Friday, April 14, 1944. Indian drama.

The Bombay Explosion occured at Mumbai, India) when the British SS Fort Stikine caught fire and exploded, creating mass destruction and killing around 800 to 1,300 people.

Kohima was relieved with a British breakthrough.

Col. Shaukat Ali Malik of the Indian National Army entered Moirang with his troops and raised the flag of the Azri Hukumat e-Azad Hind for the first time on Indian soil.

The stories above illustrate the complicated nature of India and the Indian people in World War Two. Col/ Sjailat Ali Malik was a Muslim Indian who had previously served in a British Indian police force, the latter being quite militarized.  The INA was a collaborationist army in combat against the Allies, while of course the British Indian Army was an Allied Army, but subject to the British Empire and therefore not really a "free" army.  

Following the war, the INA would be regarded with sympathy by many Indians.  I don't know what happened to Col. Malik, but the Muslin portions of Indian broke off from it immediately with independence, forming Pakistan. Today, what had been East and West Pakistan are Pakistan and Bangladesh.

The Red Army reached the Carpathian foothills.

Gen. Nikolai F. Vatutin died of wounds received in an ambush by Ukrainian partisans on February 29, 1944.

The U-448 was sunk off of the Azores.

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Thursday, April 13, 1944. Soviet advances in Crimea.

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Sunday June 13, 1971. Strife

On this day in 1971 the New York Times began publishing "the Pentagon Papers", the same being an internal report smuggled out by Daniel Ellsberg who had worked on the report.  The documents demonstrated an early involvement in the Vietnam War that differed from the one that the Johnson Administration had boosted.

The documents were one more step towards a disillusionment on the part of the public with the war, and indeed helped achieve a permanent distrust of the Federal Government that has never been restored. 

On the same day the London Times broke a story regarding Pakistani massacres of the Bengal Hindu population in East Pakistan.