Wednesday, January 19, 1944. Destroying Berlin.

The RAF dropped 2,300 tons of bombs on Berlin in just over one hour, the heaviest raid on the city to date.

The U-641 was sunk by the British corvette Violate in the North Atlantic.

The Red Army took Krasnoye Selo, Popsha, and Peterhof, near Leningrad.

The British 5th Division captured Minturno.

Lt. Michael Sinclair and Flight-Lieut. Jack Best escaped Colditz Castle POW camp.  They made it all the way to the Dutch border before being recaptured.

Monday January 3, 1944. The Turner Explosion.

George C. Marshall was Time's Man Of The Year.

The USS Turner suffered a series of internal explosions while in harbor off of the Ambrose Light in New York.  138 of the 256-man crew died during the incident.  A Coast Guard Sikorsky HNS-1 flown by Lieutenant Commander Frank A. Erickson flew two cases of blood plasma, lashed to the helicopter's floats, from New York to Sandy Hook, saving many of the injured crewman, and providing the first incident of a helicopter used in that fashion.

Commander Frank A. Erickson, USCG and Dr. Igor Sikorsky, Sikorsky Helicopter HNS-1.  The HNS-1 had been in service for slightly under a year at this time.

Gregory "Pappy" Boyington was shot down and became a Prisoner of War of the Japanese.

The Red Army took Olevsk, a mere ten miles from the pre-war Polish border. 

The Reichskanzlei was hit during an RAF raid on Berlin, which otherwise caused little damage but which resulted in the loss of 27 Lancasters.

William Tubman took office as the President of Liberia, which he would remain until 1971.

Saturday, January 1, 1944. Sort of independence.

Syria became independent theoretically, but the French mandate continued.

The RAF bombed Berlin again.

The War Department was pondering its policies regarding African American soldiers.

From Sarah Sundin's blog:

Today in World War II History—January 1, 1944: Gen. Alexander Vandegrift replaces Gen. Thomas Holcomb as commandant of the US Marine Corps. US penny production switches from steel to a copper & brass alloy.

USC Trojans beat the Washington Huskies 29-0 in the Rose Bowl, Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets defeated Tulsa Golden Hurricane 20-18 in the Sugar Bowl., the LSU Tigers beat the Texas A&M Aggies 19-14 in the Orange Bow, the Cotton Bowl Classic ended in a 7–7 tie between the Randolph Field Ramblers and the Texas Longhorns.

Wednesday, December 29, 1943. Rationing Bicycles

F.F. Calkin, of Cadillac, Michigan, and J. Ferber, of Camden, New Jersey, using British bicycles for transportation in England, 1943.

Today In Wyoming's History: December 29: 1943  Wartime quotas of new adult bicycles for January cut in half, with 40 being allotted to Wyoming.Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

Bicycles at high school in Texas, 1943.

This was no small matter.  Bicycles had increased enormously in importance due to the war.  The National Park Service notes:

The government rationed bicycles from July 1942 to September 1945. The goal was to reduce the amount of wartime materials used for bicycles, but also to ensure that those who rode instead of drove could get one (thereby saving on car tires and gasoline).[10]

Shortly after the December 1941 Japanese attacks, the government took over control of the bicycle industry. They halted the bicycle trade entirely, and forbade bicycles from leaving “a factory, a jobber, a wholesaler, or a retailer’s place of business after 11:59 tonight” (April 3, 1942). They hoped this would prevent hoarding, and also gave them the opportunity to evaluate supply and demand.

The government issued specifications for what became known as Victory bicycles. These were designed and built only for adults; bikes for children were not manufactured during the war. Victory bikes were lightweight, weighing no more than 31 pounds (lighter by about a third than pre-war). They were made of steel only with no copper or nickel parts, and a minimum of chrome plating. Paint was used instead on handlebars and wheel rims. Accessories like chain guards, bells, and whitewall tires were removed, and a maximum tire width of 1-3/8" was set.[12] Behind the scenes, there were disagreements between the OPA and the Wartime Production Board (WPB) about the necessity of bicycle rationing – were bicycles a luxury? Was the rubber needed to make bicycle tires better used for other war needs while people continued to put wear on the car tires they already owned? This debate was eventually resolved, and Victory bikes went into production.[13]

When rationing began in July 1942, the OPA had 150,000 Victory bicycles and 90,000 pre-war bicycles to divide up. To get a bicycle, you had to apply at the local rationing board and prove you needed a bicycle. For example, your job was too far to walk to, and there was no good public transportation. By August 1942, access to bicycles was further limited to health care workers, school teachers, fire fighters, and others in critical occupations. New and used bicycles became much in demand, as thousands used them to get to their war jobs.[14] Despite this, the numbers of bicycles made and allocated by rationing boards never met the actual demand.[15]

Sailors who had bicycled to Arlington Farms, a residence for women who worked in the U.S. government for the duration of the war, from Washington in search of a date, 1943.

