, thee brilliant war chief. Crazy Horse, they warned, was too shrewd to give Crook an opportunity to attack a stationary village. Crook soon learned that his allies were right.

Around 8 a.m. on this day in 1876, Crook halted his force of about 1,300 men in the bowl of a small valley along the Rosebud Creek in order to allow the rear of the column to catch up. Crook’s soldiers unsaddled and let their horses graze while they relaxed in the grass and enjoyed the cool morning air. The American soldiers were out in the open, divided, and unprepared. Suddenly, several Indian scouts rode into the camp at a full gallop. “Sioux! Sioux!” they shouted. “Many Sioux!” Within minutes, a mass of Sioux warriors began to converge on the army. A force of at least 1,500 mounted Sioux warriors caught Crook’s soldiers by surprise. Crazy Horse had kept an additional 2,500 warriors in reserve to finish the attack.

Fortunately for Crook, one segment of his army was not caught unprepared. His 262 Crow and Shoshone allies had taken up advanced positions about 500 yards from the main body of soldiers. With astonishing courage, the Indian warriors boldly countercharged the much larger invading force. They managed to blunt the initial attack long enough for Crook to regroup his men and send soldiers forward to support his Indian allies. The fighting continued until noon, when the Sioux-perhaps hoping to draw Crook’s army into an ambush-retreated from the field. The combined force of 4,000 Sioux warriors had outnumbered Crook’s divided and unprepared army by more than three to one. Had it not been for the wisdom and courage of Crook’s Indian allies, Americans today might well remember the Battle of the Rosebud as they do the subsequent Battle of the Little Big Horn.

As it was, Crook’s team was badly bloodied–28 men were killed and 56 were seriously wounded. Crook had no choice but to withdraw and regroup. Crazy Horse had lost only 13 men and his warriors were emboldened by their successful attack on the American soldiers. Eight days later, they would join with their tribesmen in the Battle of the Little Big Horn, which would wipe out George Custer and his 7th Cavalry.

1898 – Navy Hospital Corps established.

1913 – U.S. Marines set sail from San Diego to protect American interests in Mexico.

1916 – American troops under the command of Gen. Jack Pershing marched into Mexico. US Gen’l. Pershing led an unsuccessful punitive expedition against Francisco “Pancho” Villa.

1926 – Spain threatened to quit the League of Nations if Germany was allowed to join.
PostPosted: Fri Jun 17, 2016 11:36 am
June 17th ~ {continued...}

1930 – The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Bill became law, placing the highest tariff on imports to the U.S. An international trade war began with the US passage of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. By the spring of 1930, it was all too clear that America would not be able to shake off the fiscal impact of the Great Crash of 1929. And so, President Herbert Hoover stepped into the breach and signed the controversial Smoot-Hawley Tariff on this day in 1930. Smoot-Hawley raised duties on imports to astronomical heights in hopes of preserving the domestic market for American-made goods.

Along with forwarding the protectionist cause, the legislation also embodied Hoover’s belief that a revived American economy would aid global fiscal health. Needless to say, Smoot-Hawley was a fast hit with protectionist forces, still licking their wounds from the crash. However, economists and international business leaders blasted Smoot-Hawley as an overly aggressive bill that would hurt and perhaps ultimately alienate foreign markets; a month before Hoover signed the bill, over one thousand economists signed a petition that protested the tariff.

Fears that foreign governments would view Smoot-Hawley as a bellicose bill proved to be all too well-founded: a raft of foreign nations retaliated by enacting their own hefty tariffs, as well as quotas on imports and other measures that not only made international trade all that more difficult, but that also exacerbated America’s fiscal woes.

1932 – The U.S. Senate defeated the bonus bill as 10,000 veterans massed around the Capitol.

1938 – Japan declared war on China.

1940 – Chief of Naval Operations asks Congress for money to build two-ocean Navy.

1942 – Yank a weekly magazine for the U.S. armed services, began publication. Hartzell Spence, executive editor of Yank, a new US Army publication, soon introduced the term “pinup” for the photo inserts of beautiful women and added the “Sad Sack” cartoon strip.

1942 – Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Fleet directed the organization of coastal pickets to combat submarine menace of Atlantic Coast. This became known as the “Corsair Fleet.”

1943 – Operation Husky. The first units of the naval support for the invasion of Sicily set sail from the British Home Fleet base at Scapa Flow.

1944 – The US 1st Army cuts off the Contentin Peninsula. The US 9th Division (part of US 7th Corps) reaches the west coast to the north and south of Barneville. German divisions isolated to the north are not permitted to attempt to break out. Hitler meets with Rundstedt, Commander in Chief (West), and Rommel, commanding Army Group B. Both Field Marshals seek a withdrawal to more defensible positions inland. Hitler refuses to allow a retreat in Normandy. He suggests that the V1 bombing of Britain will force it out of the war.

1944 – The US 27th Infantry Division lands on Saipan to reinforce the American beachhead.

1944 – The carriers led by Admiral Clark and the rest of the main US carrier forces sail for a rendezvous to the west of the Mariana Islands.
PostPosted: Fri Jun 17, 2016 11:46 am
June 17th ~ {continued...}

1945 – On Okinawa, reinforced American units advance in the Kuishi Ridge area which has been stubbornly defended by forces of the Japanese 32nd Army. Along the line of the US 24th Corps, the last Japanese defensive line is broken. The US 7th Division completes the capture of Hills 153 and 115. The commander of the Japanese naval base on Okinawa, Admiral Minoru Ota, is found dead, having committed suicide.

1945 – On Luzon, elements of the US 37th Division, US 1st Corps, captures Naguilian after making a forced crossing of the Cagayan river, near the town of Cagayan.

1945 – General Arnold orders General Chennault to be replaced by General Stratemeyer as Commander in Chief of the US air forces operating in China. Japanese troops in southern China begin withdrawing northward in five long columns between the Yellow and Yangtze rivers.

1953 – A revised demarcation line was settled at Panmunjom.

1953 – Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas stayed the executions of spies Julius & Ethel Rosenberg scheduled for next day, their 14th wedding anniversary. They were put to death June 19th.

1953 – The Soviet Union orders an entire armored division of its troops into East Berlin to crush a rebellion by East German workers and antigovernment protesters. The Soviet assault set a precedent for later interventions into Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968. The riots in East Berlin began among construction workers, who took to the streets on June 16, 1953, to protest an increase in work schedules by the communist government of East Germany.

By the next day, the crowd of disgruntled workers and other antigovernment dissidents had grown to between 30,000 and 50,000. Leaders of the protest issued a call for a general strike, the resignation of the communist East German government, and free elections. Soviet forces struck quickly and without warning. Troops, supported by tanks and other armored vehicles, crashed through the crowd of protesters. Some protesters tried to fight back, but most fled before the onslaught. Red Cross officials in West Berlin (where many of the wounded protesters fled) estimated the death toll at between 15 and 20, and the number of wounded at more than 100.

The Soviet military commanders declared martial law, and by the evening of June 17, the protests had been shattered and relative calm was restored. In Washington, President Dwight D. Eisenhower declared that the brutal Soviet action contradicted Russian propaganda that the people of East Germany were happy with their communist government. He noted that the smashing of the protests was “a good lesson on the meaning of communism.”

America’s propaganda outlet in Europe, the Voice of America radio station, claimed, “The workers of East Berlin have already written a glorious page in postwar history. They have once and for all times exposed the fraudulent nature of communist regimes.” These criticisms had little effect on the Soviet control of East Germany, which remained a communist stronghold until the government fell in 1989.

1965 – For the first time, 27 B-52s fly from Guam to bomb a Vietcong concentration in a heavily forested area of Binhduong Province. Such flights, under the aegis of the Strategic Air Command, are known as Operation Arc Light.

1967 – China detonated its 1st hydrogen bomb and became the world’s 4th thermonuclear power.
PostPosted: Fri Jun 17, 2016 11:48 am
June 17th ~ {continued...}

1969 – U.S. intelligence reports that an estimated 1,000 North Vietnamese troops have reoccupied Ap Bia Mountain (Hill 937), one mile east of the Laotian border. U.S. and South Vietnamese forces had fought a fierce battle with North Vietnamese troops there in May. The battle was part of a 2,800-man Allied sweep of the A Shau Valley called Operation Apache Snow. The purpose of the operation was to cut off the North Vietnamese and stop any infiltration from Laos that was menacing Hue to the northeast and Da Nang to the southeast.

Paratroopers from the 101st Airborne had engaged a North Vietnamese regiment on the slopes of Hill 937, known to the Vietnamese as Ap Bia Mountain. Entrenched in prepared fighting positions, the North Vietnamese 29th Regiment repulsed the initial American assault and beat back another attempt by the 3rd Battalion, 187th Infantry on May 14th. An intense battle raged for 10 days as the mountain came under heavy Allied air strikes, artillery barrages, and 10 infantry assaults.

On May 20th, Maj. Gen. Melvin Zais, commanding general of the 101st, sent in two additional U.S. airborne battalions and a South Vietnamese battalion as reinforcements. The communist stronghold was finally captured in the 11th attack when the American and South Vietnamese soldiers fought their way to the summit of the mountain.

1970 – North Vietnamese troops cut the last operating rail line in Cambodia.

1971 – After 21 months of hard bargaining, US Secretary of State William P. Rogers and Japanese Foreign minister Kiichi Aichi sign a treaty returning Okinawa, scene of one of the bloodiest World War II Pacific campaigns, to Japanese rule. Located just 400 miles from Communist China, for 25 years it has been the key center through which US supplies flowed in the Korean and Vietnam wars. It is due to remain the most powerful base in the western Pacific, but under terms of the treaty, nuclear weapons are banned from Okinawa and its use as a base for staging to wars in Asia is to be limited.

