La Cruz Blanca Neutral, a medical relief organization taking a neutral stance in the Mexican Revolution, was formed. The Red Cross refused to treat rebels in the conflict.
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The Japanese carried out the Kalagong massacre, killing villagers in the area after they failed to provide any information about guerrillas in the area.
The Japanese also murdered Peter To Rot, a Catholic from New Guinea, in a bizarre incidence demonstrating the severe Japanese anti Western view and, frankly, the Japanese debasement of the period, which not only reflected itself in murder, but in a chattel slavery view of women and sex. He was executed for defending a woman whom another planned to kidnap and force into a plural marriage, with the Japanese supporting plural marriages in New Guinea (they were not legal in Japan). He was arrested and then later murdered on this day. He will be canonized this October.
Japanese rocket propelled fighter the Mitsubishi J8M made its first flight under it's own power. The test flight was not really a success as the engine stalled. The pilot, Lieutenant Commander Toyohiko Inuzuka, was able to glide the power into a landing, but the plane hit a building. He died the following day.
The plane was intended as a licensed copy of the ME 163. Only seven were built.
Heloísa Pinheiro (Helô Pinheiro), who inspired The Girl from Ipanema, was born.
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The Germans commenced a forced march of 50,000 Hungarian Jews from Budapest to Austria as Germany's ongoing amplification of mass murder against the Jews in the closing months of the war carried on.
Josip Broz Tito became the Prime Minister of Yugoslavia.
The 7th Army took Nompatelize.
The 5th Army took Casseta.
Robert Edward Femoyer preformed the actions that resulted in his receiving a posthumous Medal of Honor.
For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty near Merseburg, Germany on 2 November 1944. While on a mission, the bomber, of which 2d Lt. Femoyer was a navigator, was struck by three enemy antiaircraft shells. The plane suffered serious damage and 2d Lt. Femoyer was severely wounded in the side and back by shell fragments which penetrated his body. In spite of extreme pain and great loss of blood he refused an offered injection of morphine. He was determined to keep his mental faculties clear in order that he might direct his plane out of danger and so save his comrades. Not being able to arise from the floor, he asked to be propped up in order to enable him to see his charts and instruments. He successfully directed the navigation of his lone bomber for 2 and one half hours so well it avoided enemy flak and returned to the field without further damage. Only when the plane had arrived in the safe area over the English Channel did he feel that he had accomplished his objective; then, and only then, he permitted an injection of a sedative. He died shortly after being moved from the plane. The heroism and self-sacrifice of 2d Lt. Femoyer are in keeping with the highest traditions of the U.S. Army.
The tanker Fort Lee was sunk in the Indian Ocean by the U-181.
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The Fourth Moscow Conference began, with Churchill, Stalin (of course), and W. Averell Harriman in attendance. The Allies, knowing that victory was coming, discussed post war Europe.
Polish delegates attended some of the meetings.
As odd as it may seem, to many in Germany, the coming defeat was not yet a mental reality. There's a lesson in there about believing what you want to believe, in spite of the evidence.
The St. Louis Cardinals took the 1944 World Series in the sixth game.
The Canadian 3d Division landed at Breskens on the south bank of the Scheldt.
A U.S. task force bombarded Marcus Island.
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The Battle of Tornio began with a Finnish attack on German positions in Lapland.
The U.S. Army took Monte Battaglia. II and IV Corps launch an offensive towards Bologna.
The Germans commenced the Putten Raid in the Netherlands, removing 660 men in reprisals for a failed assassination attempt on a German official.
British commandos landed at Poros, Greece. Greek troops landed at Mitilini, Lemnos, and Levita.
British General General Richard McCreery assumed command of the 8th Army, in Italy. General Oliver Leese, was assigned to command Allied Land Forces, Southeast Asia.
Gen. Rudolf Schmundt, age 48, died of wounds sustained in the July 20 plot. He had been an adjutant to Hitler.
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Fighting was ongoing in Italy.
The Moscow Armistice was signed between Finland and the USSR.
The land ceded by Finland was similar in extent to that which had been ceded to end the Winter War four years earlier.
Will discuss the history of Finnish wars with the USSR in a separate thread, which is much more complicated than generally recalled, but suffice it to say, Karelia had been a major bone of contention between the two countries, and fought over several times in the 20th Century until the Continuation War seemingly ended the dispute.
