Last Spring

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• The Allied Combined Joint Chiefs designate General Douglas MacArthur as Commander in Chief of all Allied non-naval air and ground Forces, Pacific, and Admiral Chester Nimitz as commander of all Allied naval forces in the Pacific. The old geographic boundaries of "South-West Pacific" and "Pacific Ocean Areas" are to be discarded in favor of this new command structure in preparation for the coming invasion of Japan. The US Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington retain direct control of the US Twentieth Air Force and will exercise strategic command in the Pacific Theater. Curtis LeMay, who will command the Twentieth Air Force, claims that air power alone can force a Japanese surrender.

 

• On Okinawa, Marines and soldiers continue spreading across the island against scattered resistance. The bulk of the defending Thirty-second Army is still in the capital of Naha or underground.

 

Okinawa landings continue.

 

• Japanese Navy Shinyō suicide boats from Squadron 22 sink American gunboat LCI(G)-82 off Okinawa.

 

• Escort carrier Wake Island is narrowly missed by two or three Japanese special attack aircraft. One explodes alongside under the water, ripping a hole in the ship's side about 45 feet long and about 18 feet from top to bottom, and making many shrapnel holes. Various compartments are flooded, and salt water contaminates boiler water and fuel oil.

 

Downing of one kamikaze headed for USS Wake Island, taken from escort carrier USS Tulagi.

 

- The Wake Island will proceed to Guam on one shaft for six weeks of repairs.

 

• Minesweeper USS YMS-71 is mined and sunk off Sanga Sanga in the Philippines.

 

• With Chiang Kai-shek withdrawing Chinese troops from Burma, General George Marshall agrees to a request from Prime Minister Churchill to not relocate American aircraft from Burma to China until after Rangoon is taken.

 

• US Navy PB4Y-1 Liberators sink Japanese tanker No.30 Nanshin Maru (the only surviving ship of convoy HI-88I) in Nha Trang Bay, French Indochina.

 

• US Army B-24s and B-25s attack Japanese shipping off Hong Kong, sinking cargo vessels Heikai Maru and Shozan Maru, and damaging kaibōkan Manju.

 

Japanese Coaster attacked by B-25s

 

Kaibōkan attacked by B-25s"

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• Flush deck destroyer/transport USS Dickerson is sunk by a kamikaze off Okinawa while destroyers Wilson and Sproston are damaged. A storm hits the invasion shipping, sinking one LSM while damaging eleven LSTs, an oiler, and a salvage vessel.

 

• General MacArthur and Admiral Nimitz are directed to plan Operation Downfall: the invasion of Kyūshū in November, 1945, and Honshū in March, 1946 with a feint at Shikoku. By summer, the plans will be in the advanced stages.

 

- General MacArthur estimates that Allied casualties will total 125,000 killed and wounded for both operations. The Joint Chiefs estimate 267,000 killed and 930,000 wounded. A half million Purple Heart medals will be manufactured in anticipation of the invasion, and more than 100,000 are still in stock.

 

• At this time, the Imperial General Headquarters predicts landings on Kyūshū in October and Honshū in 1946 and enacts the Ketsu-Go Plan for defense. They also correctly predict the landing sites, stationing 65 infantry and 2 armored divisions, 25 independent mixed brigades, three Guards brigades, and seven tank brigades in those areas, well over half the forces available. The main lines of defense will be out of range of naval bombardment, and additional armored forces would be able to respond quickly to any landings. Japan also founded in March the Patriotic Citizens Fighting Corps, similar to the German Volkssturm. By August, two million civilians will be conscripted into it.

 

- Japan has expended relatively few of the available kamikaze units and more modern aircraft, anti-tank weapons, submarines, and tanks. They are being reserved for defense of the home islands.

 

• The Soviet Union is also planning an invasion of the Kuriles in September 1945 using elements of the 87th Rifle Corps augmented by the 128th Airborne Division. Stalin is making very preliminary plans to invade Hokkaido in 1946.

 

Freeman Field Mutiny

 

At Freeman Field, Indiana, the African-American 477th Bombardment Group (Medium) (Colored) is in training on the B-25J Mitchell prior to the deployment of its four squadrons to the Pacific.

 

On the base, there are two officer’s clubs. One well appointed for white officers and a poorly furnished one for black officers. Led by Second Lieutenant Coleman Young, the future mayor of Detroit and an experienced labor organizer, a group of black officers decide to challenge the segregation at Freeman Field on the grounds of US Army Regulation 210-10, Paragraph 19, which prohibits any public building on a military installation from being used "for the accommodation of any self-constituted special or exclusive group".

 

The first group of three officers is turned away by Major Andrew White, the officer in charge of the club; but later groups are met by the Officer of the Day, who is armed with a holstered .45 caliber weapon and who was stationed there on the orders of Colonel Robert Selway, the white commanding officer of the 477th.

 

When 19 of the officers, including Coleman Young, enter the club and refuse to leave, Major White puts them in arrest "in quarters." In response to the arrest order, the 19 officers leave the club and return to their quarters. 17 more are placed under arrest later that night, then 25 more officers acting in three groups enter the club and are also placed under arrest.

 

After investigating the incidents, Colonel Torgils Wold, Air Inspector of the First Air Force, recommends dropping the charges, which Colonel Selway does.

 

Colonel Selway drafts a new order, Base Regulation 85-2, that he feels will meet all technical legal requirements and keep the O-clubs segregated. He then parades the African-American officers of the 477th and requires them to read the regulation and sign that they fully understand it. None of them sign.

 

They are then told that failure to sign will result in being charged under the 64th Article of War for disobeying a direct order by a superior officer in time of war, an offense that technically could be punished by death.

 

One hundred and one officers refuse to sign are placed under arrest.

 

In the meantime, pressure from African-American organizations, labor unions and members of Congress is brought to bear on the War Department. On orders from Army Chief of Staff General George Marshall, the 101 will be released on April 23, although General Frank Hunter, commander of the First Air Force, places an administrative reprimand in the file of each officer who had been arrested.

 

As a result of the protest, the 477th is relocated to Godman Field, Kentucky, and two of its four bomb squadrons inactivated. The all-black 99th Fighter Squadron (Tuskeegee Airmen) is rotated home from Italy in June and added to the group, which is re-designated the 477th Composite Group. It is scheduled to deploy to the Pacific on August 31st.

 

The 477th will be inactivated in 1947. In 1995, in response to requests from veterans of the 477th, the Air Force will officially remove General Hunter’s letters of reprimand.

 

{Below is an image of the 101 officers about to board buses to take them into confinement. Photography was banned and several cameras destroyed. This image was taken by Master Sergeant Harold Beaulieu, who hid a camera in a shoebox.}"

 

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• Operation Kikusui No. 1 is launched against shipping off Okinawa, Japan, with about 230 Japanese Navy and 125 Japanese Army special attack and escorting aircraft. Three quarters of the aircraft are shot down before reaching their targets. The Japanese pay special attention to the outlying radar pickets which have relatively little support from other ships and aircraft. American destroyer Bush is hit by three kamikaze aircraft, destroyer Colhoun by four, and destroyer/minelayer Emmons by five. All three ships are sunk with the loss of 182 crewmen.

 

Wreck of USS Emmons. She will be looted by divers in 2010.

 

- Destroyers Haynsworth, Morris, and Hyman are each damaged by single aircraft. Ammunition ships Logan Victory and Hobbs Victory are sunk by kamikazes offshore. Even stronger special attack strikes are planned for tomorrow to coincide with Ten-gō.

 

• For Operation Ten-gō, the largest kamikaze of the war departs on her last mission. With the Bungo Suidō sanitized by aircraft and surface escorts, battleship Yamato steams out with only enough fuel to reach Okinawa. There she will drive to the landing zone and beach herself as an unsinkable gun emplacement, fighting until destroyed.

 

- Ten-gō is the brainchild of Naval Lieutenant General Ryūnosuke Kusaka, who crafted it in response to criticism of the surface fleet from the Emperor Hirohito, who had noted that aircraft were conducting all the defensive operations at Iwo Jima.

 

- Combined Fleet commanders initially reject the plan, considering it futile and wasteful of men and especially fuel, which is desperately needed for Japan’s escort vessels and submarines. Objections are ended when Kusaka tells them that the Emperor supports the plan.

 

- Naval Lieutenant General Seiichi Itō leads the Surface Special Attack Force aboard Yamato escorted by light cruiser Yahagi and eight destroyers.

 

- Submarine USS Threadfin spots the force but is unable to get into position due to the 22 knot speed of advance and zig-zagging. She sends a sighting report. Later, USS Hackleback also spots the force and is also unable to attack. Vice Admiral Spruance directs Vice Admiral Mitscher to launch airstrikes tomorrow and have his escorting fast battleships ready to engage Yamato in a gun action. Older battleships conducting shore bombardment are also directed to be ready for a surface action.

 

- Escorting destroyer Asashimo develops engine trouble and falls behind. Naval Colonel Kotaki Hisao refuses an offer of assistance so as to not delay or weaken the Yamato force. The destroyer will be sunk with all hands by USS San Jacinto carrier aircraft tomorrow.

 

Asashimo sinking 07 April, 1945

 

• On Luzon, US XI Corps makes another assault on the stubbornly defended Mount Mataba.

 

• USS Hardhead torpedoes and sinks 6,900 ton cargo ship Araosan Maru in the Gulf of Siam.

