Friday, May 19, 1944. Dewey take the GOP nomination.

155s firing on Wadke Island, May 19, 1944.

The Allies took Gasta Itri, Monte Grande, Pico and n the Aquino airfield, in the Liri Valley.

Task Group 58.2 raided Marcus Island.

B-17 Donna Mae II seconds before a bomb dropped from a B-17 above her, under which she had drifted, struck her horizontal stabilizer and caused the plane to go straight down, killing the entire crew.

The Republican primary process concluded with the Oregon Primary.  Dewey was the nominee.

Peter Mayhew, who played Chewbacca in the original Star Wars, was born.

Thursday, May 18, 1944. Monte Cassino ends.

And in more ways than one.

The Germans had withdrawn, leaving only 30 men too wounded to be moved. The Poles were the first Allied troops in the monastery.

It would be rebuilt.

Stalin ordered the Crimean Tartars deported from their homeland. The action was carried out on the excuse that some Tartars had collaborated with the Germans, which was actually true of every Soviet ethnicity, including, in large numbers, the Russians.  Repression of the Tartars would carry on for decades after the war, and the disaster has never been sufficiently redressed.

The Admiralty Islands Campaign and the Battle of Wakde ended in Allied victories.

Gerd von Runstedt as Commander in Chief of German forces in the west.

Von Runstedt was an old soldier by this point, having been born in 1875 and having entered the Prussian Army in 1892.  Like MacArthur in the U.S. Army, he'd retired before the war, having left service in 1938, although he was five years older than MacArthur, who was old for a U.S. Army commander.  An erasable character, he was not personally fond of Hitler, knew of plots to kill him which he kept to himself, but would not participate in them as he felt the concept disloyal.

After the war he was imprisoned for four years and upon his release found himself separated from his wife due to the division of Germany. She was in the American Zone of occupation, but he could not secure permission to visit her, as the US was upset by the British decision to release him.  He died in 1953 at age 77.

It can be argued that his decision not to support the July 20 plotters was instrumental in the coup's failure.

Last prior edition:

Wednesday, May 17, 1944. Landing at Wakde.

1940s, 1944, Battle of Wakde, Burma, Italy, Merrill's Maurauders, Nationalist Chinese Army, Operation Diadem, Operation Straight Line

Friday, May 16, 1924. Harry Yount.

Harry Yount, sometimes erroneously referred to as Wyoming's first game warden (he wasn't), passed away in Wheatland at age 85.

Yount was from Missouri in 1839 and joined the Union Army during the Civil War, being taken prisoner by the Confederates from whom he escaped.  His escaped from captivity was barefoot and lead to a condition of rheumatism, which left him eligible for benefits for the same when they were first passed in 1890.  After the war, he headed West and engaged in a classic series of Frontier occupations, including bull whacking and buffalo hunting.

In the 1870s he was engaged by the Smithsonian in order to collect taxidermy specimens, and he became a regular member of the Hayden expeditions throughout the decade. During this period, he also took up prospecting.  He was well known enough to be the subject of a newspaper profile in 1877.  Around this time he became a commercial hunter in Wyoming, that still being legal until Wyoming took efforts to outlaw it early in the 20th Century.

In 1880, he was hired at the impressive salary of $1,000 per year to become Yellowstone National Park's first game warden, gamekeeper, or "park ranger" at a time at which the law was enforced in Yellowstone by the U.S. Army.  He occupied the high paying job for fourteen months.  Upon resigning he noted:

I do not think that any one man appointed by the honorable Secretary, and specifically designated as a gamekeeper, is what is needed or can prove effective for certain necessary purposes, but a small and reliable police force of men, employed when needed, during good behavior, and dischargeable for cause by the superintendent of the park, is what is really the most practicable way of seeing that the game is protected from wanton slaughter, the forests from careless use of fire, and the enforcement of all the other laws, rules, and regulations for the protection and improvement of the park.

His resignation seems to have come over a disagreement with the park superintendent, who wanted him to spend more time building roads.

After leaving the Park, he prospected, after a short and unsuccessful stint as a homesteader, in the Laramie Range for almost forty years, a remarkable stint at that occupation.  He took out a marble mining claim and spent his later years there, working also at prospecting right up to the day he died.  He collapsed near the Lutheran Church in Wheatland after walking into town, something he did daily.  He was 85 years old.

Younts Peak near Yellowstone is named after him.  The Park Service gives out the Harry Yount Award, established in 1994, annually to an outstanding ranger employee.

The Soviet children's magazine Murzilka appeared for the first time.

