Thursday, August 5, 1943. WASPs.

While by this point, this story is now confusing because of predecessor organizations, the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) were officially formed.

WASP wings.

The Red Army recaptured Orel.

The British took. Catania, Sicily.

The crew of the PT-109, including future President John F. Kennedy, were found by two Solomon Island coastwatchers, namely Biuku Gasa and Eroni Kumana.

Eva-Maria Buch and Rose Schlösinger of the Red Orchestra were executed in Berlin.

Most of the members of the Red Orchestra were Communists, but 22 year old Buch was not.  Indeed, she was Catholic.

Monday, July 19, 1943. Hitler haranges Mussolini, Allies bomb Rome.

Benito Mussolini met with Adolf Hitler at Feltre.  The purpose of the meeting was an Italian withdrawal from the war, but Mussolini apparently never brought it up.  Instead, the discussion turned to forming a defensive line across the Italian peninsula upon the inevitable upcoming Allied invasion, a strategy which ignored Italy's long coasts and the fact that the Italian Army was beaten in the field in Sicily, and the Italian people rapidly switching their allegiances towards the Allies.  It did, however, take advantage of Italy having rough terrain and only being 75 miles wide, for the most part.

It further was never more than a plan for a defensive withdrawal, with a defensive war not being winnable.

U.S. troops advancing in Sicily, July 19, 1923.

The meeting featured a long harangue by Hitler on the many virtues of war which Mussolini, well aware the war was lost, mostly endured silently, a fact aided by his poor understanding of German.  Hitler, for his part, had already ordered his General Staff to make plans for the occupation of Italy in the event of an Italian surrender or armistice.  Mussolini, however, assured the Germans that the Italians would continue fighting on.

The Allies bombed Rome.  The raid went on for two hours.

Pope Pius XII left the Vatican for the first time since 1940 to observe the bombing damage.  He attempted to comfort the wounded, resulting in his white soutaine being bloodstained. A statue in his honor was later erected on the location.  

The Pope's actions became a symbol of opposition to the violence of war. The bombing itself, however, shocked Romans, even though it was directed at military targets (rail yards) of the era.  The bombing helped accelerate the already increasing Italian abandonment of Mussolini.

The War Department ordered that difficult German POWs and those with Nazi ideology be kept at Camp Alva in Alva, Oklahoma.

Konzentrationslager Warschau was opened in Warsaw.

Shirley Slade, a WASP pilot trainee, although the WASPs were at that time the WAFS, appeared on the cover of Life Magazine in a photo that would go on to have cult status.  After training, Slade ferried Bell P-39 Airacobras and Martin B-26 Marauders, the latter of which was a notoriously difficult aircraft nicknamed "The Widowmaker".  She moved to Chicago after the war and married Major William Berkeley, an Air Force veteran and later Eugene "Gene" Lafitte Teer.

She passed away in 2000 at age 79. 

The first New York Fashion Week was held, with the object of giving women an alternative to French fashions.

The Army's news flyer warned troops of potential German use of poison gas, something the Germans did not, in fact, resort to in World War Two.

Sunday, March 21, 1943. A second assassination attempt.

Hard on the heels of a plot to kill Adolph Hitler by blowing his airplane out of the sky with explosives contained in a bottle of alcohol, Generalmajor Rudolf Christoph Freiherr von Gersdorff attempted to kill him by detonating a time fused bomb on his person while escorting Hitler through an exhibition of Soviet war materials as the Zeughaus in Berlin.  A detailed coup d'état was to follow the assassination.

By Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1976-130-51 / Unknown author / CC-BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5482858

It was expected that the tour would take thirty minutes, and Gersdorff set the fuse ten minutes prior to Hitler's arrival.  Hitler rushed through the exhibit in two minutes, and Gersdorff defused the bomb in a restroom.

Gersdorff was, amazingly, never mentioned by the July 20 conspirators, even though he had participated in the plot.  He therefore survived the war.  His role becoming known post-war, he was denied admission to the Bundesherr and therefore devoted the remainder of his life to charitable causes, dying in 1980 at age 74.  He was a paraplegic the last twelve years of his life due to a riding accident.

Sarah Sundin reports, in her blog:

Today in World War II History—March 21, 1943: Cornelia Fort becomes first WAFS member (precursor of the WASPs) to be killed, in a midair collision while ferrying a BT-13 in Texas.

She also notes that on this day the Rangers took Gafsa and New Zealanders bypassed the  bypass the Mareth Line 

Thursday, September 10, 1942. WAFS founded.

WAFS, 1943.

Today in World War II History—September 10, 1942: US forms WAFS (Women’s Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron) under Nancy Harkness Love for already-licensed pilots, a precursor to the WASP program.

From Sarah Sundin's blog.

The WAFS were civilians by regulation, not military pilots, and operated under ninety day contracts. They had to be licensed pilots with 200 hours of experience when they hired on, and while they wore uniforms, they had to buy them, although that was required of Army officers as well. Unlike officers, however, they had to pay for their own room and board as well.  There were only forty at the height of the program.

While they were required to have 200 hours of flight time, in reality the average for those signing on was 1,400 and a commercial pilots license. This made the WAFS not only quite experienced as pilots, in context, but unusual for female pilots.

Betty H. Gillies.

Betty H. Gillies was the first member, in that she was the first to report for training. She was an experienced pilot of fourteen years and married to the vice president of Grumman.