 

• USAAF B-25s attack Japanese convoy HOMO-03 off the China coast, sinking kaibōkan CD-1 and CD-134 and crippling destroyer Amatsukaze. The destroyer crew manages to beach the ship at the entrance to Amoy harbor, but she is a total loss.

 

{The below photos are usually reported as destroyer Amatsukaze, but it is definitely one of the kaibōkan}

 

B-25J pulling up

Kaibōkan hit

 

Kaibōkan sinking

 

• Preparations for the Allied spring offensive in Italy (Operation Grapeshot) begin with three days of artillery bombardment and attacks by over 800 heavy bombers and a thousand medium and light bombers and a similar number of fighter-bombers.

 

South African Beaufighter attacking German forces in Žužemberk, Yugoslavia in spring of 1945.

 

- Morale has been low in Allied units in Italy, with formations stripped away to northern Europe. Until now, artillery units have been restricted to five rounds per day because of shortages. Field Marshal Sir Harold Alexander is planning for the British Eighth Army to attack westwards through the Argenta Gap while the US Fifth Army attacks northwards west of Bologna. The assault will be helped by the arrival of new flamethrowing tanks and armoured tracked amphibious troop carriers for crossing of rivers.

 

• Elements of US Third Army are checked by a German counterattack near Mühlhausen.

 

• Elements of US Ninth Army conduct an assault crossing of the Weser River near Minden.

 

• On the Island of Texel off the Dutch coast, Georgian troops of the 882. Infanterie Bataillon (Königin Tamar) of the Georgian Legion mutiny against the Germans, killing some 246. The Georgians are Red Army POWs who chose to serve in the Wehrmacht rather than be used as slave labor. They call on the Allies to land on the island, but no response is made. The Germans will move the 163. Marine-Schützenregiment to the island and retake it amid brutal fighting in which captured Georgians are made to dig their own graves. Fighting will continue beyond the German surrender, only ending when Canadian troops secure the island on May 20th.

 

- The fighting will result in 565 Georgian, 812 German, and 117 Dutch civilian deaths. 228 surviving Georgians will be turned over to the Soviets. They will be sent to Gulag but rehabilitated in the mid-1950s and later described as heroes for rising against the Nazis.

 

• Joseph Goebbels announces that a German victory is to come during this month and only Adolf Hitler knows the moment.

 

• On Himmler’s orders, 15,000 Jews are evacuated from Buchenwald as American troops approach. He hopes to use them as bargaining chips for a peace settlement.

 

• Yugoslav 2. Armija forces a crossing of the Bosna River and liberates Sarajevo from the German XXI Armeekorps.

 

• After six days of artillery and aerial bombardment of Königsberg, East Prussia, the ground offensive begins as troops of 3rd Belorussian Front assault, supported by 530 armored vehicles.

 

Soviet assault on Königsberg

 

• The Sukhoi Su-5 has its maiden flight. It is a hybrid fighter with a Klimov piston engine and a Kholshchevnikov motorjet, the latter to provide thrust during combat. It will not be developed as jet technology advances.

 

Sukhoi Su-5"

 

Edited April 6 by cardboard_killer
Added ETO

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• In a last ditch Luftwaffe operation, the pilots of 183 Fw-190 and Bf-109 fighters are ordered to deliberately ram American heavy bombers. 137 German aircraft are lost with 70 pilots killed. Fifteen American bombers are struck but only eight are brought down.

 

This B-17 was able to return to base on 07 April, 1945.

 

• U-1024 attacks convoy HX-346 off Holyhead, damaging the American 7,200 ton James W. Nesmith. She makes port but is considered a total loss. In 1946 she will be loaded with German chemical ammunition and scuttled in the North Sea.

 

• British motor torpedo boats fight a surface action with schnellboote in the North Sea, with MTB-594 and MTB-5001 being sunk along with S-176 and S-177.

 

• US 10th Armored Division captures Crailsheim, Germany.

 

 

• The defenders of Königsberg, East Prussia, conduct a counterattack. Although it inflicts casualties on the Soviets, it is thrown back.

 

• Elements of Heersgruppe Mitte counterattack Soviet forces in Czechoslovakia.

 

• As territory held by rival German puppet regimes shrinks, fighting breaks out on the Lijevče Field near Banja Luka when Croatian Ustaše militia and Croatian Home Guard forces attack and defeat Serbian Chetnik forces. Chetnik leaders Pavle Đurišić, Zaharije Ostojić and Petar Baćović are captured, and then executed along with a number of Serbian Orthodox priests.

 

• In Vienna, elements of Fourth and Ninth Guards armies break through the lines of the 2. and 3. SS Panzer Divisions, entering the western suburbs.

 

Helping a wounded comrade in Vienna April 1945

 

• Off Okinawa, LST-447 is sunk while carrier Hancock, battleship Maryland, and four destroyers are damaged by Japanese special attack aircraft.

 

 

Ten-Go

 

• Battleship Yamato is spotted by two radar equipped PBM Mariners as she is approaching Okinawa. At roughly the same time Japanese scout aircraft report the location of TF 58, in position to strike at the Japanese force. Naval General Ito orders a course to return to Sasebo. An hour later her radar picks up incoming American aircraft. Yamato has a little over three hours left.

 

1232: The first wave of TF 58 aircraft approach: 280 aircraft.

 

1235: Yamato stops zigzagging and increases speed to 24 knots. Her nine 18” guns begin firing Sanshiki-dan beehive shells. As the Americans attack, the concussion from the big guns repeatedly throws off the aim of the twenty-four 127mm and one hundred fifty-two 25mm AA guns, actually decreasing overall AA effectiveness. The American planes release their bombs and torpedoes and strafe the bridge with machine-gun fire.

 

Curtiss SB2C over Yamato group

 

1240: Yamato is hit by two armor piercing bombs amidships. One starts a fire that cannot be extinguished and rips a 60-foot hole in the weather deck. One Helldiver is shot down, another is damaged badly.

 

1243: Five Avengers launch torpedoes, gaining one hit. One Avenger is shot down. The battleship takes on 2,350 tons of water. Damage Control counterfloods with 604-tons of water. Fourteen Corsairs strafe and rocket Yamato but cause only minor damage.

 

1247: A torpedo strikes destroyer Hamakaze and she blows in two. Suzutsuki takes a 500 lb bomb hit and catches fire. Two rockets hit Fuyutsuki. Light cruiser Yahagi is torpedoed amidships, bringing her dead in the water.

 

1250: The first attack wave retires. Suzutsuki and Yahagi are left behind. Yamato is able to maintain full speed.

 

1302: Yamato radar reports the approach of a second attack wave: 50 aircraft. The Attack Force changes course due south to 180 degrees.

 

1322: Yamato is hit by at least one 1,000 lb bomb as the Japanese attempt to thread American attacks.

 

1333: Another 110 aircraft from TF 58 attack over a thirty minute period. Twenty Avengers make a new torpedo run from 60 degrees to port. Yamato starts a sharp turn to port but three torpedoes rip into her port side amidships. One Avenger is shot down. Her auxiliary rudder is jammed in position hard port. She ships about 3,000 tons of seawater and takes a list of 7º to port. Armor-piercing and other bombs make a shambles of her upper works. Damage Control counter-floods both starboard engine and boiler rooms and almost entirely corrects the list.

 

1402: Three bombs explode port amidships and another torpedo hits starboard side amidships. Executive Officer Nomura Jiro reports that his damage control officers are all dead and that counter-flooding can no longer correct the list. He suggests the order to abandon ship be given. General Ito directs the remaining ships to pick up as many survivors as possible. The Emperor's portrait is removed.

 

1405: Light cruiser Yahagi, hit by twelve bombs and seven torpedoes, sinks.

 

1412: Yamato is slowly rolling over onto her starboard side, while several torpedoes strike the exposed hull.

 

1423: Yamato's No. 1 magazine explodes and sends up a cloud of smoke seen 100 miles away. She slips under followed by an underwater explosion. 3,055 of the 3,332 men aboard are lost.

 

- Later in the day, battered destroyers Isokaze and Kasumi are scuttled. 1,187 crewmen of DesRon 2’s light cruiser Yahagi and the four destroyers are lost.

 

- The Americans lose 10 aircraft and 12 crewmen.

 

Yamato under attack

 

Light cruiser Yahagi dead in the water

 

Yamato explodes"

[cardboard_killer]

Yamato Diorama.

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• The United Kingdom transfers the escort aircraft carrier HMS Biter to France, which immediately commissions her as Dixmude. She is the first French aircraft carrier since the demilitarization of Béarn in 1942.

 

• While en route from Norway to Kiel, four u-boats travelling together for AA protection are attacked by thirty-four rocket armed Mosquitos in the Kattegat. U-843 is sunk while both U-804 and U-1065 explode, hitting four aircraft with flying debris. One Mosquito crashes and the other three make emergency landings in Sweden. The downed Mosquito was filming the raid. Below is the same Wing in December, 1944:

 

 

After a 59 day siege, General der Infanterie Otto Lasch surrenders Festung Königsberg to the Soviets. The fighting cost the Germans 42,000 dead and 27,000 captured. Some 25,000 civilians also perished in the fighting. Hitler sentences Lasch to death and orders his family arrested. They will be freed in May and Lasch released from Soviet captivity in 1955.