A bill to nationalize British coal mining failed, 264 to 168.

Last prior edition:

Thursday, May 15, 1924. "Patriotism, which is bought and paid for is not patriotism."

1920s, 1924, Calvin Coolidge, It was because of World War One

Sunday, May 12, 1974. Divorce Italian Style.

Italians voted to retain the newly granted right to obtain a divorce, dating from 1970, in Italy's first public referendum.  The vote was 59% in favor of retention of the law.

Italian divorce or the lack of it, had actually been the theme of an Italian movie of several yeas prior, at the time that Italian movies and bombshell actresses were a big thing.  In the film, which I've never seen, apparently Ferdinando Cefalù, placed by Marcello Mastroianni, is married a 37-year-old impoverished Sicilian nobleman when he falls in love with his cousin Angela, a 16-year-old girl he sees only during the summer.

Ick.

So he starts to plot to kill his wife, and it goes on from there.

I don't think I'll bother to catch it.

Mastroianni is an interesting character, as his own marriage failed due to his infidelities, but he and his wife remained married throughout his life.  Asked once about it, he was horrified when it was suggested he should divorce, noting that he was Catholic and Catholics do not divorce.

Daniela Rocca, who played the devoted wife in the film, actually was rendered mentally unstable during it, and attempted to commit suicide. Stefania Sandrelli, who played the 16-year-old love interest, and ultimately unfaithful second wife, was actually only 14 years old when she played the part.

Leyla Qasim, became the first woman to be executed by Saddam Hussein's regime.  She was one of five Kurds charged with attempting to hijack and airplane and plotting to kill the Iraqi leader.

Last prior edition:

Thursday, May 9, 1974. Probable cause.

1970s, 1974, Disaster, Geology, Government, Japan, television, Watergate

Friday, May 12, 1944. Heroism in Italy. End of the war in the Caucasus.

The two-year-long Battle of the Caucasus ended in a Soviet victory.  

What's partially amazing about this is that the Soviets and Axis forces were fighting a war that was effectively far behind the real front lines by this point.  The Axis forces should have withdrawn from this region months prior to this.

The war in Italy at this point was remarkably multinational, with the US 5th Army including a wide variety of western units, including units of the Indian Army. Sepoy Kamal Ram won the Victoria Cross in Italy for single handely wiping out a German machinegun post, causing a second one to surrender a,d n assisting a feelow soldier in the destruction of a third.

His citation.

In Italy, on 12 May 1944, after crossing the River Gari overnight, the Company advance was held up by heavy machine-gun fire from four posts on the front and flanks. As the capture of the position was essential to secure the bridgehead, the Company Commander called for a volunteer to get round the rear of the right post and silence it. Volunteering at once and crawling forward through the wire to a flank, Sepoy Kamal Ram attacked the post single handed and shot the first machine-gunner; a second German tried to seize his weapon but Sepoy Kamal Ram killed him with the bayonet, and then shot a German officer who, appearing from the trench with his pistol, was about to fire. Sepoy Kamal Ram, still alone, at once went on to attack the second machine-gun post which was continuing to hold up the advance, and after shooting one machine-gunner, he threw a grenade and the remaining enemy surrendered. Seeing a Havildar making a reconnaissance for an attack on the third post, Sepoy Kamal Ram joined him, and, having first covered his companion, went in and completed the destruction of this post. By his courage, initiative and disregard for personal risk, Sepoy Kamal Ram enabled his Company to charge and secure the ground vital to the establishment of the bridgehead and the completion of work on two bridges. When a platoon, pushed further forward to widen the position, was fired on from a house, Sepoy Kamal Ram, dashing towards the house, shot one German in a slit trench and captured two more. His sustained and outstanding bravery unquestionably saved a difficult situation at a critical period of the battle and enabled his Battalion to attain the essential part of their objective.

He was 19 years old at the time, and would remain in the Indian Army after the war, retiring in 1972.  He died in 1987 at the age of 57. 

The 5th Army made progress against the Gustav Line.  The French Expeditionary Corps captured Monte Faito. The British 13th Corps crossed the Rapido opposite of Cassino.

Frederick Schiller Faust, better known by his pen name Max Brand, was killed by artillery while working as a writer attached to U.S. infantry, a request he'd made some weeks earlier.  He was 51 years old.

The United States Army Air Force hit synthetic oil plants at Leuna-Merseburg, Bohlen, Zeitz, Lutzkendorf and Brux.

ME 410 photographed from a B-17 over Brux.

