1st
1918. Marine Regiment in France says, “Retreat, Hell!! We just got here.”
2nd
1875. A 4th Infantry detachment under command of LT Adolphus Greely completes the first telegraph line into the Oklahoma Indian Territory.
1995. Air Force F-16 pilot CAPT Scott F. O'Grady is shot down over northwest Bosnia on an Operation Deny Flight mission. He is rescued after an eight-day ordeal during which he subsisted on bugs and rainwater.
3rd
1941. President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order making 2,100 USCG officers and men available to man four Navy transports and 22 other ships manned by U.S. Navy personnel.
1949. ENS Wesley Brown is first African-American to graduate from U.S. Naval Academy.
4th
1942. Three U.S. carriers destroy four Japanese carriers while losing one of their own during the Battle of Midway, inflicting a major defeat on the Japanese fleet.
1944. Soldiers of the 88th Recon Troop. 88th Infantry Division, are the first American troops to enter Rome. More units race to follow.
5th
1944. LTGEN H. M. (Howlin' Mad) Smith is designated as the first Fleet Marine Force, Pacific.
6th
1944. D-Day in Normandy; Operation Overlord begins.
7th
1981. Eight Israeli Air Force F-16s, escorted by F-15s, attack the Osirak nuclear reactor near Baghdad, Iraq, disabling its core. As a result, the U.S. imposes a temporary embargo on the supply of new F-16s to Israel.
8th
1959. The U.S. Postal Service enters the missile age, loading 3,000 stamped envelopes on board a Vought RGM-6 Regulus missile to be launched from the submarine USS Barbero (SSG-317) in the Atlantic. The unarmed missile lands twenty-one minutes later at the Naval Auxiliary Air Station at Mayport, Fla.
9th
1917. Six armed yachts, nucleus of the U.S. Patrol Squadron, sail for France.
10th
1842. LT John Fremont leads an Army expedition with Scout Kit Carson to explore and map routes for emigration through the Rocky Mountains.
1898. Navy lands Marines at Guantanamo Bay; first U.S. troops on Cuban soil.
11th
1911. The Army establishes the School of Fire at Ft. Sill OK. It will be renamed the Field Artillery School in 1919.
1927. Marines hold back crowds welcoming Charles Lindbergh home from Paris.
12th
1775. Navy captures British schooner Margaretta in first action of the American Revolution.
1948. Congress passes the Women's Armed Services Act, establishing the Women's Army Corps.
1956. The Army adopts its official flag.
13th
1913. CAPT John Pershing leads an attack against the last Moro insurgent stronghold at Jolo, Philippine Islands, ending the uprising.
14th
1775. U.S. Army established.
1879. The experimental 25th Infantry Bicycle Corps begins a 900-mile ride from Ft. Missoula MT to St. Louis MO. They complete the trip in 40 days.
2002. Flag Day
15th
1928. LTs. Karl S. Axtater and Edward H. White, flying in an Army Air Corps blimp directly over an Illinois Central train, dip down and hand a mailbag to the postal clerk on the train, thus completing the first airplane-to-train transfer.
16th
1941. The 1st Provisional Marine Brigade is activated for duty in Iceland.
17th
1993. LTCOL Patricia Fornes becomes the first woman to lead an Air Force ICBM unit. She
assumes command of the 740th Missile Squadron at Minot AFB, S.D., a squadron once commanded by her father.
18th
1916. Lafayette Escadrille pilot H. Clyde Balse, becomes, the first American-born aviator shot down in World War I, during a dogfight over Verdun, France.
19-20th
1944. “The Marianas Turkey Shoot: In two days of fighting, the Japanese lose 476 Aircraft. American losses are 130 planes.
20th
1939. The German Heinkel (He-176), the first aircraft to have a throttle-controlled liquid-fuel rocket engine, makes its first flight at Peenemünde with Flugkapitan Erich Warsitz at the controls.
21st
1866. Navy Hydrographic Office established.
22nd
1945. Okinawa is declared captured by U.S. forces. The loss of 6,000 men, 36 ships, and 800 aircraft while capturing this island is a key consideration in the decision to drop atomic bombs on Japan.
1977. The Coast Guard assigned women to sea billets for the first time in that service's history.
23-24th
1952. Combined air elements of the Air Force, Navy, and Marines virtually destroy the electrical power potential of North Korea. The two-day attack involves 1,200 sorties and is the largest single air effort since World War II.
24th
1900. Marine Legation Guard joined the Allies to repulse a heavy Chinese Boxer attack.
25th
1950. North Korean troops invade South Korea to start Korean War.
26th
1948. Operation Vittles, the Berlin Airlift, begins with Douglas C-47 crews bringing 80 tons of supplies into the city on the first day. By the time it ends, on September 30, 1949, the Anglo-American airlift will have delivered a total of 2.3 million tons of food, fuel, and supplies to the beleaguered city.
27th
1950. Flying a North American F-82, 1st LT William G. Hudson destroys a Yak-11 near Seoul, the first enemy plane shot down in the Korean War.
28th
1941. The War Department combines all of the air elements into the new Army Air Forces, under MAJGEN Henry H. “Hap Arnold. 1995. The Smithsonian Institution National Air and Space Museum finally display the Enola Gay — the B-29 that dropped the first atomic bomb on Japan. The exhibition program is straightforward and factual. Earlier, amid major controversy, the museum canceled plans to show the Enola Gay as a prop in a politicized horror show after Congress and the public, alerted by reports from many veterans and military associations, raised strong objections.
29th
1994. U.S. space shuttle makes first visit to the Russian Space Station Mir.
30th
1834. Congress places the Marine Corps under Navy jurisdiction.
1946. The U .S. Navy returned the Coast Guard's eleven air stations to the operational control of the Coast Guard.