 

• Elements of US 1st Infantry and 5th Armored Division cross the Weser in preparation for an assault on Hannover.

 

1st Infantry Division troops crossing the Weser.

 

• Liberty ship Charles Henderson, loaded with aircraft bombs, explodes up in Bari harbour in Italy, killing 360 and injuring 1,730. The reason has not been determined.

 

• The ground part of the Italy Spring Offensive is launched. In the early afternoon 825 heavy bombers drop fragmentation bombs on the support zone behind the Senio River followed by medium bombers. In the late afternoon, five heavy artillery barrages are fired, each lasting 30 minutes, interspersed with fighter-bomber attacks. The 8th Indian Infantry Division, New Zealand 2nd Infantry Division and Polish 3rd Carpathian Rifle Division conduct assaults at dusk. Amid heavy fighting, Victoria Crosses are won by Indian riflemen Ali Haidar and Namdeo Jadhav.

 

• Three Hundred RAF bombers attack Kiel. Four Type XXI elektroboote and four conventional u-boote are sunk while heavy cruiser Admiral Scheer is hit or near-missed by five Tallboy bombs and capsized. Casualties are light since most of the crew are ashore in air raid bunkers. After the war the wreck will be stripped and the hull buried with rubble in place as the base for a new parking lot.

 

Admiral Scheer wreck

 

• The Danish resistance seizes Danish freighter Rosnæs near Copenhagen and sails her to Sweden. Nineteen other vessels will be taken over the next month or so.

 

• The US 9th Infantry Division liberates Stalag 326 at Eselheide, Germany. It is occupied primarily by Soviet Prisoners of War. Approximately 20,000 to 50,000 Soviets had died in the camp. Many of the survivors are in dire need and will be moved to American and British hospitals while the remainder will be housed in part of the camp being given better conditions while the other part of the camp will be used to house German POWs. In 1946 it will become Civilian Camp No 7 for displaced persons, mainly civilians from multiple nationalities who are homeless. The last WW-II refugees will not leave the camp until 1977.

 

Soviet POWs celebrating with GI 09 April 1945

 

• As the Japanese Twentieth Army advances westward, they take over the outlying flatlands of Hunan with little resistance. Once they enter the uplands they are surprised at how well the Chinese are prepared. The mountainous terrain is ideal for ambushes and mortar bombardment of approaching Japanese forces in the lower grounds.

 

KMT troops with small mortar.

 

- The Chinese conduct “fire and retreat” tactics, forcing the Japanese to halt and prepare an assault. Sino-American aircraft also add to the difficulty of the Japanese advance.

 

• Off Okinawa, escort carrier Chenango is damaged by crash of an F6F on the flight deck; destroyer Sterett by kamikaze, destroyer Porterfield by friendly fire, destroyer/transport Hopping by a shore battery, and cargo ship USS Starr by suicide demolition boat.

 

• On Okinawa 6th Marine Division explores the Motobu Peninsula in an effort to reveal the Japanese positions there. 96th Infantry Division assaults Kakazu Ridge, but is repulsed by heavy Japanese fire and frequent counterattacks. 7th Infantry Division captures Tomb Hill with the assistance of heavy naval gunfire support.

 

Salvo from USS North Carolina hitting Okinawa"

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago yesterday] "• Vice President Harry Truman casts his only tie-breaking vote in the US Senate, defeating a bill sponsored by Republican Senator Robert Taft to halt delivery of contracted lend-lease shipments the day the war ends in Europe.

 

• Adolf Hitler sends his servants ahead of him to Berchtesgaden to prepare for his arrival scheduled for April 20th.

 

• Soviet naval aircraft attack a German convoy in the Baltic, sinking merchant vessel Hansa I and minesweeper R-69.

 

 

• German torpedo boat T-13 is sunk by British aircraft in the Skagerrak.

 

• The Luftwaffe flies its final sortie over the United Kingdom, a reconnaissance mission from Norway over Scotland by an Arado Ar-234.

 

• An RAF raid on Kiel wrecks drydocked torpedo boat T-1 and the incomplete German light carrier Weser (former heavy cruiser Seydlitz).

 

• Canadian First Army liberates Deventer, the Netherlands.

 

• British Second Army captures Wildenhausen.

 

• US Ninth Army captures Hannover.

 

• French 1^re Armée breaks through German defenses south of Karlsruhe.

 

• 1,224 Allied heavy bombers attack German airfields in Italy, Austria, and Germany.

 

B-24L downed by flak over Lugo Italy 10 April 45 - there is one survivor

 

B-17G downed by flak over Stendal Germany 08 April 45 - there is also one survivor"

 

• A Japanese Fu-Go balloon blows up or burns near Southern Indian Lake, Manitoba, Canada. There is no damage.

 

• American B-24s attack positions in the Kuriles.

 

• Ten M6A submarine launched floatplanes perform a practice flight over Fukuyama, Japan to familiarize the crews with navigation over densely populated areas in case they are called on to deliver a biological warfare attack on US cities. One aircraft crashes while making a water landing.

 

Aichi M6A Seiran"

 

[80 years ago today] "• RAF Liberators sink Japanese submarine chaser Ch-7 and auxiliary netlayer Agata Maru in Andaman Sea.

 

• Off Okinawa, kamikazes damage carrier Enterprise, battleship Missouri and destroyers Bullard and Kidd and destroyer escort Samuel S. Miles. Carrier Essex and destroyer Hale are damaged by bombs.

 

 

A6M about to hit USS Missouri - 11 April 1945"

 

• Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the only American President ever elected four times, dies suddenly of a cerebral haemorrhage in Warm Springs, Georgia, where he is resting prior to travelling to San Francisco where he was looking forward to the opening conference of the United Nations. He is 63 years old.

 

 

- Republican Senator Robert Taft, the son of President William Howard Taft and a fierce adversary of the President, is typical of the response in Congress. Taft calls Roosevelt "the greatest figure of our time", removed "at the very climax of his career".

 

- President Roosevelt had been sitting for a portrait by Elizabeth Shoumatoff. He suddenly said, “I have a terrific headache” before collapsing. The portrait has never been finished, and hangs at the President’s retreat in Warm Springs, known as the Little White House.

 

Unfinished Portrait of FDR"

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] " • On being pressed again to make a drive on Berlin, General Eisenhower announces that Berlin is not a military objective of the Western Allies.

 

• An Avro Lancaster on a night mission against Potsdam becomes the last British bomber shot down by a German night fighter during World War II.

 

• What is believed to be the first combat use of the Focke-Wulf Ta-152 occurs when, after failing to catch a fast moving Mosquito, three Ta-152s surprise two Hawker Tempests near Neustadt-Glewe. Despite surprise, one Ta-152 and one Tempest are downed.

 

• Heinrich Himmler orders the commandant of Dachau, Gottfried Weiss, to eliminate all remaining prisoners and begin destruction and concealment of the camp.

 

• The Soviet Union's top propagandist, Ilya Ehrenburg, is formally reprimanded by Georgy Alexandrov, head of the Central Committee’s Propaganda and Agitation Department, for broadcasting and distributing leaflets that encourage Red Army soldiers to commit atrocities against German civilians.

 

• British advances in northern Italy are held up at Bastia and the Fossa Marina canal, frustrated by the reinforcing 15. Panzergrenadier Regiment. After a heavy aerial and artillery bombardment, US IV Corps begins to attack the western end of the German line, but makes little headway when the Germans dispatch the reserve 29. Panzergrenadier Division in response.

 

• US 6th Armored Division takes Altenburg, Germany.

 

 

• American troops capture the underground aircraft factory at Tarthun south of Magdeburg that produces He-162 jet fighters.

 

• Elements of the Détachement d’Armée de l’Atlantique under Général Edgard de Marminat, having relieved American units besieging the German garrisons of the Atlantic ports, begin an assault on Bordeaux and La Rochelle. Elderly battleship Lorraine provides naval gunfire support. American heavy bombers attacking two German forts in the Gironde estuary suffer a friendly fire incident when an error in timing results in B-17s dropping fragmentation bombs from high altitude onto B-24s dropping napalm from low altitude at Royan. Five B-24s are lost.

 

Royan France 14 April 1945

 

• Seven G4M bombers approach American ships off Okinawa carrying MXY7 Ohkas, but all are shot down before reaching their release points.

 

• Off Okinawa, kamikazes damage battleship New York and three destroyers.

 

• USS Tirante attacks Japanese convoy MOSI-02 in the approaches to the Yellow Sea, sinking 3,900 ton transport Jusan Maru, escort destroyer Nomi, and kaibōkan CD-31. For his skill and daring in carrying out this surface attack through mined and shoal-obstructed waters, Lieutenant Commander George Street will receive the Medal of Honor.

 

• President Roosevelt’s funeral is held in Washington D.C. (video is qued to the funeral beginning at two minute mark):

 

 

Chief Petty Officer Graham Jackson plays ‘Goin Home’ as FDR funeral train departs"

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• Type XB minelayer U-234 departs Norway bound for Japan carrying 560 kg of uranium oxide stored in the mine shafts, design drawings for the Me-262 fighter plus two Messerschmitt production engineers, stores, mail, and ammunition for the Far East U-boat base at Penang, and two Japanese officers returning home. On receiving word of the German surrender, Kapitänleutnant Johann-Heinrich Fehler will head for New Hampshire and surrender. The two Japanese will commit suicide with sleeping pills.

