August 30: This Day in U.S. Military History

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30 August
1645 – Dutch & Indians signed peace treaty in New Amsterdam (NY).
 1682 – William Penn left England to sail to New World. He took along an insurance policy.
 1780 – General Benedict Arnold betrayed the US when he promised secretly to surrender the fort at West Point to the British army. Arnold whose name has become synonymous with traitor fled to England after the botched conspiracy. His co-conspirator, British spy Major John Andre, was hanged.
 1781 – The French fleet of 24 ships under Comte de Grasse arrived in the Chesapeake Bay to aid the American Revolution. The fleet defeated British under Admiral Graves at battle of Chesapeake Capes.
 1800 – Gabriel Prosser postpones a planned slave rebellion in Richmond, Virginia, but is arrested before he can make it happen.
 1813 – Marines aboard the USS President helped capture the HMS brig Shannon.
 1813 – Creek Indians massacred over 500 whites at Fort Mims Alabama.
 1836 – The city of Houston is founded by Augustus Chapman Allen and John Kirby Allen
 1861 – Union General John Fremont declared martial law throughout Missouri and made his own emancipation proclamation to free slaves in the state. President Lincoln overruled the general.
 1862 – Union forces were defeated by the Confederates at the Second Battle of Bull Run in Manassas, Va. Brig. Gen. Irvin McDowell fought at the Second Battle of Manassas, which was also a Union defeat (the Union army in this case was commanded by Maj. Gen. John Pope). McDowell was then relieved of his command until he was sent to command the Department of the Pacific in 1864, where he finished the war.
 1862 – Confederates under Edmund Kirby Smith rout a Union army at Richmond, Kentucky, in one of the most lopsided engagements of the Civil War. As part of an attempt by the Confederates to drive the Yankees from central Tennessee and Kentucky, Smith moved toward Lexington, Kentucky, with about 19,000 troops in search of supplies. Facing him was a Union force under General Horatio Wright, who was sitting atop a palisade along the Kentucky River just south of Lexington. Part of Wright’s force, under the command of General Mahlon D. Manson, did not receive orders to fall back to the river. Instead, Manson placed his 6,500 troops on high ground around Richmond, further south of the Kentucky River. On the morning of August 30, Smith’s force collided with Manson’s south of Richmond. The Confederates soon routed the Yankees, many of whom were new soldiers with no battle experience. After retreating two miles, Manson’s troops mounted a counterattack but were repulsed. The Union force retreated again, and the Confederates followed with a withering attack. This time, the Yankee retreat was cut off by Colonel John Scott’s Confederate cavalry force. The loss was complete for the Yankees. Fewer than 1,200 of the 6,500 Federals escaped, and more than 4,300 were captured. Confederate losses stood at 98 killed, 492 wounded, and 10 missing out of 6,800. Among those captured were Manson and his entire staff. The Confederates captured Lexington two days later.
 1862 – U.S.S. Passaic launched at Greenpoint, New York. A newspaper reporter observed: “A fleet of monsters has been created, volcanoes in a nutshell, breathing under water, fighting under shelter, steered with mirrors, driven by vapor, running anywhere, retreating from nothing. These floating carriages bear immense ordnance, perfected by new processes, and easily worked by new and simple devices.
 1863 – A detachment of the Marine Brigade, assigned to Rear Admiral Porter’s Mississippi Squadron, captured three Confederate paymasters at Bolivar, Mississippi. The paymasters, escorted by 35 troops who were also taken prisoner, were carrying $2,200,000 in Confederate currency to pay their soldiers at Little Rock. “This,” Porter commented, “will not improve the dissatisfaction now existing in Price’s army, and the next news we hear will be that General Steele has posses-sion of Little Rock.”