1972 – Five burglars are arrested in the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office and apartment complex in Washington, D.C. James McCord, Frank Sturgis, Bernard Barker, Virgilio Gonzales, and Eugenio Martinez were apprehended in the early morning after a security guard at the Watergate noticed that several doors leading from the stairwell to various hallways had been taped to prevent them from locking.

The intruders were wearing surgical gloves and carrying walkie-talkies, cameras, and almost $2,300 in sequential $100 bills. A subsequent search of their rooms at the Watergate turned up an additional $4,200, burglary tools, and electronic bugging equipment. Although there was no immediate explanation as to the objective of the break-in, an extensive investigation ensued, eventually unveiling a comprehensive scheme of political sabotage and espionage designed to discredit Democratic candidates.

McCord, who was one of the burglars, was also Richard Nixon’s security chief for the Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP). Nixon campaign funds were ultimately linked back to the Watergate break-in. In addition, equipment used during the burglary had been borrowed from the CIA. In the fall of 1972, Nixon was re-elected into office, but the probe continued. FBI agents soon established that hundreds of thousands of dollars in Nixon campaign contributions had been set aside to pay for a massive undercover anti-Democratic operation.

According to federal investigators, CREEP had forged letters and distributed them under Democratic candidate’s letterhead, leaked false and manufactured information to the press, seized confidential Democratic campaign files, and followed Democratic candidates’ families in order to gather damaging information. During an interview with the Senate select Watergate committee on July 13, 1973, former White House aide Alexander Butterfield revealed that Nixon had been taping all of his conversations and telephone calls in the White House since 1971.

After losing a battle in the Supreme Court to keep these tapes private, Nixon was heard approving the cover-up of the Watergate burglary less than a week after it happened. During a June 20, 1972, discussion of the Watergate scandal between the President and former White House chief of staff H.R. Haldeman, an 18 1/4-minute gap had been inexplicably erased, causing frustration and speculation from investigators.

On August 9, 1974, President Nixon resigned-the first U.S. president to do so. However, newly elected President Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon a month later, saving him from facing criminal charges. Liddy later asserted that John Dean was really after a brochure of call-girl pictures kept by DNC secretary Ida Wells that included a picture of Dean’s girlfriend, Maureen Biner.
PostPosted: Fri Jun 17, 2016 11:49 am
June 17th ~ {continued...}

1972 – Chilean president Allende formed a new government and the CIA prepared to oust him.

1979 – Colonel Valeria Hilgart became the first woman Marine to assume duty as chief of staff of a major command (Albany, Georgia).

1983 – National Narcotics Border Interdiction System (NNBIS) began operations under the direction of Vice President George Bush and the executive board consisting of Secretaries of State, Transportation and Defense, the Attorney General, the Counselor to the President, the Director of Central Intelligence, and the Director of the White House Drug Abuse Policy Office. “U.S. Army, Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps airborne and seaborne craft, intelligence, technology, surveillance, and manpower now are used to augment operations by the U.S. Coast Guard, Customs Service, the Drug Enforcement Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Immigration and Naturalization Service, Border Patrol, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office. The system provides a coordinated national and international interagency network for prioritizing interdiction targets, identifying resources, recommending the most effective action, and coordinating joint special actions.”

1991 – The remains of President Zachary Taylor were briefly exhumed in Louisville, Kentucky, to test a theory that Taylor had died of arsenic poisoning. Results showed death was from natural causes.

1991 – The U.N. Special Commission (UNSCOM) is established to monitor Iraqi disarmament.

1992 – President Bush and Russian President Boris Yeltsin signed a breakthrough arms-reduction agreement. Addressing Congress, Yeltsin pledged to find any American prisoners of war still being held in Russia.

1996 – The Middle East Economic Digest reports that Iraq’s State Oil Marketing Organization (SOMO) will soon sign 3-month sales contracts with foreign oil companies. The United Nations selects France-based Banque Nationale de Paris (BNP) to hold the escrow account for Iraqi oil sales, the proceeds of which will be used by the U.N. for humanitarian purposes. Iraq could begin exporting oil under U.N. Security Council Resolution 986as early as late September 1996.

1997 – Mir Aimal Kasi, suspected in the shooting deaths of two CIA employees outside agency headquarters in January 1993, was brought to Fairfax, Va., to face trial after being arrested in Pakistan. He was later convicted and sentenced to death.

2003 – A US federal appeals court ruled the government properly withheld names and other details about hundreds of foreigners who were detained in the months after the September 11th attacks.

2004 – The US bipartisan commission investigating the 2001 Sep 11 attacks released its final report.

2004 – In Afghanistan fighters loyal to several regional warlords stormed Chagcharan, a provincial capital of western Ghor province, and forced the governor to flee. The fledgling Afghan National Army was deployed and soon restored order.
PostPosted: Fri Jun 17, 2016 11:51 am
June 17th ~ {continued...}

2004 – Algerian troops killed one of North Africa’s most-wanted terrorist leaders, who allied his group with Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaida network. Nabil Sahraoui (also known as Abu Ibrahim Mustapha), one of his key right-hand men and a “good number” of other Salafist lieutenants were killed in a military sweep.

2004 – Pakistan’s army killed Nek Mohammed, a renegade tribal leader accused of sheltering al-Qaida fighters, tracing him to a mud-brick compound near Wana via a satellite phone and then leveling the building in a helicopter assault. Army troops killed 30 tribesman suspected of shielding al-Qaida fugitives. As many as 70 “foreign terrorists” were also killed in the operation.

2006 – The Second Battle of Ramadi was fought for control of the capital of the Al Anbar Governorate in western Iraq. A combined force of U.S. Soldiers, U.S. Marines, U.S. Navy SEALs, and Iraqi Security Forces fought insurgents for control of key locations in Ramadi, including the Government Center and the General Hospital. Coalition strategy relied on establishing a number of patrol bases called Combat Operation Posts throughout the city. U.S. military officers believe that insurgent actions during the battle led to the formation of the Anbar Awakening.

In August, insurgents executed a tribal sheik who was encouraging his kinsmen to join the Iraqi police and prevented his body from being buried in accordance with Islamic laws. In response, Sunni sheiks banded together to drive insurgents from Ramadi. In September 2006, Sheik Abdul Sattar Abu Risha formed the Anbar Salvation Council, an alliance of approximately 40 Sunni tribes. The battle also marked the first use of chlorine bombs by insurgents during the war. On October 21, 2006, insurgents detonated a car-bomb with two 100-pound chlorine tanks, injuring three Iraqi policemen and a civilian in Ramadi.
PostPosted: Sat Jun 18, 2016 9:44 am
June 18th ~

1778 – After almost nine months of occupation, the 15,000 British troops under Sir Henry Clinton evacuate Philadelphia, the former U.S. capital. The British position in Philadelphia had become untenable after France’s entrance into the war on the side of the Americans. To avoid the French fleet, General Clinton was forced to lead his British-Hessian force to New York City by land. Loyalists in the city sailed down the Delaware River to escape the Patriots, who returned to Philadelphia the day after the British departure. U.S. General Benedict Arnold, who led the force that reclaimed the city without bloodshed, was appointed military governor.

On June 24th, the Continental Congress returned from its temporary capital of York, Pennsylvania. On September 26, 1777, Philadelphia was captured by the British following Patriot General George Washington’s defeats at the Battle of Brandywine and the Battle of the Clouds. British General William Howe had made Philadelphia, the seat of the Continental Congress, the focus of his campaign, but the Patriot government had deprived him of the decisive victory he hoped for by moving its operations to the more secure site of York one week before. Nine months later, the Continental Congress returned.

1812 – The day after the Senate followed the House of Representatives in voting to declare war against Great Britain, President James Madison signs the declaration into law–and the War of 1812 begins. The American war declaration, opposed by a sizable minority in Congress, had been called in response to the British economic blockade of France, the induction of American seaman into the British Royal Navy against their will, and the British support of hostile Indian tribes along the Great Lakes frontier. A faction of Congress known as the “War Hawks” had been advocating war with Britain for several years and had not hidden their hopes that a U.S. invasion of Canada might result in significant territorial land gains for the United States. In the months after President Madison proclaimed the state of war to be in effect, American forces launched a three-point invasion of Canada, all of which were decisively unsuccessful.

In 1814, with Napoleon Bonaparte’s French Empire collapsing, the British were able to allocate more military resources to the American war, and Washington, D.C., fell to the British in August. In Washington, British troops burned the White House, the Capitol, and other buildings in retaliation for the earlier burning of government buildings in Canada by U.S. soldiers. In September, the tide of the war turned when Thomas Macdonough’s American naval force won a decisive victory at the Battle of Plattsburg Bay on Lake Champlain. The invading British army was forced to retreat back into Canada.

The American victory on Lake Champlain led to the conclusion of U.S.-British peace negotiations in Belgium, and on December 24, 1814, the Treaty of Ghent was signed, formally ending the War of 1812. By the terms of the agreement, all conquered territory was to be returned, and a commission would be established to settle the boundary of the United States and Canada. British forces assailing the Gulf Coast were not informed of the treaty in time, and on January 8, 1815, the U.S. forces under Andrew Jackson achieved the greatest American victory of the war at the Battle of New Orleans. The American public heard of Jackson’s victory and the Treaty of Ghent at approximately the same time, fostering a greater sentiment of self-confidence and shared identity throughout the young republic.

1862 – Commander S.P. Lee submitted a demand from Flag Officer Farragut and General Butler for the surrender of Vicksburg; Confederate authorities refused and a year-long land and water assault on the stronghold began.