The Battle of Păuliș ended in Romanian-Soviet victory.
The Soviets took Valga, Estonia. A mass flight from the advancing Soviets by the Estonian population was underway, with a huge percentage of the population on their feet and in boats to attempt to escape.
British 30 Corps reached the US 82nd Airborne at Grave.
The Battle for Brest ended in Allied victory.
The Battle of Hürtgen Forest began between German and U.S. forces in the Hürtgen Forest began. The battle would continue until mid December. The Battle over a 54 square mile of industrial forest on the Belgian German frontier would continue until December 16 and became the longest battle on German ground during World War II and is the second longest single battle the U.S. Army has ever fought after The Battle of Bataan.
US tanker Lafayette G. Pool lost his third Sherman tank in combat in a night engagement when it was ambushed by a German Panther at Münsterbusch, southeast of Aachen, Germany. Pool lost his leg in the engagement, ending a pre war amature boxing career.
In 81 days of combat tanks commanded by Pool had destroyed 12 German tanks, 258 total armored vehicles and self propelled busn and killed German soldiers.
Pool reentered the Army in 1949 and retired in 1960. He thereafter became a Protestant minister. He passed away in 1991.
The SS declared a state of emergency in Denmark over the ongoing strike.
Heavy fighting occurred on Peleliu and Angaur.
The U-407 and U-867 were sunk by the Allies and the U-565 damaged beyond repair.
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The Red Army took Polonne and Kamianets-Podilskyi.
Polonne had been within Poland until the Russo Polish War, when it went to the Soviets in 1920. It had a major Jewish population before World War Two. Kamianets-Podilskyi had also been part of the post World War One Polish state until 1920.
The U-81 was sunk at Pola Italy by American aircraft.
The US 2nd Corps attacked Cervaro and Monte Trochio in Italy.
The US constructed a second airfield on Bougainville.
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Allied forces took Maungdaw in Burma.
Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin fame was born on this day in 1944.
For the first time in the war, the United Kingdom and Germany engaged in a prisoner exchange. 4,340 Allied POWs, all sick or injured, were exchanged for 835 German POWs. The Swedish Red Cross supervised the exchange, which took place in Sweden. Seventeen Americans were included in the group.
On the same day, Allied aircraft sank the German-controlled cargo ship MS Sinfra in the Mediterranean. Ironically, the 2,000 casualties were mostly Italian internees.
The Red Army broke out of the Kremenchug bridgehead.
Paul Robeson made his Broadway debut, portraying Othello. Robeson was a great singer, and a great, if tortured and misguided, intellect. He obtained a law degree from Columbia Law School in 1923 while playing for hte NFL, which was integrated far earlier than baseball was.
Streptomycin was first isolated in a laboratory.
The Allies captured the Sicilian port cities of Syracuse (Siracusa), Licata, Gela, Pachino, Avola, Noto, Pozzallo, Scoglitti, Ispica and Rosolini.
US Navy gunners opened up on US transport aircraft carrying paratroopers at Gela that evening, resulting in the deaths of over 300 of them in the worst friendly fire incident in the war to date. The Luftwaffe had earlier attempted a nighttime raid on the ships much earlier in the day, making the gunners nervous. The disaster commenced when a single ship's gunner opened up on passing C-47s and C-53s.
The Navy, however, also saved the day at Gela on this day by stopping an armored counterattack with ship to shore fire. And Patton came ashore at the same city that day. Both events are depicted in movies, with the first in The Big Red One, and the second in Patton.
Red Cross field director James P. Show would perform acts of heroism on this day which would result in the Silver Star. His citation would read:
The President of the United States of America takes pleasure in presenting the Silver Star to Mr. James P. Shaw a United States Civilian, for gallantry in action while serving as Field Director, American Red Cross, attached to the *** Infantry, in action on 11 July 1943, near Licata, Sicily. On that date, an enemy dive bomber scored a direct hit on a landing craft which had almost reached its position for debarkation. Mr. Shaw, who was already ashore, immediately left his position of comparative security, waded back into the rough water and assisted many men to safety. He continued to assist until the last man had been brought to shore and the wounded cared for. All of these acts were performed at the risk of his life because of attacking enemy airplanes, the explosion of ammunition on the damaged craft, and the turbulent and treacherous water. The gallantry of Mr. Shaw on this occasion is a distinct credit to himself and the American Red Cross.
The Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), the military arm of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalist OUN-B branch, attacked 99 Polish settlements in Wołyń Province of Poland. Attacks were carried out in what became known as the Vohynian Bloody Sunday on Kisielin, Poryck, Chrynów, Zabłoćce, and Krymn. Attacks coincided with local attendance at Mass.
The massacre campaign was part of a OUN-B effort, which is sometimes called the Volyn (Wołyń) Tragedy, to clear Poles from the territory east of the Bug River, and dated back to the difficulties that existed in drawing a border between Poland, Ukraine and Belarus following World War One. The OUN itself was split into OUN-B and OUN-M. The OUN itself dated back to 1929 when it formed and absorbed other Ukrainian independence movements. It was a right wing organization which picked up elements of fascism early on, and the Nazism later. OUN-M was named for one of the OUN's founders, Andriy Melnyk, who declared Ukraine independent after the German invasion of the country during World War Two. OUN-B, named for Stepan Bandera, was much more radical and indeed the two organizations fought each other. OUN-B came to dominate.
A far right organization in general, and in the case of OUN-B radically so, the organization picked up much of the extreme far right attitudes of the day, including being racist, deeply nationalist, and anti-clerical (indeed Melnyk's personal conservatism and Catholicism made Melnyk at odds with the views of his own organization). OUN-B principally attacked Poles during the war and was allied to the Germans until the Germans began to collapse, at which time it eschewed its fascist ideology and took on a pro-democracy one. The UPA would fight against the Soviets and Poles after the conclusion of the Second World War.
The genocidal effort against the Poles was bizarre in a way in that not only was it horrifically violent, but it ultimately served the interests of the Soviet Union in creating an ethnic line of demarcation which was west of the Bug. While the majority of victims were Poles, some Ukrainian civilians who opposed the actions or who were not of the same brand of nationalist as the UPA. Several hundred Jews, Russians, Czech and Georgians who were part of Polish families or who sheltered Poles were murdered. Total Polish victim numbers are hard to determine, but they were ultimately between 50,000 to 100,000, mostly killed during July and August 1943.
Melnyk would escape to the West after the war and died in Luxembourg at age 73, in 1964. Bandera was assassinated by the KGB in Munich in 1959. He was 50 years old.
The Panzerkampfwagen VI, famously known as the Tiger, or in this instance the Tiger I tank, made its battlefield appearance outside of Leningrad. The Soviets were making a determined effort to relieve the city.
The Tiger was a feared German weapon, and justifiably so. Classified as a heavy tank, with much more armor than previous German tanks, and armed with an 88 mm main gun, it can be regarded as one of the first tanks, along with the T34, that pointed the way towards the Main Battle Tank of the post-war period, although that concept was still years away. Indeed, it might be better able to claim the position of having essentially occupied that role prior to any other tank.
1,347 were made during the war. Mechanically complicated due to over engineering, it had a high breakdown rate. It was so feared by the Western Allies that troops routinely reported German tanks to be Tigers, no matter what they actually were.
On the same day the Soviet Air Force bombed Berlin in a nighttime raid using 100 Petlyakov Pe-8, Ilyshin II-4 and Yermolayev Yer 2 bombers. A small party of Pe-8s bombed Königsberg.
The first class of officers for the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps graduated.
The Saturday Evening Post featured P38 Lightenings on its cover.
I failed to note the August 1, 1942, cover, which featured a cover illustration of a Marine in the newly adopted herringbone tweed cotton dungarees. The Marine in question is wearing the Marine's khaki summer shirt underneath his hbt jacket, and it was in fact a jacket. It was rarely worn that way, however, typically being worn as simply a shirt. He's also wearing the M1 helmet and carrying a M1903 Springfield, all of which was typical gear at this point in the war and all of which reflected the appearance of the average Marine going into Guadalcanal.
Worth noting, however, is that at this point the hbt uniform was so new the Marines only issued a single set to its men. Marines landing at Guadalcanal had only one, that is, set of hbt dungarees.
The Red Cross announced that the Japanese had refused the free passage of ships carrying food and medicine to American POWs.
From this Day In Aviation
