Tuesday, May 9, 1944. Sevastopol liberated.

The Red Army took Sevastopol.  Axis troops fall back on Cape Kersonessky for evacuation.

Brig. Gen. Andrés Ignacio Menéndez became President of El Salvador after Maximiliano Hernández Martínez fled the country.   He'd only serve until October, when he'd fall in a coup and be exiled to Guatemala.  He'd ultimately move to New York, where he died in 1962 at the age of 83.

J79.

General Electric’s XJ79 turbojet engine makes its first flight in the NB-45 test aircraft over Sche­nectady, N.Y. 

The same engine was developed into the j79 which was used in the Convair B-58, the Lockheed F-104, and the McDonnell Douglas F-4. 

Pretty amazing really.

Last prior edition:

Monday, May 8, 1944. Red Army defeated in Romania again.

1940s, 1944, Aircraft, boats and ships, Czechoslovakia, Disaster, Dwight Eisenhower, Lend Lease, Operation Overlord, Romania, Romanian Navy, Second Battle of Târgu Frumos, Weapons, World War Two

Sunday, May 7, 1944. Hitting Berlin, Assaulting Sapun.

The 8th Air Force conducted a 1,500 plane raid on Berlin.  The 15th Air Force and Bomber Command attacked railway sites in Bucharest.  The 9th Air Force attacked the railway yards at Mezieres-Charleville with B-26s and P-38s.

The 46th Infantry Division occupied Cape Hopkins Airfield on the Bismark Archipelago.  The Japanese offered no resistance.

The Red Army carried out an assault on Sapun Mountain May 7, 1944 in the Battle of Sevastopol.

Polish Gen. Anders visited the 15th Vilnius Rifle Battalion "Wilków" and attended Mass with them.

The RCN Valleyfield was sunk by the U-548 off of Cape Rice.  129 out of 167 crewmembers died in the attack.

"Georgetown, D.C. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, rested and tanned after a four week vacation at Shangri-La, returned to the White House. The President rested a month in the 23,000 estate. His residence was a guarded secret until he was safe back in Washington. It was a fishing and bathing vacation with the nearest telephone five in good health and good spirits, all traces of his bronchitis from which he suffered during the winter months having disappeared, May 7th, 1944. Shown: U.S. Marine standing guard at Shangri-La, Maryland."

The Marine guard is wearing an early pattern field jacket and carrying a M50 Reising submachinegun.

Sarah Sundin, on her entry Today in World War II History—May 7, 1944 notes that another D-Day exercise, Exercise Pigeon, commenced.

A  B-25 crashed in bad weather and one mile north of West Chester, Pennsylvania, killing all seven on board.

Last prior edition:

Saturday, May 6, 1944. Shelling Sevastapol.

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Wednesday, July 1, 1942. Stopping the Afrika Korps.

Rommel's forces make the first assaults on El Alamein.  They go badly.

Rommel with officers. By Bundesarchiv, Bild 101I-785-0287-08 / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=631949

Axis forces take Sevastopol.  The battle had resulted in 18,000 Red Army KIA and 95,000 lost as prisoners.  5,000 were evacuated as sick and wounded. The Germans lost 5,786 men and the Romanians 1,874.  The German wounded amounted to 21,626 and the Romanian 6,571.

Axis forces also approach Voronezh in the Soviet Union, where the Red Army is preparing to meet them and counter-attack

The U.S. submarine USS Sturgeon sinks the Japanese Montevideo Maru, a passenger ship.  It was carrying Australian POWs and civilian internees, all who died in the sinking.

The USS Luckenbach, which was carrying 1/6th of the world's tungsten supply, hit two mines in a U.S. minefield off of the Florida Keys.  The tungsten would later be recovered.

Pierre Laval, Prime Minister of France, allowed German forces to enter Vichy controlled France to search for hidden radio transmitters.

Tuesday, June 30, 1942. Spreading Nazi Oppression.

The Third Reich closed all remaining Jewish schools inside of Germany.