Leo Pasvolsky of the State Department finished the draft for the United Nations Charter.

Gen. Eisenhower ordered Allied Commanders to avoid attacking historic Italian monuments to the extent that this was possible; stating:

We are bound to respect those monuments so far as war allows. If we have to choose between destroying a famous building and sacrificing our own men, then our men's lives count infinitely more and the buildings must go. But the choice is not always so clear-cut as that. In many cases the monuments can be spared without any detriment to operational needs.

The Royal Air Force resumed bombing Berlin, its Christmas hiatus having ended.

The Red Army took Korosten in Ukraine.

The Italian submarine Axum was scuttled after running aground off of Morea, Greece.  The boat had a very successful war record.

Christmas Day, 1943.

1st Marine convoy en route for invasion of Cape Gloucester, New Britain.

Raids on Berlin by the Royal Air Force and the U.S. Army Air Force were temporarily halted.  The Luftwaffe likewise conducted no raids on the United Kingdom.

Sixty-four prisoners tunneled out of the Ninth Fort in Lithuania.  The facility housed mostly Lithuanian Jews.  About half would be recaptured by mid-January.

U.S. Task Force 50.2 raided Kavieng, New Guinea, with aircraft, sinking a Japanese transport ship.

The Scharnhorst departed northern Norway to attack Convoy JW-55B.

The epic The Song of Bernadette was released.

The film tells the story of St. Bernadette Soubirous, the French peasant woman who saw the Virgin Mary at Lourdes.

Attending movies at Christmas, and even on Christmas Day, is a tradition with a lot of people, although I've never done it.  

Christmas service on USS Card, December 25, 1943.

USS Brooklyn (CL 40), galley, Christmas morning, 1943.  Malta.

Tuesday, December 7, 1943. FDR likes Ike.

Public Information Office staff wishing Perry Robinson farewell, December 7, 1943.

President Roosevelt personally informed Dwight Eisenhower that he was being transferred to Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) in London as its commander, stating "Well, Ike, you are going to command Overlord".

Eisenhower with the shoulder patch of SHAEF, December 31, 1944.

On the same day, Air Marshall Harris informed his superiors that he believed he could win the war through the RAF alone if the Battle of Berlin is continued and if he can deploy 15,000 Lancasters over the next few months.  He in fact would send 14,500 Lancasters in the effort and be proven grossly in error.

The British 8th Army captured Poggiofiorito.  The U.S. 5th Army secured the Mignano Gap.

At this point the last of the major Allies, the US, had been in the war for two years.  In that time, the Germans and Italian had been pushed out of Africa, and the Western Allies had reentered the European continent through Italy.  The Italian government had switched sides and joined the Allies.  The French forces in Africa had joined the Allies in rebellion against Vichy.  The naval battles in the Atlantic and Mediterranean continued, but the Axis was slowly losing them.  A new air campaign over Germany itself had been launched by the Western Allies.

On the East, the fighting was bitter and ongoing, but the Axis had been pushed back from Stalingrad.

In Asia, the Australian and American forces had stemmed Japanese advances and were retaking lost ground in the Southern Pacific. The battle had just been extended into the Central Pacific. The Japanese had been pushed out of the Aleutians.

The war had obviously not been won, and the Axis was bitterly contesting the Allies everywhere, but they were nonetheless continually on the defensive for the most part.  Huge numbers of Axis troops were tied up on the Eastern Front in a largely defensive effort with continual efforts to regain offensive initiative and in Asia massive amounts of Japanese forces were tied up in China where they were accordingly useless for anything else.

Chiara Lubich started the lay Catholic humanitarian organization Focolare Movement in Trento, Italy.

Friday, December 3, 1943. Murrow broadcast on bombing Berlin, Kennesaw Mountain Landis opens the door to African Americans.

Chain-smoking giant of American broadcasting, Edward R. Murrow, delivered his classic "Orchestrated Hell" broadcast on CBS Radio describing a nighttime bombing raid on Berlin, by 619 Squadron, RAF in which he stated:

CBS Announcer: CBS World News now brings you a special broadcast from London. Columbia's correspondent, Edward R. Murrow, was on one of the RAF bombing planes that smashed at Berlin last night, in one of the heaviest attacks of the war. Forty-one bombers were lost in the raid and three out of the five correspondents who flew with the raiders failed to return. For Mr. Murrow's story of the attack, we take you now to London.