 1864 – Small stern-wheeler U.S.S. Fawn, Acting Master Grace, convoyed Union infantry and artillery embarked in transport Kate Hart, on an expedition up the White River from Devall’s Bluff, Arkansas. The troops were to join with General West’s cavalry, then searching for General Shelby’s force of Confederate raiders. Fawn and the transport returned to Devall’s Bluff on 2 September, and commenced a second foray with larger forces embarked in transports Nevada, Commercial, and Celeste that afternoon. Next day, above Peach Orchard Bluffs, Confederate batteries opened on the convoy, but were dislodged from their riverbank position by Fawn’s gunfire. Unable to proceed water-borne because of the low level of the river, scouts and cavalry were sent ahead to communicate with General West, and returned, escorted by Fawn, to Devall’s Bluff on 6 September. Shelby’s forces continued to elude the Union troops and harass shipping on the White River.
 1872 – The Neptune Line steamer Metis sank in 30 minutes off Watch Hill, RI. Of 104 passengers and 45 crew, only 33 survived. A coasting schooner had struck the Metis, which had a full passenger list and cotton cargo bound for New England textile mills. Captain Daniel Larkin (retired light keeper and one of the first Life-Saving Station captains), Captain Jared Crandall (light keeper), and lifeboat crewmen Albert Crandall, Frank Larkin, and Byron Green launched from the Life-Saving station. Boat Captain John Harvey and crewmen Courtland Gavitt, Edward Nash, Eugene Nash, and William Nash saw the collision and launched a fishing seine from the beach. The lifeboat and seine rescued 32. Revenue cutter Moccasin from Stonington, CT, met the boats, took their passengers, and located a survivor. The Moccasin and seine continued to search until dark. Participants were awarded Certificates of Heroism from the Massachusetts Humane Society and gold medals, minted to commemorate the rescue, by Congressional resolution, February 24, 1873. The event signified the growing interaction among the members of the Life-Saving Service, the Lighthouse Service, and the Revenue Cutter Service, a factor in the later merger of the three services.
 1879 – John Bell Hood, confederate general (lost Atlanta, along with arm and leg), died at 48 of Yellow Fever in a New Orleans epidemic.
 1880 – Diablo, a chief of the Cibecue Apache, is killed during a battle with a competing band of Indians. Known as Eskinlaw to his own people, Diablo was a prominent chief of the Cibecue Apache, who lived in the White Mountains of Arizona. Initially, Diablo had attempted to cooperate with the increasing number of whites who were encroaching on the Apache homeland. In July 1869, he traveled to Fort Defiance, the first American military post in Arizona, in hopes of establishing good relations. Three white men returned with Diablo and regular visits between the two groups began. Tensions, however, continued amongst the Apache themselves, many of whom were less welcoming to the Americans. In 1873, a warrior from a competing band of Apaches led by Eshkeldahsilah killed a white man working at the army’s Fort Apache. Diablo tracked down the offending warrior and killed him, winning the Americans’ praise but Eshkeldahsilah’s increased enmity. To avoid further violence, the commander of Fort Apache ordered all the surrounding tribes to move closer to the fort. This may have decreased the attacks on the Americans, but it increased the tensions between the Apache bands. The government further angered Diablo in July 1875, when it ordered that all of the Apaches in the region move to the San Carlos Reservation east of present-day Phoenix. In apparent frustration at the imperious behavior of the Americans, Diablo finally turned against the whites. In January 1876, he attacked the camp near Fort Apache, and he killed at least one white civilian. He also began attacking a competing band of White Mountain Apache who continued to cooperate with the Americans. Eventually, the White Mountain Apache got their revenge on Diablo. On this day in 1880, the two bands of Apache fought a fierce battle near Fort Apache. By the time the American military arrived on the site, Diablo’s opponents had killed him.
 1913 – Navy tests Sperry gyroscopic stabilizer (automatic pilot).
 1918 – The First Army of General John Pershing’s American Expeditionary Force moves into position around the German-held St. Mihiel salient to the southeast of Verdun along the Meuse River. Together with the French II Colonial Corps, the First Army will launch an attack on the position in mid-September.
 1929 – Near New London, CT, 26 officers and men test Momsen lung to exit submerged USS S-4.
 1942 – At Guadalcanal, the American forces receive 18 more fighters and 12 dive bombers.
 1944 – The US 12th Army Group and the British 21st Army Group continue to advance.
