August 28 : This Day in U.S. Military History

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28 August
1565 – St Augustine Fla, oldest city in the US, was established.
1609 – Henry Hudson discovered Delaware Bay.
1640 – The Indian War in New England ended with the surrender of the Indians.
1676 – Indian chief King Philip, also known as Metacom, was killed by English soldiers, ending the war between Indians and colonists.
1814 – The War of 1812 was still going strong, as the British continued their ransacking of America. By August 28, they had captured a large portion of the East Coast, including Washington, D.C., prompting New York banks to halt specie payments.
1861 – Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, falls to Union troops after a two-day operation, closing an important outlet from Pamlico Sound for Confederate blockade runners.
1862 – Confederate General Robert E. Lee, by splitting his smaller army and using flanking maneuvers, succeeds in routing the Union Army under the command of General John Pope from field. Fought over much of the same area as the Battle of First Manassas a year earlier, the losses on both sides were much higher. Lee attempts to capitalize on this victory by marching into Maryland to take the war north. He was stopped at Antietam Creek in September.
1862 – The Battle of Thoroughfare Gap, VA.
1862 – Confederate spy Belle Boyd was released from Old Capital Prison in Washington, DC.
1864 – Union General Alfred Terry is promoted from brigadier general to major general of the United State Volunteers. A native of Connecticut, Terry studied law and became a clerk of the New Haven Superior Court before the war. He was a colonel in the Second Connecticut when the war began, and his regiment fought at the First Battle of Bull Run. Terry and his regiment fought at Port Royal, South Carolina, in the fall of 1861. He spent the next two and a half years fighting along the southern coast. For his service, he was promoted to brigadier general and given temporary command of the captured Fort Pulaski in Georgia. At the end of 1863, Terry was assigned to General Benjamin Butler’s Army of the James. He participated in the early stages of the siege of Petersburg, Virginia, before his promotion to major general, and assumed temporary command of the Tenth Corps when General David Birney died of malaria. At the end of 1864, Terry participated in an attempt to capture Fort Fisher in North Carolina, a stronghold that protected the approach to Wilmington, the Confederacy’s most important blockade-running port. Led by General Benjamin Butler, the expedition was a dismal failure. General-in-chief Ulysses S. Grant was so disappointed with Butler that he removed him from command and placed Terry in charge of the next attempt. In January 1865, Terry teamed with Admiral David Porter to make another attempt on Fort Fisher. Porter’s ships shelled the fort, and Terry led nearly 10,000 troops on multiple attacks that effected a surrender by the Confederate garrison inside. Terry went on to a distinguished postwar military career. He commanded the Department of Dakota in the late 1860s, then took over the Department of the South during Reconstruction. He returned to the Department of Dakota, and he was the overall commander of the expedition that resulted in the massacre of George Custer and his entire command at the Battle of the Little Bighorn on June 25, 1876. Terry retired in 1888, and he died in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1890 at age 63.
1867 – Captain William Reynolds of Lackawanna raises U.S. flag over Midway Island and took formal possession of these islands for the U.S.
1883 – John Montgomery (d.1911 in a glider crash) made the first manned, controlled flight in the US in his “Gull” glider, whose design was inspired by watching birds.
1898 – Marines defended American interests in Valparaiso, Chile.
1919 – President Woodrow Wilson signed Executive Order 3160 which returned the Coast Guard to the administrative control of the Treasury Department from the Navy after World War I.
1933 – The government took steps to safeguard the nation’s gold supplies as the Depression rolled on. On this day, an executive order was handed down that prohibited “hoarding” gold and placed limits on exports of precious metal.
1941 – With the nation on the verge of entering World War II and prices threatening to skyrocket, the government chose to take action against inflation. On this day, President Franklin Roosevelt handed down an executive order establishing the Office of Price Administration (OPA). Charged with controlling consumer prices in the face of war, the OPA wheeled into action, imposing rent controls and a rationing program which initially targeted auto tires. Soon, the agency was churning out coupon books for sugar, coffee, meat, fats, oils, and numerous other items. Though goods were in tight supply, Americans were urged to stick to the system of rationing. Some even took the Homefront Pledge, a declaration of their commitment to avoiding the black market in favor of buying the OPA way. The end of the war didn t prompt an instant shutdown of the OPA. Reasoning that some goods were still quite scarce, President Truman kept the agency running. However, the existence of a government agency for regulated prices and production didn’t sit well with some people. Big business bristled at the controls, as did farmers, who suffered under continued meat rationing. Soon after the ’46 election, the OPA was relieved of its duties, with only rents, sugar, and rice still subject to controls. The agency’s record of service during the war was fairly impressive: by V-J, consumer prices had increased by 31 percent, a number which was noticeably better than the 62 percent bloating of prices during World War I.
