June 22 in Military History

The British warship HMS Leopard fires on the American frigate USS Chesapeake off Norfolk, Virginia, killing three sailors and forcibly removing four alleged deserters, a major cause of the War of 1812.

Virginia militia, U.S. regulars, and sailors from USS Constellation repulse a British amphibious assault on Craney Island, saving the Gosport Navy Yard and the frigate itself from capture.

The Royal Navy flagship HMS Victoria sinks after being accidentally rammed by HMS Camperdown during maneuvers off Tripoli, killing 358 including Vice Admiral Sir George Tryon.

After twenty days of close-quarters fighting, U.S. Marines and Army troops of the 2nd Division push the last German defenders from Belleau Wood, securing a hard-won defensive victory northeast of Paris.

France signs an armistice with Nazi Germany in the same railway car at Compiègne where Germany surrendered in 1918, a deliberate humiliation orchestrated by Hitler.

Nazi Germany launches the largest military invasion in history against the Soviet Union, sending over 3 million soldiers across a 1,800-mile front in a campaign that will ultimately decide World War II.

A Japanese submarine fires seventeen shells at Fort Stevens on the Oregon coast, one of the very few direct attacks on a U.S. military installation on the American mainland during World War II.

President Roosevelt signs the Servicemen's Readjustment Act (GI Bill), providing education, housing, and business loans to returning veterans, transforming American society and creating the middle class.

Japanese Thirty-Second Army commander Lieutenant General Mitsuru Ushijima commits ritual suicide in his Mabuni headquarters cave, formally ending organized resistance in the Okinawa campaign.

U.S. Naval Observatory astronomer James Christy discovered Pluto's large moon Charon in photographic plates taken at the Flagstaff station. The discovery doubled known Pluto-system mass and reshaped trajectory planning for what became the New Horizons mission, a NASA-Johns Hopkins APL deep-space platform with substantial Navy and Air Force heritage in its guidance system.