SHOKAKU (June 19, 1944) Japanese aircraft carrier (25,675 tons) sunk about 140 miles north of the island of Yap, during the two day Battle of the Philippine Sea. A spread of six torpedoes were fired from the submarine USS Cavalla (Lt. Cmdr. Kossler) three of which struck the Shokaku. Badly damaged, the carrier ground to a halt. One torpedo had hit the forward aviation fuel tanks near the main hanger and planes which had just landed and were being refueled, exploded into flames. Ammunition and exploding bombs added to the conflagration as did burning fuel spewing from shattered fuel pipes. With her bows subsiding into the sea and fires now out of control, the captain gave orders to abandon ship. Within minutes, total catastrophe struck the vessel. Volatile gas fumes had accumulated throughout the vessel and when an aerial bomb exploded on the hanger deck, a series of terrific explosions simply blew the ship apart. The mighty carrier, now a blazing inferno, rolled over and slid beneath the waves taking 887 navy officers and men plus 376 men of Air Group 601, a total of 1,263 men in all, to the seabed. There were 570 survivors, including the carrier's commander, Captain Matsubara Hiroshi. (The USS Cavalla is now on public display at Galveston, Texas)
TAIHO (June 19, 1944) The largest and newest carrier in the Japanese fleet, sunk west of Guam during the Battle of the Philippine Sea. It took only one torpedo hit from the USS Albacore to sink the 29,300 ton vessel, the flagship of Vice Admiral Jisburo Ozawa. Two fuel tanks were ruptured and fumes from the liberated crude oil and aviation spirit spread throughout the vessel. The ship sunk after a catastrophic explosion caused by the accumulated fumes igniting near an electric generator on the hanger deck. Of her complement of 1,751 a total of 1,650 crewmen were lost. The USS Albacore (Lt. Cmdr. H. Rimmer) was lost during her 11th patrol off the coast of Japan, on November 7, 1944, after hitting a mine while submerging. Her entire crew of 86 perished.
June 20, 1943 Britain launches Operation Bellicose On this day in 1943, British bombers perform the first "shuttle bombing" raid of the war, attacking sites in Germany and Italy. Taking off from airbases in Britain, bombers made for the southwestern German city of Friedrichshafen, at one time the home to Zeppelin airship construction. It now was the site of steel construction works, which were heavily damaged in the British attack. The Brits then flew, not back to Britain, but to airbases in Algeria. Refueled, they then headed north for the Italian naval base in La Spezia, in Liguria. This "shuttle" strategy enabled the bombers to kill two enemies with one operation-Bellicose. The damage done to the steel works in Germany was so extensive that the assembly line had to be completely abandoned. Unbeknownst to Britain, that assembly line included the manufacture of more than just steel, but also new V2 rockets, to be spun out at the rate of 300 a month. The Brits unwittingly spared themselves retaliation-at least from V2s.
HIYO (June 20, 1944) Japanese aircraft carrier also sunk during the Battle of the Philippine Sea. Hit by bombs and aerial torpedoes from Avenger aircraft from the carrier USS Belleau Wood, part of the US Task Force 38, she was set on fire after a tremendous blast from leaking aviation fuel. Dead in the water, the burning Hiyo then slipped stern first under the waves, taking the lives of 250 officers and men. The rest of her crew, about one thousand, survived to be rescued by Japanese destroyers. The Philippine Sea battle was a disaster for the Japanese naval air arm, only 35 out of Admiral Ozawa's 473 planes were left in a condition fit to fly. Soon, the loss of the Marianas, Tinian, Saipan and the island of Guam forced the resignation of the Japanese prime minister, General Tojo.
20 Jun 1943 Bomber Command begins its first shuttle bombing raid. On the outward leg aircraft bomb radar-building works Friedrichshafen, Germany then land in North Africa. On the return journey to the UK they bomb La Spezia in Italy.
21 June 1940 The Royal Air Force (RAF) forms the Parachute Training School at Ringway, under the command of Squadron Leader Louis A. Strange. This later becomes a component of the Central Landing School. Subsequently, the Central Landing Establishment (CLE) is formed from the Central Landing School on 19 September 1940. The functions of the CLE includes training parachute troops, glider (sailplane) pilots and aircrew in the airborne role, developing the tactical handling of airborne troops, conducting technical research and recommending operational requirements.
