366 Days
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July
News Headlines
1
BRITAIN’S SPECIAL AIR SERVICE (SAS) TO BEDEVIL AXIS ENEMY
Cairo, Egypt • July 1, 1941 During World War II Great Britain excelled in creating multiple networks of secret operatives. Perhaps the most famous set of secret agents worked for the Special Operations Executive. Officially formed on July 22, 1940, to “set Europe ablaze,” as Prime Minister Winston Churchill expressed it, the SOE was specifically tasked […]
2
JAPAN UNAFRAID OF WAR WITH U.S.
Tokyo, Japan • July 2, 1941 On this date in 1941, in an Imperial Conference of high-level Japanese officials (Gozen Kaigi), Shōwa Emperor Hirohito sanctioned the military seizure of bases in the south of Vichy French Indochina (present-day Vietnam). It was in keeping with Japan’s so-far unsuccessful attempts to force the surrender of their Chinese […]
3
ROYAL NAVY DESTROYS FRENCH FLEET
Mers-el-Kébir, French Algeria • July 3, 1940 On June 22 and 23, 1940, representatives of the new French prime minister, Marshal Philippe Pétain, signed armistices with emissaries from Adolf Hitler’s Germany and Benito Mussolini’s Italy. Article 8 of the Franco-German armistice permitted the defeated French nation, headquartered after July 1 in the spa town of Vichy, to […]
4
FLYING TIGERS CHENNAULT TO HEAD CHINA AIR FORCE
Washington, D.C. • July 4, 1942 On this date in 1942 Gen. Claire Lee Chennault was appointed commander of China Air Task Force (CATF), replacing his original (officially disbanded) command, the American Volunteer Group (AVG) of “Flying Tigers” fame. The AVG volunteer group of U.S. Army, Navy, and Marine flyers had been created by Nationalist […]
5
GERMANS LAUNCH OPERATION CITADEL
Near Kursk, Russia • July 5, 1943 The pivotal year of the war in Europe was 1943. Early February saw Gen. Friedrich Paulus’ German Sixth Army, the largest army the Wehrmacht (armed forces) fielded in the war, surrender at Stalingrad (modern-day Volgograd) in Southern Russia. Some 850,000 service members from German, Italian, Romanian, Hungarian, and […]
6
BANZAI CHARGE FAILS TO EVICT GIs FROM SAIPAN
Saipan, Marianas, Central Pacific • July 6, 1944 The Battle of the Philippine Sea (June 19–20, 1944) was a pivotal U.S. naval victory, effectively eliminating Japan’s ability to both conduct large-scale carrier actions and reinforce its garrisons to the east in the Mariana Islands chain. The most important islands in the Marianas were Guam (an […]
7
JAPANESE, CHINESE CLASH AT MARCO POLO BRIDGE
Wanping, Near Beijing, China • July 7, 1937 The major turning point that ultimately led to Japan’s disastrous war with the United States and its European allies in December 1941 occurred late on this date, July 7, 1937, and into the next. Japanese and Chinese soldiers clashed at a bridge over the Yongding River near Wanping, […]
8
B-17 FLYING FORTRESS MAKES COMBAT DEBUT
London, England • July 8, 1941 On this date in 1941, five months before the United States was drawn into World War II, the Boeing B‑17 Flying Fortress was flown in combat for the first time, this by the Royal Air Force in an attack on the North German port of Wilhelmshaven. The first production model, […]
9
RAUOL WALLENBERG TO RESCUE HUNGARY’S JEWS
Budapest, Occupied Hungary • July 9, 1944 On this date in 1944 Raoul Wallenberg, a 31-year-old bachelor from a distinguished Swedish family, arrived in Budapest, capital of Nazi-occupied Hungary. With diplomatic accreditation from the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Sweden was a neutral nation), Wallenberg had been secretly recruited by the recently created (January 22, 1944) […]
10
BILL MAULDIN, SOLDIER CARTOONIST, STORMS SICILY BEACH
Near Scoglitti, Sicily, Italy • July 10, 1943 On this date 21-year-old Oklahoma national guardsman Bill Mauldin landed on the southwest coast of Sicily with K Company, 180th Infantry Regiment, 45th Division as part of Operation Husky (July 9/10 to August 17, 1943). Mauldin is less known for his 3‑year service in World War II than […]
11
PÉTAIN ASSUMES NEAR-ABSOLUTE POWER IN FRANCE