 

U-234 cruising alongside destroyer escort USS Sutton shortly after surrendering on 14 May, 2945.

 

• The crews of three German harbor defense boats desert by sailing from Oslo to Swedish waters, where they are interned.

 

• Seven months after Market-Garden, Arnhem is liberated by Canadian forces. Canadian 5th Armoured Division begins a drive from there to Zuider Zee while Canadian 1st Division continues toward Apeldoorn.

 

• US First Army captures Remscheid in Germany, east of Düsseldorf.

 

• French 1^er Corps d'Armée captures Kehl and Offenburg, while 2^e Corps d'Armée is clearing the Black Forest.

 

• French troops cross the Gironde in at Pointe de Grave and drive a salient into German positions near Vensac.

 

• Soviet torpedo cutters TK-131 and TK-141 raid the Bay of Danzig and encounter German destroyer Z-34 which is returning from a bombardment mission against Red Army forces. They put one torpedo into her which cripples her. Z-34 is able to reach port and make temporary repairs, and will sail to Copenhagen carrying refugees and be decommissioned.

 

- TK-131 is a memorial now. Z-34 will be allocated to the United States post-war but the USN will decline to take her due to her poor condition. She will be scuttled in the Skagerrak with a full load of chemical weapons aboard.

 

TK-131 at the Poklonnaya Gora Museum

 

• The 3rd Ukrainian Front occupies Radkesburg during its offensive against the industrial area of Mührisch-Ostrau in Moravia. The 2nd Ukrainian Front attacks towards Brno in Czechoslovakia.

 

• When told that people are having a difficult time believing his reporting from Buchenwald and that his description may be too extreme, CBS journalist Edward R. Murrow responds in his broadcast and written dispatch,

 

“I pray you to believe what I have said about Buchenwald. I have reported what I saw and heard, but only part of it. For most of it I have no words.... If I've offended you by this rather mild account of Buchenwald, I'm not in the least sorry.”

 

• Bergen-Belsen concentration camp is liberated by the British Army. An estimated 40,000 inmates are there with about 13,000 corpses lying about. Anne Frank and her sister Margot had died of typhus there only a few weeks earlier. Hospitals are set up in the barracks and doctors and nurses work round the clock to feed and treat prisoners. Many prisoners cannot eat food, and become hysterical when the British attempt intravenous feeding since German doctors routinely murdered prisoners with injections. Specialist teams and 96 medical students are flown from the UK to assist. In spite of the aid, nearly fourteen thousand of the surviving inmates will perish.

 

- Camp Commandant Joseph Kramer and Camp Doctor Fritz Klein are forced to join German troops, SS guards, and local civilians in burying victims in mass graves. Both will be executed for war crimes. Once the camp is cleared of people, it will be burned down with flamethrowers to help combat the spread of disease.

 

French Belgian and Dutch inmates weeks later after being medically cleared to return home"

[Note, I did not post more horrible pictures. I could not bear to look at them long enough to post them]

 

"• On southern Luzon, elements of 11th Airborne and 1st Cavalry Divisions open an assault on Mount Malepunyo following air and artillery bombardment:

 

 

• About 200 Chinese and American aircraft attack Japanese targets across a large area of eastern China, targeting bridges, river traffic, railroads, gun positions, warehouses, and troop concentrations.

 

• HMS Statesman sinks a three masted sailing vessel with gunfire in the Malacca Strait.

 

• TF 58 aircraft attack airfields and aircraft on the ground in southern Kyushu.

 

• Off Okinawa, kamikazes damage destroyers Wilson and Laffey, while a Japanese suicide demolition boat damages motor minesweeper YMS-331. Attack transport USS Berrien is damaged by friendly fire."

 

 

 

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• Canadian troops liberate Harlingen, Groningen, and Leeuwarden in the Netherlands. [Those sound like made up names]

 

• Eighteen Lancaster bombers of No. 617 Squadron RAF attack the German heavy cruiser Lützow at Swinemünde (now Swinoujscie, Poland). All but two of the aircraft are damaged, although only one is lost. A near miss by a "Tallboy" 12,000-lb bomb tears a large hole in the bottom of the cruiser, and she settles to the bottom. Lützow’s main deck is still two meters above water and she will operate as a stationary gun battery against advancing Soviet troops until put out of action by Soviet aircraft on May 4th.

 

Lützow in the Kaiserfahrt on 26 April, 1945.

 

• The Allied Joint Chiefs of Staff formally decree the ending of the area bombing campaign against Germany. In one of British Bomber Command's last major operations of the war, 900 bombers attack the German island fortress of Helgoland.

 

• Soviet naval aircraft sink the German 1,500 ton Cap Guir, resulting in 756 soldiers and crewmen lost. The 5,400 ton Gotha is damaged.

 

• Soviet submarine L-3 torpedoes the German 5,200 ton passenger liner Goya. The two torpedo hits break her in half and she sinks within four minutes, killing 6,220 people being evacuated from East Prussia, most of whom are wounded soldiers and civilian refugees. This is the 2nd greatest loss of life at sea from a single ship, after the Wilhelm Gustloff sunk in March.

 

• The final Soviet assault against Berlin begins with strikes by night bombers of the Fourth and Sixteenth Air Armies against German positions in the early morning hours, coordinated with mortar, katyusha rocket, and artillery attacks. The Soviets then break out from from the Oder bridgeheads.

 

- The Germans are defending with 200,000 men of the 3. Panzer Armee and 9. Armee, with 750 tanks and assault guns and 1,500 artillery pieces. German artillery inflicts heavy casualties on the attacking Soviets.

 

Soviet T-34 crew receiving operational orders prior to launching the offensive

 

Soviet Zis-3 guns bombarding Seelowe Heights 16 April 1945

 

 

• Operation Kikusui No. 3 is launched against shipping off Okinawa with approximately 120 Japanese Navy and 45 Japanese Army special attack and escorting aircraft. Six Ohka carrying G4Ms are included but all six are downed by fighters short of their release points.

 

 

- Kamikazes sink destroyer Pringle with the loss of 71 crewmen. Fleet carrier Intrepid and battleship Missouri are damaged as are several smaller ships."

[Heliopause]

Sherman Firefly from the Royal Canadian Dragoons in Leeuwarden, Holland. The city liberated on the 15th.

 

April 16th: "Canadian tanks fireing on enemy positions in the southern part of the city centre of Groningen".

Edited April 17 by Heliopause

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• U-548 is sunk with all hands south-east of Halifax by depth charges from the American destroyer escorts Reuben James and Buckley.

 

• Elements of Zhukov’s 1st Belorussian Front break through the final line of the Seelow Heights and now nothing but broken German formations lay between them and Berlin. The remnants of the 9. Armee and 4. Panzer Armee are enveloped by the 1st Belorussian Front and elements of Konev’s 1st Ukrainian Front which had broken through and turned north. Other units of the 1st Ukrainian Front are racing west towards the Americans.

 

T-34/85 moving through pine woods south of Berlin.

 

• Lavrentiy Beria orders the agents of NKVD, NKGB, and SMERSH to send all Soviet citizens suspected of helping the Germans to special vetting camps.

 

• 79 RAF Mosquitos conduct strikes on German positions around Berlin.

 

• Soviet naval aircraft sink the German 5,900 ton Altengamme off Sassnitz.

 

• School boat U-258 is sunk in the Kattegat south of Göteborg by rockets from British and Norwegian Mosquito aircraft.

 

• In Italy, German resistance is collapsing. Allied Italian frogmen piloting British-built Chariot manned-torpedoes sink the carrier Aquila pierside at Genoa to prevent her from being used by the Germans as a blockship. She will be raised in 1946 and scrapped in 1952.

 

Aquila in 1950

 

• Switzerland closes its borders with Germany (including the former Austria).

 

• US Seventh Army forces break through the walls of Nuremburg and enter the inner city.

 

• British XXX Corps attacks Bremen while Canadian troops capture the Luftwaffe base of Stade, 40 kilometers west of Hamburg, without opposition.

 

Cromwells and Challengers in western Germany

 

• Field Marshal Hisaichi Terauchi, commander-in-chief of the Southern Expeditionary Army Group, orders Burma Area Army commander Hyotarō Kimura to defend Rangoon to the death. Kimura has no fighting troops, but large numbers of headquarters and supply personnel as well as air force ground crew and naval support personnel. A large force of the Indian National Army is also present in Rangoon but Kimura suspects that they intend to surrender at the first opportunity. Prime Minister Ba Maw tells him that the Burmese will do nothing to help the Japanese turn Rangoon into a battlefield. Kimura decides to abandon the city, leaving the 105th Independent Mixed Brigade to hold the road at Pegu and the INA troops to maintain order in the city until the Anglo-Indians arrive.

 

• General MacArthur directs US Eighth Army to continue actions on Mindanao, Cebu, Negros, and Bohol until all Japanese are wiped out.

 

• IJA Thirty-fifth Army commander Sōsaku Suzuki is attempting to escape from Cebu to Mindanao when the boats being used by his headquarters are attacked by Allied aircraft in the Bohol Sea. Suzuki is killed in action and the Army will be officially disbanded though remnants will continue to resist.

 

• USS Pogy is mistakenly attacked by PB4Y Liberator as Pogy approaches a Japanese convoy southeast of Honshu. Fortunately, the submarine is undamaged and remains on patrol.

