1944 Today - The historical events leading up to D-Day (and HoI 4 release)

[DazKaz]

This is a thread inspired by Axe99's thread.
When I first saw it I thought what a great idea a historical calendar of events leading up to D-Day, but his thread is based on a different concept to this one.

This thread is any information you can post in relation to todays date in 1944.
Please add whatever you find on the relevant day you post it.
As of this posting that is D-Day -79.
Don't forget to give attribution to the place you find it.

From the World War II Today website:
Friedrichshafen – Disaster for the 392nd Group

On the 18th March 1944 the USAAF were out again for another daylight raid on Germany.
Every effort was being made to knock out as much of Germany’s aircraft industry as possible in the run up to D-Day. ‘Big Week’ – when the 8th Air Force had put on maximum effort together with RAF Bomber Command – had come and gone.
The USAAF 392nd Bomber Group had won a Unit Citation then. For most of the crews it made little difference, they had more missions to complete. This time they flew out passing the snows of the Alps in bright sunshine and then swung round to begin their bomb run from a position over Lake Constance, which was a deep blue marker 20,000 feet below them. The target was Friedrichshafen and they fully expected to be able to bomb the Manzell Air Armaments factory accurately in these conditions.
Then as they approached the target the 392nd Bomb Group was hit by some very accurate flak which damaged several planes and disrupted their bombing. More trouble was to come as they turned for home.

See here for more information:
http://ww2today.com/18-march-1944-friedrichshafen-disaster-for-usaaf-392nd-bombardment-group

 

[Axe99]

Cool thread DazKaz, I likes it . I've got a great 'casual' WW2 book, "The Chronicle of the Second World War", which has chronological articles (although not one for every day) in a newspaper style, so should be able to contribute - all my contributions will be from that unless I post otherwise.

For the 18th of March:

Allied Troops rush to repel Japanese

As General Mutaguchi's men press forward towards the vital military base at Imphal, penetrating the Indian border on a massive front, General Slim is belatedly rushing troops north from Arakan to try to repel them. The Japanese have caught him on the hop with their attack which came a week earlier than he had predicted.

To add to Slim's woes, Operation Thursday, the attack by glider-borne Chindits behind enemy lines near Indaw, has failed to make much impact. The plan was to cut off Japanese forces in Northern Burma, reopening the route between Ledo and Kunming. Despite cutting the Mandalay to Myitkina railway, Wingate's crack troops find themselves sidelined temporarily by the Imphal battle.

Slim's tactic is to pull his troops back to the Imphal plain and entice the Japanese to follow, thus lengthening the enemy's supply lines through difficult territory and shortening his own. The 20th Indian Division, hard pressed by the Japanese 33rd Division, has withdrawn from Tamu to the hills and is now virtually blocking the Imphal road. To the north, Mutaguchi is poised to attack Sangshak, the gateway to his second main target: Kohima, a rail and supplies centre almost as important as Imphal.

Pic (from the Wikipedia page of the Battle of Imphal): Gurkhas advancing with Lee tanks to clear the Japanese from Imphal-Kohima road.

 

[DazKaz]

From the The Mount Vesuvius Eruption of March 1944 Site created by Don Kaiser:

Dr. Leander K. Powers served in Italy during World War II and his diary provides an interesting chronology of the March 1944 eruption:
Sunday, March 18, 1944
"On Sunday night, the roars became more frequent and grumbled like a lion’s roar. Streams of fire were shooting thousands of feet into the air, and the countryside was lit up for miles around. Oft times the entire top of the mountain looked as if it were a blazing inferno. It’s really uncanny, yet amazing to look at this phenomenon. The vibrations of the building were truly uncomfortable."

These B-25s from the 447th Squadron of the 321st Bombardment Group passed very near the erupting volcano on their way to bomb targets.

Read more about it here:
http://www.warwingsart.com/12thAirForce/Vesuvius.html

 

[Mannstien]

Japan

25 Feb 1944 Assigned to the Second Fleet, Yamato was dry docked at Kure, Japan to receive upgrades. Two beam triple 6.1 inch (155-mm) turrets were to be removed and replaced by six (3x2) 5-inch (127-mm) HA AA mounts. Twenty-four (8x3) and 26 single 25mm AA mounts were to be added. Shelters were also added on the upper deck for the increased AA crews. Type 13 air search and Type 22 Mod 4 surface search/gunnery control radars were to be installed. The main mast was to be altered. Two 150-mm searchlights were to be removed (later installed ashore at Kure, Japan). Yamato was to be fitted with Type 2 infrared (IR) Identification Friend-or-Foe (IFF)/signaling devices mounted midway up on each side of the bridge; the system might had been based on the German Seehund IR device, built around a telescopic sensor that received light-waves in the IR range and registered a readout in the radio shack. The IFF system also included a pair of 20-mm binoculars coaxially mounted with the transmitting IR lamp on the bridge so that another ship could use the IR detector for elementary signaling or as a formation light for station keeping. About this time, Yamato was also fitted with multiple E27 radar detectors copied from the German FuMB 1 Metox R.600.
18 Mar 1944 Yamato exited dry docks at Kure, Japan.

