April 1943

April 1, 1943 (Thursday)

• SIGSALY, referred to as the X System vocoder or "Green Hornet", went into operation for use in secure phone conversations between U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and U.K. Prime Minister Winston Churchill. The new system, developed by AT&T's Bell Labs, encrypted speech into electronic signals that could be transmitted at the rate of 1,551 bits per second, and decrypted it at the other end, permitting the two wartime leaders to talk to each other without being understood by wiretappers. The terminals for transatlantic calls were at The Pentagon in Washington, D.C. and in the basement of Selfridges department store in London.
• In the Second Battle of Sedjenane, Allied forces retook the Tunisian town of Sedjenane on the railway line to Mateur and the port of Bizerta.
• Japanese forces launched Operation I-Go, an aerial counter-offensive in the Pacific.
• The Royal Air Force marked its 25th anniversary by presenting Churchill with honorary wings. "I am honoured to be accorded a place, albeit out of kindness, in that comradeship of the air which guards the life of our island and carries doom to tyrants, whether they flaunt themselves or burrow deep," Churchill stated.
• The Italian destroyer Lubiana was either sunk or stranded off the Tunisian coast and declared a total constructive loss.

  April 2, 1943 (Friday)

• On a visit to Germany, King Boris III of Bulgaria told German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop that the 25,000 Jews in Bulgaria would not be turned over to German control, despite the alliance between the two Axis powers. At most, the King said, the Bulgarian government might intern its Jewish citizens in camps under Bulgarian control.
• The German submarine U-124 was shelled and sunk in the Atlantic Ocean west of Porto, Portugal by British warships.
• Born: Larry Coryell, American jazz fusion guitarist; in Galveston, Texas

  April 3, 1943 (Saturday)

• The Battle of Manners Street, a riot in Wellington, New Zealand, between American servicemen and New Zealand servicemen and civilians, occurred when some of the American servicemen refused to allow Māori soldiers to enter the Allied Services Club. Dozens of people were injured but news of the riot was censored at the time.
• Shipwrecked steward Poon Lim was rescued by Brazilian fishermen after being adrift for 131 days as the sole survivor of a British merchant ship, the, which had been torpedoed on November 29, 1942.
• Born:
• *Richard Manuel, Canadian-born pop musician for The Band; in Stratford, Ontario
• *Trond Mohn, Scottish-born Norwegian billionaire, in Buckie
• Died: Conrad Veidt, 50, German-born film actor known for Casablanca, died of a heart attack while playing golf at the Riviera Country Club in Los Angeles with singer Arthur Fields and his personal physician.

  April 4, 1943 (Sunday)

• Lady Be Good, an American B-24 bomber became lost over the North African desert after completing a bombing raid in Italy, ran out of gas, and crashed after its crew parachuted to safety. The nine member crew died of thirst, one by one, over the next eight days. For nearly 16 years, Lady Be Good would remain missing until its discovery on February 27, 1959. The bodies of the men would be found almost a year after that, on February 11, 1960.
• William Dyess was able to escape from a Japanese prisoner of war camp in the Philippines along with nine other men, and to make his way through the jungle and to a ship that transported him to Australia. Once free, Dyess would be able to reveal to the world the atrocities of the Bataan Death March that had taken place after U.S. and Philippine forces surrendered on April 9, 1942.
• An American B-25 bomber on a training mission went down in Lake Murray in South Carolina. The entire crew was rescued by a boater on the lake, but the B-25 sank to the bottom of the lake for the next 62 years, finally being raised on September 19, 2005 in nearly perfect condition.
• German radio announced that three former imprisoned leaders had been turned over by the government of Vichy France, to Germany, in order to stop "establishment of a counter-government". Former Prime Ministers Édouard Daladier and Léon Blum, along with the former French Army commander in chief, General Maurice Gamelin, had been held in custody in France since shortly after the 1940 surrender, and would be sent to Buchenwald concentration camp until the end of the war.
• Born: Mike Epstein, American MLB baseball player nicknamed "SuperJew"; in the Bronx
• Died: Raoul Laparra, 67, French composer of the opera La Habanera; in an American air raid on Paris

  April 5, 1943 (Monday)

• Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer was arrested at the headquarters of the German military intelligence by the Nazi secret police along with lawyer Hans von Dohnanyi, and both were found to have incriminating materials in their possession, showing cooperation with the enemy in Britain. Adolf Hitler would order the execution of Bonhoeffer, Dohnanyi, and the Abwehr director, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, on April 9, 1945, less than a month before the conquest of Germany.
• The German submarine U-635 was sunk in the North Atlantic by a B-24 of No. 120 Squadron RAF.
• The Japanese submarine Ro-34 was sunk off the Russell Islands by American destroyers O'Bannon and Strong.
• American bomber planes bombed the town of Mortsel in Belgium. The target was a local factory in which German fighter planes were being repaired. However, only four out of 216 bombs that were dropped hit the target, while the others destroyed most of the town of Mortsel, killing 936 civilians.
• Born: Max Gail, American television actor who portrayed Wojo Wojciehowicz, on Barney Miller; in Detroit

