Friday, March 19, 1943. Ships lost, Airmen Promoted, Mobster departs.

The Carras (Greek), Glendalough (UK), Lulworth Hill (UK), and Matthew Luckenbach (US) went down in the Atlantic.   So did the U348, which was sunk by a British B-17.

Sarah Sundin notes, in her blog:

Today in World War II History—March 19, 1943: U-boats break off attacks on convoys HX-229 and SC-122, ending largest convoy battle of the war. 

The HMS Derwent, Ocean Voyager (UK) and Varvara went down in the Mediterranean.  

The U-5 went down in a diving accident off of Pilaue, East Prussia.  The Soviet TKA-35 collided with another torpedo boat and sank.

USS Wahoo.

The Japanese lost the Kowa Maru, Takachiho and Zogen Maru, all merchant ships, to two submarines. The USS Wahoo sank two of them.   She would be lost in December 1943.

The Japanese losses demonstrate that the Japanese were enduring in the Pacific what the Allies were in the Atlantic, shipping losses due to submarines.  However, the Japanese were never able to adjust to it to the extent that the Allies ultimately did.

Sundin also noted:

Today in World War II History—March 19, 1943: Henry H. Arnold is promoted to four-star general.

Arnold was a career airman and had in fact received flight instruction from the Wright Brothers.  A West Point graduate, he had wanted to be a cavalryman, but his initial assignment was to infantry.  He switched to aviation in 1911, but did not receive any sort of World War One overseas assignments, being used in other roles, much like Eisenhower, until 1918 at which time he became ill with Spanish Flu.  He arrived in Europe right at the time of the Armistice.

He became chief of the Air Corps in 1938.

56 at the time of this promotion, he was in ill health and starting in 1943 he would have the first of four severe wartime heart attacks which should have caused him to be required to leave the service, but he was allowed to stay due to intervention by President Roosevelt.

He was appointed to General of the Army in December 1944, and General of the Air Force, although retired in 1949.  He's the only person to have held five-star rank in the Air Force, and the only one to hold five star rank in two services.

He retired in 1947, before the establishment of the Air Force as a separate branch, and died at age 63 in 1950.

The Albanian Communist Party formed the Sigurimi which gathered intelligence in the fight for Albanian freedom, and then was used post-war to stamp out any chance of Albanian freedom.

Frank Nitti, cousin of and mobster with, Al Capone, died by suicide the day before a scheduled grand jury appearance.  

Nitti had risen high up in the Chicago mob due to Al Capone, although he was not exclusively active with it.  He did become a very significant member of it and was more than mere muscle, contrary to the way he has been portrayed in film.  Born in Italy, and raised in the US under rough circumstances, he was perhaps a natural for crime.

Contrary to what is sometimes assumed, Nitti and Capone were not in the mafia and were not eligable to be as they were not Sicilians or of Sicilian extraction.