Posted on 08/06/2013 4:49:21 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
Winston S. Churchill, Closing the Ring
http://www.onwar.com/chrono/1943/aug1943/f06aug43.htm
Allies engaged in heavy fighting
Friday, August 6, 1943 www.onwar.com
British armored artillery moves toward Adrana [photo at link]
In Sicily... The US 1st Division takes Troina after several days of heavy fighting. There are new British attacks toward Adrana.
On the Eastern Front... Northwest of Kharkov, Zolochev falls to the advancing Red Army.
In the Solomon Islands... In Vela Gulf there is an encounter engagement between 6 American destroyers and 4 Japanese destoyers carrying troops and supplies to Kolombangara. Three of the Japanese vessels are sunk.
In Italy... At Verona, representatives of the German and Italian governments meet. The Foreign Ministers (Ribbentrop and Guaniglia) and the Chiefs of Armed Forces High Commands (Keitel and Ambrosio) are among those present. The Italians attempt to assure the Germans that they are not negotiating with the Allies.
http://www.etherit.co.uk/month/thismonth/06.htm
August 6th, 1943 (FRIDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM: Frigate HMS Ascension launched.
Escort carrier HMS Emperor commissioned.
GERMANY: Allied air raids cause a partial evacuation of Berlin. (Glenn Steinberg)
U-826 and U-1277 laid down.
U.S.S.R.: Zolochev, North-West of Kharkov falls to the Red Army.
ITALY: German troops start pouring in to take over the country’s defences.
Troina, Sicily falls to the US 1st Division. The “Big Red One” has had a bitter, tough fight. They then push through the town and one mile (1.6 km) to the east before opposition halts them.
US troops are unable to cross the Furiano River as fierce resistance continues.
The British are advancing on Adrana. They also take Biancavilla. During the night they take Adrano as the enemy pulls back.
There is a meeting between German and Italian foreign ministers at Tarvisio. (Glenn Steinberg)
In the air, 60+ USAAF Ninth Air Force B-26 Marauders bomb Bronte, Catania, and Randazzo and the area north of the Adrano-Biancavilla road; 20+ others bomb road intersections in Adrano and Bronte; and 100+ P-40s attack shipping and shore targets in the Messina area while 30 others attack shipping on the west coast.
Northwest African Strategic Air Force B-17 Flying Fortresses bomb coastal roads near Messina; B-26s and B-25 Mitchells hit a road junction southwest of Badiazza and railroad bridges north of Gesso;
Northwest African Tactical Air Force light and medium bombers hit roads, junctions, and buildings in the Troina, Adrano, Biancavilla, Tortorici, Bronte, Piranino, and Randazzo areas and the Bagnara, Italy area; and fighter-bombers hit shipping from Vibo Valentia south to the Straits of Messina.
SOLOMON ISLANDS: On Santa Isabel Island 20 P-39Airacobras and P-40s of the USAAF Thirteenth Air Force hit the Tanagaba Harbor area; and 24 B-17s and B-24s, 24 B-25s, and 50+ US Marine Corps F4U Corsairs and SBD Dauntlesses pound the Rekata Bay area, hitting bivouac and supply areas. Marine F4U pilots shoot down 6 A6M “Zekes” and 2 Aichi E13A1 Navy Type 0 Reconnaissance Seaplanes, Allied Code Name “Jake.”
Shortly before 2400 hours local, the Battle of Vella Gulf is joined as six destroyers of the USN’s Task Group 36.2 (Commander Frederick Moosbrugger) attack four Japanese destroyers attempting to bring troops and supplies to Kolombangara Island in Vella Gulf; USN destroyers USS Dunlap (DD-384), USS Craven (DD-382), and USS Maury (DD-401) sink IJN destroyers HIJMS Kawakaze, HIJMS Hagikaze, and HIJMS Arashi, at position 07.50S, 156.47E. U.S. forces suffers no damage.
General MacArthur announced the capture of Munda (Japanese air base on New Georgia Island) by American forces. All organized resistance on New Georgia ceased August 28
U.S.A.: The motion picture “Above Suspicion” is released. Based on a Helen MacInnes novel, this spy thriller, directed by Richard Thorpe, stars Joan Crawford, Fred MacMurray, Conrad Veidt, Basil Rathbone and Reginald Owen; Peter Lawford appears as a student in an unaccredited role. The plot has Oxford professor MacMurray and his bride Crawford off on a European honeymoon on the eve of World War II but they are actually spying for British intelligence. This was Veidt’s last film; he died on 3 April 1943 after previously appearing in “Casablanca.”
Frigate USS Orange launched.
Submarine USS Corvina commissioned.
Destroyer escort USS Ottersetter commissioned.
ATLANTIC OCEAN: At 0450, the unescorted Fort Halkett was torpedoed and sunk by gunfire by U-185 about 600 miles SE of Natal, Brazil. The master and 23 survivors landed south of Natal. The chief officer and 23 survivors were picked up by destroyer USS Goldsborough and landed at Recife. The second officer and ten survivors landed at Cabadello, Brazil.
U-615 sunk by USN Mariner aircraft, Squadron VP-205/P-4. The boat was lost in this massive hunt in the Caribbean. It fought bravely for days against overwhelming odd before finally being sunk.
OMG...what a post...Thanks so much for this!
I was 9 yrs old when this occurred and was always busy reading the war news, My folks did not approve tho.
Thanks again Homer, I will save this...send it of to my kids. They will appreciate it to.
Your post makes it sound like this is the first time you have bumped into a WWII + 70 years post. We have them every day, you know.
