The Central Powers established bridgeheads over the San.
Ottoman soldiers killed 6,000 Armenians by artillery fire while covering the evacuation of Turkish women and children from Van.
The Royal Naval Air Service intercepted two Zeppelins, badly damaging one.
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The East Prussian Offensive and the Samland Offensive ended in Soviet victories.
Today In Wyoming's History: April 25: 1945 Last Boeing B-17 attack against Germany.
Hanna Reitsch flew Luftwaffe General Robert Ritter von Greim from Munich to Berlin by Hanna Reitsch for a meeting with Hitler in which he was given command of the Luftwaffe and promoted to Field Marshall. Anti aircraft fire resulted in Greim being injured during the flight.
Reitsch lived until 1979 when she died at age 67. There's some speculation that she may have committed suicide with a cyanide capsule she was given at the bunker, but this is speculation based in part on a cryptic letter she sent to former British test pilot and Royal Navy officer Eric Brown. She remained an unrepentant Nazi until her death in some ways, but lived for a time in Ghana where she recanted racist views on Africans. She was a fantastic pilot and remains a fascinating figure, being a woman who succeeded in a male field in the 30s and 40s and in an environment that was hostile to working women. Additionally, she excelled in flying even after the war.
The Luftwaffe's last air victories in World War Two occurred when five Allied bombers were shot down over Aussig.
Italian partisan Miotero Geninetti, age 40, Italian partisan leader, was executed.
Walter Gross, age 40, racist German physician and Nazi politician committed suicide.
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The Red Army took Vienna and began the Samland Offensive.
Members of the SS and Luftwaffe German SS and Luftwaffe burned 1,016 slave laborers alive in a large barn at Gardelegen.
New Zealander troops captured Massa Lombarda, southwest of Lake Comacchio, Italy.
American forces land on Fort Drum,"the Concrete Battleship", in Manila Bay. They poured 5,000 gallons of oil fuel into the fortifications and set it on fire, whereupon it burned for five days.
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The "great jet massacre" occurred in which Allied aircraft shot down fifty Me 262s causing the Luftwaffe to abandon the aerial defense of Berlin.
The last reconnaissance flight over the UK was flown by the Luftwaffe, using a Ar234.
US Army Corporal Rick Carrier discovered Buchenwald leading to its liberation the following day.
The US 84th Infantry Division took Hanover. The 9th Army took Essen.
The Battle of Authion began in the French Alps
The RAF sank the U-878 in the Bay of Biscay.
The 96th Infantry Division seized part of Kakazu Ridge.
The 14th Corps reached Lamon Bay and captured Mauban on the Philippines.
The British 4th Corps captured Thazi in Burma.
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The Japanese Imperial Navy launched an ill advised doomed kamikaze attack with ten warships, including the Yamato off of Okinawa. The Yamato was sun k with a loss of 2,055 of its 2,332 crewmembers, and five other Japanese ships went down as well.
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The Luftwaffe also engaged in a suicide mission, sending out 120 student pilots about against a 1,000 plane US raid. They were to ram their aircraft into the Americans ones, and hopefully parachute out.
Most of the pilots missed their targets and most were shot down.
Operation Amherst commenced which saw the Free French and SAS launch an effort to capture Dutch canals, bridges and airfields intact.
Kantarō Suzuki replaced Kuniaki Koiso as Prime Minister of Japan.
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The Battle of the Visayas began in the Philippines, commencing with amphibious landings. The campaign would continue until the end of the war.
Japan closed its schools in Tokyo and ordered everyone over the age of six to report for war work.
The largest Allied bombing raid on Berlin during World War Two took place. 1,329 Allied bombers and 700 fighters were countered by the Luftwaffe using the new Me 262s and air-to-air rockets.
The U.S. Eighth Air Force lost six Mustangs and 13 bombers while the Luftwaffe only lost two planes. 3,000 tons of bombs were dropped on the city.
The US 3d Army took Bingen and Bad Kreuznach.
The Battle of Kolberg ended in Soviet and Red Polish victory.
The Battle of the Ligurian Sea was fought between British and German naval forces in the Gulf of Genoa.
The U-866 was sunk by the U.S. Navy.
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The Battle of Manilla ended in a U.S. victory.
Hitler visited General Theodor Busse’s 9th Army Headquarters, close to the river Oder. It was Hitler's last visit to the front.
Red Army tank commander Aleksandra Grigoryevna Samusenko was killed. There are two variants of her death, both involving her being run over by a tracked vehicle. She may have been accidentally run over by a Red Army tank.
She was a real exception to the rule about women in combat generally. Unfortunately, not a great deal is known about her. She appears as the "daughter of the regiment" of a tank unit as early as 1934, when she was 12 years gold, and it appears that by that time her mother was dead. Her ethnic origin is debated, with Belorussian, Ukrainian and Tartar all claimed (fwiw, she looks pretty Ukrainian). Effectively, she was in the Red Army from about 12 years of age on.
Finland retroactively declared war on Germany, dating the start of the war to September 15, 1944.
The Luftwaffe commenced Operation Gisela, a nighttime intruder operation aimed at RAF night operations. The aircraft lost by the Luftwaffe in the operation was nearly the same as that lost by the RAF, 22 to 24.
The Polish post Home Army and Polish civilians killed up to 500 Ukrainians in hte Pawlokoma Massacre in retaliation for Ukrainian Insurgent Army attacks on civilians, although there is evidence that the NKVD, and not the UIA, had carried out the attacks the Poles were seeking revenge for.