1942 – 1st and 2nd Bn 7th Marines leave Pago Pago for combat.
1942 – 120 women, commissioned directly as ENS or LTJG, reported to “USS Northampton,” Smith College for training.
1942 – At Guadalcanal, the Japanese received more reinforcements brought in by Admiral Tanaka’s 2nd Destroyer Flotilla, nicknamed the “Tokyo Express.”
1943 – Mussolini was transferred from La Maddalena Sardinia to Gran Sasso.
1944 – Elements of US 1st Army cross the Marne River at Meaux. The US 3rd Army is approaching Reims.
1944 – The German garrisons in Toulon and Marseilles surrender. In the Rhone valley, some elements of the German 19th Army have been cut off, to the south of Montelimar, by forces of the US 7th Army. Among those elements is the German 11th Panzer Division, which launches an attack northward and succeeds in breaking through the line with heavy losses from Allied artillery and ground attack aircraft.
1945 – Goring, Ribbentrop, and 22 others former Nazi government officials are indicted as war criminals. Hermann Goring heads the list of 24. Rudolf Hess, formerly deputy to Hitler, who has been a prisoner in Britain since May 1941, is next on the list, followed by Martin Bormann, the secretary of the NSDAP, who disappeared from the Berlin bunker. Others include Konstantin von Neurath, the first foreign minister to Hitler; Gustav Krupp von Bohlen, the industrialist; Franz von Papen, the vice-chancellor in 1933-34; and, Hjalmar Schacht, who served as the minister of finance in the Nazi government until falling out of favor with Hitler.
1945 – US forces under General George Marshall landed in Japan. This advance guard of 150 American technicians land at Atsugi airfield, near Yokohama. For the first time, the Allies set foot on Japanese soil. Their arrival has been delayed for 48 hours by the forecast of a typhoon.
1945 – Chinese communist leader Mao Tse-tung arrived in Chunking to confer with Nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek in a futile effort to avert civil war.
1952 – Units on USS Boxer (CV-21) launch explosive-filled drone which explodes against railroad bridge near Hungnam, Korea. First guided missile launched from ship during Korean Conflict.
1963 – As soon as two U.S. Air Force KC-135 tanker aircraft became reported as overdue at their destination, Homestead Air Force Base, Florida, the U.S. Coast Guard Eastern Area Commander initiated an intensive air search. It lasted through 2 September with as many as 25 U.S. Coast Guard, Air Force, and Navy planes participating. None of the 11 occupants of the two KC-135’s were ever found, only wreckage, indicating that there had been a midair collision.
1965 – Navy CDR Scott Carpenter and 9 aquanauts enter SeaLab II, 205 ft. below Southern California’s waters to conduct underwater living and working tests.
1965 – The Viet Cong were routed in the Mekong Delta by U.S. forces, with more than 50 killed.
1966 – It is reported in three Soviet newspapers that North Vietnamese pilots are undergoing training in a secret Soviet air base to fly supersonic interceptors against U.S. aircraft. This only confirms earlier reports that the Soviets had initiated close relations with North Vietnam after a visit by Soviet Premier Aleksei Kosygin to Hanoi in February 1965 during which he signed economic and military treaties with the North, pledging full support for their war effort. The Soviets and North Vietnamese leadership planned military strategy and discussed North Vietnam’s needs to prosecute such a strategy. The Soviets agreed to supply the necessary war materials, to include air defense weapons for the North and offensive weapons to be employed in the South. At one point in the war, the Soviets would supply 80 percent of all supplies reaching North Vietnam.
1968 – The Democratic National Convention in Chicago endorses the Johnson administration’s platform on the war in Vietnam and chooses Vice President Hubert Humphrey as the party’s nominee for president. The decision on the party platform resulted in a contentious three-hour debate inside the convention hall. Outside, a full-scale riot erupted, where antiwar protesters battled with police and National Guardsmen. By the time the convention was over, 668 demonstrators had been arrested and many Americans were stunned by the images of armed conflict in the streets. Humphrey’s Republican opponent, Richard Nixon, very successfully used this incident in a call for return to law and order that won him much support during the election campaign.
