1944 : Operation Knight's Move is launched

On this day in 1944, Germany launches Operation Knight's Move, in an attempt to seize Yugoslav communist partisan leader Tito.

Using parachute drops and glider troops, German forces landed in the Yugoslavian village of Drvar, where Josep Broz Tito, leader of the anti-Axis guerilla movement, was believed to be. The village was decimated: Men, women, and children were all killed by German troops in search of Tito, who escaped.

Also on this day in 1944, a revolt breaks out at the extermination camp at Auschwitz.

As several hundred Hungarian Jews were being led to a gas chamber in Birkenau (a supplementary camp, part of the Auschwitz complex known as Auschwitz II), the prisoners ran into the woods, suspecting their fate. Searchlights flooded the surrounding area, enabling the SS, who controlled the camp, to shoot all those who fled. This was the second such revolt in three days.

1940 : Britain's Operation Dynamo gets underway as President Roosevelt makes a radio appeal for the Red Cross

On this day in 1940, American President Franklin D. Roosevelt makes known the dire straits of Belgian and French civilians suffering the fallout of the British-German battle to reach the northern coast of France, and appeals for support for the Red Cross

"Tonight, over the once peaceful roads of Belgium and France, millions are now moving, running from their homes to escape bombs and shells and machine gunning, without shelter, and almost wholly without food," broadcast FDR.

On May 26, the British Expeditionary Force was evacuated from Dunkirk in France. Ships arrived at Calais to remove the Force before German troops occupied the area, and it was hoped that 45,000 British soldiers could be shipped back to Britain within two days. The German air force, though, had other plans. Determined to prevent the evacuation, the Luftwaffe initiated a bombing campaign in Dunkirk and the surrounding area. British, Polish, and Canadian fighter pilots succeeded in fending off the German attack in the air, allowing finally for a delayed, but successful, evacuation nine days later. But the cost to civilians was great, as thousands of refugees fled for their lives to evade the fallout of the battle.

So I'm a few hours ahead of time. Get off my back!
27th May 1941
German battleship Bismarck sunk by HMS King George V and HMS Rodney.

__________________

1940 : British evacuation of Dunkirk turns savage as Germans commit atrocity

On this day in 1940, units from Germany's SS Death's Head division battle British troops just 50 miles from the port at Dunkirk, in northern France, as Britain's Expeditionary Force continues to fight to evacuate France.

After holding off an SS company until their ammo was spent, 99 Royal Norfolk Regiment soldiers retreated to a farmhouse in the village of Paradis, just 50 miles from the Dunkirk port. Ships waited there to carry home the British Expeditionary Force, which had been fighting alongside the French in its defensive war against the German invaders. Agreeing to surrender, the trapped regiment started to file out of the farmhouse, waving a white flag tied to a bayonet. They were met by German machine-gun fire.

They tried again and the British regiment was ordered by an English-speaking German officer to an open field where they were searched and divested of everything from gas masks to cigarettes. They were then marched into a pit where machine guns had been placed in fixed positions. The German order came: "Fire!" Those Brits who survived the machine-gun fire were either stabbed to death with bayonets or shot dead with pistols.

Of the 99 members of the regiment, only two survived, both privates: Albert Pooley and William O'Callaghan. They lay among the dead until dark, then, in the middle of a rainstorm, they crawled to a farmhouse, where their wounds were tended. With nowhere else to go, they surrendered again to the Germans, who made them POWs. Pooley's leg was so badly wounded he was repatriated to England in April 1943 in exchange for some wounded German soldiers. Upon his return to Britain, his story was not believed. Only when O'Callaghan returned home and verified the story was a formal investigation made. Finally, after the war, a British military tribunal in Hamburg found the German officer who gave the "Fire" order, Captain Fritz Knochlein, guilty of a war crime. He was hanged.

1940 : Belgium surrenders unconditionally

On this day in 1940, after 18 days of ceaseless German bombardment, the king of Belgium, having asked for an armistice, is given only unconditional surrender as an option. He takes it.

German forces had moved into Belgium on May 10, part of Hitler's initial western offensive. Despite some support by British forces, the Belgians were simply outnumbered and outgunned from the beginning. The first surrender of Belgium territory took place only one day after the invasion, when the defenders of Fort Eben-Emael surrendered.