Vichy, France • July 11, 1940 On July 10, 1940, the French National Assembly meeting in the municipal opera house in Vichy, France, a small resort town 200 miles south of German-occupied Paris, ceded its power and authority to Premier Philippe Pétain, the 84‑year-old Maréchal of France and World War I hero. On this date, one day […]
12
ALLIES PLUCK LEBANON, SYRIA FROM AXIS GRIP
Beirut, Lebanon • July 12, 1941 During their advance on the Iraqi capital of Baghdad in May 1941, the British were harassed by Luftwaffe aircraft (Heinkel bombers and Messerschmitt fighters) flown in support of the pro-German Iraqi government of Prime Minister Rashid Ali al‑Gaylani. (Al‑Gaylani or El‑Ghalani, who had helped found the anti-Western and anti-Semitic […]
13
SOVIETS HAMMER GERMANS AT KURSK
Kursk, Soviet Union • July 13, 1943 On this date in 1943 Operation Citadel (Unternehmen Zitadelle), Adolf Hitler’s delayed gambit to retake the important Soviet rail hub of Kursk, south of Moscow, and straighten the German line on the Eastern Front failed with devastating losses on both sides, but especially to German strategic armored reserves. […]
14
D-DAY HERO TEDDY ROOSEVELT, JR., LAID TO REST
Sainte-Mère-Église, Normandy, France • July 14, 1944 On this date, Bastille Day in France, the U.S. Army laid to rest Brig. Gen. Teddy Roosevelt, Jr., at the U.S. cemetery in Ste-Mère-Église a few miles west of Utah Beach in Normandy. The 56‑year-old Roosevelt had died of a heart attack less than two days before at […]
15
USS INDIANAPOLIS LEAVES ON SECRET MISSION
San Francisco, California • July 15, 1945 On this date in 1945 the USS Indianapolis, a fast Portland-class cruiser in California for repairs, received orders to pick up some special cargo at Hunters Point (predecessor name for the now-closed San Francisco Naval Yard). Eleven days later, on July 26, Indianapolis unloaded her mysterious cargo—a large crate […]
16
U.S. SUCCESSFULLY DETONATES WORLD’S FIRST ATOMIC BOMB
Trinity Test Site near Alamogordo, New Mexico • July 16, 1945 On this date in 1945 the first detonation of an atomic bomb directly led to greater unimaginable destruction when “Little Boy” and “Fat Man” immolated Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9, 1945, respectively. Up until July 16, 1945, military brass and military and civilian scientists […]
17
POTSDAM CONFERENCE TO REDRAW EUROPE’S BORDERS
Berlin Suburb of Potsdam, Germany • July 17, 1945 After Nazi Germany’s fuehrer (leader) Adolf Hitler committed suicide on April 30, 1945; and after Hitler’s political successor Reich President Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz agreed to the unconditional surrender of all German armed forces on May 7 and 8, 1945; and after Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander […]
18
PRIME MINISTER HIDEKI TŌJŌ SACKED
Tokyo, Japan • July 18, 1944 On this date in 1944 Prime Minister, War Minister, Home Minister, and Chief of Army General Staff Hideki Tōjō was removed from office with the blessing of Emperor Hirohito (posthumously referred to as Emperor Shōwa). Up until this date the scrawny, owlish Tōjō had enjoyed the confidence of his […]
19
GERMANS REVEL IN FRANCE’S DEFEAT
Berlin, Germany • July 19, 1940 Military operations between France and the Axis powers—that is, Germany and Italy—ended on June 25, 1940. A week and a half earlier, on June 14, the German Wehrmacht (armed forces) marched unchallenged into the nearly deserted French capital of Paris under skies heavy with soot from the oil reserves the retreating […]
20
ARMY PLOT TO KILL HITLER NEARLY SUCCEEDS
Wolf’s Lair, Rastenburg, East Prussia, Germany • July 20, 1944 Adolf Hitler had been the target of four assassination attempts before he became Germany’s head of state in January 1933 and perhaps two dozen more afterwards. On July 11, 1944, 36‑year-old Lt. Col. Claus von Stauffenberg arrived at the Berghof on the Obersalzberg, Hitler’s Bavarian retreat near Berchtesgaden, […]
21
ANGLO-CANADIAN VICTORY ENDS 6-WEEK BATTLE FOR CAEN
Caen, Normandy, France • July 21, 1945 The capture of the historic Norman town of Caen, a city of 62,000, was a key objective of Operation Overlord (June 6, 1944 to August 30, 1944), the start of the Allies’ liberation of German-occupied Western Europe. Overlord’s plans called for the British Second Army and the Canadian First Army, […]