1863 – After repeated acts of insubordination, General John McClernand was relieved by General Ulysses S. Grant during the siege of Vicksburg.
PostPosted: Sat Jun 18, 2016 9:49 am
June 18th ~ {continued...}

1863 – Rear Admiral Farragut in U.S.S. Monongahela steamed down river from Port Hudson to Plaquemine, Louisiana, where a raid by a company of Confederate cavalry had burned two Army transports. It was feared that the Confederate intent was to capture Donaldsonville, Louisiana, cutting off the flow of supplies between New Orleans and General Banks before Port Hudson. U.S.S. Winona, Lieutenant Commander Aaron ‘V. Weaver, shelled the Confederate cavalrymen from the town.

1864 – At Petersburg, Union General Ulysses S. Grant realized the town could no longer be taken by assault and settled into a siege.

1864 – Union war hero Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain is severely wounded at Petersburg, Virginia, while leading an attack on a Confederate position. Chamberlain, a college professor from Maine, took a sabbatical to enlist in the Union army. As commander of the 20th Maine, he earned distinction at Gettysburg when he shored up the Union left flank and helped save Little Round Top for the Federals. His bold counterattack against the Confederates earned him the Congressional Medal of Honor. His wound at Petersburg was the most serious of the six he received during the war.

Doctors in the field hospital pronounced his injury fatal, and Union General Ulysses S. Grant promoted him to brigadier general as a tribute to his service and bravery. Miraculously, he survived and spent the rest of the Petersburg campaign convalescing at his Maine home. He returned to the Army of the Potomac in time for Lee’s surrender at Appomattox, and he was given the honor of accepting the arms of the Confederate infantry.

Chamberlain returned to Maine after the war and served four terms as governor. He then became president of Bowdoin College—the institution that had refused to release him for military service—and held the position until 1883. Chamberlain remained active in veterans’ affairs and, like many soldiers, attended regimental reunions and kept alive the camaraderie created during the war. He was present for the 50th anniversary of Gettysburg in 1913, one year before he died of an infection from the wound he suffered at Petersburg.

1878 – Congress established the U.S. Life-Saving Service as a separate agency under the control of the Treasury Department.

1878 – The 45th Congress enacted a rider on an Army appropriations bill that became known as the Posse Comitatus Act [Chapter 263, Section 15, U.S. Statutes, Vol. 20.] This act limited active-duty military involvement in civil law enforcement leaving the Revenue Cutter Service as the only military force consistently charged with federal law enforcement on the high seas and in U.S. waters and the militia, later to become the National Guard, available for such duty.

The rider prohibited the use of the Army in domestic civilian law enforcement without Constitutional or Congressional authority. The use of the Navy was prohibited by regulation and the rider was amended in 1976 outlawing the use of the Air Force. In 1981, however, new legislation allowed the Secretary of Defense to bring Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps support to civilian authorities in intelligence, equipment, base and research facilities, and related training.

1900 – Empress Douairisre ordered I-Ho-Chuan (the Boxers) to kill all foreigners.

1903 – 1st transcontinental auto trip began in SF and arrived in NY 3-months later.

1918 – Allied forces on the Western Front began their largest counter-attack against the spent German army.

1942 – The U.S. Navy commissioned its first black officer, Harvard University medical student Bernard Whitfield Robinson.
PostPosted: Sat Jun 18, 2016 9:57 am
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1944 – On Saipan, elements of the US 5th Amphibious Corps continue to make progress. The 4th Marine Division reaches the west side of the island at Magicienne Bay. This advance divides the Japanese garrison. Elements of the 27th Division capture Aslito airfield. Japanese air strikes sink 1 American destroyers and 2 tankers as well as damaging the escort carrier Fanshaw Bay. Most of the American air and naval support has withdrawn to meet the approaching Japanese fleet.

1944 – The main US carrier forces rendezvous west of the Mariana Islands. Japanese scout planes sight the American fleet late in the day. The Japanese command intends to launch air strikes next morning, while still beyond range, and fly the aircraft to Guam to refuel and rearm.

1944 – Elements of the French Expeditionary Corps (part of US 5th Army), in the west, enter Radicofani.

1945 – On instructions from Emperor Hirohito, Prime Minister Suzuki tells the Japanese Supreme Council that it is the intention of Hirohito to seek peace with the Allies as soon as possible.

1945 – On Okinawa, the remnants of the Japanese 32nd Army continue to offer determined resistance to attacks of the US 3rd Amphibious Corps and the US 24th Corps. Lt. General Simon Bolivar Buckner, commanding US 10th Army, is killed by Japanese artillery fire while he is on a visit to the front line, inspecting troops of the US 8th Marine Division. He is temporarily replaced by General Geiger, commanding the US 3rd Amphibious Corps.

1945 – On Luzon, elements of the US 37th Division, supported by an armored column, advance in the Caygayan valley, capturing Ilagan airfield and crossing the Ilagan River. On Mindanao, organized Japanese resistance comes to an end. Forces of the Japanese 35th Army have been cut off and dependent on roots and tree bark for food for some time now. Nonetheless, some small units of Japanese continue to resist.

1945 – General Dwight D. Eisenhower received a tumultuous welcome in Washington, where he addressed a joint session of Congress. Eisenhower went on to meet Pres. Harry Truman and the 2 men established a warm relationship that later soured. In 2001 Steve Neal authored “Harry and Ike: The Relationship That Remade the Postwar World.”

1945 – Organized Japanese resistance ended on the island of Mindanao, Philippines.

1953 – ROK President Syngman Rhee ordered ROK guards to release 25,000 North Korean prisoners who did not wish to be repatriated. This unilateral action by Rhee threatened to derail armistice negotiations.

1953 – U.S. Air Force Captains Lonnie R. Moore and Ralph S. Parr of the 4th Fighter-Interceptor Wing became the 33rd and 34th aces of the war. Their F-86s were named “Billie/Margie” and “Barb/Vent De Mort.”

1954 – Albert Patterson was assassinated in Phenix, Ala. He had recently been elected as attorney general on a platform to crack down on vice. His murder led the governor to call in the National Guard to replace local law enforcement and cleanup the vice. Patterson’s son John filled the attorney general position. He was elected governor in 1958.

1957 – CNO approves ship characteristics of the Fleet Ballistic Missile submarine.
PostPosted: Sat Jun 18, 2016 10:02 am
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1964 – In a meeting with North Vietnam’s Premier Pham Van Dong, J. Blair Seaborn, the chief Canadian delegate to the International Control Commission, is serving as a secret envoy for the US government for he has been authorized to appraise the situation in Hanoi, specifically, to see whether the North Vietnamese leaders are ready to pull back from the war. Although Seaborn is not authorized to make any literal threats, he leaves the Premier with little doubt that the United States was prepared to ‘carry the war to the North…if pushed too far.’ Seaborn, however, was not informed about, nor authorized to convey a package of proposals including the withdrawal of US forces and various forms of economic aid if Hanoi would halt hostilities in South Vietnam. When Seaborn returns to Saigon and sends two long reports to the US State Department, no action is taken by the US authorities.

1965 – For the first time, 28 B-52s fly-bomb a Viet Cong concentration in a heavily forested area of Binh Duong Province northwest of Saigon. Such flights, under the aegis of the Strategic Air Command (SAC), became known as Operation Arc Light. The B-52s that took part in the Arc Light missions had been deployed to Andersen Air Force Base in Guam and more bombers were later deployed to bases in Okinawa and U-Tapao, Thailand. In addition to supporting ground tactical operations, B-52s were used to interdict enemy supply lines in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos, and later to strike targets in North Vietnam.

Releasing their bombs from 30,000 feet, the B-52s could neither be seen nor heard from the ground as they inflicted awesome damage. B-52s were instrumental in breaking up enemy concentrations besieging Khe Sanh in 1968 and An Loc in 1972. Between June 1965 and August 1973, 126,615 B-52 sorties were flown over Southeast Asia. During those operations, the Air Force lost 29 B-52s: 17 from hostile fire over North Vietnam and 12 from operational causes.

1966 – Gen. William Westmoreland, senior U.S. military commander in Vietnam, sends a new troop request to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Westmoreland stated that he needed 542,588 troops for the war in Vietnam in 1967–an increase of 111,588 men to the number already serving there. In the end, President Johnson acceded to Westmoreland’s wishes and dispatched the additional troops to South Vietnam, but the increases were done in an incremental fashion. The highest number of U.S. troops in South Vietnam was 543,500, which was reached in 1969.

1979 – During a summit meeting in Vienna, President Jimmy Carter and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev sign the SALT-II agreement dealing with limitations and guidelines for nuclear weapons. The treaty, which never formally went into effect, proved to be one of the most controversial U.S.-Soviet agreements of the Cold War. The SALT-II agreement was the result of many nagging issues left over from the successful SALT-I treaty of 1972. Though the 1972 treaty limited a wide variety of nuclear weapons, many issues remained unresolved.

Talks between the United States and the Soviet Union began almost immediately after SALT-I was ratified by both nations in 1972. Those talks failed to achieve any new breakthroughs, however. By 1979, both the United States and Soviet Union were eager to revitalize the process. For the United States, fear that the Soviets were leaping ahead in the arms race was the primary motivator. For the Soviet Union, the increasingly close relationship between America and communist China was a cause for growing concern.

In June 1979, Carter and Brezhnev met in Vienna and signed the SALT-II agreement. The treaty basically established numerical equality between the two nations in terms of nuclear weapons delivery systems. It also limited the number of MIRV missiles (missiles with multiple, independent nuclear warheads). In truth, the treaty did little or nothing to stop, or even substantially slow down, the arms race. Nevertheless, it met with unrelenting criticism in the United States.

The treaty was denounced as a “sellout” to the Soviets, one that would leave America virtually defenseless against a whole range of new weapons not mentioned in the agreement. Even supporters of arms control were less than enthusiastic about the treaty, since it did little to actually control arms. Debate over SALT-II in the U.S. Congress continued for months.