June 21, 1942 Allies surrender at Tobruk, Libya On this day in 1942, General Erwin Rommel turns his assault on the British-Allied garrison at Tobruk, Libya, into victory, as his panzer division occupies the North African port. Britain had established control of Tobruk after routing the Italians in 1940. But the Germans attempted to win it back by reinforcing Italian troops with the Afrika Korps of Erwin Rommel, who continually charged the British Eighth Army in battles around Tobruk, finally forcing the Brits to retreat into Egypt. All that was left to take back the port was the garrison now manned by the South African Division, which also included the Eleventh Indian Brigade. With the use of artillery, dive-bombers, and his panzer forces, Rommel pushed past the Allies. Unable to resist any longer, South African General Henrik Klopper ordered his officers to surrender early on the morning of the 21st. Rommel took more than 30,000 prisoners, 2,000 vehicles, 2,000 tons of fuel, and 5,000 tons of rations. Adolf Hitler awarded Rommel the field marshal's baton as reward for his victory. "I am going on to Suez," was Rommel's promise.
June 22, 1941 Germany launches Operation Barbarossa--the invasion of Russia On this day in 1941, over 3 million German troops invade Russia in three parallel offensives, in what is the most powerful invasion force in history. Nineteen panzer divisions, 3,000 tanks, 2,500 aircraft, and 7,000 artillery pieces pour across a thousand-mile front as Hitler goes to war on a second front. Despite the fact that Germany and Russia had signed a "pact" in 1939, each guaranteeing the other a specific region of influence without interference from the other, suspicion remained high. When the Soviet Union invaded Rumania in 1940, Hitler saw a threat to his Balkan oil supply. He immediately responded by moving two armored and 10 infantry divisions into Poland, posing a counterthreat to Russia. But what began as a defensive move turned into a plan for a German first-strike. Despite warnings from his advisers that Germany could not fight the war on two fronts (as Germany's experience in World War I proved), Hitler became convinced that England was holding out against German assaults, refusing to surrender, because it had struck a secret deal with Russia. Fearing he would be "strangled" from the East and the West, he created, in December 1940, "Directive No. 21: Case Barbarossa"--the plan to invade and occupy the very nation he had actually asked to join the Axis only a! month before! On June 22, 1941, having postponed the invasion of Russia after Italy's attack on Greece forced Hitler to bail out his struggling ally in order to keep the Allies from gaining a foothold in the Balkans, three German army groups struck Russia hard by surprise. The Russian army was larger than German intelligence had anticipated, but they were demobilized. Stalin had shrugged off warnings from his own advisers, even Winston Churchill himself, that a German attack was imminent. (Although Hitler had telegraphed his territorial designs on Russia as early as 1925--in his autobiography, Mein Kampf.) By the end of the first day of the invasion, the German air force had destroyed more than 1,000 Soviet aircraft. And despite the toughness of the Russian troops, and the number of tanks and other armaments at their disposal, the Red Army was disorganized, enabling the Germans to penetrate up to 300 miles into Russian territory within the next few days. Exactly 129 years and one day before Operation Barbarossa, another "dictator" foreign to the country he controlled, invaded Russia--making it all the way to the capital. But despite this early success, Napoleon would be escorted back to France--by Russian troops.
22 June 1941 The first 'Gee' chain ground stations at Daventry, Ventnor and Stenigot are completed. Gee was a medium range radio aid to navigation and target identification which employed ground transmitters and an airborne receiver. The navigator plots returns on the screen of the receiver on a special Gee chart.
22 June 1940 The French Government signs an armistice in the Forest of Compiegne. The ceremony is conducted in the same railway carriage in which German representatives had signed the armistice that ended the First World War.
22 June 1940 Flight Lieutenant George Burge of the Royal Air Force, flying a Gloster Sea Gladiator nicknamed Faith, claims the first Italian bomber aircraft destroyed over Malta. Faith is one of three crated Sea Gladiators left on Malta by the Fleet Air Arm, which are hurriedly assembled at the outbreak of hostilities with Italy. For some time they represent the only fighter defence of the naval dockyard and the island. They are quickly nicknamed Faith, Hope and Charity.