Disregarding the odds, King Leopold III of Belgium had tried to rally his forces, evoking the Belgian victory during World War I. The Belgian forces fought on, courageously, but were continually overcome by the invaders.

By May 27, the king of Belgium, realizing that his army was depleted and that even retreat was no longer an option, sent an emissary through the German lines to request an armistice, a cease-fire. It was rejected. The Germans demanded unconditional surrender. Belgium's government in exile, stationed in Paris, repudiated the surrender, but to no avail. Belgium had no army left to fight. In the House of Commons, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill defended King Leopold's decision, despite the fact that it made the British troops' position, attempting to evacuate Dunkirk, in northern France, more precarious.

King Leopold refused to flee the country and was taken prisoner by the Nazis during their occupation, and confined to his palace. A Belgian underground army grew up during the occupation; its work including protecting the port of Antwerp, the most important provisioning point for Allied troops on the Continent, from destruction by the Germans.

1942 - Jews in Paris are forced to sew yellow stars on their coats.

1932 - The Bonus Army arrives in Washington D.C..

1736 - Birthday of American patriot Patrick Henry.

__________________

1942 : Jews in Paris are forced to sew a yellow star on their coats

On this day in 1942, on the advice of Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler orders all Jews in occupied Paris to wear an identifying yellow star on the left side of their coats.

Joseph Goebbels had made the persecution, and ultimately the extermination, of Jews a personal priority from the earliest days of the war, often recording in his diary such statements as: "They are no longer people but beasts," and "[T]he Jews ... are now being evacuated eastward. The procedure is pretty barbaric and is not to be described here more definitely. Not much will remain of the Jews."

But Goebbels was not the first to suggest this particular form of isolation. "The yellow star may make some Catholics shudder," wrote a French newspaper at the time. "It renews the most strictly Catholic tradition." Intermittently, throughout the history of the papal states, that territory in central Italy controlled by the pope, Jews were often confined to ghettoes and forced to wear either yellow hats or yellow stars.

1942 : Brits bombard Cologne in Operation Millennium

On this day in 1942, a thousand-plane raid on the German city of Cologne is launched by Great Britain. Almost 1,500 tons of bombs rain down in 90 minutes, delivering a devastating blow to the Germans' medieval city as well as its morale.

Air Marshal A.T. (later Sir Arthur) Harris, commander in chief of the Bomber Command, planned Operation Millennium. It was his goal to prevent significant losses of Royal Air Force bombers by concentrating air attacks in massive bomber raids, overwhelming the enemy by numbers and delivering decisive, crippling blows. Harris would need to beef up the relatively small number of 416 "first line" aircraft needed, though; to those he had to add second-line and training squadron bombers, thus creating an aircraft force of 1,046.

On the night of May 30, Cologne was besieged: 600 acres of the city sustained heavy damage, 45,000 Germans were left homeless and 469 were killed. The chemical and machine tool industries, the main targets of the raid, were rendered useless. The cost to the British: 40 bombers, or less than 4 percent of the total that participated.

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who approved the raid, telegraphed President Franklin Roosevelt the next day: "I hope you were pleased with our mass air attack ... there is plenty more to come."

And plenty more there were. The Cologne thousand bomber raid will remain as one of the most famous in WWII history

__________________

1941 : Germans conquer Crete

On this day in 1941, the last of the Allies evacuate after 11 days of battling a successful German parachute invasion of the island of Crete. Crete is now Axis-occupied territory.

On the morning of May 20, some 3,000 members of Germany's Division landed on Crete, which was patrolled and protected by more than 28,000 Allied troops and an almost equal number of Greek soldiers. The German invasion, although anticipated, was not taken seriously; the real fear was of an attack from the sea. Those initial 3,000 parachutists were reinforced-to the tune of an additional 19,000 men, arriving by parachute drop, glider, and troop carrier.

The Allies remained optimistic; many of the German soldiers who dropped from the sky died or were injured on impact. The rest were undersupplied and inexperienced. But by the May 26, British General Bernard Freyberg, commander of the defense of Crete, already reported that their position was hopeless. Evacuation of Allied troops began on the 28th. By the night of the 31st, the last of the Allies that would make it out had left the seaport of Sphakia; 5,000 men would be left behind in the hands of the Germans. The total loss of Allied land soldiers in the Cretan engagements was 1,742; a further 2,265 sailors were lost at sea. Three cruisers and six destroyers had been sunk. The Germans suffered a loss of about 4,000 men.