In December 1979, however, the Soviets launched an invasion of Afghanistan. The Soviet attack effectively killed any chance of SALT-II being passed, and Carter ensured this by withdrawing the treaty from the Senate in January 1980. SALT-II thus remained signed, but un-ratified. During the 1980s, both nations agreed to respect the agreement until such time as new arms negotiations could take place.
PostPosted: Sat Jun 18, 2016 10:06 am
June 18th ~ {continued...}

1983 – From Cape Canaveral, Florida, the space shuttle Challenger is launched into space on its second mission with Dr. Sally Ride, who as a mission specialist became the first American woman to travel into space. During the six-day mission, Ride, an astrophysicist from Stanford, operated the shuttle’s robot arm, which she had helped design. Her historic journey was preceded almost 20 years to the day by cosmonaut Valentina V. Tereshkova of the Soviet Union, who on June 16, 1963, became the first woman ever to travel into space.

The United States had screened a group of female pilots in 1959 and 1960 for possible astronaut training but later decided to restrict astronaut qualification to men. In 1978, NASA changed its policy and announced that it had approved six women to become the first female astronauts in the U.S. space program. The new astronauts were chosen out of some 3,000 original applicants. Among the six were Sally Ride and Shannon Lucid, who in 1996 set a new space endurance record for an American and a world endurance record for a woman during her 188-day sojourn on the Russian space station Mir.

1984 – Radio talk host Alan Berg, the self-described “man you love to hate,” is gunned down in the driveway of his home in Denver, Colorado. With his own show on KOA aiming to stir up controversy, Berg was used to receiving an endless stream of death threats. He had reportedly once said, “You never know where the nuts are going to come from so you live day by day.”

One of the suspects, Bruce Pierce-leader of a neo-Nazi organization called the Order-was arrested nearly a year later in Georgia, driving a van that contained machine guns, grenades, dynamite, and a crossbow. His right-wing extremist group had been linked to many armored-car robberies in the West. David Lane and Richard Scutari, Pierce’s alleged accomplices, were caught a short time later. Authorities believed that Robert Matthews, the founder of the Order, was also involved, but he had died in a fire caused by a shootout with FBI agents in Seattle, Washington, in December 1984.

After Pierce, Lane, and Scutari were charged with violating Berg’s civil rights, a jury concluded that Pierce had been responsible for shooting Berg, while Lane had driven the getaway car. Scutari was acquitted.

1987 – Charles Glass, a journalist on leave from ABC News, was kidnapped in Lebanon. (Glass escaped his captors the following August.)

1995 – The Bosnian Serbs announced the resumption of cooperation with the UN. Serbs released the last 26 UN hostages held since NATO airstrikes.

1996 – Federal prosecutors in California charged Theodor J. Kaczynski, the UNABOM suspect, in four of the Unabomber attacks He was indicted by a federal grand jury for two killings in Sacramento.

1996 – Two Army transport helicopters collided and crashed during training exercises near Fort Campbell, Ky., killing six and injuring 33.
PostPosted: Sat Jun 18, 2016 10:10 am
June 18th ~ {continued...}

1999 – The US and Russia agreed on terms for Russian participation in Kosovo peacekeeping.

1999 – NATO peacekeepers took 25 KLA members into custody after finding 15 Gypsy prisoners they had mistreated. Serb media reported that KLA fighters had killed 3 Serbs in Novo Selo and kidnapped 18 Serbs near Pristina.

1999 – The CGC Midgett departed its homeport of Seattle for a six-month deployment to the Persian Gulf. Midgett was attached to a Navy carrier battle group. The Midgett’s crew brought the Coast Guard’s expertise in boarding ships to the battle group. Once in the Gulf, the cutter’s primary mission was to enforce United Nations’ sanctions against illegal Iraq petroleum shipments and conduct SAR operations.

2000 – A US F-14 Tomcat fighter jet crashed during an air show at Willow Grove, Pa. Two naval aviators were killed.

2001 – The US Navy dropped dummy bombs on Vieques island. A number of protesters were arrested for trespassing.

2001 – In Yemen 15 suspected terrorists were arrested. US FBI investigators had pulled out on June 17 under a security threat.

2002 – President Bush sent to Congress his detailed proposal for creation of a new Homeland Security Department.

2002 – Saudi Arabia announced its first al-Qaida-related arrests since Sept. 11 and said it was holding 11 Saudis, an Iraqi and a Sudanese man behind a plot to shoot down a U.S. military plane taking off from a Saudi air base.

2004 – In southern Afghanistan Taliban insurgents attacked a government office in Mizan, sparking a gunfight with Afghan troops that killed seven people.

2004 – South Korea said it will send 3,000 soldiers to northern Iraq beginning in early August to assist the U.S.-led coalition.

2004 – A Saudi al-Qaida group said it killed American hostage Paul M. Johnson Jr., posting three photos on the Internet showing his body and severed head.

2004 – Saudi security forces killed Abdulaziz al-Moqrin (31), a top al-Qaida leader, and three other militants in Riyadh.

2004 – The U.N. atomic watchdog agency censured Iran for past cover-ups in its nuclear program in a resolution, warning Tehran to be more forthcoming.

2007 – Operation Arrowhead Ripper began when Multi-National Division-North commenced offensive operations against Al-Qaeda positions in Baquba in Diyala province where fighting had already been going on for months. The operation started with air assaults under the cover of darkness in Baquba. Heavy street fighting lasted throughout the first day of the operation, mainly in the center of the city and around the main city market. On 22 June, Coalition attack helicopters killed 17 al-Qaeda gunmen and the vehicle they were using southwest of Khalis in Diyala province. By 19 August, at least 227 insurgents had been killed in Baquba.

2013 – The handover of security from NATO to Afghan forces was completed. The International Security Assistance Force formally handed over control of the last 95 districts to Afghan forces at a ceremony attended by President Hamid Karzai and NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen at a military academy outside Kabul. Following the handover, Afghan forces will have the lead for security in all 403 districts of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces. Before the handover they were responsible for 312 districts nationwide, where 80 percent of Afghanistan’s population of nearly 30 million lives.
PostPosted: Sun Jun 19, 2016 9:06 am
June 19th ~

1586 – English colonists sailed from Roanoke Island, N.C. after failing to establish England’s first permanent settlement in America.

1778 – General George Washington’s troops finally left Valley Forge after a winter of training.
Washington left to intercept the British force on its way to New York City.

1786 – General Nathanael Greene died of sunstroke at his Georgia plantation.

1794 – Richard Henry Lee (b1732) statesman, Declaration of Independence signer, died.

1811 – Samuel P. Chase judge, jurist, Supreme Court Justice, revolutionary, attorney, Declaration of Independence signer; picture on a $10000 bill, died.

1845 – The Secretary of the Treasury had Lieutenants Thornton A. Jenkins and Richard Bache detailed from the Navy and sent abroad to procure information that might tend to the improvement of the lighthouse system of the United States. Subsequently, when the Secretary submitted the report of these two naval officers and asked that a board be appointed to consider thoroughly the matter of lighthouse improvements. No legislative action resulted.

1862 – Slavery was outlawed in U.S. territories. President Abraham Lincoln outlined his Emancipation Proclamation. News of the document reached the south and Texas through General Gordon Granger.

1863 – A naval battery mounted to fire across the river at Cerro Gordo, Tennessee, manned by crew from U.S.S. Robb, Acting Ensign Hanford, was hotly engaged by Confederate troops. Hanford reported: “They [the Confederates] charged four abreast (dismounted) and came to within 20 yards of the cannon’s mouth, while canister was being fired into them like rain.”

1864 – Skirmish at Pine Knob Georgia.

1864 – USS Kearsarge sinks CSS Alabama off the coast of Cherbourg, France. “The day being Sunday and the weather fine, a large concourse of people-many having come all the way from Paris collected on the heights above the town [Cherbourg], in the upper stories of such of the houses as commanded a view of the sea, and on the walls and fortifications of the harbor. Several French luggers employed as pilot-boats went out, and also an English steam-yacht, called the Deerhound.

Everything being in readiness between nine and ten o’clock, we got underway, and proceeded to sea, through the western entrance of the harbor; the Couronne [French ironclad] following us. As we emerged from behind the mole, we discovered the Kearsarge at a distance of between six and seven miles from the land. She had been apprised or our intention of coming out that morning, and was awaiting us.”
PostPosted: Sun Jun 19, 2016 9:08 am
June 19th ~ {continued...}

1864 - {continued...}

Thus Captain Raphael Semmes drew the scene as the historic Kearsarge-Alabama battle unfolded. Alabama mounted 8 guns to Kearsarge’s 7. Yet, Captain Winslow of Kearsarge enjoyed a superiority in eight of broadside including two heavy XI-inch Dahlgren guns while Semmes had but one heavy gun, an VIlI-inch. Perhaps his greatest advantage was superior ammunition, since Alabama’s had deteriorated during her long cruise.

Furthermore, Winslow had protected the sides of his ship and the vulnerable machinery by hanging heavy chains over the sides from topside to below the waterline. Kearsarge’s complement numbered 163; Alabama’s, 149. The antagonists closed to about one and a half miles, when Semmes opened the action with a starboard broadside. Within minutes the firing became fierce from both ships as they fought starboard to starboard on a circular course.

Lieutenant Sinclair, CSN, wrote: “Semmes would have chosen to bring about yard-arm quarters, fouling, and boarding, relying upon the superior physique of his crew to overbalance the superiority of numbers; but this was frustrated.” Shot and shell from the heavier guns of Kearsarge crashed into Alabama’s hull, while the Union sloop of war, her sides protected by the chain armor, suffered only minor damage. One shell from Alabama lodged in the Kearsarge’s sternpost but failed to explode. “If it had exploded,” wrote John M. McKenzie, who was only 16 years old at the time of the battle, “the Kearsarge would have gone to the bottom instead of the Alabama. But our ammunition was old and had lost its strength.” Southern casualties were heavy as both sides fought valiantly.