Murrow: This is London. Last night, some of the young gentlemen of the RAF took me to Berlin. The pilot was called Jock [Abercrombie]. The crew captains walked into the briefing room, looked at the maps and charts, and sat down with their big celluloid pads on their knees. The atmosphere was that of a school and a church. The weatherman gave us the weather. The pilots were reminded that Berlin is Germany's greatest center of war production. The intelligence officer told us how many heavy and light ack-ack guns, how many searchlights we might expect to encounter. Then, Jock, the wing commander, explained the system of markings, the kind of flares that would be used by the pathfinders. He said that concentration was the secret of success in these raids; that as long as the aircraft stayed well-bunched, they would protect each other.

The captains of aircraft walked out. I noticed that the big Canadian with the slow, easy grin had printed "Berlin" at the top of his pad and then embellished it with a scroll. The red-headed English boy with the two-weeks'-old mustache was the last to leave the room.

Late in the afternoon we went to the locker room to draw parachutes, Mae Wests1 and all the rest. As we dressed, a couple of the Australians were whistling. Walking out to the bus that was to take us to the aircraft, I heard the station loudspeakers announcing that that evening all personnel would be able to see a film, Star-Spangled Rhythm -- free.

We went out and stood around the big, black four-motored Lancaster, "D for Dog." A small station wagon delivered a thermos bottle of coffee, chewing gum, an orange, and a bit of chocolate for each man. Up in that part of England the air hums and throbs with the sound of aircraft motors all day, but for half an hour before takeoff the skies are dead, silent, and expectant. A lone hawk hovered over the airfield, absolutely still as he faced into the wind. Jack, the tail gunner, said, "It'd be nice to fly like that." D-Dog eased around the perimeter track to the end of the runway. We sat there for a moment. The green light flashed and we were rolling -- ten seconds ahead of schedule.

The takeoff was smooth as silk. The wheels came up, and D-Dog started the long climb. As we came up through the clouds, I looked right and left and counted fourteen black Lancasters climbing for the place where men must burn oxygen to live. The sun was going down and its red glow made rivers of lakes of fire on tops of the clouds. Down to the southward, the clouds piled up to form castles, battlements, and whole cities, all tinged with red.

Soon we were out over the North Sea. Dave, the navigator, asked Jock if he couldn't make a little more speed. We were nearly two minutes late. By this time, we were all using oxygen. The talk on the intercom was brief and crisp. Everyone sounded relaxed. For a while, the eight of us in our little world in exile moved over the sea. There was a quarter moon on the starboard beam and Jock's quiet voice came through the intercom, "That'll be flak ahead." We were approaching the enemy coast. The flak looked like a cigarette lighter in a dark room -- one that won't light, sparks but no flame -- the sparks crackling just above the level of the cloud tops. We flew steady and straight, and soon the flak was directly below us. D-Dog rocked a little from right to left, but that wasn't caused by the flak. We were in the slipstream of other Lancasters ahead, and we were over the enemy coast.

And then a strange thing happened. The aircraft seemed to grow smaller. Jack in the rear turret, Wally the mid-upper gunner, Titch the wireless operator, all seemed somehow to draw closer to Jock in the cockpit. It was as though each man's shoulder was against the others. The understanding was complete. The intercom came to life, and Jock said, "Two aircraft on the port beam." Jack in the tail said, "Okay, sir. They're Lancs." The whole crew was a unit and wasn't wasting words.

The cloud below was ten-tenths. The blue-green jet of the exhausts licked back along the leading edge, and there were other aircraft all around us. The whole great aerial armada was hurtling towards Berlin. We flew so for twenty minutes, when Jock looked up at a vapor trail curling across above us, remarking in a conversational tone that, from the look of it, he thought there was a fighter up there. Occasionally the angry red of ack-ack burst through the clouds, but it was far away, and we took only an academic interest. We were flying in the third wave.

Jock asked Wally in the mid-upper turret, and Jack in the rear turret, if they were cold. They said they were all right and thanked him for asking. He even asked how I was and I said, "All right so far." The cloud was beginning to thin out. Off to the north we could see lights, and the flak began to liven up ahead of us. Buzz, the bomb-aimer, crackled through on the intercom, "There's a battle going on the starboard beam." We couldn't see the aircraft, but we could see the jets of red tracer being exchanged. Suddenly, there was a burst of yellow flame and Jock remarked, "That's a fighter going down. Note the position." The whole thing was interesting, but remote. Dave, the navigator, who was sitting back with his maps, charts, and compasses, said, "The attack ought to begin in exactly two minutes." We were still over the clouds.

