The Royal Navy sank the Haguro ending the Battle of Malacca Strait. Admiral Kaju Saguira, age 49, was one of the casualties.
Fourteen U-boats surrendered to convoys in the Arctic.
The British liberated Alderney.
Heavy fighting occurred on Okinawa with the Japanese succeeding in knocking out some U.S. tanks.
Physicist Leo Szilard wrote a letter to J. Robert Oppenheimer trying to convince him that atomic bombs shouldn't be used against Japan.
Last edition:
The Prague Uprising and the Battle of Czechoslovak Radio began. The Axis raised Russian Liberation Army switched sides and supported the Czech partisans.
The Bratislava–Brno Offensive ended in Soviet-Romanian victory.
The Battle for Castle Itter in Austria resulted in an Allied victory.
A Japanese balloon bomb killed the pregnant wife of Reverend Archie Mitchell, Elsie, age 26, and five children of their Sunday School class on Gearhart Mountain near Bly, Oregon, where they had gone for an outing.
The bomb had likely been in place for a month before it was discovered by the party.
Rev. Mitchell moved to Vietnam in 1947 with his new bride Betty, the older sister of two of the children killed by the fire balloon in Bly, where they served as missionaries. They were kidnapped by the Viet Cong in 1962 and forced to serve as medics, and ultimately disappeared.
The cartoon character Yosemite Sam appeared for the first time in the Bugs Bunny animated short Hare Trigger.
Otto-Heinrich Drechsler, age 50, German Nazi Commissioner of Latvia committed suicide in British captivity.
The man responsible for the deaths of millions in Europe, Adolf Hitler committed suicide with a .32 ACP PPK. His wife of one day, Eva Braun, also killed herself. Both deaths occurred around 3.30 p.m..
Their bodies were taken outside of the bunker, liberally doused with gasoline, and burned in a pit.
The Red Army was less than 500m from the Führerbunker. Soviet troops reached the Reichstag.
Karl Dönitz and Joseph Goebbels took on Hitler's former roles as Head of State and Head of Government of Germany in accordance with his wishes.
Such was the engine of the German state that, even though the Nazis would never have come to power without Hitler, and the war would never have occurred without Hitler, the war nonetheless continued on without him.
The Battle of Bautzen ended in a localized German victory.
The U-879, U-1107 and U-326 were all sunk.
Actors Osvaldo Valenti and Luisa Ferida were killed by Italian partisans due to their links to fascism.
Last edition:
German radio broadcast that Adolf Hitler was in the "main fighting line" in Berlin and would "remain there despite all rumors."
The Allies suspected he was in Bavaria organizing resistance there.
Göring sent a telegram asking for permission to assume leadership of the Third Reich which Hitler regarded as treason, ordering his arrest.
The Flossenburg concentration camp was liberated by the U.S. Army.
The U-183 was sunk off of Borneo by the U.S. submarine Besugo.
The Navy deployed Bat air to ship missiles against Japanese ships in Balipapan Harbor in Borneo, marking their first use.
Those arrested in the Freeman Field Mutiny were released.
The Germans used gas in scale for the first time at Ypres. The Allies sustained mass casualties, but Canadians, improvising protection with urine soaked rags, held their ground.
Last edition:
The Battle of the Seelow Heights ended in Soviet/Polish victory.
The US 1st Army took Leipzig.
Robert Cappa, the famous photographer, took a series of photos in an event that occurred in this battle, in which a tank crewman who was manning a machinegun in a building was killed by a German sniper. The bloody scene and the soldier's lifeless body is the recalled photograph. A nearly as dramatic photo of another crewman stepping over him to man the gun is not as well recalled.
Richard Dimbleby broadcast the conditions of Belsen on the BBC.
The Battle of Odžak began in Croatia between Yugoslav Partisans and the Axis aligned Croatian Armed Forces. The last battle to be fought in the Second World War in Europe, it would continue until May 25.
Pyinmana, the base of the Japanese aligned Burma Defence Army, fell to the 5th Indian Division.
Japanese Gen. Sōsaku Suzuki, age 53, was killed in action in the Philippines.
Nazi Party member Fritz Wächtler, age 54, was executed by the Nazis for desertion over the surrender of Bayreuth. The charge was unjust and due to rivalry on the part of other Nazis.
It's amazing to think of this sort of infighting when it should have been obvious they'd all be facing trials by the victors soon.
The U-251, U-548 and U-879 were sunk.
Johnny Kelley won the Boston Marathon.
Last edition:
I learned in Basic Training how to fight with a bayonet. The US M7 bayonet specifically.
It's not all that easy to do, frankly.
have probably never shot a .22, or anything else.
I really do.
Mind you, I'm pro 2nd Amendment myself, but at the same time I don't think you need to pack heat into schools or on college campuses.
And I really truly suspect that at least a few politicians who really carry blazing torches on this, probably have no interest in the topic whatsoever, and even less than that.
Indeed, while I may be very off, I can think of one pro gun politician whom I bet hasn't even fired a BB gun, let alone a real firearms.
Truth be known, you suspect this too. . .
This decision was made beforehand (by the Wyoming Legislature), and we’re just here to clean up the mess.
British and French forces prevailed in Operation Amherst.
The US won the Battle for Cebu City.
The Battle of Lijevče Field ended in victory for the forces of the Independent State of Croatia which wasn't to be independent for very much longer.
Last edition:
US approves $64M sale of M4A1 carbine rifles to Ecuador
The question would be, however, with the US moving away from the 5.56 and the AR platform, why would any country want M4s now?
The Germans fired their last V-2 rockets killing 200 civilians in England and Belgium.
The US captured Cebu City.
Argentina declared war on the Axis, after having been sympathetic to it for much of the war.
The Royal Navy sank the U-722.
Last edition:
The Red Army took Zvolen, Czechoslovakia.
Army Group South committed its reserves in Hungary.
The RAF used a 22,000 lbs bomb, the largest conventional bomb of the war, for the first time on a raid on the Bielfeld viaduct.
The U-714 and U-1021 were sunk by British and South African surface ships, and a mine, respectively.
Last edition:
