July 18 in Military History

The 54th Massachusetts Infantry, one of the first African American regiments in the Union Army, leads a courageous frontal assault on Fort Wagner outside Charleston, South Carolina. Nearly half the regiment is killed, wounded, or captured, including Colonel Robert Gould Shaw.

After U.S. troops attack Nez Perce bands refusing forced relocation to an Idaho reservation, the tribe's warriors under Chief Joseph and other leaders begin a 1,170-mile fighting retreat toward the Canadian border.

French, American, and British forces launch a massive counterattack against the German salient at the Marne, marking the beginning of the Hundred Days Offensive that would end World War I. The Germans never regained the initiative.

The 1st and 2nd U.S. Divisions, including the 5th and 6th Marines, spearhead the Allied counterattack at Soissons as part of the Aisne-Marne offensive. The Marines' aggressive assault helped break the German line.

Nationalist military officers under General Francisco Franco launch a coup against the Spanish Republic, beginning the three-year civil war that served as a rehearsal for World War II, with Germany and Italy supporting Franco and the Soviet Union backing the Republic.

The Messerschmitt Me 262, the world's first operational jet fighter, makes its first flight under jet power alone at Leipheim, Germany. The revolutionary aircraft would enter combat in 1944, though too late and in too few numbers to change the war's outcome.

General Hideki Tojo resigns as Prime Minister of Japan following the fall of Saipan, acknowledging that the war situation had turned decisively against Japan. His resignation signaled the beginning of the end for Japan's military government.

The U.S. Navy commissions its first thirteen African American officers, the "Golden Thirteen," at Camp Robert Smalls, breaking the service's long-standing exclusion of Black men from the commissioned officer corps.

British Second Army launches Operation Goodwood, the largest armored offensive of the Normandy campaign, committing three armored divisions east of Caen to pin German panzer reserves and facilitate the American Operation Cobra breakout.

President Dwight Eisenhower meets Soviet Premier Nikolai Bulganin, British Prime Minister Anthony Eden, and French Premier Edgar Faure at Geneva for the first postwar summit between the wartime Allies, shaping the early Cold War military balance.

Apollo 11 enters lunar orbit after a three-day coast from Earth, with military test pilots Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins preparing for the next day's lunar landing attempt.