  April 6, 1943 (Tuesday)

• The Battle of Wadi Akarit began in Tunisia.
• The German submarine U-632 was sunk in the Atlantic Ocean by a B-24 of No. 86 Squadron RAF.
• The Little Prince, a children's book by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, was published. Saint-Exupéry would join the French Army later in the month, and would disappear the next year after his airplane was shot down in combat.
• Five members of the U.S. Army Air Forces were rescued after having been marooned on an icecap in Greenland for almost five months. The men had been on a B-17 bomber that made a crash landing while searching for another lost plane, but were kept alive with supplies dropped by Colonel Bernt Balchen, an Arctic explorer and aviator.

  April 7, 1943 (Wednesday)

• Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini began a four-day meeting at Schloss Klessheim near Salzburg. Mussolini was in poor health and would spend most of the conference listening silently to Hitler's long rambling monologues; an attempt by Mussolini to bring up the possibility of making peace with the Soviets was swiftly rebuffed.
• The British government published a plan drawn up by John Maynard Keynes for a postwar economy. The plan proposed an international monetary fund which could help any nation out of temporary financial difficulties. In return, that country would have to adopt policies aimed at restoring stability.
• The Battle of Wadi Akarit ended in an Allied victory. American forces of 2nd Corps under General George Patton reached the El Guettar–Gabès road, where they linked up with the lead elements of the British 8th Army. With the Mareth Line broken in the south of Tunisia, the remaining Axis forces made a retreat to join the other Axis forces in the north.
• The American destroyer Aaron Ward was bombed and sunk in Ironbottom Sound by Japanese aircraft.
• The German submarine U-644 was torpedoed and sunk in the Norwegian Sea by the British submarine Tuna.
• Bolivia declared war against the Axis powers, becoming the 33rd nation to enter World War II on the side of the Allies.
• Died: Alexandre Millerand, 84, President of France 1920–1924

  April 8, 1943 (Thursday)

• The Japanese decided to answer their logistic needs by building a new railway in northern Burma using forced labour.
• The German submarine U-733 sank in a collision with a patrol boat at Gotenhafen. U-733 would be raised, repaired and returned to service.
• The Detroit Red Wings defeated the Boston Bruins 2–0 to sweep the 1943 Stanley Cup Finals in four games.
• The 1943 NFL draft was held in Chicago. The Detroit Lions selected running back Frank Sinkwich of the University of Georgia as the #1 overall pick.
• Born: Michael Bennett, American choreographer and director, and winner of seven Tony Awards; as Michael Bennett DiFiglia in Buffalo, New York
• Died:
• *Harry Baur, 62, French character actor, killed after being tortured by the Gestapo in Berlin
• *Otto and Elise Hampel, 45 & 39, Germans opposed to Nazism, executed in Berlin
• *Richard Sears, 81, seven-time U.S. tennis champion, 1881–1887

  April 9, 1943 (Friday)

• Liquidation of the Jews in the Zborow ghetto in German-occupied Ukraine began, with the shooting of about 2,300 people on the first day.
• The Japanese destroyer Isonami was torpedoed and sunk in the Banda Sea by the American submarine Tautog.
• The war film Edge of Darkness starring Errol Flynn and Ann Sheridan was released.
• Died: Philip Slier, 19, a Jewish Dutch typesetter whose letters about life in a Nazi forced labor camp would be discovered in 1997, was killed in the Sobibór extermination camp

  April 10, 1943 (Saturday)

• Former American college football star Tom Harmon, who had joined the U.S. Army Air Corps, disappeared while flying over Surinam. The only member of his crew to survive a crash in bad weather, Harmon survived for seven days by drinking swamp water and eating rations, Harmon was able to make his way to Paramaribo and was able to rejoin his unit.
• The Tunisian port of Sfax was captured from the Axis powers by the British Army, led by General Bernard Montgomery in the course of the North African Campaign. Sfax would then become the base for the Allied invasion of Sicily as the first stage of the Italian Campaign.
• The Italian cruiser Trieste sank in port at La Maddalena, Sardinia after being hit by several bombs from American B-24s.
• Born: Margaret Pemberton, British romance and mystery author; as Margaret Hudson in Bradford