Sunday, March 5, 1944. The Uman–Botoșani Offensive, Yeager shot down.

A member of No. 9 Commando at Anzio, equipped for a patrol with his Bren gun, 5 March 1944.

The Red Army began the Uman–Botoșani Offensive in Ukraine.  It would become one of hte most successful Soviet offensives of the war.  On this day they took Iziaslav and Yampil.

The 77th Indian Infantry Brigade, the Chindits, was inserted in Burma by glider.

Flight Officer Chuck Yeager was shot down by Unteroffizier Irmfried Klotz, east of Bordeaux, France, on his eighth combat mission.  Russ Spicer, who would, like Yeager, remain in the Air Force after the war, was also shot down.  Unlike Yeager, Spicer did not live a long life, dying at age 59 just after he retired from the Air Force as a Maj. Gen.

Irmfried Klotz did not survive the war.  He was actually a fairly green pilot, and the FW190 he was flying was shot down by another P51 in the same dogfight.  He bailed out, but his parachute did not open.

Yeager would escape to Spain by March 30, and then return to action.  Spicer spent the rest of the war in a POW camp.

Saturday, March 1, 1924. The Nixon Nitration Works Disaster.

The Nixon Nitration Works disaster occured in which an explosion of ammonium nitrate killed at least 18 people, destroyed several miles of New Jersey factories, and demolished Nixon, New Jersey.

While a very famous industrial disaster, the Nixon Nitration Works and Nixon New Jersey are remembered now principally for being mentioned in Band of Brothers as Cpt. Lewis Nixon III, a major character Ambrose's depiction of the 506 Parachute Infantry Regiment, mentions it.  Lewis Nixon was in fact a member of the family that owned the plant, and it was the case that Richard Winters, his close friend and for most of his service in Europe his superior, worked there for a time after the war.

The Nixon's were troubled in general, and Lewis Nixon III was no exception.  His marriage contracted just after the start of the war failed during it, as did a subsequent one.  A third marriage to Grace Umezawa, formerly a Japanese internee, was successful.  She helped him overcome the alcoholism depicted during the series.

The KDP, the Communist Part of Germany, was reinstated.  The KDP, together with the NADSP, the Nazi Party, would figure enormously in the destruction of German democracy as the extremes grew increasingly powerful in the remaining years of the Weimar Republic.

Alice's Day at Sea, the first of 57 Alice comedies produced by Walt Disney, appeared.  They were short films meant to be shown before the feature, something at one time common.

White rats paraded in San Pedro, California.

Hacks, i.e., cabs, were allowed back in Hyde Park for the first time since 1636.

Not a hack, but on this day, an Irish Traveler feeding his pony on this day in 1924.

Locally, a story didn't add up.

A 20-year-old marrying a 15-year-old?  

And she was in 6th Grade?

Sunday, September 5, 1943. Airborne firsts.

The 503d Parachute Regiment, supported by Australian artillery, dropped at and seized the airport at Nadzab, New Guinea.  It was the first major Allied airborne drop in the Far East.

MacArthur watched the drop from overhead, in a B-17.

Lt. Alex Doster was picked up with a harness by a low flying Stinson using a system pioneered for picking up mail. The experiment hoped to use the process to rescue downed aviators.

Sunday, August 16, 1942. The mystery of the L-8.

The Navy blimp L-8, put out earlier that day in search of Japanese submarines, coasted into Daly California without its crew.

The blimp and its crew of two had taken off at 06:03 from Treasure Island off of San Francisco.  At 07:38 its crew radioed that they had seen an oil slick off of Farallon Islands, Point Reyes.  A Liberty ship and a fishing boat both later reported that the blimp descended to about 30 feet above the slick and then headed east, rather than its planned route, which would have taken it northwest.  It was next spotted at 11:15 off of Ocean Beach, by which time it lacked a crew.  The blimp contained its parachutes and life raft, so the crew had not bailed out.

They've never been found.

Official speculation is that they were trying to deploy a smoke signal when one slipped out and the other went to rescue him, with both going into the ocean, or some variant of that. This seems fairly likely, although other theories abound.

The 101st Airborne Division, provided with cadre from the 82nd Airborne Division, was activated.  The 82nd had been converted organizationally from a conventional infantry division to an airborne division the day prior.

Shoulder insignia of the 101st Airborne Division.

The 101st had come into the table of organizations during World War One, but just existed for nine days on the charts, having been created immediately before the end of the war.  In contrast, the 82nd "All American" Division had seen action in World War One and included in its ranks the famous Alvin York.

Shoulder patch of the 82nd Airborne Division.

The USS Alabama was commissioned.

The Alabama in 1942.

The ship avoided being scrapped in 1964, which the Navy intended to do, and was acquired by the State of Alabama where she became a museum ship.  In spite of the original scrapping intent, a provision of the Navy's transfer of her ownership was that she could be recalled if needed, and in fact when the Iowa Class battleships were reactivated in the 1980s, some of her engine parts were cannibalized by the Navy as they were needed for those ships and were no longer manufactured.

The German Navy began Operation Wunderland with the goal of entering the Kara Sea, an extension of the Arctic Ocean, in order to attack Soviet ships that took refuge in the region which was iced up ten months out of the year.  The German Navy also sank three ships off of Aracaju, Brazil, operating under the belief that Allied ships were operating in neutral territorial waters off of eastern South America.

The Japanese, operating off of faulty areal reconnaissance, dispatch the 28th Naval Infantry Regiment from Truk to retake what they believe is a mostly abandoned Guadalcanal.

The U.S. Army Air Force bombed Axis targets in Egypt for the first time.

What started as a Mass to commemorate members of the Begona Regiment who had died in the Spanish Civil War degenerated into a riot between Falangist and Carlist factions in which a Falangist member, who had hand grenades with him, through two resulting in the wounding of thirty people.

Monday September 15, 1941. Things that fly

 

British airborne training, 1941.

British parachute units were officially created on this day in 1941, with the 1st Brigade coming into existence.

British airborne forces came about due to the British being shocked and impressed by German airborne operations in 1940.  Ironically, the Germans themselves had come to the conclusion after Crete that losses were too heavy in airborne operations to be sustained, and determined not to conduct them after that. While German airborne units remained, they increasingly became merely titular as the war went on, although they retained an airborne capacity for some time. By the end of the war, they really lacked one.

In contrast, the British started up airborne forces and went first with commando units before establishing regular army formations.  To some degree this is responsible for the ongoing categorization of airborne units as elite, or sort of commando like, as the British airborne became the inspiration in various ways for almost all airborne units that came after them.

The Germans reestablished the Peenemünde Army Research Center. Its origins went back to the 1930s, but it had been suspended as a facility for a time.  It was reestablished on this date.  The facility would be responsible for German military rocketry.

The Orson Welles Show, which went by a variety of names during its run, went on the air for the first time.   The show was not the same one as the famous Mercury Theater of the Air, which was also on the radio.