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Military History

On 17 May 1943, the crew of the Memphis Belle, one of a group of American bombers based in Britain, became the first B-17 crew to complete 25 missions over Europe.

The Memphis Belle performed its 25th and last mission, in a bombing raid against Lorient, a German submarine base. But before returning back home to the US, film footage was shot of Belle’s crew receiving combat medals. This was but one part of a longer documentary on a day in the life of an American bomber, which included dramatic footage of a bomber being shot out of the sky, with most of its crew parachuting out, one by one. Another film sequence showed a bomber returning to base with its tail fin missing. What looked like damage inflicted by the enemy was, in fact, the result of a collision with another American bomber.

The Memphis Belle documentary wasn’t released for another 11 months, as more footage was compiled to demonstrate the risks these pilots ran as they bombed “the enemy again and again and again—until he has had enough.” The film’s producer, Lieutenant Colonel William Wyler, was known for such non-military fare as The Letter, Wuthering Heights, and Jezebel.

On 18 May 1863, Union General Ulysses S. Grant surrounded Vicksburg, the last Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River, in one of the most brilliant campaigns of the war.

Beginning in the winter of 1862-63, Grant made several attempts to capture Vicksburg. In March, he marched his army down the west bank of the Mississippi, while Union Admiral David Porter’s flotilla ran past the substantial batteries that protected the city. They met south of the city, and Grant crossed the river and entered Mississippi. He then moved north to approach Vicksburg from its more lightly defended eastern side. In May, he had to split his army to deal with a threat from Joseph Johnston’s Rebels in Jackson, the state capital that lay 40 miles east of Vicksburg. After defeating Johnston’s forces, Grant moved toward Vicksburg.

On May 16, Grant fought the Confederates under John Pemberton at Champion Hill and defeated them decisively. He then attacked again at the Big Black River the next day, and Pemberton fled into Vicksburg with Grant following close behind. The trap was now complete, and Pemberton was stuck in Vicksburg, although his forces would hold out until July 4.

In the three weeks since Grant crossed the Mississippi in the campaign to capture Vicksburg, his men marched 180 miles and won five battles. They took nearly 100 Confederate artillery pieces and nearly 6,000 prisoners, all with relatively light losses.

On 19 May 1864, President Abraham Lincoln wrote to anti-slavery Congressional leader Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts proposing that widows and children of soldiers should be given equal treatment regardless of race.

Lincoln shared many of his friend Sumner’s views on civil rights. In an unprecedented move, Lincoln allowed a black woman, the widow of a black Civil War soldier, Major Lionel F. Booth, to meet with him at the White House. Mary Booth’s husband had been killed at Fort Pillow, Tennessee, in April 1864 by a Confederate sniper. The massacre of African-American Union forces that followed the subsequent fall of the fort was considered one of the most brutal of the Civil War. After speaking with Mrs. Booth privately, Lincoln sat down and wrote a letter of introduction for Mrs. Booth to carry to Sumner and asked him to hear what she had to say about the hardships imposed on families of black soldiers killed or maimed in battle. The letter introduced Booth’s widow and said she makes a point widows and children of colored soldiers who fall in our service [should receive the same] benefit of the provisions [given] to widows and orphans of white soldiers.

As a result of his meeting with Mrs. Booth, Senator Sumner influenced Congressional members in 1866 to introduce a resolution to provide for the equal treatment of the dependents of black soldiers. According to the Library of Congress, though, there are no records that Mrs. Booth ever applied for or received a widow’s pension after the bill’s passage.

On 19 May 1967, during the Cold War. The Soviets ratified a treaty banning nuclear weapons from outer space. One of the first major treaties designed to limit the spread of nuclear weapons goes into effect as the Soviet Union ratifies an agreement banning nuclear weapons from outer space. The United States, Great Britain, and several dozen other nations had already signed and/or ratified the treaty.

With the advent of the so-called “space race” between us and the Soviet Union, which had begun in 1957 when the Russians successfully launched the Sputnik satellite, some began to fear that outer space might be the next frontier for the expansion of nuclear weapons. To forestall that eventuality, an effort directed by the UN came to fruition in January 1967 when we, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and dozens of other nations signed off on a treaty banning nuclear weapons from outer space. The agreement also banned nations from using the moon, other planets, or any other “celestial bodies” as military outposts or bases.

The agreement was yet another step toward limiting nuclear weapons. In 1959, dozens of nations, including us and the Soviet Union, had agreed to ban nuclear weapons from Antarctica. In July 1963, the Limited Test Ban Treaty was signed, banning open-air and underwater nuclear tests. With the action taken in May 1967, outer space was also officially declared off-limits for nuclear weapons.

On 20 May 1815, Commodore Stephen Decatur (Frigate Guerriere) sailed with 10 ships to suppress Mediterranean pirates’ raids on US shipping.

On 20 May 1902, we ended our three-year military presence in Cuba as the Republic of Cuba was established under its first elected president, Tomas Estrada Palma. Theodore Roosevelt had criticized the government’s sluggish withdrawal of disease-stricken US troops from Cuba.

On 20 May 1942, during WWII, our Navy 1st permitted black recruits to serve.

On 20 May 1951, Air Force Captain James Jabara, 4th Fighter-Interceptor Wing, became the first Korean War ace and the first jet ace in aviation history after downing his fifth MiG. He accomplished this feat in an F-86 Sabre with one hung drop tank.

On 20 May 1956, we conducted the first airborne test of an improved hydrogen bomb, dropping it from a plane over the tiny island of Namu in the Bikini Atoll in the Pacific Ocean. The successful test indicated that hydrogen bombs were viable airborne weapons and that the arms race had taken another giant leap forward.

