Saturday, January 9, 1943. First flight of the Lockheed Constellation and Nazi atrocities.

 The Lockheed Constellation flew for the first time on this day in 1942.

The plane was a major leap forward in transport aviation and reflected a remarkable advancement in which the US, which already was fielding the best transport aircraft in the sky, the DC3/C47, was making it effectively obsolete.

This Day In Aviation:  9 January 1943

It was a great airplane.

Heinrich Himmler visited the Warsaw Ghetto and came away irate that 40,000 Jews remained residents there.  He ordered SS Colonel Ferdinand von Sammern-Frankenegg to wipe the ghetto out by February 15.

On the same day, Jews in the Khmelnytskyi Oblast in Ukraine were removed by the Germans from the towns of Ostropol, Krasyliv, Hrytsiv and Syniava and shot.

There's some tragic irony here that these events would happen on a Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath.

Sarah Sundin reports on her blog:

Today in World War II History—January 9, 1943: British & Indian troops take Maungdaw, Burma, in the Arakan campaign. First flight of prototype Lockheed C-69 Constellation.