“After the lapse of about one hour and ten minutes,” Semmes reported, “our ship was ascertained to be in a sinking condition, the enemy’s shells having exploded in our side, and between decks, opening large apertures through which the water rushed with great rapidity. For some few minutes I had hopes of being able to reach the French coast, for which purpose I gave the ship all steam, and set such of the fore and aft sails as were available. The ship filled so rapidly, however, that before we had made much progress, the fires were extinguished in the furnaces, and we were evidently on the point of sinking. I now hauled down my colors to prevent the further destruction of life, and dispatched a boat to inform the enemy of our condition.”

Alabama settled stern first and her bow raised high in the air as the waters of the English Channel closed over her. Boats from Kearsarge and French boats rescued the survivors. The English yacht Deerhound, owned by Mr. John Lancaster, picked up Captain Semmes with 13 of his officers and 27 crew members and carried them to Southampton. The spectacular career of the Confederacy’s most famous raider was closed. Before her last battle Semmes reminded his men: “You have destroyed, and driven for protection under neutral flags, one-half of the enemy’s commerce, which, at the beginning of the war, covered every sea.

Alabama had captured and burned at sea 55 Union merchantmen valued at over four and one-half million dollars, and had bonded 10 others to the value of 562 thousand dollars. Another prize, Conrad, was commissioned C.S.S. Tuscaloosa, and herself struck at Northern shipping. Flag Officer Barron lamented: “It is true that we have lost our ship; the ubiquitous gallant Alabama is no more, but we have lost no honor.” For Winslow and Kearsarge the victory was well deserved and rewarding.

Throughout the North news of Alabama’s end was greeted with jubilation and relief. Secretary Welles wrote the Captain: “I congratulate you for your good fortune in meeting the Alabama, which had so long avoided the fastest ships of the service . . . for the ability displayed in the contest you have the thanks of the Department. . . . The battle was so brief, the victory so decisive, and the comparative results so striking that the country will be reminded of the brilliant actions of our infant Navy, which have been repeated and illustrated in this engagement . . . Our countrymen have reason to be satisfied that in this, as in every naval action of this unhappy war, neither the ships, the guns, nor the crews have deteriorated, but that they maintain the ability and continue the renown which have ever adorned our naval annals.”

Winslow received a vote of thanks from Congress, and was promoted to Commodore with his commission dated 19 June 1864, his victory day.
PostPosted: Sun Jun 19, 2016 9:10 am
June 19th ~ {continued...}

1865 – Emancipation Day, also known as Juneteenth, was the day that Union General Granger informed Texas slaves that they were free. Blacks came to celebrate the day as Juneteenth Freedom Day.

1885 – The Statue of Liberty, a gift of friendship from the people of France to the people of the United States, arrives in New York City’s harbor. Originally known as “Liberty Enlightening the World,” the statue was proposed by French historian Edouard Laboulaye to commemorate the Franco-American alliance during the American Revolution. Designed by French sculptor Frederic Auguste Bartholdi, the 151-foot statue was the form of a woman with an uplifted arm holding a torch. In February 1877, Congress approved the use of a site on New York Bedloe’s Island, which was suggested by Bartholdi. In May 1884, the statue was completed in France, and three months later the Americans laid the cornerstone for its pedestal in New York.

On June 19, 1885, the dismantled Statue of Liberty arrived in the New World, enclosed in more than 200 packing cases. Its copper sheets were reassembled, and the last rivet of the monument was fitted on October 28, 1886, during a dedication presided over by U.S. President Grover Cleveland. On the pedestal was inscribed “The New Colossus,” a famous sonnet by American poet Emma Lazarus that welcomed immigrants to the United States with the declaration, “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, / The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. / Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me. / I lift my lamp beside the golden door.” Six years later, Ellis Island, adjacent to Bedloe’s Island, opened as the chief entry station for immigrants to the United States, and for the next 32 years more than 12 million immigrants were welcomed into New York harbor by the sight of “Lady Liberty.” In 1924, the Statue of Liberty was made a national monument.

1868 – Attempting to convince hostile Indians to make peace with the United States, the Jesuit missionary Pierre-Jean De Smet meets with the great Sioux Chief Sitting Bull in present-day Montana. A native of Belgium, De Smet came to the United States in 1821 at the age of 20. He became a novitiate of the Jesuit order in Maryland and was subsequently ordained in St. Louis. As a priest, De Smet’s ambition was to be a missionary to the Native Americans of the Far West. In 1838, he was sent to proselytize among the Potawatomi villages near today’s Council Bluffs, Iowa. There, he met a delegation of Flathead Indians who had come east seeking a “black robe” whom they hoped might be able to bring the power of the Christian god to aid their tribe.

During the 1840s, De Smet made several trips to work with the Flathead in present-day western Montana. He established a thriving mission and eventually secured a peace treaty with the Flathead’s previously irreconcilable enemy, the Blackfeet. A genuine friend to the Native Americans, De Smet earned a reputation as a white man who could be trusted to fairly negotiate disputes between Indians and the American government. During the 1860s, such disputes became increasingly common in the West, where Plains Indians like the Sioux and Cheyenne resisted the growing flood of white settlers invading their territories. The U.S. government began to demand that all the Plains Indians relocate to reservations. Leaders in the American government and military hoped the relocation could be achieved through negotiations, but they were also perfectly willing to use violence to force the Indians to comply. One of the principal leaders of the so-called “hostile” Indians that resisted relocation was the great Chief of the Teton Sioux, Sitting Bull.

In May 1868, the federal government asked De Smet to meet with Sitting Bull to negotiate a peace treaty. The 67-year-old De Smet agreed to try, and on this day in 1868, he met with Sitting Bull at his camp along the Powder River in present-day Montana. Although tensions were high, Sitting Bull had promised to meet De Smet with “arms stretched out, ready to embrace him.” Lest any hotheaded young brave do something foolish, Sitting Bull first talked with De Smet in his own lodge in order to ensure the priest’s safety. The next day, De Smet met with a council that included other chiefs. De Smet was not able to convince Sitting Bull personally to sign a peace treaty. However, the chief did agree to send one of his lesser chiefs to Fort Laramie, Wyoming, to sign a treaty in which the Sioux agreed to allow white travel and settlement in specified areas. Although Sitting Bull himself had not agreed to the treaty, the negotiations were a triumph for De Smet. As one historian later noted, “No White Man has ever come close to equaling his universal appeal to the Indian.”

De Smet spent the remaining five years of his life continuing to work for peace with the Plains Indians. Through his books and speaking tours, he also attempted to bring a sympathetic portrait of the Indians to an American public that tended to think of Indians as bloodthirsty savages. Ultimately, however, De Smet was unable to stop the tragic Plains Indian War that eventually forced Sitting Bull and other Indians to leave their homes and move to government-controlled reservations. De Smet died in St. Louis in 1873, three years before Sitting Bull won his greatest victory in his war with the United States at the Battle of the Little Big Horn.
PostPosted: Sun Jun 19, 2016 9:12 am
June 19th ~ {continued...}

1888 – Marines landed in Korea and marched 25 miles to protect the Seoul Legation.

1902 – The US Senate voted in favor of Panama as the canal site. US support for a $40 million purchase was based on Congressional acceptance for a canal in Panama rather than Nicaragua, and the acquisition of land to serve as a canal zone.

1941 – In retaliation for the closing of all Italian and German consulates in the United States, similar action is taken by Italy and Germany with respect to American consulates.

1942 – Churchill and Roosevelt confer. One of topics discussed are the plans for a Second Front. It has become clear that Operation Sledgehammer, the planned invasion of France will not be possible in 1942. Churchill proposes an attack on French North Africa instead. Also under discussion is the Atomic research program. It is agree that the Americans and British will share their information, but that the research should be concentrated in the United States rather than wartime Britain.

1944 – In the early morning hours Japanese reconnaissance finds US Task Force 58 while remaining undetected. The Japanese immediately launch 372 aircraft, in four waves, to strike the American fleet. Overall, the Japanese have about 550 planes (including those on Guam) while the Americans have roughly 950. Furthermore, US radar provides significant advance warning of the attack. There is enough time to launch an air raid on Guam before the Japanese can arrive over their target.

American fighters begin intercepting the incoming Japanese planes while 50 miles away. Many of the attackers are shot down before reaching the American fleet; US anti-aircraft defenses accounts for many more. The only hit achieved by the Japanese is on the USS South Dakota which is damaged by one bomb. The Japanese lose 240 aircraft and the Americans lose 29. The attackers fly on to Guam where American aircraft strike and destroy another 50 Japanese planes. Meanwhile, the Japanese aircraft carriers Taiho and Shokaku are sunk by the US submarines Cavalla and Albacore. American participants refer to the day as “The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot” because of the ease with which the Japanese forces have been suppressed.

1944 – “Ace of Aces” David McCampbell (1910-1996) and the Fabled 15 challenged 80 Japanese carrier based aircraft bearing down on an American fleet. He shot down 7 Zeroes and the group routed the enemy fliers at the Battle of the Marianas.

1944 – On Biak, the reinforced US 41st Division launches attacks against Japanese strongpoints in the west of the island.

1944 – Elements of the US 1st Army clear Montebourg and Valognes.

1945 – Millions of New Yorkers turned out to cheer Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was honored with a parade.

1945 – Spain is barred from membership in the United Nations organization as long as the Franco regime continue to hold power.

1945 – On Luzon, in the Cagayan Valley, Ilagan is captured by advancing troops of the US 1st Corps.

1945 – On Okinawa, the insistent use of propaganda by means of leaflets and loudspeakers, by the American forces, induces some 343 Japanese troops to surrender. Japanese forces fall back in some disorder along the frontage of the US 3rd Amphibious Corps but continue to resist along the line held by the US 24th Corps.