June 22, 1941 Germany launches Operation Barbarossa--the invasion of Russia Three years later the shoe goes on the other foot. S. Zaloga - Operation Bagration On 22 June 1944, three years to the day after Germany's 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union, the Red Army launches a massive offensive in Byelorussia. Codenamed 'Operation Bagration', this campaign climaxed five weeks later with the Red Army at the gates of Warsaw. In many respects Operation Bagration was the 1941 Operation Barbarossa invasion in reverse, fought over many of the same battlefields. The Wehrmacht's Army Group Centre was routed, a total of 17 Wehrmacht divisions were utterly destroyed, and over 50 other German divisions were shattered. It was the most calamitous defeat of the German armed forces in World War II, costing the Wehrmacht more men and materiel than the cataclysm at Stalingrad 16 months earlier. It was all the more catastrophic when the Anglo-American forces in Normandy inflicted a similar blow in August 1944 by trapping the Wehrmacht forces in the Falaise pocket in France. Although known to historians of the Eastern Front, this important campaign is little appreciated in the West, overshadowed by the Normandy campaign. Lt.Col. W.Connor, USA - Analysis of Deep Attack Operations, Op. Bagration, Belorussia 22 Jun - 29 Aug 44 Operation BAGRATION had resulted in the reconquest of Belorussia and even the invasion of part of Germany itself, Eastern kssia, as well as penetrating Poland to the Vistula River and Warsaw. It had allowed the 1iberation of Lithuania and part of Latvia, and there were bridgeheads over the Vistula River, as well as the full crossing of the Neman and Narev Rivera on the way to East Prussia. As a result of paving the way for later offensives, it indirectly led to the precipitate withdrawal of Rumania from the war, three days after the Jassy-Kishinev Operation commenced in the south. Later on in the year, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Finland would also be taken out of the war. In the destruction of Army Group Center during the first two weeks of the operation, it had achieved stzktegic results, and the effects were also strategic. Its successes drew forces away from the other sectors of the front khich the Red Army planned to hit during the summer, making them more successful. It had also caused the destruction of thirty divisions and the diversion of twenty-eight divisions to its front. Three German armies had been wrecked and a fourth, the 16th in Army Group North, severely mauled. The Red Army had advanced almost 600 kilometers during the summer, approximately twice as far as the Allies and Patton advanced after the breakout from Normandy to the German frontier. It had encircled Geman forces at Vitebsk and Bobruisk, at Minsk, and at Vilnius and Brest-Litovsk. It had widened the advance frontage from 700 kilometers at its start to 1,000 kilometers at its end and sucked in an estimated ninety-seven German divisions and thirteen brigades, piecemeal. Those German divisions faced an overall force of 2,500,000 men, 45,000 guns and mortars, 6,000 tanks and assault guns, and approximately 7,000 aircraft.
June 23, 1940 Hitler takes a tour of Paris On this day in 1940, Adolf Hitler surveys notable sites in the French capital, now German-occupied territory. In his first and only visit to Paris, Hitler made Napoleon's tomb among the sites to see. "That was the greatest and finest moment of my life," he said upon leaving. Comparisons between the Fuhrer and Napoleon have been made many times: They were both foreigners to the countries they ruled (Napoleon was Italian, Hitler was Austrian); both planned invasions of Russia while preparing invasions of England; both captured the Russian city of Vilna on June 24; both had photographic memories; both were under 5 feet 9 inches tall, among other coincidences. As a tribute to the French emperor, Hitler ordered that the remains of Napoleon's son be moved from Vienna to lie beside his father. But Hitler being Hitler, he came to do more than gawk at the tourist attractions. He ordered the destruction of two World War I monuments: one to General Charles Mangin, a French war hero, and one to Edith Cavell, a British nurse who was executed by a German firing squad for helping Allied soldiers escape German-occupied Brussels. The last thing Hitler wanted were such visible reminders of past German defeat. Hitler would gush about Paris for months afterward. He was so impressed, he ordered architect and friend Albert Speer to revive plans for a massive construction program of new public buildings in Berlin, an attempt to destroy Paris, not with bombs, but with superior architecture. "Wasn't Paris beautiful?" Hitler asked Speer. "But Berlin must be far more beautiful. [W]hen we are finished in Berlin, Paris will only be a shadow."
23 June 1944 The first V1 flying bomb is destroyed by being 'toppled' by the wingtip of a defending fighter, causing the missile to dive out of control. This attack is attributed to a Supermarine Spitfire XIV No.91 (Nigeria) Squadron, RAF, flown by Flying Officer Collier.
June 24, 1945 Russians enjoy a victory parade On this day in 1945, Soviet troops parade past Red Square in celebration of their victory over Germany. As drums rolled, 200 soldiers performed a familiar ritual: They threw 200 German military banners at the foot of the Lenin Mausoleum. A little over 130 years earlier, victorious Russian troops threw Napoleon's banners at the feet of Czar Alexander I.
24 June 1945 British bombers destroy the "Bridge Over the River Kwai." Thousands of British and Allied prisoners of war, forced into slave labor by their Japanese captors, had built a bridge, under the most grueling conditions, over the River Kwai, linking parts of the Burma-Siam (now Thailand) railway and enabling the Japanese to transport soldiers and supplies through this area. British aircraft bombed the bridge to prevent this link between Bangkok and Moulein, Burma. This episode of the war was dramatized in extraordinary fashion in the 1957 film Bridge on the River Kwai, directed by David Lean, and starring Alec Guinness and William Holden.