 

• On Ie Shima, 77th Infantry Division is repulsed in several attempts to take “Bloody Ridge” and Ie town; the 3rd Battalion of 307th Regiment bypasses the Japanese positions to conduct an attack from the rear.

 

• On Okinawa, activity subsides in III Amphibious Corps' area while XXIV Corps launches a general assault on the outer belt of the Shuri defenses after a tremendous preparatory bombardment from naval vessels, 27 artillery battalions, and the largest single airstrike of the campaign. The bombardment has little effect against the well-organized network of cave and tunnel positions.."

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• The Soviets complete the encirclement of Berlin. Zhukov's tanks, sweeping across the northern suburbs, have cut all the roads leading to the west and yesterday linked up with Konev's drive from the south at Ketzin. Inside the city, government buildings in the Wilhelmstraße are under point-blank fire from field guns.

 

• The incomplete German aircraft carrier Graf Zeppelin is scuttled at Stettin to prevent her capture by the Soviet Union. The Soviets will raise her in 1947.

 

• Patrols led by Lieutenant Alexander Sylvashko of the 58th Guards Rifle Division and 2nd Lieutenant William Robertson of the US 69th Infantry Division meet at Torgau on the Elbe River.

 

Photo of East meets West at Torgau probably taken tomorrow.

 

• 275 B-17s escorted by four groups of P-51 Mustangs attack the Pilzen-Škoda armament factory in Czechoslovakia. It is the last American heavy bomber mission against a European industrial target.

 

• French 1^er Corps d'Armée defeats an attempt by the XVIII SS Panzerkorps to break out from the Black forest and escape to the Bavarian Alps.

 

• US IV Corps captures Verona, Italy.

 

• U-326 is sunk with all hands in the Bay of Biscay by a homing torpedo dropped by a US Navy PB4Y Liberator.

 

• Field Marshal Montgomery takes operational control of US XVIII Airborne Corps for the final drive from the Elbe to the Baltic and to prevent the Soviets from entering Denmark.

 

• Bremen is taken by Canadian II Corps and British XXX Corps. Mopping up the industrial center will take another day.

 

Slave workers from the U-boat yards welcome British armour in Bremen

 

German POWs led by naval officers in Bremen

 

• US Secretary of War Stimson and Major General Leslie Groves arrive at the White House to brief President Truman on the Manhattan Project. He has been kept unaware of it until now."

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• German 9. Armee makes its first breakout attempt against Konev’s 1st Ukrainian Front near Halbe, just south of Berlin. They are attempting to reach the German 12. Armee and flee west. The 10. SS and 21. Panzer Divisions lead two columns with Panther tanks. Oberst Hans von Luck is ordered to open a column for the sole use of military units to escape. No civilians are to be allowed to use it. The columns hit the 50th Guards Rifle and the 329th Rifle Divisions, which will be quickly reinforced with armor.

 

- The Germans are repelled by the Soviet defenses and scattered. Von Luck disbands his kampfgruppe and authorizes his men to flee westward individually. He will be captured by the Soviets and released in 1950.

 

• Generaloberst Robert Ritter von Greim was promoted to the rank of Generalfeldmarschall and named by Hitler as Hermann Göring’s replacement. He is wounded today by Soviet anti-aircraft fire while flying into Berlin.

 

• The 2nd Belorussian front captures Stettin on the river Oder, while the 3rd Belorussian Front captures the Baltic port of Pillau, 20 miles West of Königsberg.

 

• Canadian First Army reports Holland to be German free except for a small region of coast at the Ems estuary.

 

• British XII Corps reaches the Elbe opposite Hamburg.

 

• US Third Army captures Regensburg, Germany.

 

• US Seventh Army's XV Corps attacks across the Danube.

 

• Elements of the French 1^re Armée take Konstanz, on Lake Constance and the border with Switzerland.

 

- In Konstanz, Maréchal Philippe Pétain salutes Général Marie-Pierre Kœnig. He then advances with outstretched hand, but Kœnig refuses to shake. It takes the former Premier of the French State a moment to realize that he is under arrest.

 

 

- In August, Pétain will be found guilty of treason against the Republic and sentenced to death but Charles De Gaulle will commute the sentence to life in prison due to his age and his First World War service.

 

• Brazilian 1st Infantry Division captures Collecchio.

 

• Italian partisans capture SS Obergruppenführer Karl Wolff, commander of all rear area forces in Italy and in charge of anti-partisan operations. Wolff will be rescued by an American OSS team on the orders of Allen Dulles and despite being indicted on war crimes charges will not be tried at Nuremburg in exchange for providing information. West Germany will convict him in 1964 of rounding up and transporting 300,000 Jews to Treblinka. He will serve 7 years in prison.

 

• B-26s of the 323rd Bomb Group are making an attack on Memmingen when they are intercepted by Generalleutnant Adolf Galland leading a half-dozen Me-262 jet fighters of Jagdverband 44. Four B-26s are shot down while one Me-262, flown by Eduard Schallmoser, is shot down by an escorting P-51. Schallmoser reportedly parachutes into his mother’s garden, and she cooks him dinner while he bandages his knee.

 

- Galland is returning to base when he is bounced and shot up by a P-47. He is able to escape his burning plane. In a few days American troops will approach the base of the German jet testing unit, and the pilots and technicians are offered consultant positions with the USAAF. Galland will either decline or be refused due to his high rank and Nazi Party status (accounts vary) and instead along with Focke Wulf designer Kurt Tank, serve the Fuerza Aérea Argentina.

 

Messerschmitt Me-262 being shot down

 

B-26 of the 323rd BG downed during the action - all but one crewman survived"

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• In Czechoslovakia, troops of Second Ukrainian Front take Austerlitz (modern Slavkov u Brna).

 

• German 9. Armee manages to break through the lines of the 50th Guards Rifle Division and create a corridor from Halbe to the west, but pays a very high price. The Soviets reinforce the flanks and attack from the south, pouring in Katyusha rockets and shells. The leading elements make contact with the 12. Armee at Beelitz. By this time command and control is breaking down. Civilians are taking pity on child soldiers, providing them with civilian clothes and hiding them from the roving squads bent on executing deserters. There is high tension between Waffen-SS and Wehrmacht soldiers, with each group trying to help their own often at the expense of the other. The Soviets are attacking the fleeing columns relentlessly from the air.

 

German column destroyed by Soviets while fleeing west.

 

- 25,000 German soldiers escape to merge with 12. Armee. Casualties of the breakout from Halbe are somewhat more than 20,000 Soviets killed, with 60,000 Germans killed and 120,000 Germans taken prisoner. An estimated 10,000 civilians have been killed.

 

• Adolf Hitler marries Eva Braun and writes a will which repeats the expulsion of Himmler and Göring from the Nazi Party and all official positions. He appoints Großadmiral Karl Dönitz to replace him as Reichspräsident (but not Führer). In Berlin furious fighting takes place around the Reichstag, Chancellery and along Potsdamer Strasse.

 

• Elements of 2nd Belorussian front advance west along the Baltic coast, seizing Anklan on the road to Stralsund, and pushing into Mecklenburg.

 

• Several U-boats attack convoy RA-66 off the Kola Inlet. British frigate Goodall is barely missed by a homing torpedo fired by U-968, and an hour later hit by another from U-286. The forward half of the ship disintegrates killing 112 crewmen. This is the last U-boat success in the Arctic, and U-286 is sunk with all hands in a counterattack by British frigates Loch Insh, Anguilla, and Cotton. Also in the attack on RA-66:

 

- U-427 fires homing torpedoes at Canadian destroyers Haida and Iroquois but misses. They respond by dropping 260 depth charges around the U-boat but she escapes damaged, returning to base.

 

- U-307 is sunk by squid fired from British frigate Loch Insh, with 14 survivors. These are the last u-boatmen captured before the German surrender.  LtCdr Edward Dempster will be awarded the DSC.

 

• British Second Army captures Lauenburg, just south of Hamburg, trapping all German forces in Denmark and securing the Baltic Ports. When Soviet forces arrive at Lübeck and Wismar not long afterward they find British and Canadian troops waiting for them. This move prevents Stalin from seizing Denmark (though he denies the intention), and prevents the Soviet Navy from having any bases on the North Sea.

 

• British 56th (London) Infantry Division takes Venice.

 

• Milan is liberated by Italian partisans.

 

• Generaloberst Heinrich von Vietinghoff, commander of Heersgruppe C, signs an instrument of unconditional surrender in Italy to take effect 02 May with a ceasefire effective immediately.

 

• American tanks surround the Oberammergau air test facility in southern Germany, capturing Willy Messerschmitt along with an uncompleted P.1101 prototype jet aircraft.

 

A Bell copy of the P.1101 with side panels removed.

 

- Messerschmitt will be classified as a Nazi “fellow traveller” particularly for his use of slave labor and serve two years in prison. Forbidden to manufacture aircraft until 1955 he will nonetheless design aircraft for Fascist Spain before then while producing sewing machines and small cars in Germany.

 

• U-1017 is sunk with all hands north-west of Ireland by a British Liberator aircraft.

 

• French light cruiser Duquesne and three destroyers land French troops on Île d’Oléron in the Gironde estuary. After scattered fighting, the Germans surrender.

 

• French 1^re Armée takes Friedrichshafen.