A20 hit by flak over France.  Pilot 1st Lt Robert E. Stockwell and gunner S/Sgt Hollis A. Foster were killed. Bombardier Lt. Albert Jedinak and gunner S/Sgt. Egon W. Rust bailed out and were captured.

The State Department was busy trying to find a way to save Rome from destruction.

German U-boat commander Oskar Kusch was executed for holding views critical of Adolf Hitler.

Last prior edition:

Thursday, May 11, 1944. Operation Diadem.

1940s, 1944, 1944 at the Movies, Blog Mirror, Bougainville, German Luftwaffe, Hermann Göring, Italy, Movies, Operation Diadem, Personalities, Royal Air Force, The Holocaust, World War Two

Thursday, May 11, 1944. Operation Diadem.

Japanese foxholes located under bank of draw in the 129th Infantry, 37th Division sector on Bougainville, Solomon Islands. The jungle growth has been cleared by the fierce artillery fire.  May 11, 1944.

Allied forces broke through German defenses in the Liri Valley in Operation Diadem with the first attacks being by the British 4th Infantry Division and the 8th Indian Infantry Division, with fire support from the 1st Canadian Armoured Brigade.  All the Allies fighting in Italy would participate in the offensive.

Allied air forces raided the French coast, with Calais particularly hard hit.

Oberst Walter Oesau (123 victories) was shot down and killed over the Eifel Mountains.  

Oesau had been goaded into flying by Luftwaffe chief Hermann Göring on that day even though he'd been sick in bed with the flu, Göring calling his command to see if he was flying.  Göring had been turning his ire on unit commanders who were not regularly flying, and upon learning that Oesau was in bed he basically accused him of cowardice.  He did skillfully fight three P-38s but was killed by cannon fire from one of the aircraft attempting to make an emergency landing.\

Oesau had fought in the Spanish Civil War, but there's little known about him overall.  He was not a flamboyant figure and included no special markings on his aircraft.

The RAF Lancaster "S for Sugar" completed its 100th mission.

Today in World War II History—May 11, 1944 In Italy, Germans release Jews of Turkish, Spanish, Portuguese, Swedish, Finnish, and Swiss citizenship under pressure from these neutral governments.

Movie premiere of The White Cliffs of Dover, starring Irene Dunne.

Social Security Administration ruling reflecting a marriage on this date, and a complicated set of relationships.

SSR 60-9. STATUS OF CHILD IN THE WOMB

A child conceived during its mother's marriage to her first husband, but born after her re-marriage to her second husband is the stepchild of the second husband from the date of such marriage.

M was divorced from F on March 25, 1944. She married P on May 11, 1944. A child, C, was born to M on July 13, 1944. P died on May 20, 1945. An application for child's benefits on P's social security account was filed September 23, 1959, on behalf of C.

Section 216(e) of the Social Security Act defines the term "child" as including a stepchild of a deceased individual who has been a stepchild "for not less than one year immediately preceding the day on which such individual died."

In view of the general principle that when justice or convenience requires, the child in the womb is dealt with as a human being even though physiologically it is part of the mother, the marriage of P and M created a steprelationship between P and M's child, C, even though C was unborn at that time. Since the marriage of P and M occurred more than one year prior to P's death, and C had been conceived and was in existence at the time of the marriage, it is held that C was P's stepchild for one year prior to his death as required by section 216(e) for becoming entitled to benefits on his earnings record.

Last prior edition:

Wednesday, May 10, 1944. New Medals.

1940s, 1944, boats and ships, Burma, Imperial Japanese Navy, Merchant Marine, Nationalist Chinese Army, Personalities, Red Army, U.S. Navy, World War Two

Wednesday, May 10, 1944. New Medals.

Chinese forces, while under assault elsewhere in China, crossed the Salween River near the Burmese border in an offensive.

The Japanese destroyer Karukaya was sunk in the South China Sea by the USS Silversides.

Soviet General Aleksandr Vasilevsky was wounded in the head at Sevastopol when his car drove over a mine.  He recovered and later served again in high command, and went on to be Stalin's post-war Minister of War, a position he lost with Stalin's death.  He died in 1977.

A series of Merchant Marine medals were established, recognizing their very dangerous service in various theaters.

Last prior edition:

Tuesday, May 9, 1944. Sevastopol liberated.

1940s, 1944, Aircraft, El Salvador, Red Army, Siege of Sevastopol, Soviet Navy, technology

Saturday, May 10, 1924. J. Edgar Hoover becomes the head of the (Federal) Bureau of Investigation.

J. Edgar Hoover was named acting director of the Bureau of Investigation, which later became the Federal Bureau of Investigation.  He'd occupy the position of the agency's head until May 2, 1972, the latter being the date of his death.