Strangely, Hitler, despite the victory, considered his "losses" too great to pursue further gains in the Mediterranean and finally drive Great Britain out of the area.

"Strangely, Hitler, despite the victory, considered his "losses" too great to pursue further gains in the Mediterranean and finally drive Great Britain out of the area."

The Germans lost huge numbers of transports, gliders, and paratroopers taking Crete and never recovered during the rest of the war. I don't know the loss in Ju-52's but it was huge.

__________________
Work Harder ! Millions on welfare are depending on you.

I looked up the number at this site and it says 493 were used and 271 were lost in the operation. That is almost 55%.

Also no transports mean no glider tugs or platform for paratroopers to fall out of.

http://www.century-of-flight.freeola...ers%20Ju52.htm

__________________
Work Harder ! Millions on welfare are depending on you.

1942 : News of death camp killings becomes public for first time

On this day in 1942, a Warsaw underground newspaper, the Liberty Brigade, makes public the news of the gassing of tens of thousands of Jews at Chelmno, a death camp in Poland-almost seven months after extermination of prisoners began.

A year earlier, the means of effecting what would become the "Final Solution," the mass extermination of European Jewry, was devised: 700 Jews were murdered by channeling gas fumes back into a van used to transport them to the village of Chelmno, in Poland. This "gas van" would become the death chamber for a total of 360,000 Jews from more than 200 communities in Poland. The advantage of this form of extermination was that it was silent and invisible.

One month before the infamous Wannsee Conference of January 1942, during which Nazi officials decided to address formally the "Jewish question," the gas vans in Chelmno were used to kill up to 1,000 Jews a day. The vans provided the "Final Solution" for Adolf Eichmann and other Wannsee attendees. The mass gassings were the most orderly and systematic means of eliminating European Jewry. Eventually, more such vans were employed in other parts of Poland. There was no thought of selecting out the "fit" from the "unfit" for slave labor, as in Auschwitz. There was only one goal: utter extermination.

On June 1, 1942, the story of a young Jew, Emanuel Ringelblum, (who escaped from the Chelmno death camp after being forced to bury bodies as they were thrown out of the gas vans), was published in the underground Polish Socialist newspaper Liberty Brigade. The West now knew the "bloodcurdling news ... about the slaughter of Jews," and it had a name-Chelmno.

1944 : United States begins "shuttle bombing" in Operation Frantic

On this day in 1944, American bombers of the Fifteenth Air Force launch Operation Frantic, a series of bombing raids over Central Europe, alighting from airbases in southern Italy, but landing at airbases in Poltava, in the Soviet Union, in what is called "shuttle bombing."

The Fifteenth U.S. Air Force was created solely to cripple Germany's war economy. Operating out of Italy, and commanded by General Carl Spaatz, a World War I fighter pilot, the Fifteenth was recruited by a desperate Joseph Stalin to help the Red Army in its campaign in Romania. In exchange for the Fifteenth's assistance, Stalin allowed the American bombers to land at airbases within the Soviet Union as they carried out Operation Frantic, a plan to devastate German industrial regions in occupied Silesia, Hungary, and Romania. Given that such bombing patterns would have made return flights to Foggia and other parts of southern Italy, the Fifteenth's launching points, impossible because of refueling problems, the "shuttle" to Poltava was the solution that made Frantic a reality.

Before it was shortened to Frantic, the operation was dubbed Operation Frantic Joe-a commentary on Joe Stalin's original urgent appeal for help. It was changed to avoid offending the Soviet premier.

Also on this day in 1944, the date for D-Day, the Allied invasion of Normandy, was fixed for June 5. Originally June 4, it was acknowledged by Allied strategists that bad weather would make keeping to any one day problematic. German General Karl von Rundstedt, intercepting an Allied radio signal relating the June 4 date, was convinced that four consecutive days of good weather was necessary for the successful prosecution of the invasion. There was no such pattern of good weather in sight. The general became convinced that D-Day would not come off within the first week of June at all.

Thanks for the info about "Frantic" I forgot about that.

__________________

1940 : Germans bomb Paris

On this day in 1940, the German air force bombs Paris, killing 254 people, most of them civilians.