 

• Dachau concentration camp, only five miles from Munich, is liberated by the US 42nd Infantry Division. There are about 30,000 inmates still alive, mostly Jews as well as Serbian and Greek Orthodox expelled from the Balkans. Just before the soldiers enter the complex, they find thirty-nine railway boxcars containing two thousand, three hundred and ten skeletal corpses. It became obvious that as the camp routine broke down, the SS men had left the emaciated passengers to simply die in the boxcars, shooting any that tried to leave. Most died of dehydration. The sight and smell of decaying bodies induces vomiting, crying, disbelief and rage in the advancing GIs.

 

- A group of 43 SS guards are summarily executed in the Dachau coalyard by American soldiers. An unknown number of other guards and “Kapo” prisoner-guards are killed by surviving inmates, some of whom are provided with handguns and knives by Americans after officers stop the soldiers from doing it themselves.

 

- A war crimes investigation will be begun concerning the American behavior, but military governor George S. Patton will drop all charges after receiving a brief from Colonel Charles Decker, an acting deputy judge advocate who states that there had been breaches of international law but. . .

 

Unauthorized execution of SS guards at Dachau 29 April 1945"

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• French battleship Richelieu, Dutch light cruiser Tromp, and British battleship Queen Elizabeth, heavy cruisers Cumberland and Suffolk, and light cruiser Ceylon bombard Japanese positions in the Nicobars. Aircraft from British escort carriers Empress and Shah attack airfields in the islands.

 

• The Indian 17th Infantry Division plus elements of the 255th Indian Tank Brigade launch their main attack on Pegu with the monsoons just beginning. The dusty tracks quickly turn into mud and rivers rapidly begin to rise. Indian infantry scramble across the girders of two demolished railway bridges under cover of artillery and tank fire, but are effectively pinned on the other side.

 

• The Mexican 201st Fighter Squadron arrives in the Philippines. They will mostly conduct ground support missions in the Philippines, but also four fighter-sweeps and a dive bombing mission over Formosa. With the disappearance of Japanese aircraft in the theater, the squadron will have no aerial combat. To avoid friendly fire incidents the Mexican aircraft carry American roundels with a Mexican red white and green fin flash.

 

P-47Ds of Escuadrón Aéreo de Pelea 201 over the Philippines

 

• US Seventh Army captures Munich.

 

• US 92nd Infantry Division enters Turin from the east, already liberated by Italian partisans. Later in the day they make contact with French forces advancing from the west.

 

• Heavy fighting continues in Berlin.

 

• With the Red Army less than half a mile away and artillery shells landing around the Führerbunker, Adolf and Eva Hitler commit suicide. The bodies are incompletely incinerated by SS personnel.

 

- The following morning Dönitz will make a speech on the radio:

 

 

“German men and women, soldiers of the German armed forces. Our Führer Adolf Hitler is dead. The German people bow in deepest sorrow and respect. Early he had recognised the terrible danger of Bolshevism and had dedicated his life to the fight against it. His fight having ended, he died a hero's death in the capital of the German Reich, after having led a straight and steady life.

 

His life was dedicated to the service of Germany. His devotion in the fight against the Bolshevist flood was in the interest not only of Europe but of the entire civilised world. The Führer has nominated me as his successor. Fully conscious of the responsibility, I am taking over the leadership of the German nation in this fateful hour, my first task is to save German men from being destroyed by the advancing Bolshevist enemy. For this reason only do the Armies continue fighting. As far and as long as the achievement of this task is being prevented by the British and Americans, we have to defend ourselves against them too and must go on fighting. Thus the Anglo-Americans are no longer carrying on the fight for their own peoples but only for the spreading of Bolshevism in Europe.

 

What the German people have achieved in this war through fighting and [the] sufferings they have undergone at home are unique in history. In the coming emergency arising for our people I shall to the best of my ability make it my business to secure for our brave women, men, and children the most tolerable conditions essential to life.

 

In order to do this, I need your help. Give me your confidence, as your road is also my road. Uphold order and discipline in towns and country. Let everybody remain at his post doing his duty. Only thus will we be able to mitigate the suffering, which the future will bring for every one of us, and prevent the collapse. If we do all that is in our power, God will not forsake us after so much suffering and sacrifice.”

 

 

- Soviet technicians will positively identify Hitler by his dental work and the charred remains will be secretly buried at the SMERSH compound in Magdeburg. Fearing that they may one day become a neo-Nazi shrine, a Soviet KGB team will exhume the remains in 1970. They will be thoroughly burned and crushed, and the ashes thrown into the Biederitz river, a tributary of the Elbe.

 

- Hitler’s aide and Chief Adjutant Julius Schaub has already destroyed Hitler’s personal belongings and papers in Berlin. He flies to Munich to do the same there and to destroy Hitler’s personal train to prevent it from becoming a trophy.

 

• Soviet troops liberate Ravensbruck concentration camp."

 

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• A Gurkha Parachute Battalion of the Indian 44th Airborne Division is dropped on Elephant Point in order to neutralize Japanese coastal gun batteries defending Rangoon. They land in good order but are bombed and strafed by American aircraft as they approach the bunkers defending the artillery sites. The Gurkhas destroy the bunkers with demolition charges and flamethrowers and take the batteries so tomorrow’s invasion force can enter.

 

Gurkhas jumping near Rangoon 01 May, 1945

 

• Vice Admiral Jesse Oldendorf conducts an anti-shipping sweep of Japanese waters with large cruisers Alaska and Guam without results, then returns to screening carrier forces in the Ryūkyūs.

 

• USS Sennet fires five torpedoes at kaibōkan CD-50 off Wakamiya but misses. The ocean escort vessel counterattacks with three depth charges, then departs to join its convoy, leaving three small patrol boats to prosecute the submarine. Sennet responds with a Mark 27 acoustic homing torpedo and blows off CD-50’s stern. She will be towed in for repairs but never return to service.

 

• Elements of the Australian 26th Brigade Group land on Tarakan as the first move in the Borneo Campaign. The Japanese have 2,200 men built around the IJA 455th Independent Infantry Battalion and the IJN 2nd Naval Garrison Force. By the end of the day the beachhead is 2,800 yards wide and up to 2,000 yards deep.

 

A Company of 23rd Battalion advancing past wrecked oil storage tanks on Tarakan 01 May, 1945.

 

- The Australian government is not happy with the operation, considering it a waste of men resources to take ground that should be bypassed. It would prefer to concentrate on the offensive against Japan itself. General MacArthur successfully argued (to the Combined Joint Chiefs of Staff) that the rise in prestige for the Allied governments would be worth the cost.

 

• US Navy PBMs sink Japanese cargo vessel Kyugkoku Maru off Mokpo, Korea.

 

• North Field on Tinian is completed. Able to hold 265 Boeing B-29 bombers at once, it is currently the largest airfield in the world.

 

B29s on and over Tinian

 

B-29s taxiing on Tinian"

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• US 24th Infantry Division and Filipino guerillas close in on Davao, Mindanao, against strong opposition.

 

• American Liberty ship Edmund F. Dickens is mined and sunk in Manila Bay.

 

• On Okinawa, Hospital Apprentice Second Class Robert E. Bush, serving as a corpsman with a rifle company with the 2d Battalion, 5th Marines, is administering blood plasma to a wounded marine when the Japanese launch a fierce counterattack against his unit. Steadfastly remaining at the wounded man's side, Bush holds the plasma bottle in one hand and draws his .45 with the other, expending his ammunition at the charging enemy. Seizing a discarded carbine, the battling corpsman, who suffers the loss of an eye among other injuries, kills six Japanese as the Marines drive the enemy back. Bush refuses medical attention for himself until the marine that he had protected is evacuated. For his selfless heroism, the corpsman will be awarded the Medal of Honor.

 

• In Burma, the Indian 17th Infantry Division secures Pegu while the Indian 26th Infantry Division makes an amphibious landing near Rangoon under cover of French battleship Richelieu and British battleship Queen Elizabeth. They meet no opposition.

 

- The crew of an RAF Mosquito notices a message painted on the roof of the jail by Allied prisoners of war. Recognizing “Extract Digit” as RAF slang for “Get your finger out” they land, damaging the tailwheel, and walk to the jail. On confirmation of the Japanese evacuation, they commandeer a sampan and sail down the river to meet the invading troops.

 

Rangoon Central Jail - holding Allied POWs

 

Landing troops along Rangoon River 02 May 1945

 

• Fourteen Type II, ten Type VII, and eighteen Type XXI submarines are scuttled at Wilhelmshaven, Bremen, Bremerhaven, Warnemünde, and Travemünde.

 

• British Field Marshal Sir Harold Alexander accepts the surrender of nearly a million Axis troops in Italy.

 

• French 1^er Corps d’Armée takes Gotzis and Oberstdorf, Austria, and reaches the border of neutral Liechtenstein.

 

• American troops capture Wernher von Braun and other scientists in Austria.

 

• Unable to escape Berlin, Martin Bormann commits suicide. His body will not be identified until 1972 leading to persistent rumors of his survival.

 

• The Battle of Berlin ends when General der Artillerie Helmuth Weidling, commander of the Berlin Defence Area, unconditionally surrenders the city of Berlin and 130,000 men to Generál-leytenánt Vasily Chuikov.