But suddenly those dirty gray clouds turned white and we were over the outer searchlight defenses. The clouds below us were white, and we were black. D-Dog seemed like a black bug on a white sheet. The flak began coming up, but none of it close. We were still a long way from Berlin. I didn't realize just how far. Jock observed, "There's a kite on fire dead ahead." It was a great, golden, slow-moving meteor slanting toward the earth. By this time we were about thirty miles from our target area in Berlin. That thirty miles was the longest flight I have ever made.

Dead on time, Buzz the bomb-aimer reported, "Target indicators going down." At the same moment, the sky ahead was lit up by bright yellow flares. Off to starboard another kite went down in flames. The flares were sprouting all over the sky, reds and greens and yellows, and we were flying straight for the center of the fireworks. D-Dog seemed to be standing still, the four propellers thrashing the air, but we didn't seem to be closing in. The clouds had cleared, and off to the starboard a Lanc was caught by at least fourteen searchlight beams. We could see him twist and turn and finally break out. But still, the whole thing had a quality of unreality about it. No one seemed to be shooting at us, but it was getting lighter all the time. Suddenly, a tremendous big blob of yellow light appeared dead ahead; another to the right and another to the left. We were flying straight for them.

Jock pointed out to me the dummy fires and flares to right and left, but we kept going in. Dead ahead there was a whole chain of red flares looking like stoplights. Another Lanc was coned on our starboard beam. The lights seemed to be supporting it. Again we could see those little bubbles of colored lead driving at it from two sides. The German fighters were at him. And then, with no warning at all, D-Dog was filled with an unhealthy white light.

I was standing just behind Jock and could see all the seams on the wings. His quiet Scots voice beat into my ears, "Steady lads, we've been coned." His slender body lifted half out of the seat as he jammed the control column forward and to the left. We were going down. Jock was wearing woolen gloves with the fingers cut off. I could see his fingernails turn white as he gripped the wheel. And then I was on my knees, flat on the deck, for he had whipped the Dog back into a climbing turn. The knees should have been strong enough to support me, but they weren't, and the stomach seemed in some danger of letting me down too. I picked myself up and looked out again. It seemed that one big searchlight, instead of being twenty thousand feet below, was mounted right on our wingtip. D-Dog was corkscrewing. As we rolled down on the other side, I began to see what was happening to Berlin.

The clouds were gone, and the sticks of incendiaries from the preceding waves made the place look like a badly laid-out city with the streetlights on. The small incendiaries were going down like a fistful of white rice thrown on a piece of black velvet. As Jock hauled the Dog up again, I was thrown to the other side of the cockpit. And there below were more incendiaries, glowing white and then turning red. The cookies, the four-thousand-pound high explosives, were bursting below like great sunflowers gone mad. And then, as we started down again, still held in the lights, I remembered that the Dog still had one of those cookies and a whole basket of incendiaries in his belly, and the lights still held us, and I was very frightened.

While Jock was flinging us about in the air, he suddenly flung over the intercom, "Two aircraft on the port beam." I looked astern and saw Wally, the mid-upper, whip his turret around to port, and then looked up to see a single-engine fighter slide just above us. The other aircraft was one of ours. Finally, we were out of the cone, flying level. I looked down, and the white fires had turned red. They were beginning to merge and spread, just like butter does on a hot plate. Jock and Buzz, the bomb-aimer, began to discuss the target. The smoke was getting thick down below. Buzz said he liked the two green flares on the ground almost dead ahead. He began calling his directions. And just then a new bunch of big flares went down on the far side of the sea of flame and flare that seemed to be directly below us. He thought that would be a better aiming point. Jock agreed and we flew on.

The bomb doors were opened. Buzz called his directions: "Five left, five left." And then, there was a gentle, confident upward thrust under my feet and Buzz said, "Cookie gone." A few seconds later, the incendiaries went, and D-Dog seemed lighter and easier to handle. I thought I could make out the outline of streets below, but the bomb-aimer didn't agree, and he ought to know. By this time, all those patches of white on black had turned yellow and started to flow together. Another searchlight caught us but didn't hold us. Then, through the intercom came the word, "One can of incendiaries didn't clear. We're still carrying it." And Jock replied, "Is it a big one or a little one?" The word came back: "Little one, I think, but I'm not sure. I'll check." More of those yellow flares came down and hung about us. I haven't seen so much light since the war began.