1947 – The first plane (F-80) to exceed 600 mph (1004 kph) was flown by Albert Boyd in Muroc, California.

1948 – USSR blocked access road to West Berlin.

1948 – Chief of Naval Operations assigns 3 destroyers to U.N. mediator for the Palestine truce.

1951 – President Harry S. Truman signed the Universal Military Training and Service Act, which extended Selective Service until July 1, 1955 and lowered the draft age to 18.
PostPosted: Sun Jun 19, 2016 9:14 am
June 19th ~ {continued...}

1953 – Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, a married couple convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage in 1951, are put to death in the electric chair. The execution marked the dramatic finale of the most controversial espionage case of the Cold War. Julius was arrested in July 1950, and Ethel in August of that same year, on the charge of conspiracy to commit espionage. Specifically, they were accused of heading a spy ring that passed top-secret information concerning the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union. The Rosenbergs vigorously protested their innocence, but after a brief trial in March 1951 they were convicted.

On April 5, 1951, a judge sentenced them to death. The pair was taken to Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, New York, to await execution. During the next two years, the couple became the subject of both national and international debate. Many people believed that the Rosenbergs were the victims of a surge of hysterical anticommunist feeling in the United States, and protested that the death sentence handed down was cruel and unusual punishment. Most Americans, however, believed that the Rosenbergs had been dealt with justly.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower spoke for many Americans when he issued a statement declining to invoke executive clemency for the pair. He stated, “I can only say that, by immeasurably increasing the chances of atomic war, the Rosenbergs may have condemned to death tens of millions of innocent people all over the world. The execution of two human beings is a grave matter. But even graver is the thought of the millions of dead whose deaths may be directly attributable to what these spies have done.”

Julius Rosenberg was the first to be executed, at about 8 p.m. on June 19, 1953. Just a few minutes after his body was removed from the chamber containing the electric chair, Ethel Rosenberg was led in and strapped to the chair. She was pronounced dead at 8:16 p.m. Both refused to admit any wrongdoing and proclaimed their innocence right up to the time of their deaths. Two sons, Michael and Robert, survived them.

1965 – Air Vice-Marshal Nguyen Cao Ky assumes the premiership of the ninth government to be installed within the last 20 months in the country. The Armed Forces Council had chosen Ky as premier on June 11, and Gen. Nguyen Van Thieu was chosen for the relatively powerless position of chief of state. Having risen to the rank of lieutenant general in the fledgling South Vietnamese Air Force, Ky was one of a group of officers who had seized power earlier in 1965 to end the anarchy that had followed in the wake of the assassination of President Ngo Dinh Diem in November 1963.

The new premier immediately took steps to strengthen the armed forces. He also instituted needed land reforms, programs for the construction of schools and hospitals, and price controls. Additionally, his government began a much-touted campaign to remove corrupt officials. At the same time, however, Ky instituted a number of unpopular repressive actions, including a ban on newspapers. In 1966, Buddhists, among other political factions, demanded Ky’s ouster, and protests took place in various cities.

The disturbances ended partly as a result of a government crackdown and partly because of a loss of support for the Buddhists among dissident elements of the military. Ky continued in his post until the elections of 1967, when be became Vice President of South Vietnam and Thieu became president. Ky served in that position until 1971, when he chose not to run as an opposition candidate against President Nguyen Van Thieu. He reverted to the rank of Air Marshal in the air force.
PostPosted: Sun Jun 19, 2016 9:16 am
June 19th ~ {continued...}

1968 – In a public ceremony at Hue, South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu signs a general mobilization bill. Under the new measure, men between the ages of 18 and 43 were subject to induction into the regular armed forces. Men between the ages of 44 and 50 and youths between 16 and 17 years old were eligible to serve in the part-time civilian People’s Self Defense Organization.

An estimated 90,000 17-year-olds in the People’s Self Defense Organization would be transferred to the regular army. It was believed that, by the end of 1968, the law would provide for the induction of an additional 200,000 men. This would begin a steady growth in the size of the Republic of Vietnam Armed Forces that would accelerate under President Richard Nixon’s Vietnamization program. There would be 1.1 million men and women in the South Vietnamese forces by the end of 1972.

1969 – Former Secretary of Defense Clifford Clark, writing in Foreign Affairs, proposes a timetable for withdrawal from Vietnam which calls for the removal of 100,000 combat troops in 1969 and an additional 100-150,000 troops by the end of 1970. President Nixon, speaking at a news conference expresses the ‘hope that we could beat Mr. Clifford’s timetable.’

1973 – The Case-Church Amendment prevented further U.S. involvement in Southeast Asia.

1976 – U.S. Viking 1 went into Martian orbit after a 10-month flight from earth.

1981 – Boeing commercial Chinook 2-rotor helicopter was certified.

1983 – The crew of the space shuttle Challenger, including America’s first woman in space, Sally K. Ride, launched the Indonesian-owned Palapa B communications satellite into orbit.

1985 – On day six of the hijacking of TWA 847, an ABC News reporter was able to briefly interview the plane’s pilot, John L. Testrake, who said from his cockpit window, “We’re OK.” ABC later denied reports that they had paid the terrorists for the interview.

1985 – In El Salvador four off-duty US Marines and 9 others were killed at sidewalk restaurants in the Zona Rosa section of San Salvador. Pedro Antonio Andrade Martinez (aka Mario Gonzalez), a Marxist guerrilla, was one of the reputed masterminds of the attack.

1992 – In a joint operation with INS, the Coast Guard assisted in the seizure of the 167-foot Belize-registered freighter Lucky No. 1, her 15-man crew, and 117 Chinese migrants that were aboard. The seizure took place off Oahu.

1994 – Former President Jimmy Carter, just returned from North Korea, said he believed the crisis with Pyongyang was over following talks with North Korean President Kim Il Sung on how to resolve the nuclear issue.

1995 – US Air Force Captain Jim Wang, a radar officer, was cleared of wrongdoing in a friendly fire attack on 2 US helicopters over northern Iraq in 1994 that resulted in 26 deaths.
PostPosted: Sun Jun 19, 2016 9:18 am
June 19th ~ {continued...}

1998 – The U.N. Security Council unanimously approves Resolution 1175 allowing Iraq to spend $300 million on spare parts for its oil industry. The spare parts are expected to expand Iraq’s oil export capacity from 1.6 million barrels per day to 1.8-1.9 million barrels per day.

1999 – NATO reached a tentative agreement with leaders of the KLA for the rebel force to gradually disarm, disband and cease military activities in 30 days.

2002 – The space shuttle Endeavour returned to Earth with one Russian and two American crewmen who’d spent six and a-half months aboard the international space station.

2002 – In Afghanistan the 9-day grand council ended with the inauguration of Hamid Karzai as president and the approval of his new Cabinet.

2003 – In Iraq The special “Task Force 20” commando team was joined in the convoy operation by an AC-130 gunship and other air support, attacking by ground and air along a known escape and smuggling route near the western city of Qaim.

2003 – Arrest and guilty plea unsealed of Iyman Faris, an Ohio truck driver who plotted with Osama Bin Laden to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge.

2003 – The U.S. Air Force dropped manslaughter and aggravated assault charges against two fighter pilots who’d mistakenly bombed Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan in 2002. One pilot was waiting trial on a charge of dereliction of duty.

2004 – A US military plane fired missiles into Fallujah, killing 26. The target was a hideout of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s terror network. 23 of the 26 killed were foreign terrorists. 3 Iraqis were among the dead.
PostPosted: Mon Jun 20, 2016 12:19 pm
June 20th ~

1675 – Abenaki, Massachusetts, Mohegan & Wampanoag Indians formed an anti English front. Wampanoag warriors attacked livestock and looted farms.

1782 – Congress approved the Great Seal of the United States and the Bald Eagle as its symbol.

1813 – Fifteen U.S. gunboats engage 3 British ships in Hampton Roads, VA

1815 – Trials of Fulton I, built by Robert Fulton, are completed in New York. This ship would become the Navy’s first steam-driven warship.

1819 – The paddle-wheel steamship Savannah arrives in Liverpool, England, after a voyage of 27 days and 11 hours–the first steamship to successfully cross the Atlantic.

1820 – The Revenue cutter Diligence captured the Buenos Aires privateer-turned-pirate General Rondeau near Wilmington, North Carolina, after a seven-day chase.

1840 – Samuel F.B. Morse, a popular artist, patented his telegraph.

1862 – Union gunboats occupied the Stono River above Cole’s Island, South Carolina, and shelled Confederate positions there. Flag Officer Du Pont reported to Secretary of the Navy Welles: “The Unadilla, Pembina, and Ottawa, under Commander Marchand . . . succeeded in entering Stono and proceeded up the river above the old Fort opposite Legareville. On their approach the barracks were fired and deserted by the enemy . . . This important base of operations, the Stono, has thus been secured for further operations by the army against Charleston.

1863 – President Lincoln admitted West Virginia as the 35th state.

1863 – A heavy combined Army-Navy bombardment of Vicksburg, lasting 6 hours, hammered Confederate positions. Supporting the Army, Porter pressed mortars, gunboats, and scows into action from 4 a.m. until 10. The naval force met with no opposition, and the Admiral noted: “The only demonstration made by the rebels from the water front was a brisk fire of heavy guns from the upper batteries on two 12-pounder rifled howitzers that were planted n the Louisiana side by General Ellet’s Marine Brigade, which has much annoyed the enemy for two or three days, and prevented them from getting water.” After this extensive bombardment, reports reached Porter that the Southerners were readying boats with which to make a river borne evacuation of the city.

Emphasizing the need for continued vigilance, the Admiral informed his gunboat commanders: “If the rebels start down in their skiffs, the current will drift them to about abreast of the houses where the mortars are laid up, and they will land there. In that case the vessels must push up amidst them, run over them, fire grape and canister and destroy all they can, looking out that they are not boarded.”

