WWII Timeline 5: 1943 - The Dam Busters

1943 JANUARY     

14 January–24 January: Thursday. A conference is held at Casablanca in newly liberated Morocco between British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Charles de Gaulle and US president Franklin Delano Roosevelt. They agree to increase bombing of Germany and mount an invasion of Sicily to exploit Allied success in North Africa. They also demand the unconditional surrender of the Axis powers.

15 January: Friday. The Japanese retreat from Guadalcanal.

18 January: Monday. Luftwaffe raids on London begin again.

21 January: Thursday. The Allies define their bombing strategy at the Casablanca conference.

23 January: Saturday. The Eighth Army captures Tripoli.

31 January: Sunday. The German 6th Army, commanded by Field Marshal Friedrich von Paulus, surrenders at Stalingrad (now Volgograd) in the USSR, to the Soviet armies encircling it. Over 200,000 Germans are killed and captured in a major blow for the Third Reich.

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1943 FEBRUARY     

8 February: Monday. The Soviets recapture Kursk in the USSR.

10 February: Wednesday. The Eighth Army reaches the border of Tunisia.

16 February: Tuesday. A Norwegian SOE team are dropped into Telemark.

25 February: Thursday. The Beatles’ lead guitarist, George Harrison, is born.

28 February: Sunday. The RAF bombs Berlin in the first daytime raid.

28 February: Sunday. The Norwegian SOE team in Telemark cross a gorge and enter the heavy water factory.

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1943 MARCH

1 March: Monday. The Norwegian SOE team, in Telemark, ski to Sweden.

5/6 March: Friday. Arthur 'Bomber' Harris and Bomber Command commence the Battle of the The Ruhr 'the land of no return'.

15 March: Monday. The Battle of Kharkov between the Waffen SS and the Red Army takes place. Adolph Hitler says, 'Hold Kharkov to the last man', but SS General 'Papa' Hausser gives the order to withdraw. The SS then encircle and recapture Kharkov. The Soviets are forced from Kharkov by the Germans. It is the first time that a General disobeys an order from the Fuhrer.

28 March: Sunday. Sergey Vasilevich Rachmaninov, Russian composer and piano virtuoso, dies in Beverly Hills, California (69).

29 March: Monday. John Major, British politician, Conservative prime minister on the resignation of Margaret Thatcher in 1990, then again 1992–97, is born in London, England.

29 March: Monday. Montgomery breaks through the Mareth Line, North Africa.

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1943 APRIL     

1 April: Thursday. Rationing begins on meats, fats and cheese in the US.

10 April: Saturday. The Eighth Army takes Sfax in Tunisia.

11 April: Sunday. US forces land in the Aleutian Islands.

12 April: Monday. The German Army surrenders in Tunisia.

13 April: Tuesday. US codebreakers intercept a message that the Japanese Admiral Yamamoto is to make a trip by aircraft.

18 April: Sunday. Lockheed P-38s shoot down Admiral Yamamoto's aircraft over the Solomon Islands.

20 April: Tuesday. Jews are massacred in the Warsaw ghetto, Poland.

27 April: Tuesday. Judy Johnson makes her debut as the first professional woman jockey in a steeplechase race at the Pimlico Racetrack, Baltimore, Maryland. She has been granted a licence by the Maryland Jockey Club because of the shortage of male jockeys resulting from their enlistment to the armed forces.

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1943 MAY

1 May–3 November: Saturday. A lengthy coal-miners' strike takes place in the USA.

8 May: Saturday. The rebellion of Warsaw Jews against the Nazis is finally put down. Around 14,000 have died, and the 7,000 survivors are sent to the death camp at Treblinka, Poland.

12 May: Wednesday. The Afrika Korps surrender.

15 May: Saturday. Guy Gibson's dog Nigger is hit and killed by a car.

16 May: Sunday. British bombers attack three dams in the Ruhr industrial region of Germany in Operation Chastise, using the rotating bouncing bombs designed by the British aeronautical engineer Barnes Wallis. Two dams are breached.

16/17 May: Sunday. 617 Squadron, the Dam Busters, are briefed by Barnes Wallis and take-off for the Mohne, Sorper, Eder and Ennepe dams. 

21 May: Friday. Vincent Crane, of Atomic Rooster, is born Vincent Cheeseman in Reading, England. He grows up in Battersea, South London, and attends Westminster City Grammar School.

24 May: Monday. Bomber Command attack Dortmund.

30 May: Sunday. Josef Mengele arrives at Auschwitz.

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1943 JUNE

10 June: Thursday. Hungarian magazine publisher Laszlo Biro patents the ball-point pen. The Biro is originally used by RAF navigators as it writes well at altitude.