Finally, the intercom announced that it was only a small container of incendiaries left, and Jock remarked, "Well, it's hardly worth going back and doing another run up for that." If there had been a good fat bundle left, he would have gone back through that stuff and done it all over again. I began to breathe, and to reflect again -- that all men would be brave if only they could leave their stomachs at home -- when there was a tremendous whoomph, an unintelligible shout from the tail gunner, and D-Dog shivered and lost altitude. I looked to the port side and there was a Lancaster that seemed close enough to touch. He had whipped straight under us -- missed us by twenty-five, fifty feet, no one knew how much.

The navigator sang out the new course and we were heading for home. And Jock was doing what I had heard him tell his pilots to do so often -- flying dead on course. He flew straight into a huge green searchlight, and as he rammed the throttles home remarked, "We'll have a little trouble getting away from this one." And again D-Dog dove, climbed, and twisted, and was finally free. We flew level then. I looked on the port beam at the target area. There was a red, sullen, obscene glare. The fires seemed to have found each other and we were heading home.

For a little while it was smooth sailing. We saw more battles. Then another plane in flames, but no one could tell whether it was ours or theirs. We were still near the target. Dave, the navigator said, "Hold her steady, skipper. I want to get an astral sight." And Jock held her steady. And the flak began coming up at us. It seemed to be very close. It was winking off both wings, but the Dog was steady. Finally, Dave said, "Okay, skipper. Thank you very much." And a great orange blob of flak smacked up straight in front of us, and Jock said, "I think they're shooting at us." I'd thought so for some time. And he began to throw D for Dog up, around, and about again. When we were clear of the barrage, I asked him how close the bursts were and he said, "Not very close. When they're really near, you can smell 'em." That proved nothing for I'd been holding my breath.

Jack sang out from the rear turret, said his oxygen was getting low -- thought maybe the lead had frozen. Titch, the wireless operator, went scrambling back with a new mask and a bottle of oxygen. Dave, the navigator, said, "We're crossing the coast." My mind went back to the time I had crossed that coast in 1938, in a plane that had taken off from Prague. Just ahead of me sat two refugees from Vienna -- an old man and his wife. The copilot came back and told them that we were outside German territory. The old man reached out and grasped his wife's hand. The work that was done last night was a massive blow of retribution, for all those who have fled from the sound of shots and blows on a stricken continent.

We began to lose height over the North Sea. We were over England's shores. The land was dark beneath us. Somewhere down there below, American boys were probably bombing up Fortresses and Liberators, getting ready for the day's work. We were over the home field. We called the control tower and the calm, clear voice of an English girl replied, "Greetings D-Dog. You are diverted to Mulebag." We swung round, contacted Mulebag, came in on the flare path, touched down very gently, ran along to the end of the runway and turned left. And Jock, the finest pilot in Bomber Command, said to the control tower, "D-Dog clear of runway."

When we went in for interrogation, I looked on the board and saw that the big, slow-smiling Canadian and the red-headed English boy with the two-weeks'-old moustache hadn't made it. They were missing.

There were four reporters on this operation. Two of them didn't come back. Two friends of mine, Norman Stockton of Australian Associated Newspapers, and Lowell Bennett, an American representing International News Service. There is something of a tradition amongst reporters, that those who are prevented by circumstances from filing their stories will be covered by their colleagues. This has been my effort to do so. In the aircraft in which I flew, the men who flew and fought it poured into my ears their comments on fighters, flak, and flares in the same tone that they would have used in reporting a host of daffodils. I have no doubt that Bennett and Stockton would have given you a better report of last night's activities.

Berlin was a kind of orchestrated hell -- a terrible symphony of light and flame. It isn't a pleasant kind of warfare. The men doing it speak of it as a job. Yesterday afternoon, when the tapes were stretched out on the big map all the way to Berlin and back again, a young pilot with old eyes said to me, "I see we're working again tonight." That's the frame of mind in which the job is being done. The job isn't pleasant; it's terribly tiring. Men die in the sky while others are roasted alive in their cellars. Berlin last night wasn't a pretty sight. In about thirty-five minutes it was hit with about three times the amount of stuff that ever came down on London in a night-long blitz. This is a calculated, remorseless campaign of destruction. Right now the mechanics are probably working on D-Dog, getting him ready to fly again. I return you now to CBS, New York.

CBS Announcer: You have been listening to Edward R. Murrow in an eyewitness report of his experiences in one of the bombers that raided Berlin last night. At 6:45pm, Eastern War Time, Mr. Murrow will again be heard over most of these stations with a report on the highlights of his story. This is the Columbia Broadcasting System.