This odd fact, that the schools were still open to some degree, points out the oddity that German Jews, while subject to all of the repression that Jews in German occupied territories were, were still safer than those in the occupied territories.  Indeed, the mortality rate during the Third Reich, while still ghastly and large, was significantly lower than it was for the occupied territories.  This has been explained by there being at least a remnant of laws applying to Jews in Germany, whereas those elsewhere were completely subject to Nazi lawlessness.

The U158, having destroyed 12 ships during a successful patrol, was sunk by a U.S. Navy PBM Mariner off of Bermuda, demonstrating how submarines were vulnerable to aircraft.

German forces moved forward again in Case Blue.  At Sevastopol, Stalin ordered senior figures evacuated by submarine.

The Afrika Korps arrived in front of El Alamein.

British troops at El Alamein.

Wedding fashions, by which we mean female wedding fashions, was the topic of the Life magazine that came out on this day.

Monday, June 29, 1942. More German advances.

Meresa Matruh, an Egyptian port city well into Egypt, fell to the Afrika Korps. Rommel's forces were now advancing at a rapid pace into Egypt.  

The city today remains a significant Egyptian port.  It's history stretches back into antiquity.

The city in 1942, Allied armor column.

They also reached Sidi Abd el Rahman, which was only 20 miles from El Alamein, even further East.  The city today is a tourist destination, although large numbers of landmines still exist in the area.

Mussolini flew, as the pilot, from Italy to Libya, carrying his white horse in anticipation of a complete conquest of North Africa in near days, and a triumphal parade in Cairo.

The Germans were also advancing rapidly in the southern Soviet Union. Dust columns from German forces could be seen from a distance of 40 miles.

The Germans crossed Severnaya Bay at Sevastopol by boat.

Admiral King proposed an invasion of the Eastern Solomon Islands to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Thursday, June 18, 1942. Advancing Wehrmacht.

 

Winston Churchill, following his transatlantic flight, arrived in Washington, D. C.

The Wehrmacht took Fortress Maxim Gorky in Sevastopol.

The Afrika Korps took Kambut, Libya.

It was another day of heavy Allied shipping losses to German submarines.

At least from a news of the day prospective, things weren't looking great for the Allies in regard to the war against the Germans.

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Tuesday, June 16, 1942. Allied setbacks.

Winston Churchill left the UK by plane to the United States for a visit with Franklin Roosevelt.

He would not have left had he known how dire the British position in North Africa was becoming, something that he'd been reassured about by Gen. Auchinleck before he departed.  On the same day, the Afrika Korps attacked El Adem and Sidi Rezegh near Tobruk, which effectively cut it off from contact with other British forces.

German U-boats had another good day in the Atlantic and Caribbean.

Operations Vigourous and Harpoon, designed to relieve Malta, concluded, largely a failure.

The Germans obliterated Ft. Maxim Gorky's artillery at Sevastopol.

The RAF conducted an ineffective nighttime raid on Essen.

Friday, June 12, 1942. Day of the Submarines.

Anne Frank received a diary on this day for her 13th birthday.

The U.S. Army Air Force bombed Polesti, Romania in a mission which saw 13 B-24s fly from Fayid Egypt to an intended landing in Iraq.  Four of the bombers made emergency landings in Iraq, and two in Syria. The ones in Turkey were interned. 

The bombers were actually in transit to China.  This was not part of Operation Tidal Wave, the famous low level raid that was also performed by B-24s.

On the same day, the Army Air Force raided Kiska for the second day in a row.

The Germans breakout in Libya and close to within fifteen miles of Tobruk.

The British launch Operation Harpoon in a desperate effort to resupply Malta by sea.

The Soviet Navy resupplied Sevastopol by sea, brining in 2,314 additional soldiers to the defense of the besieged city.

The Japanese submarine I-24 sank the SS Guatemala off of Sidney.  The I-16 sank the Yugoslavian flagged Supetar, the I-20 the Panamanian flagged Hellenic Trader, and the British Clifton Hall, all cargo vessels, in hte Mozambique Channel.