 

Colorised second flagraising over the Reichstag. This photo is taken on orders of Stalin, who wants something similar to the US flag over Iwo Jima. In an example of photoshop before photoshop, Soviet censors erased extra wristwatches from one of the men (indicating looting) and added smoke for dramatic effect - and when colorized in modern times the wristwatches have been added back in.

 

• Commandant Karl Rahm of the Theresienstadt Concentration Camp relinquishes control of the camp to the International Red Cross.

 

• Kiel is declared an open city.

 

• Reichspräsident Dönitz holds his first cabinet meeting. Albert Speer is the only notable holdover from Hitler’s cabinet. Dönitz promotes Hans-Georg von Friedeburg to Generaladmiral and appoints him to command of the Kriegsmarine. He directs OKW move what remains of the Wehrmacht towards the Western Allies. Once the meeting is concluded the government has to flee from the British Second Army to the Naval Academy at Flensburg.

 

• A wave of suicides has been sweeping Germany and Austria since early in the year and is sharply rising, prompted by despair over the death of Hitler, fear of the Allied occupation, and indoctrination from Nazi propaganda. Such propaganda has for months claimed that the Allies intended to exterminate the German people, and included helpful descriptions of relatively painless methods of suicide. 3,881 people in Berlin alone have killed themselves in the past month.
 

Spoiler

Austrian family suicide as Soviet troops approach

 

Family suicide in Germany as American troops approach"

 

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• Pre-dreadnought battleship Schlesien detonated a British mine outside Swinemünde late yesterday, and her crew beached her to prevent sinking and use her for artillery support of ground forces. Today she is attacked by Soviet A-20 and Il-2 aircraft, which score two bomb and numerous rocket hits on her as well as sinking minesweeper M-387 and patrol ship V-2001. She is abandoned.

 

Schlesien after being abandoned. She will be scapped in place by East Germany.

 

• Soviet forces make contact with the British Second Army in the Wismar area and the US Ninth Army at Schwerin.

 

British paratroopers and Soviet tankers meet 03 May, 1945

 

• British troops take Hamburg without resistance.

 

• RAF Typhoons sweep over the Bay of Lübeck with bombs and rockets, sinking the 27,600 ton liner Cap Arcona, 21,000 ton liner Deutschland, and 2,800 ton cargo vessel Thielbek. The British are under the impression that SS men are fleeing to Norway for a last-ditch defense. The ships are actually loaded with nearly 8,000 inmates from several concentration camps, mostly Neuengamme. They had been moved so that Himmler could use them as bargaining chips for a negotiated peace. Since that failed, according to Höherer SS und Polizeiführer Georg-Henning Graf von Bassewitz-Behr, Himmler had directed that the ships were to be scuttled with the inmates aboard.

 

SS Cap Arcona on her side in the shallow water after the attack.

 

- German trawlers rescue crewmen and SS guards, shooting or clubbing any inmates trying to climb aboard. SS and police units shoot any inmates trying to get to shore, and the Typhoons are strafing people in the water, believing them all to be SS troops. Less than 400 inmates will survive, while nearly 700 SS and crew will be rescued.

 

• Generalfeldmarshall Fedor von Bock is travelling by car to Hamburg for an undetermined reason when it is strafed by a British fighter-bomber. His wife and step-daughter are killed instantly while he will die of his injuries the following day.

 

• Spanish dictator Francisco Franco approves an editorial in the state-run newspaper:

 

“Adolf Hitler, son of the Catholic Church, died while defending Christianity. It is therefore understandable that words cannot be found to lament over his death, when so many were found to exalt his life. Over his mortal remains stands his victorious moral figure. With the palm of the martyr, God gives Hitler the laurels of Victory.”

 

• Prime Minister António de Oliveira Salazar of the Portuguese right-wing corporatist Estado Novo declares two days of national mourning for the death of Adolf Hitler.

 

• In southern Germany, US 12th Armored Division is driving on Innsbruck, crossing the Austrian border. US 20th Armored is advancing on Salzburg and French 2^e Division Blindée (2nd Armored Division) on Berchtesgaden.

 

Tanks of the US 20th Armored Division fording the Inn River on the drive to Salzburg

 

2e DB commander Leclerc's jeep on the road to Bertchesgaden - named Death to Idiots

 

General Maximilian von Edelsheim in his Schwimmwagen crosses the River Elbe to surrender 48 Panzerkorps to Americans

 

• Operation Kikusui No. 5 is launched against shipping off Okinawa, with about 75 Japanese Navy and 50 Japanese Army special attack and escorting aircraft. Destroyer USS Little, on radar picket duty, is struck by four aircraft, sinking with the loss of thirty crewmen. LSM(R)-195 is also sunk, while destroyer Barche and destroyer/minesweeper Macomb are damaged. Destroyer/minelayer Aaron Ward, also on picket duty, is hit by five aircraft and one bomb with another bomb detonating alongside.

 

USS Aaron Ward is considered to be the most badly damaged kamikaze target to survive.  Although nearly every suviving crewmember is wounded to some degree, only twenty-seven are KIA.

 

- Cargo ship USS Carina is damaged by suicide demolition boat while civilian freighter Sea Flasher is damaged by AA fire from battleship New Mexico.

 

• On Mindanao, the US 31st Infantry Division is preparing to assault Kibawe while 24th Infantry Division gathers before Davao. Both are supported by large contingents of Wendell Fertig’s guerillas. The monsoons begin, greatly slowing movement and resupply.

 

• Indian 26th Infantry Division enters Rangoon unopposed and disarms the remaining Indian National Army troops left behind by the Japanese. The liberation of the Burmese capital is considered to be the end of the Burma Campaign."

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• The British Home Fleet conducts its last operation (Operation Judgement) with a Fleet Air Arm strike from escort carriers Searcher, Trumpeter and Queen on the U-boat base at Harstad, Norway. The main target is the submarine depot ship Black Watch while eight Wildcats armed with 250 lb bombs are to sink the flakship Thetis (former Norwegian coast defense ship Harald Haarfagre). The Wildcats miss allowing Thetis or shore based guns to shoot down two Avengers. Nonetheless, they are able to sink the Black Watch and U-711 which is moored alongside. Two other ships are damaged.

 

Thetis is at lower left while steamer Senja is bracketed by bombs. Black Watch and U-711 are obscured by smoke and spray behind SS Senja.

 

• Type XXIII elektroboot U-2338 is sunk off the Danish coast by a Coastal Command Beaufighter. There is one survivor.

 

• U-155, U-680, and U-1223 are transiting from Germany to Norway when they are strafed by RAF Mustangs. The lead fighter, piloted by the Squadron Leader, is shot down by U-155 after which the rest break off.

 

• Dönitz sends Generaladmiral Hans Georg von Friedeburg to Field Marshal Montgomery's HQ at Lüneburg Heath to arrange for the surrender of Holland, Denmark and north Germany. When Montgomery refuses to accept the surrender of the armies fighting the Soviets, stating that they must surrender to the Soviets, von Friedeburg breaks into tears. He spends the night at Montgomery’s HQ and will be taken to General of the Army Eisenhower at Reims tomorrow.

 

• Neuengamme concentration camp is liberated by British troops.

 

• US First Army begins to turn over its troops to other US armies as First Army HQ prepares to return to the USA for redeployment to the Pacific.

 

• German cargo vessel Bolkoburg is bombed in the Baltic Sea off Fehmarn, Schleswig-Holstein by RAF Typhoons. She is beached and burnt out.

 

• German tanker Altengamme is sunk by Soviet aircraft off Rügen.

 

• German merchant raider Orion has been used as an escort and artillery training ship since her raiding career ended. Today she is transporting refugees from Swinemünde to Copenhagen when she is attacked and set on fire by A-20s of the Soviet 51st mine-torpedo Aviation Regiment. Of the more than 4,000 people on board, only 150 are rescued despite sinking in very shallow water.

 

- German training vessel Hektor, flakship Hummel, and torpedo recovery vessel T-155 are bombed and sunk by Soviet aircraft off Swinemünde (Świnoujście).

 

101st Airborne troopers with Hermann Göring’s armored Mercedes 04 May 1945

 

• Air raids are still going on against bypassed Japanese garrisons. This bomber is lost today:

 

 

- One crewman survives, only to be captured and beheaded by the Japanese.

 

• With Rangoon taken, 11th Army Group commander Sir Oliver Leese, who strongly dislikes Sir William Slim and the British Indian Army in general, replaces him with XV Corps commander Sir Philip Christison. Slim is to be transferred to newly forming Twelfth Army for occupation duty.

 

- Slim replies by writing to Leese and Sir Claude Auchinleck, the C-in-C India, to say he would refuse the new post and resign from the army in protest. Once the news circulates within the Fourteenth Army, mutinies and mass resignations of officers are threatened. Leese will be obliged to reinstate Slim when SEAC commander Admiral Louis Mountbatten refuses to support him.

 

- Mountbatten subsequently confers with Sir Alan Brooke and they agree that Leese should be removed. He will be succeeded at 11AG by Slim.

 

• American General Daniel Sultan irritates his allies by announcing that American troops have liberated Rangoon, though the only Americans arriving there are service and support units.

 

• A second wave of Kikusui No. 5 attacks ships off Okinawa. They sink destroyers Luce and Morrison, LSM(R)-190 and LSM(R)-194 and damage the aircraft carrier HMS Formidable, escort carrier USS Sangamon, light cruiser USS Birmingham, four destroyers, a destroyer-minelayer, and three smaller ships.

