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.

Sunday, August 8, 1943. No Photos.

The United States banned taking photos or making illustrations of Atlantic beach resort beaches.

U.S. troops landed at Sant'Agata di Militello, Sicily, in an amphibious end run. German forces had succeeded in halting the US advance, which resulted in a series of beach landings.

U.S. soldier receives plasma from a pipe smoking medic at Sant'Agata di Militello

The Tripitz and Scharnhorst lead a task force to bombard Longyearbyen, Barentsburg and Grumant on Spitsbergen.

Ambassard Steinhardt wrote back to the Secretary of State regarding U.S. aircrewmen in Turkey.

The Ambassador in Turkey (Steinhardt) to the Secretary of State

Ankara, August 8, 1943—11 p.m.

[Received August 9—9:30 p.m.]

1388. I discussed with the Minister for Foreign Affairs yesterday the status of the various American aviators interned in Turkey after the Ploesti raid. I suggested to him that the survivors of the crew of the Liberator which crashed off the coast and who were rescued by the Turkish coast guard be regarded as “shipwrecked mariners” and be released, and that all of the wounded aviators (some of whose wounds are very light) be regarded as unfit for further military service and be released and that subsequently the Turkish General Staff be instructed not to interpose too many barriers in the path of attempted escapes by others. Numan replied that he would give serious consideration to the release of the “shipwrecked mariners” and the wounded, and that he would suggest to the General Staff that they should not take “exceptional measures” to prevent escapes but that we must not embarrass him by “too many escapes” in the immediate future and particularly while the internment of the planes and crews was in the public eye. He added that “unfortunately” there were no German or Italian internees whose release could constitute a basis for exchange. He agreed to the immediate transfer of all the wounded to the American hospital in Istanbul.

Please inform General Arnold of foregoing.

Steinhardt

Wednesday September 3, 1941. The first use of Zyklon B.

The Germans first used Zyklon B to murder human beings with the first victims being 600 Soviet POWS and 250 sick Polish POWs held at Auschwitz.

The Soviets began the process of expelling Volga Germans to Siberia.

The espionage trial for the fourteen members of the Duquesne Spy Ring who had not confessed to the crime (nineteen had) commenced on this day in 1941.  The German effort was the largest spy bust in U.S. history, although it was dwarfed by the Soviet efforts that had commenced in the 1920s and which ran through the end of the Cold War.

Most of the spies were predictably German or Austrian immigrants, but there are some surprises.  A few were not of German ancestry.  One who was, was a Jewish German immigrant who served as a honey pot and appears to have suffered from a psychological condition giving rise to her use.  One was a Russian immigrant.  The spy ring had a Japanese liaison, as well as a German one, demonstrating a very early connection between Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany.

More on all of this here:

Today in World War II History—September 3, 1941

Operation Gauntlet, an Allied raid on Spitsbergen concluded.  It had met with no German resistance.

German radio station on Spitsbergen being blown down.

The local population was evacuated, German installations destroyed, and mining equipment from the high Arctic mines also destroyed.