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The Luftwaffe commenced Operation Bodenplatte, which had originally been planned for December 16, in an attempt to cripple Allied air forces in the Low Countries. The hope was to gain air superiority so that the stalled German advance in Wacht am Rhein could resume.
A tactical surprise resulting in the destruction of 500 Allied aircraft on the ground, it none the less failed to achieve its goal and actually destroyed the Luftwaffe as an offensive, or even defensive, force due to heavy losses. Allied losses were replaced within one week.
Soldiers of the 11th Armored Division murdered about 80 German POWs at Chenogne, Belgium, in reprisal for the Malmedy Massacre.
Some of the boys had some prisoners line up. I knew they were going to shoot them, and I hated this business.... They marched the prisoners back up the hill to murder them with the rest of the prisoners we had secured that morning.... As we were going up the hill out of town, I know some of our boys were lining up German prisoners in the fields on both sides of the road. There must have been 25 or 30 German boys in each group. Machine guns were being set up. These boys were to be machine gunned and murdered. We were committing the same crimes we were now accusing the Japs and Germans of doing.... Going back down the road into town I looked into the fields where the German boys had been shot. Dark lifeless forms lay in the snow.
Following the Malmedy Massacre some US units were issued orders not to take SS POWs, a clearly illegal order. The murdered POWs, however, were members of the Führerbegleitbrigade and 3rd Panzergrenadier Division, German Army units, the latter of which had been associated with atrocities in Italy.
The killing of SS POWs became routine in some units.
The event was covered up and only really became known in detail in 2018. This was not the only such event that occurred, and some units began to routinely kill SS prisoners.
The UK refused to recognize the Soviet sponsored Polish government.
Hitler made a radio address which omitted the current German situation to such an extent that it provoked Allied debate on who made it, and when.
It's worth noting at this point that while October, 1944, was the bloodiest month of the war for the US, in larger terms, the killing and dying ramped up massively starting in January, 1945, as the Allies closed in on Germany.
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The Japanese captured Fuzhou, the last seaport China had controlled.
The Battle of Memel commenced.
German reduced civilian food rations.
An ME 262 was shot down for the first time in combat. The RCAF scored the victory.
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The Red Army commenced Operation Bagration with massive artillery and bombing raids.
Tailed first by a ME109, and then by a dispatched HE111, the Luftwaffe learned that the U.S. Army Air Force was using the Ukrainian airfield at Poltava. German aircraft shadowed the B-17s headed to Poltava, Ukraine, following a raid. The Luftwaffe then struck the base at night, destroying 15 P-51 fighters and more than 40 B-17s. Soviet air defenses were ineffective, and P-51s were not allowed by the Soviets to take off during the raid.
Sarah Sundin's blog has a great photograph taken during this air raid:
The HMS Fury struck a mine off of Sword Beach and was wrecked.
Meanwhile, the Channel storm continued and was effecting British operations on land.
The Battle of Val-de-Saire started on the Cotentin Peninsula. US troops enter Cherbourg following a massive bombardment. Intense fighting occurs in Cherbourg and the German commander, Lt. Gen. Von Schlieben ordered the port and navy assets destroyed. The US attacks towards Saint-Lô in the face of a German order to hold at all costs.
Mail call. Note how heavily these soldiers are dressed.
The US 2nd Marine Division captured Mount Tipo Pole and then started fighting for Mount Tapotchau on Saipan. The 4th Marine Division progressed east on the Kagman Peninsula.
The British broke the Siege of Imphal in Burma.
The Royal Navy raided the Andaman islands in an aircraft carrier raid.
Oliver Lyttelton addressed his remarks in front of the American Chamber of Commerce before the House of Commons, stating:
I was trying, in a parenthesis, to make clear the gratitude which this country feels for the help given to us in the war against Germany, before Japan attacked the United States, the words I used, however, when read textually, and apart from the whole tenor of my speech, seemed to mean that the help given us against Germany provoked Japan to attack. This is manifestly untrue. I want to make it quite clear that I do not complain of being misreported, and any misunderstanding is entirely my own fault. I ask the House to believe, however, that the fault was one of expression and not of intention. I hope this apology will undo any harm that the original words may have caused here or in the United States.
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Today was Memorial Day for 1944.
The Japanese mounted aggressive counterattacks on Biak and Arare, using tanks on Biak.
The Germans gave up the four-month strategic bombing campaign against Southern England.
The U-549 sank the USS Block Island off of the Canary Islands. Six crew members died, but 951 were picked up. The U-549 was sunk in the same engagement. All 57 hands went down with her.
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Today in World War II History—May 14, 1944: 80 Years Ago—May 14, 1944: In Italy, US II Corps breaks German Gustav Line, opening the route to Rome.
Sarah Sundin's blog.
The Luftwaffe raided Bristol at night.
E-boats attacked Allied landing craft near the Isle of Wight.
Albanian SS rounded up 281 Kosovo Jews for deportation to concentration camps.
Vichy radio reported that French cardinals had appealed to the Roman Catholic clergy in Britain and the United States to use their influence to ensure that the French civilian population towns, works of art and churches would be spared from Allied bombing as much as possible,
The ironically named America Maru was sunk by the USS Nautilus. Most of the occupants of the ship were Japanese civilians being evacuated from Saipan, the overwhelming majority of whom were killed in the sinking.
George Lucas was born in Modesto, California.
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