http://www.etherit.co.uk/month/2/03.htm
March 3rd, 1945 (SATURDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM: Tonight, Luftwaffe fighters shoot down 20 British bombers as they return from bombing Kamen and the Dortmund-Ems canal.
Boom defense vessel HMS Baritone launched.
Frigate HMS Burghead Bay launched.
NETHERLANDS: RAF bombers kill over 500 civilians in the Hague when they miss their target, a V2 launch site.
GERMANY: U-3037, U-4709 commissioned.
The commander of U-733 died after an accident in Wesermünde. [Oberleutnat zur See Hans Hellmann].
NORWAY: U-1024 sailed from Kristiansand on her first and final patrol.
BURMA: Lt William Basil Weston (b.1924), Green Howards, led an attack superbly but fell at a bunker. To save his men casualties, he blew up the bunker - and himself - with a grenade. (Victoria Cross)
COMMONWEALTH OF THE PHILIPPINES: Manila: The last pockets of Japanese resistance are cleared. Over 20,000 Japanese soldiers have died in the battle for the city.
VOLCANO ISLANDS: Iwo Jima: Corporal Charles Joseph Berry of the US Marine Corps, 1st Battalion, 26th Marines, 5th Marine Division, displays conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life and beyond as a member of a machine-gun crew in action against Japanese forces. MOH
AUSTRALIA: Frigate HMAS Macquarie launched.
CANADA: HMS LST 3560, 3561, 3562, 3563, 3564, 3565, 3566, 3567, 3568, 3569, 3570, 3571, 3572, 3573, 3574 ordered. All cancelled 18 Aug 45.
U.S.A.: The motion picture “The Picture of Dorian Gray” is released. Directed by Albert Lewin, this horror movie based on an Oscar Wilde novel stars George Sanders, Donna Reed, Angela Lansbury and Peter Lawford. The film is narrated by Cedric Hardwicke.
Destroyers USS John A Bole and Robert K Huntington commissioned.
Destroyer USS Bordelon launched.
ATLANTIC OCEAN: ASW trawler HMS Southern Flower sunk by U-1022 at 64.05N, 23.15W.
Today's German maps, starting in the West. The Allies have reached the Rhine. The German forces are still listed on the map, but we're pretty much looking at “ghost divisions.”
Farther south, Patton's 3rd Army is on the move along the Moselle. In between the Moselle and the American 1st Army are a bunch of understrength and immobile units, and to whatever strength is there the Germans are trying to transfer to the more active sectors.
In Pomerania, from west to east, the Soviets are pushing to the Baltic east of Stargard.
The next map crop contains the right hand portions of those Soviet units penetrating to the Baltic that were shown in the previous crop. This shows how they are isolating X SS Corps and Grp. Von Tettau.
Farther East, the 2nd Belorussian Front continues its drive on a broad front to the Baltic west of Danizg.
And the Germans continue to give ground grudgingly south of Danzig along the west bank of the Vistula.