Murrow had ridden on the raid the night prior.

Murrow, together with other media giants of that day and the one immediately following, to include Cronkite, Brinkley and Whitaker Chambers, make a total putz like Tucker Carlson and the News Max crew look like midgets, and the people who listen to them like dupes, which in the latter case, they truly are.

It's truly shocking how very far we have fallen.  It was, moreover, at least partially, but certainly not exclusively, due to technology.

The current edition of Yank came out.

It was demonstrating emergency firing of the M1919 machine gun on the cover, presumably aiming at an airplane.

Things were going on in Italy, as Sarah Sundin notes on her blog:

Today in World War II History—December 3, 1943: US Fifth Army launches main ground attack on the Winter Line in Italy after an artillery barrage and infantry assault at night.

That offensive included the Battle of Monte la Difensa, which began on this day.

The Red Army took Dovsk.

Kennesaw Mountain Landis convened a meeting between National League and American League team owners, and publishers from eight African-American newspapers, at the Hotel Roosevelt in New York, to discuss allowing African American players to compete for positions in Major League Baseball. Landis announced at the end of the meeting that blacks were free to compete for positions, at the discretion of the club owners.

Segregation in baseball was collapsing.

Tuesday, November 23, 1943. Victory at Tarawa and Makin.

Unit patch of the 2nd Marine Division.  Only during World War Two did the Marine Corps ultimately adopt divisional patches.

The Battle of Tarawa concluded at 1:00 p.m., local time, after 77 hours of combat.  The Battle of Makin also concluded.

U.S. Army 27th Infantry Division unit patch.

FWIW, there are 138 miles between the two islands.

Tarawa would add to the status of the Marines that Guadalcanal had already conveyed. The fighting was horrific.  The public, however, was stunned by the level of US losses.

The Deutsche Opernhause in Berlin was destroyed in a British air raid, as was the Berlin Zoo, which resulted in the loss of most of its 4,000 animals. Over the week Berlin would further lose the German National Theatre, the National Gallery, the Invalidenstrasse Museum, the Hotel Bristol, the Charite Hospital, the City Hospital, the Schulstrasse Maternity Hospital, the Lichterfelde-East Rail Station, and the embassies of France, Sweden, Turkey, Iran and Slovakia.

Hitler witnessed a demonstration of the ME262.  Perhaps because of events like that described above, he ordered that the jet fighter be redesigned to carry bombs, thereby delaying production of the aircraft.

The extent to which people like to satirical claim that "Hitler was the best general the Allies had" has been overdone. Frankly, quite a few of his strategic and even tactical decisions during the war were correct over the opposition of his general.  By this point, however, he was starting to make really significant blunders, of which this was one.  Germany's task at this point, from the position of its airspace, was to defend it, which the ME262 would prove quite able at. The resulting delay was accordingly significant.

German forces landed on Samos in the Aegean.

Roosevelt, at the Cairo Conference, sent a message to Congress regarding the post-war return of servicemen.

Message to Congress on the Return of Service Personnel

to Civilian Life

November 23 , 1943

To the Congress:

All of us are concentrating now on the one primary objective of winning this war. But even as we devote our energy and resources to that purpose, we cannot neglect to plan for things to come after victory is won.

The problem of reconverting wartime America to a peacetime basis is one for which we are now laying plans to be submitted to the Congress for action. As I said last July:

"The returning soldier and sailor and marine are a part of the problem of demobilizing the rest of the millions of Americans who have been working and living in a war economy since 1941. . . . But the members of the armed forces have been compelled to make greater economic sacrifice and every other kind of sacrifice than the rest of us, and they are entitled to definite action to help take care of their special problems."

At that time I outlined what seemed to me to be a minimum of action to which the members of our armed forces are entitled over and above that taken for other citizens.

What our service men and women want, more than anything else, is the assurance of satisfactory employment upon their return to civil life. The first task after the war is to provide employment for them and for our demobilized war workers.

There were skeptics who said that our wartime production goals would never be attained. There will also be skeptics who will question our ability to make the necessary plans to meet the problems of unemployment and want after the war. But, I am confident that if industry and labor and Government tackle the problems of economic readjustment after the war with the same unity of purpose and with the same ingenuity, resourcefulness, and boldness that they have employed to such advantage in wartime production, they can solve them.

We must not lower our sights to prewar levels. The goal after the war should be the maximum utilization of our human and material resources. This is the way to rout the forces of insecurity and unemployment at home, as completely as we shall have defeated the forces of tyranny and oppression on the fields of battle.