22
SPECIAL OPERATIONS EXECUTIVE (SOE) FORMED
London, England • July 22, 1940 On this date in 1940 British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, encouraged by future Prime Minister Winston Churchill, signed the founding charter of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) organization. For security purposes the SOE’s “cloak and dagger” operations was concealed behind the name “Inter-Service Research Bureau.” (At the time the […]
23
FRENCH COURT CHARGES VICHY HEAD PÉTAIN WITH TREASON
Paris, France • July 23, 1945 Following the military defeat of France by Nazi Germany in June 1940, World War I hero Maréchal (Marshal) Philippe Pétain proclaimed a new French government on July 10, 1940. Pétain held the title of “President of the Council” instead of President of France. His government, which accorded him extraordinary powers, was […]
24
“GOMORRAH” CATASTROPHE OVERWHELMS HAMBURGERS
Hamburg, Germany • July 24, 1943 On this date in 1943, over the North German city of Hamburg, the Royal Air Force kicked off Operation Gomorrah (July 24 to August 3, 1943). British retaliation for the Luftwaffe’s firebombing of the medieval city of Coventry in the English Midlands, where 503 tons of explosives, 56 tons of incendiaries, and 127 parachute […]
25
EISENHOWER TO PICK UP TORCH
London, England • July 25, 1942 On this date in 1942 U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt learned that the Combined Chiefs of Staff (CCS), an amalgam of the high-ranking military officers of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff (War and Navy Departments) and their British counterparts, the British Chiefs of Staff Committee, had established the […]
26
ALLIES ISSUE JAPAN SURRENDER ULTIMATUM
Potsdam, Germany • July 26, 1945 After the conclusion of the ruinous Battle of Berlin (April 16 to May 2, 1945) and the unconditional surrender of Nazi Germany (May 7 and 8, 1945), U.S. President Harry S. Truman, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin gathered at a “Big Three” victors’ conference in Potsdam. Their […]
27
HITLER REVIEWS ARMY UNITS NEAR LENINGRAD
On Germany’s Eastern Front • July 27, 1941 On this date in 1941, five weeks after the launch of Operation Barbarossa, Nazi Germany’s surprise attack on the Soviet Union, Adolf Hitler left his East Prussian Fuehrer Headquarters, known as the Wolf’s Lair (Wolfsschanze) and which had been built specifically for the Russian campaign, to pay […]
28
U.S. NAVY IMMOBILIZES JAPANESE FLEET
Aboard USS Shangri-La • July 28, 1945 In December 1941 the Imperial Japanese Navy had the second most powerful navy in the Pacific Theater in World War II and the third largest navy in the world after the U.S. and Royal navies. During the first years of the war the Japanese Combined Fleet (Rengō Kantai), the IJN’s […]
29
WARSAW UPRISING: BID TO EXPEL NAZI ENEMY
Warsaw, Occupied Poland · July 29, 1944 By July 1944 Poland had been occupied by the forces of Nazi Germany for close to five years and by those of the Soviet Union for considerably less. The Polish resistance Home Army (Armia Krajowa), which was loyal to the London-based Polish government-in-exile, had long planned some form […]
30
U.S. NAVY OKAYS ATTACKS ON JUNKS, SAMPANS
U.S. Seventh Fleet HQ • July 30, 1943 During the Pacific War U.S. submarines fired some 11,000 torpedoes, sinking hundreds of Japanese warships and well over one thousand merchant ships. The number of lives lost in the latter engagements is estimated at 116,000 Japanese merchant seamen, with 70,000 casualties the result of U.S. submarine actions. In […]
31
FRENCH FLYER SAINT-EXUPÉRY DISAPPEARS
Marseille, Occupied France • July 31, 1944 On this date in 1944 French poet, writer, and pioneering aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry vanished on a reconnaissance flight off the Mediterranean coast near Marseille, France. Best known for his novella The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince), and to a lesser extent for books about his aviation adventures, […]
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