Hoover in 1932.

Hoover was a lawyer who had graduated from Georgetown with an LLB in 1916 and obtained a LLM from the same institution in 1917.  That year, he went to work in the Justice Department War Emergency Division at age 22.  He was 77 when he died, the mandatory Federal retirement age having been waived in his case.  His extremely long retention is peculiar, and has given rise to speculation that various Presidents were afraid of what he might have on them in his files.

Hoover was foundational for the FBI, as might be suspected. As an individual personality he was peculiar and notably never married, and lived with his mother into his 40s and was extremely close to assistant director Clyde Tolson, who inherited his estate, all of which has given rise to speculation about his sexuality but nothing has been proven one way or another about it.

Personally, I suspect that Hoover was the source of information used by Joe McCarthy on Communists in the US government, something that the Truman Administration early on had attempted to keep the lid on, but I've never seen that speculated upon elsewhere.

It was a Saturday.

Last prior edition:

Friday, May 9, 1924. Scottish question results in chaos.

1880s, 1885, 1920s, 1924, 1990s, 1999, Aircraft, Belfast Northern Ireland, Calvin Coolidge, Immigration, Japan, law, Mail, Scotland, Scotland (Liverpool), Washington DC

Wednesday, May 10, 1899. Song and Dance.

 Fred Astaire was born in Omaha, Nebraska as Frederick Austerlitz

Texas State University was founded.

Last prior edition:

Sunday, May 7, 1899. Aguinaldo moves

1890s, 1899, Philippine Insurrection, Philippines

Wednesday, May 5, 1899. The station at Khilkovo.

William S. Davidson, Sarah E. Smith, Maud Morphew, Eleonora Hansen, Frederick Pray, and David Clarkson at Khilkovo Station (Okeanskaia), north of Vladivostok. 

I enclose a photo I took at the station at Khilkovo-- you will recognize all but Miss Morphew and Mrs. Hansen and you can distinguish them by Mrs. Hansen's fur cape. 

Elanor Pray.

We discussed Mrs. Pray yesterday, but here too there's a warning for us moderns. Russian society of 1899 was blisteringly ignorant.  That ignorance would help fuel two revolutions, the second successful, and the rise of Communism, through its adoption by populists.

A warning on populist extremism to us all.

Last prior edition:

Thursday, May 4, 1899. The Battle of Santo Tomas and the remarkable Elanor Pray.

1890s, 1899, 1930, 1930s, China, Iowa National Guard, Kansas National Guard, Montana National Guard, Nebraska National Guard, Philippine Insurrection, Philippines, Russia, Vladivostok Russia, World War Two

Wednesday, May 4, 1944. Japanese Command Changes.

 

Soemu Toyoda (豊田 副武) was made Commander in Chief of the Imperial Japanese Navy Combined Fleet.

Toyada became a full Admiral only shortly before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and was opposed to it from the onset, believing that a war with the United States was unwinnable.  He figured in late war Imperial Conferences on finding an end to the war, which he was in favor of ending but he wished for better terms for Japan, even after the atomic strikes on the country.  He was in favor of defending the home islands to the last man.

Arrested and charged with war crimes in 1948, he was acquitted in 1949, the only member of the Japanese armed forces to prevail in a war crimes trial.  He died in 1957 at age 72.

The British 14th Army captured the heights above the Maungdaw-Buthindaung road in the Arakan.

The USS Donnell was heavily damaged by a strike by the U-473. Towed to Scotland, she became a total loss.

The U-852 was scuttled on the Somali coast.

Harvard scientists announce the ability to produce synthetic quinine.

The French Resistance burned 100,000 liters of acetone at the Lambiotte plant.

2nd Lt. John W. Garrett, age 19, was killed making an emergency landing of a B-24 at Rentschler Field, East Hartford, Connecticut. 

Sarah Sundin has some interesting entries on her blog, Today in World War II History—May 3, 1944.

She reports, for instance, that Going My Way was released.

I've never seen the film, but according to some its the best in Bing Crosby's career.  I probably should catch it.

The movie is really from the golden age of the portrayal of Catholic clerics in American films.  It interestingly came before the point at which Catholics had crossed over into the American cultural mainstream, and remained their own ethnicity to a strong degree.  The era, which started in the 1930s and continued into the 1950s, basically ended after the American Catholic integration occured following John F. Kennedy's election to the White House.

