Monday, March 13, 1944. Bougainville counterattack.

US troops regained most of the ground lost on Bougainville in a counterattack.

37th Infantry Division soldier firing Thompson submachinegun on Bougainville, March 13, 1944.

Light tank in action, Bougainville.

Artillery in action, Bougainville.

U.S. forces overrun the small Japanese garrison at Hauwei.

In northwest Indian, the 17th and 20th Indian Divisions were authorized to pull back to Imphal. Mountbatten requested American aircraft to supply the Chinese and to redeploy the 5th Indian Division from the Arakan.  

Japanese aircraft attacked the Broadway airfield being used to supply the Chindits.

The Kingdom of Italy and the Soviet Union restored diplomatic relations with each other.

The Red Army took Kherson.

The U-575 was sunk in the Atlantic.  The Japanese cruiser Tatsuta was sunk off Hachijō-jima by the American submarine Sand Lance.

Last Prior:

Sunday, March 12, 1944. Derailed.

Friday, October 15, 1943. Flight 63.

American Airlines Flight 63 crashed near Centerville, Tennessee, killing all ten people on board.

The aircraft involved.

The CAB found:

Inability of the aircraft to gain or maintain altitude due to carburetor ice or propeller ice or wing ice of some combination of these icing conditions while over terrain and in weather unsuitable for an emergency landing.... Weather conditions which, had their nature been anticipated, should have precluded the dispatch of the flight in an aircraft not equipped with wing or propeller deicing equipment.

 Civil Aeronautics Board, CAB File No. 4889-43

The British 8th Army took Vinchiaturo.

The British also reestablished their base at Spitzbergen.

The Japanese staged an air raid on Oro Bay, New Guinea, but sustained heavy losses.

Monday, September 27, 1943. The commencement of the Quattro giornate di Napoli.

Naples revolved against German occupation in an event which is known as the Quattro giornate di Napoli.

Popular uprisings in advance of Allied troops would prove to be a help, and a hindrance, in the war from this point out.  They placed demands on Allied commanders to quickly relieve those areas that had revolved against German rule, while also proving to be a major problem to German occupiers.

The event did show that the fight had not gone out of the Italians. . . it just wasn't directed in aid of fascism any longer.

The British 8th Army entered Foggia, Italy.  This placed Allied aircraft within easy range of the Balkans, Southern Germany, and Poland.

The Australian Aboriginal and European Benedictine Catholic community of Kalumburu was attacked by the Imperial Japanese Army Air Force, killing five and destroying its buildings.

Professor Sam Ruben, a co-discoverer of Carbon 14, received a lethal dose of phosgene while working on war related processes.  He'd die the following day.

Sunday, December 20, 1942. The Japanese bomb Calcutta.

The Japanese bombed Calcutta.

Operation Mars ended as an operational failure.

Thursday, June 5, 1941. The US starts to occupy Iceland

4,000 Marines, a substantial number, arrived in Iceland to replace British troops garrisoning the country.

USS New York off of Reykjavik.

Iceland had not regarded the British invasion of their island, done to keep the Germans from seizing it, as a favor.  US forces were not invited either, but were better tolerated under the circumstances.

On the same day about 4,000 Chinese residents of Chongquing China died of asphyxiation in a tunnel in which they had sought refuge from a Japanese air raid.

Vichy France's status as a quasi belligerent on the Axis side increased when their aircraft bombed Aman, Jordan.   The Royal Air Force had already bombed Syrian airfields, so the move wasn't wholly unjustified, but it did signal that France was creeping up on being an outright Axis ally under the authoritarian regime of Marshal Petain.

Around 2,500 people were killed in an ammunition storage explosion in Yugoslavia.