On 20 May 1969, after 10 days and 10 bloody assaults, Hill 937 in South Vietnam was finally captured by US and South Vietnamese troops. Ur troops who fought there cynically dubbed Hill 937 “Hamburger Hill” because the battle and its high casualty rate reminded them of a meat grinder. Located one mile east of the Laotian border, Hill 937 was ordered taken as part of Operation Apache Snow, a mission intended to limit enemy infiltration from Laos that threatened Hue to the northeast and Danang to the southeast. On May 10, following air and artillery strikes, our infantry launched its first assault on the North Vietnamese stronghold but suffered a high number of casualties and fell back. Ten more infantry assaults came during the next 10 days, but North Vietnamese defenders didn’t give up their fortified position until May 20. Almost 100 Americans were killed and over 400 wounded in taking the hill, amounting to a shocking 70% casualty rate. Our leaders had ordered the attack primarily as a diversionary tactic, and on May 28 it was abandoned. This led to further outrage in America over what seemed a senseless loss of American lives. North Vietnamese forces eventually returned and re-fortified their original position.

On 23 May 1777, during the Revolutionary War, at Sag Harbor, New York, Patriot troops under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Meigs captured several British vessels and burned Redcoat supplies.

With the help of two local men, Meigs and his Connecticut raiders grabbed the British commander from his bed in the wee hours of the morning, firing only one gunshot. Instead of guns, the Patriots used silent but deadly bayonets to capture the British fort, successfully avoiding announcing their presence with gunfire.

The British had built their fort on the site of a burial ground because it was the highest land in the area and had the best view of the harbor. The Redcoats desecrated colonists’ family gravesites, and in the process, lost the important battle for the hearts and minds of the residents. Nearly half of Sag Harbor’s families fled to Connecticut during the British occupation.

With six Redcoats dead and 53 captive from their success on land, the Patriots moved from the hilltop fort towards the harbor. The British ships anchored there eventually noticed the body of men moving towards them and opened fire. The Patriots, though, went on to burn 24 British ships and their cargoes of hay, rum, grain and other merchandise. With an additional 37 prisoners in custody, the 170 Yankee raiders returned to Connecticut without having lost a single man in their party.

The Sag Harbor ambush was the only successful Patriot attack on Long Island between the British takeover in 1776 and their departure following the Treaty of Paris in 1783.

On 26 May 1865, during our Civil War, Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith, commander of the Confederate Trans-Mississippi division, was the last general of the Confederate Army to surrender. Smith, who had become commander of the area in January 1863, was charged with keeping the Mississippi River open to the Southerners. Yet he was more interested in recapturing Arkansas and Missouri largely because of the influence of Arkansans in the Confederate Congress who helped to secure his appointment. Drawing sharp criticism for his failure to provide relief for Vicksburg in the summer of 1863, Smith later conducted the resistance to the failed Union Red River campaign of 1864. When the Confederate forces under Robert E. Lee and Joseph Johnston surrendered in the spring of 1865, Smith continued to resist with his small army in Texas. He insisted that Lee and Johnston were prisoners of war and decried Confederate deserters of the cause. On May 26, General Simon Buckner, acting for Smith, met with Union officers in New Orleans to arrange the surrender of Smith’s force under terms similar to Lee’s surrender at Appomattox. Smith reluctantly agreed and officially laid down his arms at Galveston on June 2. Smith himself fled to Mexico, and then to Cuba, before returning to Virginia in November 1865 to sign an amnesty oath. He was the last surviving full Confederate general until his death in 1893.

On 26 May 1945, during WWII, some 464 American B-29 Superfortress bombers fire-bombed Tokyo with about 4000 tons of incendiares. Parts of the imperial palace were damaged as was the nearby business district of Marunouchi, which was the targeted area. A total of 26 of the Marianas-based bombers were lost.

On 26 May 1951, during the Korean War, UN Forces drove the communists’ back across the 38th parallel on most of the Korean battlefields.

On 28 May 1754, in the first engagement of the French and Indian War, a Virginia militia under 22-year-old Lieutenant Colonel George Washington defeated a French reconnaissance party in

southwestern Pennsylvania. In a surprise attack, the Virginians killed 10 French soldiers from Fort Duquesne, including the French commander, Coulon de Jumonville, and took 21 prisoners. Only one of Washington’s men was killed. The French and Indian War was the last and most important of a series of colonial conflicts between the British and the American colonists on one side, and the French and their broad network of Native American allies on the other. Fighting began in the spring of 1754, but Britain and France did not officially declare war against each other until May 1756 and the outbreak of the Seven Years War in Europe.

On 28 May 1945, during WWII, over 100 Japanese planes are shot down near Okinawa. This was the last major effort against the Allied naval forces surrounding the island. One American destroyer was sunk in the otherwise unsuccessful air strikes.

On 28 May 1951, UN Forces drove the communists’ back across the 38th parallel on most of the Korean battlefields.

On 28 May 1984, President Reagan led a state funeral at Arlington National Cemetery at the Tomb of the Unknowns for an unidentified American soldier killed in the Vietnam War. The remains were unearthed in 1998 for DNA testing and possible identification. They were later identified as those of Air Force First Lieutenant Michael J. Blassie, and were sent to St. Louis for hometown burial.

On 30 May 1868, by proclamation of General John Logan of the Grand Army of the Republic, the first major Memorial Day observance was held to honor those who died “in defense of their country during the late rebellion.” Known to some as “Decoration Day,” mourners honored the Civil War dead by decorating their graves with flowers.

By the late 19th century, many communities across the country had begun to celebrate Memorial Day, and after World War I, folks began to honor the dead of all of our wars. In 1971, Congress declared Memorial Day a national holiday to be celebrated the last Monday in May.

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