 1945 – American and British forces land in the Tokyo area. The US 11th Airborne Division flies in to Atsugi airfield, while the US 4th Marine Regiment of the US 6th Marine Division lands in the naval base at Yokosuka. Meanwhile, the American cruiser USS San Juan starts to evacuate Allied prisoners of war detained in the Japanese home islands.
 1945 – Gen. Douglas MacArthur lands in Japan to oversee the formal surrender ceremony and to organize the postwar Japanese government. The career of Douglas MacArthur is composed of one striking achievement after another. When he graduated from West Point, MacArthur’s performance, in terms of awards and average, had only been exceeded in the institution’s history by one other person-Robert E. Lee. His performance in World War I, during combat in France, won him more decorations for valor and resulted in his becoming the youngest general in the Army at the time. He retired from the Army in 1934, only to be appointed head of the Philippine Army by its president (the Philippines had U.S. commonwealth status at the time). When World War II broke out, MacArthur was called back to active service-as commanding general of the U.S. Army in the Far East. Because of MacArthur’s time in the Far East, and the awesome respect he commanded in the Philippines, his judgment had become somewhat distorted and his vision of U.S. military strategy as a whole myopic. He was convinced that he could defeat Japan if it invaded the Philippines. In the long term, he was correct. But in the short term, the United States suffered disastrous defeats at Bataan and Corregidor. By the time U.S. forces were compelled to surrender, he had already shipped out, on orders from President Roosevelt. As he left, he uttered his immortal line, “I shall return.” Refusing to admit defeat, MacArthur took supreme command in the Southwest Pacific, capturing New Guinea from the Japanese with an innovative “leap frog” strategy. MacArthur, true to his word, returned to the Philippines in October 1944, and once again employed an unusual strategy of surprise and constant movement that still has historians puzzled as to its true efficacy to this day. He even led the initial invasion by wading ashore from a landing craft-captured for the world on newsreel footage. With the help of the U.S. Navy, which succeeded in destroying the Japanese fleet, leaving the Japanese garrisons on the islands without reinforcements, the Army defeated adamantine Japanese resistance. On March 3, 1945, MacArthur handed control of the Philippine capital back to its president. On August 30, 1945, MacArthur landed at Atsugi Airport in Japan and proceeded to drive himself to Yokohama. Along the way, tens of thousands of Japanese soldiers lined the roads, their bayonets fixed on him. One last act of defiance-but all for naught. MacArthur would be the man who would reform Japanese society, putting it on the road to economic success.
 1945 – A proclamation to the German people is signed today formally announcing the establishment of the Allied Control Council and its assumption of supreme authority in Germany.
 1945 – A pale green Super Six coupe rolled off the Hudson Company’s assembly line, the first post-World War II car to be produced by the auto manufacturer. Like all other U.S. auto manufacturers, Hudson had halted production of civilian cars in order to produce armaments during the war. The Super Six boasted the first modern, high-compression L-head motor, though it garnered its name from the original Hudson-manufactured engine produced in 1916. The name stayed, though the engines became more sophisticated.
 1950 – The USAF organized Detachment F of the 3rd Rescue Squadron in Korea and equipped it with Sikorsky H-5 helicopters.
 1950 – The U.S. 1st Cavalry Division relieved the ROK 1st Division on the Naktong River front.
 1950 – The 3rd Infantry Division (minus the 65th Infantry Regiment) sailed from San Francisco for Japan.
 1952 – Captain Leonard W. Lilley of the 4th Fighter Interceptor Wing scored his first aerial victory. He went on to become an F-86 Sabre ace.
 1961 – Two Cuban frigates fire on a Naval Reserve aircraft on a training mission over international waters.
