June 2 in Military History

Ottawa chief Pontiac led a coalition of Native American tribes in besieging Fort Detroit, beginning Pontiac's War, the largest Native American resistance to British expansion after the French and Indian War.

Parliament passed the final Coercive Act, authorizing royal governors to quarter British soldiers in unoccupied houses, barns, and outbuildings throughout the American colonies. The act fueled colonial outrage and hastened the path to revolution.

Harriet Tubman guided three Union gunboats up the Combahee River in South Carolina, destroying Confederate supply depots and liberating more than 700 enslaved people in the first armed operation led by a woman in the Civil War.

Union forces completed their positions for the ill-fated frontal assault at Cold Harbor, where 7,000 soldiers would fall in thirty minutes on June 3.

Confederate General Edmund Kirby Smith formally surrendered the Trans-Mississippi Department at Galveston, ending organized Confederate military resistance west of the Mississippi River nearly two months after Appomattox.

Operation Dynamo continued as the Luftwaffe intensified its attacks on the Dunkirk beaches and harbor, sinking multiple ships while over 26,000 troops were evacuated on this day alone.

The German 5th Mountain Division and remnants of the 7th Flieger Division completed the conquest of Crete as the last British rearguard and Allied stragglers on the south coast were captured or took to the mountains.

The Japanese Combined Fleet under Admiral Yamamoto approached Midway Atoll, unaware that American codebreakers had revealed the plan and three US carriers lay in ambush northeast of the island.

Fifteenth Air Force B-17s bombed the rail yards at Debrecen, Hungary, and continued on to land at Soviet airfields near Poltava, opening the Operation Frantic shuttle bombing campaign aimed at stretching Luftwaffe defenses.

Elizabeth II was crowned Queen at Westminster Abbey in a ceremony watched by millions worldwide. As head of the British Armed Forces, she became commander of the largest military alliance in history through NATO.

US Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl was released by the Taliban after five years of captivity in exchange for five Taliban detainees from Guantanamo Bay, sparking intense controversy over the terms of the swap.