1864 – General John Bell Hood’s Confederate force attack William T. Sherman’s troops outside of Atlanta, Georgia, but are repulsed with heavy losses. This was Hood’s first battle as head of the Army of Tennessee. Hood had assumed the command from Joseph Johnston just two days before when Confederate President Jefferson Davis replaced Johnston after Sherman backed Johnston into this key Southern city. For nearly three months, Sherman had pushed Johnston southward from Chattanooga to Atlanta. Johnston had blocked each of Sherman’s flanking maneuvers, but in doing so he lost territory. Davis finally lost patience with Johnston, and selected the more offensive-minded Hood to defeat Sherman.

Hood wasted little time. He planned to strike the Army of the Cumberland, commanded by General George Thomas, as it crossed Peachtree Creek. The waterway was deep, and the Confederates destroyed all bridges on their retreat into the outskirts of Atlanta. Hood suspected that the Yankees were most vulnerable when only part of their force was across the creek so he planned a two-pronged assault to hold part of Thomas’ army at bay while the rest could be pinned against Peachtree Creek. It was a sound plan, but poor execution doomed the operation. Scheduled for 1:00 p.m. on July 20th, the attack was delayed for three hours while Hood’s troops shifted into position. The overall assault lacked a general coordination, so units charged the Union positions piecemeal.

Twenty thousand Rebels assaulted the same number of Yankees, but the delay proved costly. The Confederates achieved some success, but could not drive the Union troops back into Peachtree Creek. After three hours, Hood ordered a halt to the advance. Hood was not deterred. Two days later, he attacked Sherman’s forces again at the Battle of Atlanta.
PostPosted: Mon Jun 20, 2016 12:21 pm
June 20th ~{continued...}

1864 – Side-wheelers U.S.S. Morse, Lieutenant Commander Babcock, and U.S.S. Cactus, Acting Master Newell Graham, dislodged Confederate batteries which had opened fire on Army supply wagon trains near White House, Virginia. Rear Admiral Lee reported: “Deserters afterwards reported that a force estimated at 10,000 of Wade Hampton’s and Fitzhugh Lee’s cavalry intended at-tacking our trains, but were deterred from the attempt by the fire of the gunboats.” For three weeks Babcock had supported the Army at White Mouse. The Admiral noted: “I should not fail to call attention to the hearty, efficient, and successful service which Lieutenant Commander Babcock has rendered to the Army in opening and protecting its communications and in repelling the assaults of the enemy.” Next day, U.S.S. Shokokon, Acting Master William B. Sheldon, similarly dispersed an attack on Union transport Eliza Hancox at Cumberland Point, Virginia.

1867 – President Andrew Johnson announced the purchase of Alaska.

1881 – Five years after General George A. Custer’s infamous defeat at the Battle of Little Bighorn, Hunkpapa Teton Sioux leader Sitting Bull surrenders to the U.S. Army, which promises amnesty for him and his followers. Sitting Bull had been a major leader in the 1876 Sioux uprising that resulted in the death of Custer and 264 of his men at Little Bighorn. Pursued by the U.S. Army after the Indian victory, he escaped to Canada with his followers. Born in the Grand River Valley in what is now South Dakota, Sitting Bull gained early recognition in his Sioux tribe as a capable warrior and a man of vision.

In 1864, he fought against the U.S. Army under General Alfred Sully at Killdeer Mountain and thereafter dedicated himself to leading Sioux resistance against white encroachment. He soon gained a following in not only his own tribe but in the Cheyenne and Arapaho Native American groups as well. In 1867, he was made principal chief of the entire Sioux nation.

In 1873, in what would serve as a preview of the Battle of Little Bighorn three years later, an Indian military coalition featuring the leadership of Sitting Bull skirmished briefly with Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer. In 1876, Sitting Bull was not a strategic leader in the U.S. defeat at Little Bighorn, but his spiritual influence inspired Crazy Horse and the other victorious Indian military leaders. He subsequently fled to Canada, but in 1881, with his people starving, he returned to the United States and surrendered. He was held as a prisoner of war at Fort Randall in South Dakota territory for two years and then was permitted to live on Standing Rock Reservation straddling North and South Dakota territory.

In 1885, he traveled for a season with Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West show and then returned to Standing Rock. In 1889, the spiritual proclamations of Sitting Bull influenced the rise of the “Ghost Dance,” an Indian religious movement that proclaimed that the whites would disappear and the dead Indians and buffalo would return.

His support of the Ghost Dance movement had brought him into disfavor with government officials, and on December 15, 1890, Indian police burst into Sitting Bull’s house in the Grand River area of South Dakota and attempted to arrest him. There is confusion as to what happened next. By some accounts, Sitting Bull’s warriors shot the leader of the police, who immediately turned and gunned down Sitting Bull. In another account, the police were instructed by Major James McLaughlin, director of the Standing Rock Sioux Agency, to kill the chief at any sign of resistance.

Whatever the case, Sitting Bull was fatally shot and died within hours. The Indian police hastily buried his body at Fort Yates within the Standing Rock Reservation. In 1953, his remains were moved into Mobridge, South Dakota, where a granite shaft marks his resting place.
PostPosted: Mon Jun 20, 2016 12:23 pm
June 20th ~{continued...}

1866 – 50 Marines and Sailors landed at new Chwang, China, to assure punishment for those who attacked an American official.

1894 – During the summer of 1894, the Pullman Palace Car Company was embroiled in what proved to be one of the most bitter strikes in American history. The strike was a direct response to company chief George Pullman and his hardball tactics, most notably his decision in the midst of the Depression of 1893 to preserve profits by slashing wages and hiking up workers’ rents. A band of frustrated employees implored Pullman to ease rents and restore wages; Pullman responded by firing three of the workers.

In May, the workers fired back at their avaricious boss by calling a strike. Backed by the organizational muscle of Eugene Debs and the mighty American Railway Union (ARU), the workers touched off a round of sympathy strikes and boycotts that effectively crippled the Chicago-based company. However, Pullman had has own network of powerful allies, including other rail honchos and a number government officials. In hopes of enlisting the aid of the federal military, Pullman and his cronies convinced the government that the strikes and boycotts were inhibiting the delivery of America’s mail.

Though Pullman’s cars didn’t carry any mail, the scheme proved effective: in early July, the government banned the boycotts and swiftly shipped troops to Chicago. Fighting broke out shortly after the government forces hit the scene; by the time the militia left Chicago on July 20, the “war” between the troops and the strikers had left thirty-four men dead. But, the damage had already been done to the Pullman strikers: their ranks and clout had been depleted, and, when American Federation of Labor chief Samuel Gompers’ refusal to lend them any substantial support, the rail workers were forced to capitulate to management. In the wake of the settlement, many of the strikers were barred from working in the rail industry.

1898 – During the Spanish-American War on the way to the Philippines to fight the Spanish, the U.S. Navy cruiser Charleston seized the island of Guam.

1900 – German minister murdered; Chinese begin siege of foreigners in Beijing. Military delegations in the “Foreign Quarter” including the US Marine delegation band together to defend their charges.

1913 – First fatal accident in Naval Aviation, ENS W. D. Billingsley killed at Annapolis, MD.

1919 – Treaty of Versailles: Germany ended the incorporation of Austria.

1923 – President Harding set out on a 7,500-mile “Voyage of Understanding” through the northwest. The 57-year-old Harding, who suffered from heart disease, was so shaken by breaking reports of corruption in his administration that he went on a cross-country speaking tour to strengthen his position.

1924 – Audie Murphy was born in Kingston, Texas. He became the most decorated American soldier of World War II who went on to make movies and write a book about his war experiences called “To Hell and Back.”

1934 – Commander in Chief, Asiatic Fleet Admiral Frank Upham reports to CNO that based on analyses of Japanese radio traffic, “any attack by (Japan) would be made without previous declaration of war or intentional warning.”
PostPosted: Mon Jun 20, 2016 12:26 pm
June 20th ~{continued...}

1940 – President Roosevelt strengthens his Cabinet by bringing in two prominent Republicans. Henry Stimson becomes Secretary for War and Frank Knox becomes Secretary for the Navy. Stimson is strongly against America’s isolationist tradition and will be a champion of Lend-Lease.

1941 – A German U-boat sights the American battleship Texas within the area that Germany has declared is the operational area for U-boats. However, after checking with the U-boat command, the Texas is not attacked.

1941 – U.S. Army Air Forces was established, replacing the Army Air Corps.

1943 – US General Krueger establishes 6th Army headquarters at Milne Bay. There is an unsuccessful Japanese attack on the 17th Australian Brigade in the Mubo area.

1943 – Race-related rioting erupted in Detroit; federal troops were sent in two days later to quell the violence that resulted in 34 deaths and 600 wounded.

1944 – Elements of the US 1st Army advance to about 5 miles of Cherbourg and begin to encounter heavier resistance.

1944 – Nazis began mass extermination of Jews at Auschwitz.

1944 – Hitler cheats death as a bomb planted in a briefcase goes off, but fails to kill him. High German officials had made up their minds that Hitler must die. He was leading Germany in a suicidal war on two fronts, and assassination was the only way to stop him. A coup d’etat would follow, and a new government in Berlin would save Germany from complete destruction at the hands of the Allies. That was the plan.

This was the reality: Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, chief of the army reserve, had been given the task of planting a bomb during a conference that was to be held at Berchtesgaden (but was later moved to Hitler’s headquarters at Rastenburg). Stauffenberg planted the explosive in a briefcase, which he placed under a table, then left quickly. Hitler was studying a map of the Eastern front as Colonel Heinz Brandt, trying to get a better look at the map, moved the briefcase out of place, farther away from where the Fuhrer was standing. At 12:42 p.m. the bomb went off. When the smoke cleared, Hitler was wounded, charred, and even suffered the temporary paralysis of one arm-but he was very much alive. (He was even well enough to keep an appointment with Benito Mussolini that very afternoon. He gave Il Duce a tour of the bomb site.) Four others present died from their wounds.