 

- Formidable loses fifteen aircraft but will be able to resume air operations later in the day. The USN liaison officer on Indefatigable will later write:

 

“When a kamikaze hits a US carrier it means 6 months of repair at Pearl. When a kamikaze hits a Limey carrier it’s just a case of ‘Sweepers, man your brooms’.”

 

- USS Sangamon heads for the US West coast and repairs, but will instead be returned to civilian life. She will be purchased by an American company, converted back to a tanker, and steam under the Liberian flag until being scrapped by a Japanese company in 1960.

 

HMS Formidable 04 May 1945 kamikaze damage

 

USS Sangamon 04 May 1945 kamikaze damage"

 

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• U-853 torpedoes and sinks the American 5,400 ton collier Black Point five miles off Point Judith, Rhode Island.

 

• At various Baltic ports, the Kriegsmarine scuttles twenty Type VII, four Type IX, one Type XVII, and seventeen Type XXI submarines. In one, the Obermaschinist setting the scuttling charges refuses to leave the boat and perishes.

 

• U-534 is sunk with all hands by a British Liberator in the Kattegat with 3 crewmen killed.

 

• U-579 is sunk by a British Liberator in the Kattegat with the loss of 24 crewmen.

 

• Type XXIII elektroboot U-2367 is lost with all hands to unknown causes north of Nakskov, Denmark. Post-war analysis of the wreck indicates a collision with an unknown vessel. She will be raised in 1956 and serve in the West German Bundesmarine as U-Hecht until 1968.

 

• In Prague, Czech resistance fighters take over the Vinohradská Street radio station, overwhelming SS guards after a bitter firefight. They then broadcast a call for the Czech people to rise up and the people of Prague to build barricades. Other bands of resistants attack the Gestapo (Secret State Police) and SiPo (Security Police) headquarters buildings.

 

Resistance members at a barricade in Prague. By the end of the day most of the city is liberated, but the Germans are determined to retake it since they need it to escape westward away from the Soviets to reach the Americans.

 

• The Red Army launches a final assault in Moravia region of Czechoslovakia against what remains of German Heersgruppe Mitte.

 

• German flottentorpedoboot T-36 is sunk by Soviet aircraft off Swinemünde (modern Świnoujście) with 63 crewmen killed. German 2,900 ton Ulrich Finistervalder is damaged in the same attack.

 

• American poet Ezra Pound is arrested by the US Counter-intelligence Corps in Genoa. Pound, who referred to Hitler as a Saint, made propaganda broadcasts for Mussolini’s government. He will be interrogated by a special agent of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s, and found incompetent to stand trial for treason. After spending 12 years in a psychiatric hospital, he will be released.

 

• When the Commandant of the high profile prison of Castle Itter in Austria flees, most of the SS Guards also scarper off. The prisoners, led by French Prime Ministers Paul Reynaud and Édouard Daladier, President Albert Lebrun, and former commanders in chief Générals d'armée Maurice Gamelin and Maxine Weygand, take over the castle, arming themselves with leftover weaponry. Prominent Yugoslav communist Zvonimir Čučković leaves the castle to seek help from Allied troops while a group of Waffen SS prepare an attack on the castle.

 

Schloss Itter.

 

- Čučković contacts a group of ten Heer soldiers led by Major Josef Gangl who are about to surrender to the Americans.

 

- They meet a patrol from the US 142nd Infantry Regiment accompanied by two Sherman tanks. Čučković convinces Lieutenant John Lee that speed is of the essence. Lee gets a quick report off and enlists Gangl’s help. As a result, a column of two Shermans, a Kubelwagen, and a truck head for the castle with fourteen Americans, one Yugoslav, and ten Germans. They overrun a group of SS setting up a roadblock and reach the castle, where one Sherman is knocked out by an 88mm gun.

 

- Over a hundred SS men are attempting to attack the castle, held off by sporadic fire from the prisoners. The situation remains static with several of the French prisoners coming out to fight the SS. Major Gangl is killed by an SS sniper. Six hours later, reinforcements from the 142nd Regiment arrive and the surviving SS flee. For his initiative, Lieutenant Lee is awarded the Distinguished Service Cross and the Légion d'honneur.

 

• At Reims, General Eisenhower refuses the German request for a phased surrender to the Western Allies followed by surrender to the Soviets. According to Eisenhower’s naval aide, Captain Harry Butcher:

 

“At dinner Ike said the reason the Germans were stalling for time was to let Germans escape from Czechoslovakia, where they are being overrun by the Russians. It seems German high officials had sent their wives and children to Czechoslovakia to avoid our heavy bombings of German cities. Now that area, once regarded safe, is one in which there is great fear.

 

Ike also detects a scheme of the Germans to get the Western Allies to accept a surrender and thus create a schism with the Russians. In the German mind, he thought, there is the desperate hope that we might yet succumb to Goebbels’ old propaganda about the Bolsheviks.

 

Once the Supreme Commander has the proper German representatives with suitable authority to act, he does not propose to let them dilly-dally. Furthermore, he wants the Gernan Army to know this time that it has been completely and decisively beaten in the field, so there will not be the cry that was heard after World War I that it was the German home front that caved in and not the Army.

 

General Ike wants to seal the Allied victory so completely that no one in Germany, civilian, soldier, airman, or sailor, will fail to appreciate the fact that the “superrace” has had the hell beaten out of it. He doesn’t want our kids to be left an inheritance of World War III.”

 

• US 11th Armored Division liberates Mauthausen Concentration Camp in Austria. The banner reads: “The Spanish Anti-Fascists Salute the Liberating Forces.”

 

 

An American displays wedding rings from Buchenwald victims 05 May 1945"

[cardboard_killer]

[80 years ago today] "• Portugal breaks off relations with Germany.

 

• Type XXI submarine U-3523 is sunk with all hands in the Skagerrak northeast of Denmark by depth charges from a British B-24 Liberator bomber.

 

• Breslau surrenders to the Soviet Sixth Army, with 40,000 prisoners taken. The Germans lost 14,000 killed and the Soviets 6,000 killed during the 82 day siege.

 

• The collaborationist government of the Independent State of Croatia flees from Zagreb to Austria. Ante Pavelić directs his Ustaše military to surrender to the Western Allies, and not to Tito’s Yugoslav People’s Army or the Soviets.

 

• German XCVII Armeekorps surrenders to Yugoslav 4. Armija.

 

• Fighting continues in Prague as the insurgents cut off water, telephone, and electricity to besieged and isolated German garrisons. US Third Army and Soviet Fourth Tank Army are both driving on Prague while the Germans prepare a counterassault.

 

• US 16th Armored Division takes Plzeň, Czechoslovakia.

 

• Generaloberst Alfred Jodl joins Generaladmiral von Friedeburg at Eisenhower’s SHAEF Headquarters. Reichspräsident Dönitz has instructed them to draw out the negotiations for as long as possible so that German troops and refugees can move west to surrender to the Western Powers. Eisenhower makes it clear that the Allies demand unconditional surrender.

 

- When it becomes obvious that the Germans are stalling, Eisenhower threatens to close the front and shoot any German troops on sight, refusing to accept the surrender of any more German soldiers. This would result in all subsequent surrenders being to the Soviets. Jodl communicates this to Dönitz.

 

• German soldiers open fire on civilians celebrating the impending liberation of Amsterdam, killing more than thirty people.

 

• The sinking of the steamer Black Point off Rhode Island yesterday results in the area being flooded with ASW assets. U-853 is attacked and sunk with all hands south-east of New London, Connecticut by destroyer escort USS Atherton and Coast Guard frigate Moberly.

 

- Submarine rescue vessel USS Penguin arrives on scene the next day and divers report that the boat is completely flooded with extensive damage which would require a major and prolonged salvage operation, with bodies inside the conning tower and the body of Matrosenobergefreiter (Seaman 1st class) Herbert Hoffmann suspended from the conning tower wearing an escape lung. The wreck, at a depth of 130 feet, is a war grave but has been stripped of some artifacts.

 

- Hoffman's body was recovered and is buried in Newport, Rhode Island.

 

Depth charge attack from USS Atherton - taken from USN blimp

 

• In Burma, Indian 26th Infantry Division of XV Corps, pushing north from Rangoon, links up with 17th Indian Infantry Division of IV Corps, advancing down the Sittang. This cuts off 20,000 sick, hungry, and desperate Japanese troops of the Twenty-eighth Army.

 

• Dutch submarine K-XIV lands supplies for native insurgents on Timor.

 

• On Mindanao, US 24th Infantry Division attacks a bypassed Japanese pocket in the Guma area but is repulsed. 31st Infantry Division conducts a similar assault on Colgan Woods, but the Japanese are too firmly entrenched. Wendell Fertig’s guerilleros are guiding the Americans and raiding the Japanese.

 

Filipino guerillas deliver a Japanese prisoner to US 124 RCT on Mindanao"

[cardboard_killer]

I know I said no more, but this was too good.

 

"• Sighting a Japanese Kawasaki Ki-45 "Nick" flying high over Okinawa, USMC First LT Robert Klingman gives chase in his F4U-1D Corsair for over 185 miles and intercepts the Ki-45 at 38,000 feet. Finding his guns frozen, he cuts off the Ki-45 's tail with his propeller in several passes, causing it to crash. He then belly lands safely at Kadena field on Okinawa. He will receive the Navy Cross for the action."