I was first on these grounds when it was still an Army installation. I went on it to go to the PX, although the PX I went to (I'm not sure if it was the only one), wasn't one of the better ones I ever visited. If I recall correctly, I was hoping to pick up a pair of BDU trousers. I picked up a t-shirt instead. It may sound odd, but I've long since lost it. As I have t-shirts older than (we're talking the mid 1980s) that's a bit surprising. I likely outgrew it, circumferentially.
Two more Italian ships were sunk in the culmination of a several day running battle in the Mediterranean between the Italian and British navies. Once again, the Italians proved themselves to be losing everywhere. This was the effective end of the Italian surface fleet as a fighting force during the war.
More on that here:
German test pilot and unrepentant Nazi Hanna Reitsch may have won the Iron Cross on this day, or it may have been the day prior. This day would have been her 39th birthday.
Reitsch never did acknowledge the atrocities of the Third Reich and as late as the 1970s she was not only unapologetic but confessed she was still a Nazi. She none the less lived in Ghana for an extended time post World War Two and show no racism towards Africans at that time. She seems to have adopted a Holocaust denier position. She and Werner Von Braun were the parents of her only child, whose parentage was not acknowledged at the time.
On the same day, the first Beechcraft C-45A was complete.
