http://www.etherit.co.uk/month/4/17.htm
May 17th, 1945 (THURSDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM: Submarine HMS Ambush laid down.
JAPAN: Okinawa: US marines today launched an assault on Naha, the capital, in an advance that is turning into the modern equivalent of Flanders trench warfare - a slow, bitter, muddy and bloody confrontation costing thousands of lives.
In the past six weeks the US Tenth Army has averaged barely 133 yards a day and its casualties are close to 20,000 - in excess of those on Iwo Jima. The worst losses have come in the last five days with the assault on three positions near Naha. During the action the marines suffered 2,662 casualties, many from crossfire from nearby hillsides. Further east the US 77th Infantry Division made swift progress today with a dawn raid bringing them close to Shuri, the heart of Japan’s defensive line.
JAPAN:
The USAAF’s Twentieth Air Force flies Mission 176: Between 0300 and 0600 hours local, 457 of 522 B-29 Superfortresses dispatched attack the Nagoya urban area in the last great attack on this city; the southern part of Nagoya, the site of the Mitsubishi Aircraft Works, Aichi Aircraft Company’s Atsuta plant and the Atsuta branch of the Nagoya Arsenal, the Nippon Vehicle Company and other targets are attacked from low levels; eleven other B-29s hit targets of opportunity; three B-29s are lost.
In an attempt to prevent kamikaze attacks, USAAF VII Fighter Command fighters from Iwo Jima fly 41 effective strike sorties against Atsugi, Japan; pilots claim ten parked aircraft destroyed. During the night of 17/18 May, two P-47 Thunderbolts of the 318th Fighter Group, presently arriving on Ie Shima (between 13 and 19 May), fly a heckling mission over Kyushu, Japan-the first such VII Fighter Command mission against Japan.
PACIFIC OCEAN: USS Ticonderoga (CV-14), with Carrier Air Group Eighty Seven (CVG-87) aboard, attacks Taroa Island in Maloelap Atoll as part of a training mission for the air group.
3,000 Parisians claim 750 planes.
Clearing WWII aerial mines[edit]
Between 600,000 and 1,000,000 naval mines of all types were laid in World War II. Advancing military forces worked to clear mines from newly taken areas, but extensive minefields remained in place after the war. Air-dropped mines had an additional problem for mine sweeping operations: they were not meticulously charted. In Japan, much of the B-29 mine-laying work had been performed at high altitude, with the drifting on the wind of mines carried by parachute adding a randomizing factor to their placement. Generalized danger areas were identified, with only the quantity of mines given in detail. Mines used in Operation Starvation were supposed to be self-sterilizing, but the circuit did not always work. Clearing the mines from Japanese waters took so many years that the task was eventually given to the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force.[57]
For the purpose of clearing all types of naval mines, the Royal Navy employed German crews and minesweepers from June 1945 to January 1948,[58] organised in the German Mine Sweeping Administration (GMSA), which consisted of 27,000 members of the former Kriegsmarine and 300 vessels.[59] Mine clearing was not always successful: a number of ships were damaged or sunk by mines after the war. Two such examples were the liberty ships Pierre Gibault which was scrapped after hitting a mine in a previously cleared area off the Greek island of Kythira in June 1945,[60] and Nathaniel Bacon which hit a minefield off Civitavecchia, Italy in December 1945, caught fire, was beached, and broke in two.[61]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_mine