It's interesting, in that there are an entire series of really sympathetic portrayals of Catholic priests and Catholicism in general from this era, including Boys Town (1938), The Song of Bernadette (1943), The Bells of Saint Mary's (1945), The Keys of the Kingdom (1944), The Quiet Man (1952) On The Waterfront (1954), and The Left Hand of God (1955).  These were all major motion pictures, not niche pictures such as For Greater Glory (2012).  They came on pretty strongly in the late 1930s and continued on into the mid 50s, but really disappeared after that.  By the 1970's M*A*S*H the portrayal of priests had declined to the point where the portrayal was entirely satyric.

Sundin reports that meat rationing was temporarily relaxed, which brings up this post that we pondered the topic in from a few years back:

Hunting (and fishing), Stateside, during World War Two.

Owning a packing house, as they did, I wonder what was table fare for my father and his family during the war?

Last prior edition:

Tuesday, May 2, 1944. Sensing a change.

1940s, 1944, boats and ships, French Resistance Movements, Red Army, Romania, Second Battle of Târgu Frumos, Spain, U.S. Navy, Vichy France

Saturday, May 3, 1924. Foundings.

The Grand Order of the Aleph Zadik Aleph (AZA or אצא), an international fraternity for Jewish teenagers, was founded in Omaha, Nebraska.

It would go on to found the B'nai B'rith Youth Organization a year later.

The SS Catalina, which would be in service for 51 years ferrying passengers between Los Angeles and Santa Catalina Island, was launched.

German police raided the Soviet Trade Delegation

Zinaida Kokorina, against the odds and through the intervention of the Soviet head of state, became the first female military pilot on this day in 1924.

She wanted to become a fighter pilot, but was persuaded to remain a flight instructor, which she did through World War Two.  She later became headmistress of a village school at Cholpon-Ata in Kyrgyzstan before retiring to Moscow.

Last prior edition:

Friday, May 2, 1924. Craters of the Moon.

1920s, 1924, Calvin Coolidge, Craters of the Moon National Monument, Cuba, Government, Idaho, Radio

Friday, April 28, 1944. Day Two of Execise Tiger.

USS LST-289. Arrives in Dartmouth Harbor, England, after being torpedoed in the stern by German MTBs during an invasion rehearsal off Slapton Sands, England, on 28 April 1944.

We've already discussed Exercise Tiger and won't repeat what we set out there, but we will note that while focus on Tiger tends to be on the American loss of life it caused, it very well may have resulted in avoiding disaster at Operation Overlord.  

In that sense, Exercise Tiger might be remembered justifiably in much the same way that the August 19,1942 Anglo Canadian raid at Dieppe can be, a disaster whose lessons were so significant that the event is sort of a Pyrrhic defeat.  That is, the lessons learned as a result of the disasters encountered there were so significant they served to avoid them occurring on the beaches in Operation Overlord.

British family moving from the Slapton Sands area when it was being taken over as an exercise area.

Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox died.

Knox had been ill for a while, having suffered a series of recent heart attacks.  He was 70 years old at the time of his death.

A Bostonian, he's served with the 1st U.S. Volunteer Cavalry, the "Rough Riders", during the Spanish American War.  After the war he had been a newspaper editor in Michigan, where he was also the state chairman of the Republican Party.  He supported Theodore Roosevelt for President in 1912 and had agitated for U.S. entry into the Great War, in which he went on to serve as an artilleryman.  He was a Vice Presidential candidate in the 1936 campaign, on the Landon Knox ticket.  Roosevelt appointed the Republican Secretary of the Navy in 1940.  After Pearl Harbor, Knox, while still Secretary of the Navy, was shunted aside to a significant degree in favor of Admiral Ernest J. King, that being somewhat of a tradition by that time.

1944  USS Crook County, LST-611, named after Crook counties Wyoming and Oregon, launched. She was a landing ship, tank.

USS Crook County at Inchon, 1950.

The ship was a LST that served in the Pacific during World War Two and then again during the Korean War.  She was decommissioned in 1956.

Related threads:

Wednesday, August 19, 2022. The Raid On Dieppe.

1940s, 1942, Canadian Army, Commandos, Dieppe France, Dieppe Raid, Espionage, Free French, Guadalcanal, Operation Jubilee, Royal Air Force, Royal Canadian Air Force, Siege of Leningrad, World War Two

Last prior edition:

Thursday, April 27, 1944. Exercise Tiger

1940s, 1944, Capitalism, Disaster, Exercise Tiger, German Kriegsmarine, Poland, Quebec, U.S. Navy, Ukraine, United Kingdom, World War Two, Wyoming, Wyoming Stock Growers Association