As the bomb went off, Stauffenberg was making his way to Berlin to carry out Operation Valkyrie, the overthrow of the central government. In Berlin, he and co-conspirator General Olbricht arrested the commander of the reserve army, General Fromm, and began issuing orders for the commandeering of various government buildings. And then the news came through from Herman Goering-Hitler was alive. Fromm, released from custody under the assumption he would nevertheless join the effort to throw Hitler out of office, turned on the conspirators. Stauffenberg and Olbricht were shot that same day. Once Hitler figured out the extent of the conspiracy (it reached all the way to occupied French), he began the systematic liquidation of his enemies.

More than 7,000 Germans would be arrested (including evangelical pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer), and up to 5,000 would wind up dead-either executed or as suicides. Hitler, Himmler, and Goering took an even firmer grip on Germany and its war machine. Hitler became convinced that fate had spared him-“I regard this as a confirmation of the task imposed upon me by Providence”-and that “nothing is going to happen to me…. [T]he great cause which I serve will be brought through its present perils and…everything can be brought to a good end.”

1944 – The Japanese fleet withdraws to refuel, believing that their aircraft have landed safely on Guam. US Task Force 58 (Admiral Mitscher) launches an air strike on the Japanese fleet in the late afternoon. The 216 American aircraft encounter 35 defending fighters and sink the carrier Hiyo. Two other Japanese aircraft carriers are damaged as are a battleship and a cruiser. US loses amount to 20 planes shot down and 72 crashing while attempting to land on their carriers in the dark. During the night, the Japanese fleet withdraws and are not pursued.

1944 – Vice Admiral Marc Mitchner, commander of the U.S. Task Force 58, ordered all lights on his ships turned on to help guide his carrier-based pilots back from the Battle of the Philippine Sea.

1944 – On Biak, there is fighting among the Japanese-held caves in the west of the island. The airfields and villages at Borokoe and Sorido are overrun by American forces.

1944 – The US 5th Amphibious Corps continues operations on Saipan. The US 27th Division clears the south of the island while the US 2nd and 4th Marine Divisions advance northward.
PostPosted: Mon Jun 20, 2016 12:27 pm
June 20th ~{continued...}

1945 – On Okinawa, Japanese resistance along the center of the line, held by the US 24th Corps, continues to be strong. The US 32nd Infantry Regiment (US 7th Division) reaches Height 89, near Mabuni, where the Japanese headquarters have been identified. On the flanks, the American Marines on the right and the infantry on the left advance virtually unopposed, capturing over 1000 Japanese and reaching the southern coast of the island at several points. The scale of surrenders is unprecedented for the forces of the Imperial Army.

1945 – On Luzon, Filipino guerrillas advance up the Cagayan valley from Aparri and liberate the town of Tuguegarao. The American regimental task force enters Aparri while elements of the US 37th Division advances 2.5 miles north of Ilagan. Meanwhile, the US 8th Army headquarters announces that operations to recapture the islands of Panay, Negros, Cebu, Bohol and Palawan, as well as the western part of Mindanao, are completed.

1945 – US Task Group 12.4 (Admiral Jennings) with the carriers Lexington, Hancock and Cowpens conduct air raids on Japanese positions. The carriers are en route to join US Task Force 38.

1948 – President Harry S. Truman institutes a military draft with a proclamation calling for nearly 10 million men to register for military service within the next two months. Truman’s action came during increasing Cold War tensions with the Soviet Union. Following World War II, the United States moved quickly to demobilize the vast military it had constructed during the conflict.

During the war, more than 16 million men and women served in the U.S. military; when the war ended in August 1945, the American people demanded rapid demobilization. By 1948, less than 550,000 men remained in the U.S. Army. This rapid decline in the size of America’s military concerned U.S. government officials, who believed that a confrontation with the Soviet Union was imminent. During the years following World War II, relations between the Russians and Americans deteriorated rapidly. In 1947, the president issued the Truman Doctrine, which provided aid to Greece and Turkey to oppose communist subversion.

In that same year, Secretary of State George C. Marshall warned that Western Europe was on the brink of political and economic chaos that would leave it defenseless against communist aggression; the following year, Congress approved billions of dollars in financial assistance to the beleaguered nations. In June 1948, the Soviets cut all land traffic into the U.S.-British-French zones of occupation in West Berlin. The United States responded with the Berlin Airlift, in which tons of food and supplies were flown in to sustain the population of the besieged city. In light of these events, many Americans believed that actual combat with the Soviet Union was not far away.

In response to this threat, President Truman announced on July 20, 1948, that the United States was re-instituting the draft and issued a proclamation requiring nearly 10 million men to register for military service in the next two months. Truman’s action in July 1948 marked the first peacetime draft in the history of the United States, thereby underlining the urgency of his administration’s concern about a possible military confrontation with the Soviet Union. It also brought home to the American people in concrete terms the possibility that the Cold War could, at any moment, become an actual war. In 1950, possibility turned to reality when the United States entered the Korean War, and the size of America’s armed forces once again increased dramatically.

1953 – U.S. infantrymen held onto outposts in the central sector despite an artillery and mortar barrage of some 5,000 rounds followed by a battalion-size assault.

1953 – The U.N. forces established a new main line of resistance on the south bank of the Kumsong River.

1954 – A cease-fire ‘Agreement on the Cessation of Hostilities in Viet Nam’ is signed by General Ta Quang Buu for the Vietminh and General Henri Delteil for France. The agreement ceases hostilities in Cambodia and Laos as well. A second document, the ‘Final Declaration of the Geneva Conference,’ receives the general support of Britain, France, Laos, China, the Soviet Union, Cambodia, and the Democratic Republic of Vietnam but is never signed.

It states: 1) Vietnam is provisionally partitioned along the 17th parallel into North and South Vietnam, pending reunification or other permanent settlement to be achieved through nationwide elections, 2) for a period of 300 days all persons may pass freely from one zone to the other, 3) limits are imposed on foreign military bases North and South, on personnel movements, and re-armaments, 4) nationwide elections are scheduled for 20 July 1956, 5) an International Control Commission made up of representatives from India, Canada, and Poland is established to supervise the implementation of these agreements. T

he Vietminh accept elections because their popular support is such that they would win, so South Vietnam pushes the elctions as far into the future as possible, and Molotov pressures the Vietminh to agree. The United States does not agree with the Final Declaration but does support it, and Bao Dai’s government denounces all agreements.
PostPosted: Mon Jun 20, 2016 12:29 pm
June 20th ~{continued...}

1963 – The United States and Soviet Union signed an agreement to set up a hot line communications link between the two superpowers and a treaty was signed limiting nuclear testing.

1964 – General William Westmoreland succeeded General Paul Harkins as head of the U.S. forces in Vietnam.

1964 – CGC Reliance, the first of the Coast Guard’s 210-foot medium endurance cutter class, was commissioned.

1964 – Viet Cong forces overrun Cai Be, the capital of Dinh Tuong Province, killing 11 South Vietnamese militiamen, 10 women, and 30 children. On July 31, South Vietnam charged that the enemy troops involved in the attack were North Vietnamese Army regulars and that Chinese communist advisors led the attack. This claim was never verified, but it is likely that North Vietnamese regulars participated in the action.

This incident and numerous intelligence reports indicated that North Vietnamese regular troops were moving down the Ho Chi Minh Trail in great numbers to join the fighting in South Vietnam. This marked a major change in the tempo and scope of the war in South Vietnam and resulted in President Lyndon B. Johnson committing U.S. combat troops. North Vietnamese forces and U.S. troops clashed for the first time in November 1965, when units from the newly arrived 1st Cavalry Division engaged several North Vietnamese regiments in the Battle of the Ia Drang Valley in the Central Highlands.

1966 – CGC Point League attacked and crippled a North Vietnamese junk attempting to run the Navy’s Market Time blockade. The action continued into the next day as the junk stranded itself on the shore and its crew fired a demolition charge, destroying their ship.

1967 – Boxer Muhammad Ali was convicted in Houston of violating Selective Service laws by refusing to be drafted. Ali’s conviction was ultimately overturned by the Supreme Court.

1967 – The United States apologizes to the Soviet Union for what it calls an inadvertent US air attack on the Soviet ship Turkestan on 2 June.

1969 – A top-secret study, commissioned by presidential assistant Henry Kissinger, is completed by the office of the Chief of Naval Operations. Code-named Duck Hook, the study proposed measures for military escalation against North Vietnam. The military options included a massive bombing of Hanoi, Haiphong, and other key areas of North Vietnam; a ground invasion of North Vietnam; the mining of harbors and rivers; and a bombing campaign designed to sever the main railroad links to China.

A total of 29 major targets in North Vietnam were pinpointed for destruction in a series of air attacks planned to last four days and to be renewed until Hanoi capitulated. This plan represented a drastic escalation of the war and was never ordered by President Richard Nixon. However, Nixon did order certain elements of the proposal, such as the intensified bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong and the mining of North Vietnamese harbors, in response to the 1972 North Vietnamese Easter Offensive.

1972 – President Nixon recorded on tape information relating to the Jun 16 Watergate break-in. Sections of the tape were later erased, allegedly accidentally by sec. Rose Mary Woods. A panel of experts examined the tape to see if the 18-minute gap was intentional. Richard H. Bolt (d.2002 at 90), acoustic expert at Bolt, Beranek and Newman, later said that if it was an accident than it was committed at least 5 time in the 18 minutes.

1972 – President Nixon appoints General Creighton W. Abrams, commander of US forces in Vietnam, to be the US Army Chief of Staff.
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