Thursday, May 24, 1945. Japanese paratroopers on Okinawa.

The 10th Army crossed the Asato and entered Naha on Okinawa.  The Japanese landed paratroopers on Yontan airfield and destroyed a large number of aircraft.

Australian troops surrounded Wewak on New Guinea.

Tokyo was heavily hit in a US incendiary rai

Field Marshall Robert Ritter von Greim, age 52, the last commander of the Luftwaffe committed suicide.  Von Greim had been a pilot in World War One and was a recipient of the Blue Max.

De Gaulle awarded Montgomery the Grande Croix of the Legion d'Honneur

Courtney Hodges was given a parade in Georgia.

Last edition:

Wednesday, May 23, 1945. The end of governments.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, German Flensburg Government, Heinrich Himmler, Japan, Nazi Germany, U.S. Navy, United Kingdom, United Nations, Winston Churchill

Sunday, May 20, 1945. Contracting in China.

Chocolate Drop Hill on Okinawa was taken by U.S. troops.  The final fighting was in interconnected tunnels.

The 1st Marine Division captured Wana Ridge on Okinawa.  Marines also conducted mopping up operations on Horseshoe and Half Moon using flamethrowers, resulting in a desperate Japanese counterattack that ends with 200 Japanese troops killed.

The US took Malaybalay on Mindanao.

The Japanese Army evacuated Hochih, China as the Imperial Japanese General Staff decided to deploy forces closer to the Japanese Home Islands.

The Japanese had secured enormous territorial gains in China with a just completed offensive, and yet there was a massive amount of China left, the same problem the Japanese had been faced with since 1932 when they first began to fight in the country.  In many ways, for the Japanese, World War Two was principally about China, and now it was faced with the reality that being tied down there was contributing enormously to its losing in the war.

The Soviets appointed Soviet authorities appointed Dr. Arthur Werner as the Oberbergermeister of the Berlin.  The appointment would be shortly confirmed by the Western Allies.

He was not a Communist and had not been a Nazi. An engineer, he had lost his teaching position in 1942.

Last edition:

Saturday, May 19, 1945. Landing in Syria and Lebanon.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, Australian Army, French Army, Indonesia, It was because of World War Two, Lebanon, Nazi Party, Okinawa, Pacific, Syria, World War Two

Wednesday, May 16, 1945. The Haguro sunk, U-boats surrender.

Okinawa.

The Royal Navy sank the Haguro ending the Battle of Malacca Strait.  Admiral Kaju Saguira, age 49, was one of the casualties.

Fourteen U-boats surrendered to convoys in the Arctic.

The British liberated Alderney.

Heavy fighting occurred on Okinawa with the Japanese succeeding in knocking out some U.S. tanks.

Physicist Leo Szilard wrote a letter to J. Robert Oppenheimer trying to convince him that  atomic bombs shouldn't be used against Japan.

Last edition:

Tuesday, May 15, 1945. Germans fully surrendered, Chinese Army in retreat.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, Austria, Axis Powers, Battle of Poljana, Battle of the Malacca Strait, Burma, German Wehrmacht, Japan, Okinawa, Philippines, World War Two, Yugoslavia

Friday, May 11, 1945. The USS Bunker Hill.

The USS Bunker Hill was badly damaged by kamikaze attacks, something that had been an unrelenting feature of the Japanese defense of Okinawa as part of Operation Ten-Go.

The Battle of West Henan–North Hubei ended in tactical stalemate but a Japanese operational victory.

Soldiers of the US Army who had commenced combat with Operation Torch and who had gone on to serve in Europe were exempted from further combat deployment.  Fighting was still raging all over the Pacific, with troops meeting stiff resistance in New Guinea, the Philippines, and Okinawa as examples.

Soldiers at a familiarization course for newly arrived soldiers on Okinawa, May 11, 1945.

The Australians took Wewak, New Guinea.

The Red Army continued to encounter German units that had not yet surrendered.  In Yugoslavia German Group Ostmark refused to surrender and kept fighting Yugoslav forces.

German forces began to surrender in the Aegean.

Last edition:

Thursday, May 10, 1945. Guderian surrenders.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, Channel Islands, Czechoslovakia, France, Luzon, Okinawa, Prague Czechoslovakia, Prisoners of War, Red Army, World War Two

Monday, April 9, 1945. The End of B-17 Production.

"Tankmen of the 781st Tank Battalion, supporting the 100th Infantry Division, relax while awaiting the construction of a new bridge across the Neckar River in Heilbronn, Germany. The former pontoon bridge put in by the engineers was knocked out by effective and accurate artillery fire. 9 April, 1945.  781st Tank Battalion, 100th Infantry Division."