There are, however, certain measures which merit the immediate attention of the Congress to round out the program already commenced for the special protection of the members of the armed forces.

The Congress has already enacted a generous program of benefits for service men and for the widows and dependents of those killed in action.

For example:

(1) Under the National Service Life Insurance Act, life insurance at low premium rates is now available to members of the armed forces in amounts not less than $1,000 and not more than $10,000 per person. A total of nearly $90,000,000,000 of insurance has already been applied for.

(2) In addition, provision has been made, under the Soldiers' and Sailors' Relief Act, for the guarantee by the Government of the payment of premiums on commercial policies held by members of the armed forces while in service. Premiums on insurance totaling $135,582,000 have been guaranteed, as a result of 56,276 applications by service men for such relief.

(3) The Congress has also enacted legislation making provision for the hospitalization and medical care of all veterans of the present war, and for the vocational rehabilitation and training of those suffering from disability incurred in, or aggravated by, military service, when such disability results in a vocational handicap preventing reemployment. Similar provision has been made for the rehabilitation of disabled persons in civil life, who, with proper training, can be equipped to play a useful part in the war effort at home. Men who are rejected for military service because of physical or mental defects, or who are discharged from the armed forces because of a disability existing at the time of induction, are thus eligible for such rehabilitation services and training as may be necessary and feasible in order to fit them for useful and gainful employment.

(4) By recent legislation, our present service men and women have been assured the same pension benefits for death or disability incurred in the line of duty while in active military service as are provided for the veterans of prior wars. The pension rates for the family of those killed in this war were recently increased by the Congress.

The Veterans Administration will, from time to time, request the consideration by the Congress of various amendments of existing laws which will facilitate administration, and which will correct any defects in our present statutory scheme which experience may disclose. I am confident that the Congress, in line with the historic policy of this Government toward its ill, injured, and disabled service men and women, will provide generous appropriations to the Veterans Administration with which to carry out these laws.

(5) Numerous other measures have been adopted for the protection of our service men such as the Soldiers' and Sailors' Civil Relief Act suspending the enforcement of certain obligations against members of the armed forces, the creation of reemployment rights under the Selective Service Act, and the provision for emergency maternity care to the wives and infants of enlisted men.

However, I believe that we must go much further.

We must make provision now to help our returning service men and women bridge the gap from war to peace activity. When the war is over, our men and women in the armed forces will be eager to rejoin their families, get a job, or continue their education, and to pick up the threads of their former lives. They will return at a time when industry will be in the throes of reconversion. Our plans for demobilization of soldiers and sailors must be consistent with our plans for the reconversion of industry and for the creation of employment opportunities for both service men and war workers. Already the armed forces have returned many thousands of service men and women to civil life. The following further steps seem desirable now:

(1) To help service men and women tide over the difficult period of readjustment from military to civilian life, mustering out pay will be needed. It will relieve them of anxiety while they seek private employment or make their personal plans for the future. I therefore recommend to the Congress that it enact legislation and provide funds for the payment of a uniform, reasonable mustering-out pay to all members of the armed forces upon their honorable discharge or transfer to inactive duty. This pay should not be in a lump sum but on a monthly installment basis.

(2) We must anticipate, however, that some members of the armed forces may not be able to obtain employment within a reasonable time after their return to civil life. For them, unemployment allowances should be provided until they can reasonably be absorbed by private industry.

Members of the armed services are not now adequately covered by existing unemployment insurance laws of the States. It is estimated that approximately one-half of them will have no unemployment insurance protection at all when they leave military service. Benefits payable to those who are covered by State law 'are unequal, and will vary greatly among the States because of the wide differences in the provisions of the State laws. The protection in many cases will be inadequate. It is plainly a Federal responsibility to provide for the payment of adequate and equitable allowances to those service men and women who are unable to find employment after their demobilization.

For these reasons, I recommend to the Congress that a uniform system of allowances for unemployed service men and women be established.

I believe that there should be a fixed and uniform rate of benefit for a fixed period of time for all members of the armed forces who, after leaving the service, are unable to find suitable work. In order to qualify for an unemployment allowance each person should 'be obliged to register with the United States Employment Service, and, following the usual practice in unemployment insurance, must be willing to accept available and suitable employment, or to engage in a training course to prepare him for such employment. The protection under this system should be continued for an adequate length of time following the period for which mustering-out payment is made.