 1963 – Two months after signing an agreement to establish a 24-hour-a-day “hot line” between Moscow and Washington, the system goes into effect. The hot line was supposed to help speed communication between the governments of the United States and the Soviet Union and help prevent the possibility of an accidental war. In June 1963, American and Russian representatives agreed to establish a so-called “hot line” between Moscow and Washington. The agreement came just months after the October 1962 Cuban missile crisis, in which the United States and Soviet Union came to the brink of nuclear conflict. It was hoped that speedier and more secure communications between the two nuclear superpowers would forestall such crises in the future. In August 1963, the system was ready to be tested. American teletype machines had been installed in the Kremlin to receive messages from Washington; Soviet teletypes were installed in the Pentagon. (Contrary to popular belief, the hot line in the United States is in the Pentagon, not the White House.) Both nations also exchanged encoding devices in order to decipher the messages. Messages from one nation to another would take just a matter of minutes, although the messages would then have to be translated. The messages would be carried by a 10,000-mile long cable connection, with “scramblers” along the way to insure that the messages could not be intercepted and read by unauthorized personnel. On August 30, the United States sent its first message to the Soviet Union over the hot line: “The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog’s back 1234567890.” The message used every letter and number key on the teletype machine in order to see that each was in working order. The return message from Moscow was in Russian, but it indicated that all of the keys on the Soviet teletype were also functioning. The hot line was never really necessary to prevent war between the Soviet Union and the United States, but it did provide a useful prop for movies about nuclear disaster, such as Fail Safe and Dr. Strangelove. Its significance at the time was largely symbolic. The two superpowers, who had been so close to mutual nuclear destruction in October 1962, clearly recognized the dangers of miscommunication or no communication in the modern world. Though the Cold War is over, the hot line continues in operation between the United States and Russia. It was supplemented in 1999 by a direct secure telephone connection between the two governments.
 1966 – Hanoi Radio announces that Deputy Premier Le Thanh Nghi has signed an agreement with Peking whereby the People’s Republic of China will provide additional economic and technical aid to North Vietnam. China had already been providing support to the Communists in Vietnam since the war against the French. When the U.S. became decisively involved after the Gulf of Tonkin incident, China increased the support to both North Vietnam and the insurgents in South Vietnam. It was this support and that provided by the Soviet Union that permitted the North Vietnamese to prosecute the war against South Vietnam and the U.S. forces there.
 1968 – In what a later official government report would call a “police riot” the four-day Democratic National Convention and all of it’s accompanying violence and mayhem comes to close as 668 people are arrested and 111 are injured mostly by police overreaction. It’s 1968 and the war in Vietnam is going so badly that President Lyndon Johnson announced in March he would not run again for office. His Vice President, Hubert Humphrey, seen by many as supporting Johnson’s policies, is the Democratic nominee for the general election. To attempt to block the process and give their antiwar candidate, Senator Eugene McCarthy a chance to get the nomination, a varied group of protesters from students to black radicals to widows and parents of men already killed in the war gather to march on the convention center. Expecting trouble William Daily, the no-nonsense mayor of Chicago, calls out the Illinois National Guard as a back up to his police forces. Nearly 6,000 Guardsmen are placed on state active duty, but few are actually deployed to the streets to face protesters. Most are used to guard important government buildings from possible damage from “rampaging mobs” as one police official phrased it. The resulting investigation found little ‘mob’ action. Most people wanted to make their voices known in the convention center but were forcibly blocked by the police, leading to violence mostly by the police. The only incident where about 500 Guardsmen were involved with the crowds occurred this evening as they helped move the protesters, numbering in the thousands, back toward Lincoln Park to disperse them. The resulting report cleared the Illinois Guard of blame for the violence and in fact, stated in several instances Guardsmen intervened to block confrontation between the two warring sides. It’s perhaps a sobering reminder that during the week these events were unfolding in Chicago in Vietnam 308 American soldiers lost their lives, including five New Hampshire Guardsmen of the 3rd Battalion, 197th Artillery, killed by a landmine on August 26th.
 1970 – An estimated 6 million South Vietnamese cast ballots for 30 seats at stake in the Senate elections. While the voting was going on, Communist forces attacked at least 14 district towns, a provincial capital, and several polling places. Fifty-five civilians were reported killed and 140 wounded.