Photographer: T/4 Irving Leibowitz, 163rd Signal Photo Co.

The Battle of Königsberg ended in a Red Army victory.

The Japanese invaded west Hunan.

The Battle of Bologna began in Italy.

The Australian Z Special Force began Operation Opossum with the goal of rescuing the Sultan of Ternate from Ternate Island in Indonesia.

The RAF sank the Admiral Scheer, the U-804, U-843 and the U-1065.

B-17 production stopped in Seattle.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, age 39, German Lutheran pastor; Wilhelm Canaris, age 58, German admiral; Ludwig Gehre, age 49, German officer; Hans Oster, age 57, German major general; Karl Sack, age 48, German jurist; and Theodor Strünck, age 50, German lawyer, and  Johann Georg Elser, age 42, were executed by the German government.

Last edition:

Sunday, April 8, 1945. Cebu City.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, Army, Battle for Cebu City, Croatia, Italy, Operation Amherst, Philippines, South African Army, Weapons, World War Two, Yugoslavia

Japanese Type 95 Ha-Go light tank. National Museum of Military Vehicles.

Last edition:

M38 A1s, National Museum of Military Vehicles.

Labels: 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 4x4, Artillery, Automobiles, Korean War, Military, National Museum of Military Vehicles, Radio, Trucks, Wyoming (Dubois)

Monday, March 26, 1945. Last action at Iwo Jima.

The Battle of Iwo Jima officially ended in a U.S. victory following a final Japanese suicide attack.  Japanese commander Tadamichi Kuribayashi is believed to have died on or around this date, probably killed in action.  Some Japanese holdouts would fight on beyond this date.

The Battle for Cebu City began in the Philippines.

The USS Halligan was irreparably damaged by a mine off of Okinawa.

The U-399 was sunk off of Land's End by the HMS Duckworth.

Last edition:

Sunday, March 25, 1945. Crossing the Rhine.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, Allied Powers, Army, Battle of Remagen, Bernard Law Montgomery, Bratislava–Brno Offensive, Germany, Operation Plunder, Red Army, the spoken word, The written word, Winston Churchill, World War Two

Wednesday, March 21, 1945. Ohka.

The first attempted use of the the Yokosuka MXYZ Ohka suicide jet failed when the flight of Betty bombers carrying them towards their target, the US fleet off of Okinawa, was intercepted and all the bombers shot down.

The Battle of West Henan–North Hubei (豫西鄂北會戰) between the Chinese National Revolutionary Army and Imperial Japanese Army began.

The RAF hit Gestapo headquarters in Copenhagen, which also resulted in 125 civilian deaths.

The Royal Air Force hit Venice harbor from the air.

Last edition:

Tuesday, March 20, 1945. Hitler's last appearance in public.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, Adolf Hitler, Arnsberg Forest Massacre, Australian Army, Blog Mirror, boats and ships, Commandos, German Army, Heroes, Hitler Youth, Kamikaze, Okinawa, Operation Platypus, War Crimes, World War Two

Japanese Type 7 305mm gun, National Museum of Military Vehicles.

Last edition:

M103 Heavy Tank, National Museum of Military Vehicles.

Labels: 1950s, 1957, 1960s, 1970s, 1974, Army, National Museum of Military Vehicles, The Cold War, Tracked vehicles, United States Marine Corps, Wyoming (Dubois)

Saturday, March 10, 1945. The execution of Gen. Émile Lemonnier.

Gen. Émile Lemonnier of the French Army was executed by the Japanese for, as a captive, refusing to sign an instrument of surrender to the Japanese in Indochina.  He was 51 years of age.

The last few years of his life must have been one of unrelenting mental torment.

The cowardly weasel ordering his execution, Captain Kayakawa was himself executed after the war..

I know some will excuse the latter's actions based on culture, but he was a weasel.

It was day two of the firebombing of Tokyo.

It's extremely difficult not to be morally troubled by this action.  There are military justifications of it, but by and large, it was a monstrous attack upon a civilian population right down to the infant level.  It survives as a reminder that even in World War Two, in which the Allies held hte moral high ground, not all Allied actions were morally licit.

In our own day, in which we have a President who stands by as rockets rain down on a civilian population, and in which that same President sat a war out due to shin splints, it rains buckets of blood on our own  heads.

The Australians landed at Wide Bay, Papua New Guinea.

Smiling Albert Field Marshal Kesselring arrivee from Italy to take command of the German armies in the west.