Italy

18 Mar 1944 New Zealand troops mounted a failed armored attack on Cassino, Italy, losing all 17 tanks in the process.

Germany

18 Mar 1944 RAF bombers attacked Hamburg, Germany with approximately 3,000 tons of bombs

 

[Mac Lazer]

March 18, 1944 - Mount Vesuvius erupted killing 26

 

[Oddb@ll]

Wow, cool thread!

 

[DazKaz]

From the website BBC- WW 2 Peoples War
THE DIARY OF
ARTHUR FREDERICK
SMITH
ARMY NO: 14632448
DORSET REGIMENT
SATURDAY 18TH MARCH 1944 - Left La Perouse by lorry and train to Phillipville, cattle trucks 9a.m. Heard we are going to Sicily.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ww2peopleswar/stories/84/a4307384.shtml

 

[DazKaz]

Royal Air Force Bomber Command
Campaign Diary
March 1944

17/18 March 1944
28 Mosquitos to Cologne and 2 to Aachen, 1 Mosquito on RCM sortie. No losses.

18/19 March 1944
846 aircraft - 620 Lancasters, 209 Halifaxes, 17 Mosquitos - to Frankfurt. The German fighter force was again split. One part was lured north by the Heligoland mining operation but the second part waited in Germany and met the bomber stream just before the target was reached, although cloud made it difficult for these fighters to achieve much success. 22 aircraft - 12 Halifaxes, 10 Lancasters - were lost, 2.6 per cent of the force. The Pathfinders marked the target accurately and this led to heavy bombing of eastern, central and western districts of Frankfurt. The later phases of the bombing were scattered but this was almost inevitable with such a large force; new crews were usually allocated to the final waves.

17 Mosquitos to airfields in Holland, Belgium and France, 98 aircraft on minelaying diversion in the Heligoland area, 11 Mosquitos on a diversion raid to Kassel, 4 RCM sorties, 13 Serrate patrols. No aircraft were lost and the Serrate Mosquitos claimed 3 Ju88s destroyed.

19 Lancasters of No 5 Group (including 13 aircraft from No 617 Squadron) on an accurate raid of an explosives factory at Bergerac in France, 12 Mosquitos to Aachen, Dortmund and Duisburg, 8 aircraft on Resistance operations, 18 OTU sorties. No aircraft lost.

Total effort for the night: 1,046 sorties, 22 aircraft (2.1 per cent) lost.

© IWM (C 4237) http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205211444
Part of a vertical photographic-reconnaissance aerial, showing some of the severe damage to the explosives factory at Bergerac, France, following the precision attack by Avro Lancasters of No. 5 Group on the night of 18/19 March 1944.

From website:
http://webarchive.nationalarchives....http:/www.raf.mod.uk/bombercommand/mar44.html

 

[Oddb@ll]

Might I make a suggestion? I think it might be a wise to perhaps keep every days events kind of summed up in short points. It might get tedious with a lot of information in several, long posts

 

[Axe99]

Hopefully Hungary does better today than it did 71 years ago!

19th March 1944, Germans Seize Hungary

With Stalin's armies now thrusting towards Germany's flank in south-eastern Europe, Hitler has sent in troops to occupy Hungary and seize vital communications for the defence of the Danube plain - the highway into the Reich.

All civilian traffic has been ordered off the roads. Admiral Horthy, the regent of Hungary, was summoned to Klessheim Castle, Salzburg, where Hitler ordered him to appoint a pro-Nazi as premier, allow the German army to take over the Hungarian transport system. Horthy returned to Budapest to find a German guard of honour lined up to greet him. He retreated to his palace and has not been seen since.

Horthy joined forces with Hitler on 20 November 1940, but recently has shown signs of wanting to extricate himself from the increasingly perilous German alliance. He has informed the Allies that he will surrender unconditionally when Allied troops reach his borders.

A related pic - a Tiger II in Budapest in October '44.