 1983 – U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Guion S. Bluford becomes the first African American to travel into space when the space shuttle Challenger lifts off on its third mission. It was the first night launch of a space shuttle, and many people stayed up late to watch the spacecraft roar up from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 2:32 a.m. The Challenger spent six days in space, during which time Bluford and his four fellow crew members launched a communications satellite for the government of India, made contact with an errant communications satellite, conducted scientific experiments, and tested the shuttle’s robotic arm. Just before dawn on September 5, the shuttle landed at Edwards Air Force Base in California, bringing an end to the most flawless shuttle mission to that date. Guion Stewart Bluford II was born in Philadelphia in 1942. From an early age, “Guy” was fascinated with flight and decided he wanted to design and build airplanes. In 1964, he graduated from Penn State with a degree in aerospace engineering. Deciding he’d need to know how to fly planes if he wanted to build them, he entered the U.S. Air Force and graduated with his pilot wings in 1965. He was assigned to a fighter squadron in Vietnam, where he flew 144 combat missions. After combat service, he became a flight instructor and in the 1970s went on to receive a master’s degree and doctorate in aerospace engineering from the Air Force Institute of Technology. In 1979, he was accepted into the U.S. astronaut program. He made his first flight in 1983 as a mission specialist on the eighth shuttle mission. He later flew three more shuttle missions, logging a total of 700 miles in orbit. After returning from NASA, he became vice president and general manager of an engineering company in Ohio.
 1984 – STS-41-D: The Space Shuttle Discovery takes off on its maiden voyage.
 1986 – Soviet authorities arrested Nicholas Daniloff, the Moscow correspondent for U.S. News and World Report, after he was handed a package by a Russian acquaintance. He was later released.
 1987 – A redesigned space shuttle booster, created in the wake of the Challenger disaster, roared into life in its first full-scale test-firing near Brigham City, Utah.
 1993 – 50 Rangers stage a raid in search of Mohammad Farrah Aidid, Warlord in Somalia.
 1994 – Lockheed and Martin Marietta inked the paperwork on a merger that created one of the world’s largest aerospace/defense companies. The newly formed Lockheed Martin Corporation had a taste for mergers, and continued to acquire other companies, including Loral and Unisys Defense.
 1995 – Bosnian Serbs gave Serbian Pres. Slobodan Milosevic authority to negotiate for them. The West pounded the Bosnian Serbs with artillery and air attacks in hopes of bludgeoning them into serious peace talks.
 1996 – The United States presents evidence to the U.N. Sanctions Committee that Iran is complicit in the smuggling of petroleum products from Iraq through the Persian Gulf. According to U.S. allegations, Iran uses barges and small ships to carry oil products from southern Iraq into Iranian territorial waters. Shipping documents then are forged to show that the cargo is of Iranian origin.
 2001 – U.S. warplanes launch strikes against Iraqi “military targets” after Iraq claims that it has shot down a U.S. spy plane. The U.S. strike also comes at a time when Iraq appears to be improving its air defence system, including longer-range surface to air missiles.
 2001 – In Macedonia NATO troops suspended arms collections to await a parliamentary vote on proceeding forward with the peace accord.
 2002 – For the 6th time in a week, coalition aircraft bombed an Iraqi defense facility in one of the no-fly zones patrolled by U.S. and British pilots.
 2002 – In the Netherlands 8 men were detained for providing financial and logistical services to al Qaeda and for recruiting fighters.
 2003 – In Operation Mountain Viper, the United States Army and the Afghan National Army (nearly 1000 in number) worked together into early September, 2003, to uncover hundreds of suspected Taliban rebels dug into the mountains of Daychopan district, Zabul province, Afghanistan.  The Operation killed an estimated 124 militants. Five Afghan Army personnel were killed and seven were injured. One U.S. soldier died in an accidental fall.
 2004 – US warplanes bombed Weradesh village in eastern Afghanistan after assailants rocketed a nearby government office.
 2004 – Rebel Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called for his followers across Iraq to end fighting against U.S. and Iraqi forces and is considering joining the political process.
Congressional Medal of Honor Citations for Actions Taken This Day
https://thisdayinusmilhist.wordpress.com/2005/08/30/august-30/