The German U-77 sank the Royal Navy destroyer HMS Grove off of Baria, Libya.  The U-124 sank the SS Dartford off of Newfoundland, the U-129 sank the SS Harwicke Grange off of Puerto Rico, the U-158sank the US SS Cities Service Toledo,an oil tanker, off of Louisiana.

The USS Swordfish sank the Japanese transport ship Burma Maru off of Cambodia.

George H. W. Bush graduated from Phillips Academy, turned 18 years old, and enlisted in the U.S. Navy on this day.

The recently completed Grand Coulee Dam was photographed.

Grand Coulee Dam, Washington.

Tuesday, June 2, 1942. The BBC reports news from the Polish underground of Nazi mass extermination of Jews.

Members of the Death's Head SS, Germans who ran the death camps.

Today in World War II History—June 2, 1942: 80 Years Ago—June 2, 1942: BBC reports news from the Polish underground of Nazi mass extermination of Jews. Henry J. Kaiser proposes building auxiliary carriers; the Navy awards him a contract for the Casablanca class by the end of the month.

Sarah Sundin's blog notes that news broke in the West, and indeed the world, of one of the biggest crimes ever committed in human history, the German efforts to exterminate the Jews.

This has been controversial, in terms of "when did they know" and "what could have been done", ever since.  But in retrospect, the news actually broke relatively quickly after the effort truly became industrial.  Up until that time, the Germans had been killing Jews on a large scale, to be sure, but it had been mostly done by deployed SS field units with that specific task, which accomplished it largely via small arms fire. A lot of people were killed in that fashion, and also by Eastern European unofficially allied bands, but it had taken place in conditions which precluded the news from being much more than rumors.  SS, and Eastern European, murders of this fashion had taken place either in chaotic conditions as the Germans marched in, or in actual field conditions just behind the lines.  As a result, they took place in areas where reporting was limited to what the Germans chose to report.  As the only significant opposition force in these regions was the Red Army, which had not recaptured any of these areas by this point in the war, news getting out simply didn't.

Industrial scale murder, however, was impossible to keep a secret.  The Poles reported it first, in an underground opposition newspaper.  The BBC picked it up the next day.

On the same day the Germans deployed an 800mm (31") railroad gun at Sevastopol.  For comparison, battleships typically had 16" guns.

The insanely large gun was a devastating weapon, but the crew required to man it was also insanely large.

Size comparison to Russian OTR-21 rocket launcher, which delivers a similarly sized payload.

The gun would be part of a five-day artillery barrage of the city, which also featured large raids by the Luftwaffe.

In North Africa the Afrika Korps was threatening to have its most recent offensive halt due to logistical problems.

U.S. Naval forces in the Pacific rendezvous at Point Luck, uniting Task Force 16 and Task Force 17, which are then under the command of Admiral Fletcher. They are there in anticipation of a Japanese assault on Midway Atoll, which they know is coming due to breaking the Japanese code.

Thursday, October 30, 1941. A Change In Material Circumstances

 

On this date in 1941, T-34s began to appear in action in numbers for the first time.

In other technological, if you will, news, Northrup received a contract for one full-scale mockup, and one actual flying experimental example, of its flying wing design.

Northrup XB-35 experimental flying wing bomber.

The revolutionary design would not fly until after the war and would not see adoption until modern stealth technology arrived, at which time Northrup's design would reappear, evolved, as the Northrup B-2 Spirit.

At Tula, the Germans attempted a pitched massive assault but Soviet forces, some of which were militia, turned them back in spite of suffering heavy losses.  The Soviets used anti tank guns and anti-aircraft guns in the effort.

The Germans and Romanians commenced the Siege of Sevastopol.  It would take the Axis forces until July to take the city.

Charles Lindbergh spoke to an anti-war rally crowd of 20,000 in Madison Square Garden.  His speech was very harsh on Franklin Roosevelt, whom he accused of attempting to draw the United States into war and of using dictatorial measures.

USO Camp Shows commenced on this day in 1941, as discussed in the link below:

Today in World War II History—October 30, 1941

A u-boat damaged the USS Salinas, a U.S. Navy fleet oiler, but the vessel managed to escape without sinking.

Pearl Harbor, October 30, 1941.