Thursday, March 30, 1944. Operation Desecrate One

 The US Navy launched Operation Desecrate One, an airborne assault on and around Palau.

The action was in preparation for the invasion of Western New Guinea and saw the  USS Enterprise (CV-6), USS Bunker Hill (CV-17), USS Hornet (CV-12), USS Yorktown (CV-10), USS Lexington (CV-16), USS Monterey (CVL-26), USS Belleau Wood (CVL-24), USS Cowpens (CVL-25), USS Cabot (CVL-28), USS Princeton (CVL-23), and USS Langley (CVL-27)  in action.

Thirty-six Japanese ships were sunk or damaged in the attacks.  Navy aircraft liad minefields by air for the first time in World War Two.

US forces occupy Pityilu Island.

96 of 795 RAF bombers were shot down in an ineffective raid of Nuremberg, the worst bomber command loss of the war.

Hitler replaced Erich von Manstein and Paul Ludwig Ewald von Kleist with Walter Model and Ferdinand Schörner in a command shake up.

Von Manstein was a difficult commander for Hitler, and was sometimes insubordinate.  Often regarded as one of the best German generals of the war, he tried to distance himself post-war from the Nazis, but it can't really be done.  Oddly enough, Hitler recognized his abilities at the time of reliving him, awarding him the Swords of the Knight's Cross at the same time.  Upon being relieved Hitler actually acknowledged his abilities but said he couldn't use him, to which Von Manstein replied:

My Führer ... please believe me when I say I will use all strategic means at my disposal to defend the soil in which my son lies buried.

The reference was to his son, who had died on the Russian Front. As earlier noted, Von Manstein was buried with full military honors at the time of his death in 1973 in spite of being a war criminal.  He was 85 at the time of his death.

While I've probably mentioned it before, an oddity of his biography is that his father was German general Eduard von Lewinski and his mother his spouse, Helene Pauline von Sperling.  He was given to his aunt and uncle, General Georg von Manstein and Hedwig von Sperling, sister to Helene, upon birth, as they were childless, which is flat out weird.  You can't psychoanalyze the dead, but I wonder if that act of betrayal caused his dog like loyalty to Hitler.

Like Von Manstein, Von Kleist would also not return to service.  Unlike Von Manstein, however, he was turned over to the Soviets after the war and died in 1954 in prison in the Soviet Union at the age of 73.

The Red Army took Chemovtsky.

Sophia Bulgaria endured its heaviest bombing, by the U.S. Army Air Force, of the war.

The U-223 sank the HMS Laforey.  The U-223 was in turn sunk by British destroyers.

The U.S. Public Health Service released To The People of the United States, a short film about a pilot who contracts syphilis.  The film won an Academy Award for documentary short, but drew the ire of the Catholic Legion of Decency for failing to stress the immoral conduct giving rise to the disease.

Last prior edition:

Wednesday, March 29, 1944 Cutting off Imphal.

1940s, 1944, boats and ships, Columbian Navy, Eastern Front, Imperial Japanese Navy, India, Lithuanian Air Force, Operation U-Go, Red Army, The Great Escape, World War Two