The Germans withdrew from from the pocket west of the Rhine between Wesel and Xanten in the face of British and Canadian pressure.

The German offensive around Lake Balatron began to encounter heavy Rad Army resistance..

The U-275 struck a mine and was sunk off of East Sussex.  The U-681 was sunk off of the Isles of Scilly by a U.S Navy B-24.

FDR involved Spanish representatives with their hands out no American aid will be forthcoming so long as the Franco dictatorship continued.

Good for FDR.

Today, King Donny would probably be giving warm smooches to Francoist delegates.

Last edition:

Friday, March 9, 1945. Firebombing Japan (Operation Meetinghouse). Japanese end French rule in Indochina (Operation Bright Moon)

Labels: 1940s, 1945, Army, French Indochina, Italian Social Republic, law, Mussolini, Operation Bright Moon, Operation Meetinghouse, The Great Tokyo Air Raid, Tokyo Japan, U.S. Air Force, War Crimes

Wednesday, January 24, 1945. Himmler given a field command.

German POW, January 23, 1945.  His cap badge indicates he was in the Luftwaffe.

Hitler appointed Heinrich Himmler as commander of the newly created Army Group Vistula.  This was rightfully resented by the German military.

The Battle of Poznań began for Polish city.

The French 1st Army took crossing over the River Ill in Alsace.  The  British 2nd Army entered Heinsberg.

"Lt. Col. V. L. Johnson, G-3 Officer, 25th Division, and Maj. Gen. C. L. Mullins, Jr., CG, 25th Division, share a foxhole in San Manuel, Luzon, P.I., with a GI of the 161st Infantry Regiment. 24 January, 1945."

The US took Calapan on Mindoro and Cabanatuan on Luzon.

The US 14th Air Force abandoned Suichuan airfield in China due to Japanese advances.  Operation Ichi-Go, the Japanese ground offensive in China, was going spectacularly well at the same time the United States was destroying the Japanese in the Pacific and getting ever closer to Japan itself, giving this a surreal quality.  Additing to it, British operations in Burma were going very well.

The Shigure was sunk by the USS Blackfin in the  Gulf of Siam.

Today In Wyoming's History: January 24:1945  The Legislature rejects a junior college plan.

One thing that's nice about doing these posts is that you learn how prior legislatures were short sighted. This is just such an example, most likely.

They would approve a community college plan within a couple of years.

This year the legislature is going to pass a bill, probably, allowing people who homeschool to not report to their school district.  By and large, those homeschooling around here do it so their children don't learn something, rather than insure that they learn.

Last edition:

Tuesday, January 23, 1945. St. Vith taken by the Allies.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, Army, Burma, German Army, German Resistance Movements, Indian Army, Personalities, Philippines, World War Two

Japanese Artillery. National Museum of Military Vehicles.

Japanese weapons receive much less attention that those of other armies, in part because their ground weapons tended to be obsolescent or odd.  Artillery is no exception.

A lot of Japanese weapons tended to reflect an earlier era, sometimes only slightly so, and sometimes greatly, than that of the 1940s.  Japan tended to adopt a weapon, of a copy of a good Western design, and stick with it for a long time, savor for naval and air weapons, where they were advancing all the time.  In terms of artillery, much of it was light and antiquated.

It's notable here that of the Japanese guns depicted, most still retain wagon wheel type wheels.

Last edition:

British 25 Pdr. National Museum of Military Vehicles.

Labels: 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 1950s, Artillery, British Army, National Museum of Military Vehicles, World War Two, Wyoming (Dubois)

Wednesday, December 6, 1944. Japanese paratroopers on Leyte.

The Japanese conducted an airborne landing on Leyte, combined with a ground infantry offensive.

The UK began to return displaced British to their homes, save for areas subject to V-weapon attacks.

Germany began stripping the Netherlands of locomotives and sending them to Germany. They were electric trains.

The RAF conducted strafing runs on communist positions in Greece.

The U-297 was sunk by the RAF.  The HMS Bullen was sunk by the U-775

Heinkel He 162 Volksjäger had its first flight.

Heinkel HE 162, National Museum of Military Vehicles, Dubois Wyoming.

A very late war German fighter, only 120 were made.

Stalin met with General de Gaulle in Moscow.

Last edition:

Tuesday, December 5, 1944. The Royal Navy in the Greek Civil War.

Labels: 1930s, 1939, 1940s, 1944, Army, Battle of Leyte, Blog Mirror, Communism, Crime, Dekemvriana (Δεκεμβριανά), Greece, Greek, Philippines, Red Army, Royal Navy, World War Two