At present, persons serving in the merchant marine are not insured under State unemployment insurance laws, primarily because the very nature of their employment carries them beyond the confines of any particular State. I believe that the most effective way of protecting maritime workers against postwar unemployment is to enact without delay a Federal maritime unemployment insurance act. There has been in effect since 1938 a railroad unemployment insurance act, and a similar act for maritime workers is long overdue. Marine workers are, however, insured under the existing Federal old-age and survivors' insurance law.

(3) Members of the armed forces are not receiving credit under the Federal old-age and survivors' insurance law for their period of military service. Credit under the law can be obtained only while a person is engaged in certain specific types of employment. Service in the armed forces is not included in these types. Since the size of the insurance benefits depends upon the total number of years in which credits are obtained, the exclusion of military service will operate to decrease the old-age retirement benefits which will eventually be payable to service men and women. Furthermore, a large number of persons whose dependents were protected by the survivors' insurance benefits at the time they entered the armed forces are losing entirely those insurance rights while they are in service.

I therefore recommend that the Congress enact legislation to make it possible for members of the armed forces to obtain credit under the Federal old-age and survivors' insurance law during their period of military service. The burden of this extension of old-age and survivors' insurance to members of the armed forces should be carried by the Federal Government, and the Federal contributions should be uniform for all members of the armed forces irrespective of their rank.

I have already communicated with the Congress requesting the enactment of legislation to provide educational and training opportunities for the members of the armed forces who desire to pursue their studies after their discharge.

The Congress will agree, I am sure, that, this time, we must have plans and legislation ready for our returning veterans instead of waiting until the last moment. It will give notice to our armed forces that the people back home do not propose to let them down.

It's worth noting the extent to which the Allied leaders in the west were taking the view that victory was simply inevitable. 

Thursday, November 18, 1943. The (Airborne) Battle of Berlin commences.

The RAF commenced the airborne Battle of Berlin on this day in 1943, hitting Berlin with 440 Lancaster bombers in a nighttime raid.  The raid killed 131 Berliners, caused light damage and resulted in the loss of nine aircraft with 53 airmen.   Raids would continue through March, 1944.

Cordell Hull addressed a joint session of Congress on the Moscow Conference.

The Germans opened the Ebensee concentration camp, with the first prisoners being non-Jewish.

The 1st Panzer Division pushed the Red Army out of Zhytomyr.

The U.S. Army issued a report on a newly encountered rifle, the FG42

German Paratrooper's Rifle F.G. 42" from Tactical and Technical Trends

German paratrooper in raid to free Mussolini carrying a FG42. By Bundesarchiv, Bild 101I-567-1503A-01 / Toni Schneiders / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5412659

Never completely finished in terms of design, the FG42 was arguably the world's first battle rifle, although it is often called an assault rifle. The selective fire rifle, firing the standard full sized German 8x57 round and was designed to fill the role of rifle, light machinegun and submachinegun.  It was made in fairly limited numbers.

Following World War Two, the concept would be adopted by NATO countries, in part because of the U.S. rejection of intermediate sized rounds.  The FAL, G3, Stg 57, BM59 and M14 are all examples of post war battle rifles.

The Army also reported on German armored cars:

"German Four-Wheeled Armored Cars" from Tactical and Technical Trends

British soldiers exam a disabled SdKfz 222, the most common German four-wheel armored car.

The Germans, like the British, liked armored cars and used four wheel, six wheel and eight wheel varieties, the latter of which proved influential after World War Two and which inspired armored cars currently in use by the U.S., Canada and Germany.  Their four wheeled variants were in the Leichter Panzerspähwagen class and used for reconnaissance.

The U-718 accidentally rammed and sank the U-476 in the Baltic.

The Greek sailing vessels Agios Demetrios  and Kanelos were shelled and sunk south-east of the Kassandra peninsula and Strati, Greece by the Royal Navy, although I don't know why.

The HMS Chanticleer was torpedoed off Portugal and damaged beyond repair.

The Empire Dunstan was torpedeoed and sunk in the Ionian Sea.

German patrol boats sank the Soviet No. 35 motor boat in the Black Sea.

The Columbian Ruby was sunk by the U-516.

The Liberty Ship Sambridge was sunk by the I27 in the Gulf of Aden, where you don't really think of Japanese submarines operating.

The Sanae, a Japanese destroyers, was sunk by U.S. submarines.

French aircraft carrier off of Roosevelt Roads, Puerto Rico, November 18, 1943.

1943  The Wyoming Department of Education released the results of a survey revealing that the state was short 70 teachers, no doubt the result of teachers having joined the armed forces during World War Two.  Attribution. Wyoming History Calendar.