http://www.etherit.co.uk/month/6/03.htm
July 3rd, 1945 (TUESDAY)
GERMANY: US occupation troops arrive in Berlin. (Pat Holscher)
BORNEO: Sepinggan airfield falls to the 7th Australian Division. Thirteenth Air Force B-24s plus carrier-based Navy and Marine aircraft continue to support the Australian forces around Balikpapan, Borneo. Headquarters of the Royal Australian Air Force’s (RAAF’s) First Tactical Air Force lands and they assume operational control of all air support missions.
JAPAN: The USAAF’s XXI Bomber Command of the Twentieth Air Force in the Mariana Islands, dispatches 509 B-29s to participate in 1 mining and 4 incendiary missions during the night of 3/4 July; 3 B-29s are lost:
Mission 246: 26 B-29s mine Shimonoseki Strait and waters at Funakawa and Maizuru during the predawn hours of the 4th; 2 other B-29s mine alternate targets. This is the last mine laying mission of Phase IV of Operation STARVATION, the mining campaign carried out by B-29s.
Mission 247: 116 B-29s attack the Takamatsu urban area destroying 1.4 sq mi (4.6 sq km), 78% of the city; 3 other hit alternate targets; 2 B-29s are lost.
Mission 248: 125 B-29s hit the Kochi urban area destroying 0.92 sq mi (3.0 sq km), 48% of the city; 1 B-29 is lost.
Mission 249: 106 B-29s attack Himeji urban area destroying 1.216 sq mi (3.99 sq km), 63.3% of the city.
Mission 250: 129 B-29s hit the Tokushima urban area destroying 1.7 sq mi (5.6 sq km), 74% of the city; 2 B-29s attack alternate targets.
CANADA: Corvette HMCS Dunvegan paid off Sydney Nova Scotia.
Corvette HMCS Quesnel paid off Sorel, Province of Quebec.
Frigate HMCS Antigonish commenced tropicalization refit Pictou Nova Scotia.
pneumatic breakwaters
Here is the info from HyperWar
http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/USA/USA-E-Logistics1/USA-E-Logistics1-7.html
One of the more novel solutions suggested was the creation of an “air breakwater.” By the use of pipes on the ocean floor this scheme proposed to maintain a curtain of air bubbles which theoretically would interrupt the wave action and thus provide smooth waters inshore of the pipe.10 This idea was actually not new either. Studies along this line had been carried out in the United States forty years before, and both Russian and U.S. engineers had conducted model experiments since 1933, although without conclusive results. The bubble breakwater would have required such large power and compressor installations that it was impractical for breakwaters on the scale envisaged, and the idea was discarded as infeasible early in September 1943.11
Meanwhile experimentation was carried on with several other schemes. One of the earliest to receive attention was a device called the “lilo,” or “bombardon.” Li-lo was the trade name for an inflated rubber mattress used on the bathing beaches in England. A British Navy lieutenant had casually observed at a swimming pool one day that the Li-lo had the effect of breaking up wavelets formed on its windward side, creating calm water in its lee, and conceived the idea of constructing mammoth lilos for use as a floating breakwater. The idea was believed to have possibilities, and experimentation began in the summer of 1943. As first conceived the lilo—or BOMBARDON, the code name by which it was better known—had two basic components: a keel consisting of a hollow concrete tube 11 feet in diameter; and a canvas air bag above, about 12 feet in diameter and extending the entire length of the unit. The keel could be flooded and submerged while the air bag extended above water. The BOMBARDONS were 200 feet long and had a 12-foot beam and a 13-foot draft, the concrete keel alone weighing about 750 tons. The first designs called for a rubberized canvas air bag, and a few units of this type were constructed. Since they were vulnerable to puncture by small arms fire, however, later designs provided for a steel cruciform superstructure, about 25 feet in width.12
In essence the BOMBARDON breakwater would consist of a string of huge, air-filled, cylindrical floats, moored at each end, but laced together to form a thin screen of air which was intended to break up wave action and thus provide sheltered water. The BOMBARDONS were believed to have an advantage over sunken blockships since they could be moored in comparatively deep water and thus provide sheltered water for the deeper-draft Liberties.13 Nevertheless, from the very beginning there were doubts about their effectiveness and feasibility, and they were never expected to do more than dampen wave action and provide anchorage supplementary to the main harbor for deep-draft ships.
Meanwhile experimentation had gone forward on another solution to the problem— the caisson, or POENIX, which eventually was to constitute the main element in the breakwater forming the harbor. The PHOENIXES were huge, rectangular, concrete, cellular barges designed to perform much the same function as sunken blockships. Their main specification was that they have sufficient weight and strength to withstand summer Channel weather; at the same time they had to be towable, easily sinkable, and of simple enough design to be constructed with a
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