1972 – The U.S. Air Force gets its first ace (a designation traditionally awarded for five enemy aircraft confirmed shot down) since the Korean War. Captain Richard S. Ritchie, flying with his “backseater” (radar intercept officer), Captain Charles B. DeBellevue, in an F-4 out of Udorn Air Base in Thailand, shoots down his fifth MiG near Hanoi. Two weeks later, Captain DeBellvue, flying with Captain John A. Madden, Jr., shot down his fifth and sixth MiGs. The U.S. Navy already had two aces, Lieutenants Randall Cunningham and Bill Driscoll. By this time in the war, there was only one U.S. fighter-bomber base left in South Vietnam at Bien Hoa. The rest of the air support was provided by aircraft flying from aircraft carriers or U.S. bases in Thailand. Also on this day: Back in the United States, President Nixon announces that the military draft will end by July 1973.
1973 – Judge John Sirica ordered President Nixon to turn over secret Watergate tapes. Nixon refused and appealed the order.
1986 – US Navy officer Jerry A. Whitworth was sentenced to 365 years for spying.
1990 – German spy Juergen Mohamed Gietler was arrested for passing military information to Iraq. He provided Iraq with intelligence reports on US military plans that included what the West knew of Iraqi Scud-B missile sites. He was convicted in a secret trial in 1991, sentenced to 5 years in prison and released in 1994 after which he moved to Egypt.
1990 – Iraq declared occupied Kuwait the 19th province of Iraq, renamed Kuwait City Kadhima, and created a new district named after President Saddam Hussein. A puppet regime under Alaa Hussein was set up. Alaa Hussein was convicted of treason in 2000 and sentenced to death. Saddam Hussein, saying he sympathized with his foreign captives, pledged to free detained women and children.
1991 – A helicopter from USS America (CV-66) rescues 3 civilian sailors who spent 10 days in a lifeboat 80 miles off Capt May, NJ after their sailboat capsized.
1995 – A request from the commander in chief of naval forces Europe led to the deployment of the CGC Dallas to the Mediterranean. She departed Governors Island on 29 May 1995 and visited ports throughout the Mediterranean and Black Sea, including Istanbul and Samsun in Turkey; Durres, Albania; Varna, Bulgaria; Constanta, Romania; Koper, Slovenia; Taranto, Italy; and Bizerte, Tunisia. The crew trained with naval and coast guard forces in each country. She deployed for a few days with the Sixth Fleet and served as a plane guard for the USS Theodore Roosevelt. The crew was also able to coordinate schedules with six NATO and non-NATO nations to conduct boardings. She returned to the U.S. in August and arrived at Governors Island on 28 August.
1995 – A mortar shell tore through a crowded market in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, killing 38 people and triggering NATO airstrikes against the Bosnian Serbs. Bosnian Serb shells hit Serajevo near the main market and killed 37 people and wounded 85 others.
1997 – US troops clashed with Bosnian Serbs in Brcko. NATO forces rescued some 50 besieged UN police monitors as crowds, opposed to Pres. Plavsic, demanded the expulsion of Western peacekeepers. U.S. troops fired tear gas and warning shots to fend off rock-hurling Serb mobs. The attempt by US-led NATO forces to install Plavsic forces in police stations in 3 cities failed.
2000 – In the Philippines Abu Sayyaf guerrillas abducted Jeffrey Schilling (24), their first American hostage.
2002 – Federal grand juries charged six men in Detroit with conspiring to support al-Qaeda’s terrorism as members of a sleeper cell.
2002 – U.N. Sec.-Gen. Kofi Annan urged the United States to resist attacking Iraq, joining calls from leaders in Germany, China, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain for restraint in considering military action to topple Saddam Hussein.
2003 – British Prime Minister Tony Blair denied that the government had “sexed up” a dossier on Iraq’s weapons threat, and said he would have resigned if it had been true.
2004 – Shiite militants and U.S. forces battled in the Baghdad’s Sadr City slum. U.S. warplanes carried out airstrikes for the second straight day in the city of Fallujah.
2004 – A Yemen court convicted 15 militants on terror charges including the 2002 bombing of a French oil tanker and plotting to kill the U.S. ambassador.
2005 – Iraqi leaders submit a draft constitution just before a self-imposed deadline.
Congressional Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken This Day


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