20 June–22 June: Sunday. Race riots break out in Detroit, Michigan, caused by the migration of 300,000 black Americans to the city for war industry jobs, leading to 35 deaths and injuring 600 people. Rioting also occurs in other US cities.

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1943 JULY      

5 July: Monday. German forces of Army Group Centre and Army Group South mount their last major offensive on the Eastern Front against well-prepared Soviet positions north and south of a huge salient around Kursk, USSR. Kursk is the largest tank battle in history, and fatally weakens German forces on the Eastern Front.

8 July: Thursday. Sir Harry Oakes is found dead in the Bahamas. He has been killed by a heavy blow to the head. The Duke of Windsor contacts Miami detectives, Melchin and Barker.

10 July: Saturday. Arthur Ashe, US tennis player and the first black man to win a major men's singles championship, is born in Richmond, Virginia (–1993).

23 July: Friday. The Allies occupy Palermo in Sicily.

26 July: Monday. Mussolini resigns and is arrested.

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1943 AUGUST

5 August: Thursday. The Soviets capture Orel in the USSR.

10 August: Tuesday. Winston Churchill, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Mackenzie King meet in Quebec.

16 August: Monday. US troops take Messina in Sicily.

23 August: Thursday. The Soviet army recaptures the city of Kharkov in the USSR from the Germans.

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1943 SEPTEMBER

3 September: Friday. Allied (British and US) forces land in mainland Italy; an armistice is signed between the Allies and the Italian government of Marshal Pietro Badoglio, the successor to the deposed dictator Benito Mussolini, on the same day.

8 September: Wednesday. Italy's unconditional surrender announced.

10 September: Friday. The Eighth Army captures Taranto in Italy.

15 September: Wednesday. The former Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini establishes a new republican fascist government at Salò on Lake Garda, Italy.

21 September: Tuesday. 9,000 Italian soldiers are massacred on Cephalonia, Greece, by their German former allies. It is the worst military massacre of the Second World War.

25 September: Saturday. The Soviets capture Smolensk in the USSR.

29 September: Wednesday. Lech Walesa, Polish labour activist and statesman, president of Poland from 1990, is born in Popowo, Poland.

30 September: Thursday. The Fifth Army captures Naples in Italy for the Allies.

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1943 OCTOBER

13 October: Wednesday. Italy declares war on Germany.

18 October: Monday. Alfred 'Freddie' De Marigny's trial, for the murder of his father-in-law, Sir Harry Oakes, begins in Nassau.

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1943 NOVEMBER

1 November: Monday. US troops invade Bougainville in the Solomon Islands.

3 November: Wednesday. US coal miners end a 6 month strike.

6 November: Saturday. The Soviets capture Kiev.

11 November: Thursday. Judge Sir Oscar Bailey sums up at Alfred 'Freddie' De Marigny's trial. Bailey is critical of the Miami detectives, Melchin and Barker.

12 November: Friday. Alfred 'Freddie' De Marigny is acquitted by a jury.

15 November: Monday. The US bomb the heavy water plant in Telemark, but, despite killing 22 civilians, do not manage to destroy the stock of heavy water.

22 November: Monday. Billie Jean Moffitt, later Billie Jean King, US women's tennis player, is born in Long Beach, California to Bill Moffitt, a fireman.

23 November: Tuesday. The Americans capture Makin in the Gilbert Islands.

28 November–1 December: Sunday. At the Tehran Conference in Iran, President Franklin D Roosevelt of the USA and Prime Minister Winston Churchill of Britain outline to the Soviet leader, Joseph Stalin, the plan for an invasion of German-occupied France in 1944.

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1943 DECEMBER

9 December: Thursday. Rick Danko, bass guitarist and singer with The Band, is born in Canada.

9 December: Thursday. Kenny Vance, rocker, is born.

9 December: Thursday. Joanna Trollope, writer, is born. 

17 December: Friday. US president Franklin D Roosevelt signs the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, granting Chinese people resident in the USA the right to naturalization and permitting immigration of 105 Chinese citizens a year.

19 December: Sunday. HM MTB 219 is ‘paid off’’. 

26 December: Sunday. The British Home Fleet, led by HMS Duke of York, sinks the German battle cruiser Scharnhorst in the east Barents Sea during the Battle of the North Cape. Of the crew of 2,000 pitched into the cold water, only 36 men are rescued. However, the British Fleet remove a threat against the Allied convoys to Russia.


Originally posted on Wednesday 3rd March 2011