"The Bedzin (Poland) Ghetto, like hundreds of others, was eventually liquidated.
This photograph, taken after the destruction of August 1, 1943, shows furniture and other items strewn chaotically about.
Standing at the left is a smiling German police officer who is undoubtedly pleased by the annihilation of the Polish-Jewish community. "
"Fryda Litwak was born in Lvov, Ukraine, in 1916.
She was one of thousands of Jews who survived the Holocaust by posing as an Aryan, in her case under the name of Zofia Wolenska.
Constantly living in fear of exposure and the certain death it would bring, she found a job with a pharmacist in Radom, Poland.
Later she even went to Germany to work.
Although she escaped the Nazis, she died in the final months of the war, possibly the victim of Allied bombs."
"Located on Janówska Street, leading from Lvov, Ukraine, the Janówska concentration camp was notorious for brutality serenaded by music.
"In fall 1941 the Deutsche Ausrüstungswerke (German Equipment Works), a section of the SS, moved ghetto prisoners to Janówska to produce war materiel.
Housed in inhuman conditions, inmates were made to perform grueling physical tests to prove their stamina.
The few who survived worked another day.
The many who did not were taken na Piaski (to the sands), a sand quarry, and shot.
"In March 1942 Janówska became a transit camp for Jews en route from Eastern Galicia to the extermination camp at Belzec, and in 1943 Janówska itself became a killing site.
At the whim of SS officer Wilhelm Rokita, a former violinist, death was set to music.
The inmate orchestra was ordered to compose and then to play the "Tango fun toyt" ("Tango of Death") as accompaniment to selections and executions. "
"Trains from Westerbork, a transit camp in northeastern Holland, deported more than 100,000 of the Netherlands' 140,000 Jews to the death camps at Sobibór and Auschwitz.
On August 24, 1943, a 29-year-old Dutch Jew named Etty Hillesum wrote a clandestine letter describing one of those deportations: "My God," she wrote, "are the doors really being shut now?...Through small openings at the top we can see heads and hands, hands that will wave to us later when the train leaves....The train gives a piercing whistle, and 1,020 Jews leave Holland."
"Prior to the autumn of 1938, Nazi Germany pressured Jews to emigrate.
As military conquest brought new territory and millions of Jews under Nazi domination, solutions to the "Jewish question" required a more aggressive policy.
During the first 18 months of World War II, deportation was part of a Nazi plan to eliminate Jews from Hitler's expanding Third Reich by sending them to ghettos or restricted areas in the East.
With the 1941 Einsatzgruppen massacres and decisions to solve the "Jewish question" by mass murder, the meaning of deportation changed.
No longer the goal, deportation became the means for sending Jews to killing centers at Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibór, Treblinka, Majdanek, and especially Auschwitz-Birkenau.
"With essential support from the German Transport Ministry and its railroad bureaucracy, Adolf Eichmann and his staff in Section IV B 4 of the Reich Security Main Office managed this continent-wide operation.
From far-flung European stations, trains shipped almost three million Jews to the killing centers.
"Passengers" had to pay one-way fares, then often were transported as cargo in crowded freight wagons.
"In 1942 deportations devastated Polish Jewry, but the network extended far and wide. In March it snared Slovakian Jews.
In July mass deportations of Jews from France and Belgium, as well as the Netherlands, were under way.
Deportation by sea and rail decimated Norway's small Jewish population in November.
"Deportation continued in 1943, the year in which new gas chambers and crematoria became operational at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Danuta Czech's Auschwitz Chronicle records the gassing of 873 Jews from Berlin on January 13.
On February 6 1868 deportees from the Bialystok (Poland) Ghetto were gassed on arrival.
Six weeks later 2191 Jews from Salonika, Greece, were killed in the gas chambers.
On and on it went.
"Etty Hillesum and her family were deported from Westerbork on September 7, 1943.
They probably reached Auschwitz on September 9.
Her parents were gassed immediately.
On November 30, 1943, the prisoner population at the Auschwitz complex consisted of 54,446 men and 33,846 women.
Of that number, 9,273 men and 8,487 women were reported as sick and unable to work.
A Red Cross report lists November 30, 1943, as the date of Etty Hillesum's death."
Seeing the article about booty, captured Nazi planes without wings made me think about what happened to them. Found the following:
http://www.airpages.ru/eng/ru/lw_trop.shtml
It appears the captured planes may have been used back home for real time identification exercise. I don’t think any pilot would want to do it in the war zone, even painted with usa on it?
Here is short video, narrated by Reagan?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuwjEflEBDo
Here are stories of what the Axis did with captured planes:
http://www.fleetairarmarchive.net/Aircraft/FAACapturedAircraftHomepage.html
oh no...can I subscribe to that type of post?
Your subscription begins tomorrow morning.
So are we technically winning at this point? Or does that come after a certain landing of troops on a certain coast?
I find it interesting on page 6 that everyone admits that Koreans are foreigners and not lumped in with Japan which had control of the country for over a generation by that time.
page 6
I’d say the Allies have the big mo right now. I guess that means we’re winning.
Especially after the fiasco in Sicily, where a bunch of C-47's carrying airborne troops to their drop sites were shot down.
Here is short video, narrated by Reagan?
One of the comments on youtube says it is Clark Gable. Maybe that is correct. I didn't quite hear Reagan's timbre.
Your posts have more and more items about Jews resisting deportation and fighting back during ghetto liquidations. The knowledge that they have nothing to lose must have penetrated everywhere.
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