Determined to wreck France's economy and military, reduce its population, and in short, cripple its morale as well as its ability to rally support for other occupied nations, the Germans bombed the French capital without regard to the fact that most of the victims were civilians, including schoolchildren. The bombing succeeded in provoking just the right amount of terror; France's minister of the interior could only keep government officials from fleeing Paris by threatening them with severe penalties.

Despite the fact that the British Expeditionary Force was on the verge of completing its evacuation at Dunkirk, and that France was on the verge of collapse to the German invaders, the British War Cabinet was informed that Norway's king, Haakon, had expressed complete confidence that the Allies would win in the end. The king, having made his prediction, then fled Norway for England, his own country now under German occupation.

1942 : The Battle of Midway begins

On this day in 1942, Japanese Admiral Chuichi Nagumo, commander of the fleet that attacked Pearl Harbor, launches a raid on Midway Island with almost the entirety of the Japanese navy.

As part of a strategy to widen its sphere of influence and conquest, the Japanese set their sights on an island group in the central Pacific, Midway, as well as the Aleutians, off the coast of Alaska. They were also hoping to draw the badly wounded U.S. navy into a battle, determined to finish it off.

The American naval forces were depleted: The damaged carrier Yorktown had to be repaired in a mere three days, to be used along with the Enterprise and Hornet, all that was left in the way of aircraft carriers after the bombing at Pearl Harbor.

On the morning of June 4, Admiral Nagumo launched his first strike with 108 aircraft, and did significant damage to U.S. installations at Midway. The Americans struck back time and again at Japanese ships, but accomplished little real damage, losing 65 of their own aircraft in their initial attempts. But Nagumo underestimated the tenacity of both Admiral Chester Nimitz and Admiral Raymond Spruance, commanders of the American forces. He also miscalculated tactically by ordering a second wave of bombers to finish off what he thought was only a remnant of American resistance (the U.S. forces had been able to conceal their position because of reconnaissance that anticipated the Midway strike) before his first wave had sufficient opportunity to rearm.

A fifth major engagement by 55 U.S. dive-bombers took full advantage of Nagumo's confused strategy, and sunk three of the four Japanese carriers, all cluttered with aircraft and fuel trying to launch another attack against what they now realized-too late--was a much larger American naval force than expected. A fourth Japanese carrier, the Hiryu was crippled, but not before its aircraft finished off the noble American Yorktown.

The attack on Midway was an unmitigated disaster for the Japanese, resulting in the loss of 322 aircraft and 3,500 men. They were forced to withdraw from the area before attempting even a landing on the island they sought to conquer.

That's what happens when you wake up a giant.

__________________

1944 : Allies prepare for D-Day

On this day in 1944, more than 1,000 British bombers drop 5,000 tons of bombs on German gun batteries placed at the Normandy assault area, while 3,000 Allied ships cross the English Channel in preparation for the invasion of Normandy-D-Day.

The day of the invasion of occupied France had been postponed repeatedly since May, mostly because of bad weather and the enormous tactical obstacles involved. Finally, despite less than ideal weather conditions-or perhaps because of them-General Eisenhower decided on June 5 to set the next day as D-Day, the launch of the largest amphibious operation in history. Ike knew that the Germans would be expecting postponements beyond the sixth, precisely because weather conditions were still poor.

Among those Germans confident that an Allied invasion could not be pulled off on the sixth was Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, who was still debating tactics with Field Marshal Karl Rundstedt. Runstedt was convinced that the Allies would come in at the narrowest point of the Channel, between Calais and Dieppe; Rommel, following Hitler's intuition, believed it would be Normandy. Rommel's greatest fear was that German air inferiority would prevent an adequate defense on the ground; it was his plan to meet the Allies on the coast-before the Allies had a chance to come ashore. Rommel began constructing underwater obstacles and minefields, and set off for Germany to demand from Hitler personally more panzer divisions in the area.

Bad weather and an order to conserve fuel grounded much of the German air force on June 5; consequently, its reconnaissance flights were spotty. That night, more than 1,000 British bombers unleashed a massive assault on German gun batteries on the coast. At the same time, an Allied armada headed for the Normandy beaches in Operation Neptune, an attempt to capture the port at Cherbourg. But that was not all. In order to deceive the Germans, phony operations were run; dummy parachutists and radar-jamming devices were dropped into strategically key areas so as to make German radar screens believe there was an Allied convoy already on the move. One dummy parachute drop succeeded in drawing an entire German infantry regiment away from its position just six miles from