TAMAHOKO MARU (June 24, 1944) Part of a convoy sailing towards Japan with 772 Australian, British and American prisoners of war on board. With the lights of Japan in sight, one of the ships in the convoy, exploded after being torpedoed by the US submarine USS Tang. Nearby, the Tamahoko Maru was almost blown apart and water poured in through a gaping hole in her side. On top of the main hatch cover 80 men were sleeping. Not one of them survived. As the Tamahoko (6,780 tons) settled in the water, hundreds of prisoners jumped into the sea and soon a Japanese whale-chaser appeared and started picking up survivors. The final count was that 560 POWs had died. Of the 267 Australians on board only 72 survived. Fifteen US soldiers and sailors were killed as well as thirteen merchant seamen rescued from the sunk freighter American Leader. Next day, 212 survivors of the Tamahoko Maru were brought into the harbour at Nagasaki to spend the rest of the war in the POW camp, Fukuoka 13.
24 June 1944 The Victoria Cross is posthumously awarded to Flight Lieutenant D.E. Hornell of the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) for his action in sinking a U-boat north of the Shetlands. The aircraft involved was Consolidated Canso 9754 'P' of No.162 (RCAF) Squadron, RAF Coastal Command. F/L. D E. Hornell sighted a U-boat at 1900 hrs in position 6300/0050, north east of the Faeroe Islands. this action has been described numerous times but briefly, Hornell made an immediate attack but was met by heavy and accurate AA fire. Coming in astern of the U-boat - U 1225 (Sauerberg) the flying boat was hit in the starboard wing and engine, setting the aircraft on fire. With his aircraft ablaze, Hornell continued his run, releasing a stack of four depth-charges from low altitude. the boat had by now turned broadside to the attack but the charges straddled the target across the bow, and the explosions were seen to lift the boat out of the water. As the Canso crossed over the U-boat, its burning starboard engine fell right out of its frame. Despite this mortal damage Hornell managed to coax his aircraft into a semi-smooth landing on the sea. All eight men clambered into a four-man dinghy. At first they took it in turns to have four men in the dinghy and four hanging on in the water, but later all eight crammed in. The depth-charges meanwhile, had proved fatal to U 1225. A Norwegian Catalina (333 squadron) that flew over the scene later sighted the wreckage, oil and bodies. The aircrew were in the water for 21 hours before rescue arrived, and three men, including Hornell, did not live through the ordeal, Hornell dying 20 minutes after rescue. Crew. F/L. D E. Hornell RCAF. Pilot + F/O. B C. Denomy RCAF. 2nd Pilot F/O. S E. Matheson RCAF. Navigator Sgt. D S. Scott RCAF. Engineer + Sgt. F. St Laurent RCAF. Engineer + F/S. I J. Bodnoff RCAF. WOP/AG F/S. S R. Cole RCAF. WOP/AG F/O. G. Campbell RCAF. WOP/AG 'U-boat v Aircraft' - Franks
24 June 1941 The first aircraft are delivered from America to West Africa via the South Atlantic route.
June 25, 1900 Lord Louis Mountbatten is born On this day in 1900, Lord Louis Mountbatten, British admiral and second cousin to King George VI, is born. Louis Mountbatten was born in Windsor, England, the fourth child of Prince Louis of Battenberg and his wife, Princess Victoria, granddaughter of Queen Victoria. He entered the Royal Navy at age 13. Among his many assignments was that of aide-de-camp to the then Prince of Wales in 1921. He attained the rank of captain in 1932 and became a French and German interpreter shortly thereafter. When the Second World War broke out, he was given the command of the destroyer Kelly, which was attacked by 24 German bombers off the coast of Crete and sunk in 1941. (Mountbatten swam to shore and took control of the rescue effort.) An able commander and a courageous soldier, Mountbatten was given ever greater responsibilities: first that of command of Combined Operations, then that of Supreme Allied Commander of Southeast Asia. His cousin, the king, would have to fend off accusations of nepotism in granting such appointments, despite Mountbatten's gifts. Mountbatten led the capture of Burma from Japanese control and later accepted the surrender of Japanese land forces in September 1945. He then went on to become the last British viceroy of India and an able negotiator of independence for both India and Pakistan. He was created Viscount Mountbatten of Burma in 1946 and admiral of the Royal Mediterranean fleet in 1956. Other positions he later held include that of chief of the U.K. defense staff, chairman of the chiefs of staff committee, and finally governor and lord lieutenant of the Isle of Wight. Mountbatten's distinguished career came to an end on August 26, 1979, when an Irish Republican Army bomb exploded on his boat, killing him.
