August 1943

August 1, 1943 (Sunday)

• Operation Tidal Wave began as a group of 177 American B-24 Liberator bombers, with 1,726 total crew, departed from Libya to make the first bombing of the oil refineries at Ploieşti, Romania, the major supplier of fuel to Germany. The mission temporarily halted oil production, but 532 airmen and 54 of the planes were lost. After a 40% loss of production, the refineries would be repaired more quickly than projected. Germany's Radio Reconnaissance Service had intercepted and decrypted the Allied messages about the raid and the departure from Libya, and anti-aircraft defenses were in place despite the low-level approach of the bombers.
• Japan granted "independence" to Burma, which had been a British colony at the time of its invasion and occupation by the Japanese Army. Ba Maw was installed as the head of state,, although the commander of the Japanese Army forces in Burma, Lieutenant-General Kawabe Masakazu, would continue to oversee Burma's politics, economy, and foreign relations.
• Rioting broke out in Harlem, the mostly African-American section of New York City, after a white NYPD officer, James Collins, shot a black soldier, Private Robert Bandy, in the shoulder during a scuffle. When an ambulance took Bandy to a hospital, a false rumor spread that the soldier had been killed, and a mob began smashing the windows of pawn shops, liquor stores and other white-owned Harlem businesses. The riot was finally suppressed by black and white NYPD officers, state national guardsmen, and military policemen, along with an appeal from Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia for peace and a delivery of food supplies to Harlem residents. When the riot ended, six African-Americans had died, and more than 500 arrested, while 40 officers had been injured.
• William D. Becker, the Mayor of St. Louis, Missouri, was killed along with nine other people while riding as an honored guest in a new cargo-carrying glider airplane at an airshow at the city's Lambert Field airport. A crowd of 10,000 watched in horror as the wings of the glider buckled as it descended to 2,000 feet, then plummeted to the ground. Killed also were Major William B. Robertson, President of the Robertson Aircraft Corporation, which had built the glider; St. Louis County Judge Executive Henry Mueller; and Thomas Dysart, President of the St. Louis Chamber of Commerce.
• The German submarines U-383 and U-454 were both depth charged and sunk in the Bay of Biscay by Allied aircraft.
• Died:
• *The Blessed Martyrs of Nowogródek, eleven Roman Catholic nuns led by Mother Superior Maria Stella Mardosewicz, were executed by a Nazi firing squad in German-occupied Poland, after volunteering to take the place of local men who had been scheduled for execution. The eleven would be beatified by the Church in 2000.
• *Lydia Litvyak, 21, Soviet fighter ace who shot down at least 11 German airplanes. She is one of two women who were "aces", the other being Yekaterina Budanova, who died on July 19. Litvyak's remains would be found in 1979, and she would be posthumously awarded the medal of Hero of the Soviet Union in 1990.

  August 2, 1943 (Monday)

• Jewish inmates at the Treblinka extermination camp in Poland seized weapons from the camp's armory and made plans to take over the concentration camp from their captors. The theft was discovered before the inmates had enough to completely overpower the guards, but hundreds charged through the main gate, and 300 managed to escape. A few guards were killed, and the rebels set several buildings ablaze, though most of the escapees were hunted down and killed, with no more than 40 surviving.
• At 2:00 am local time, the U.S. Navy patrol torpedo boat PT-109, with a crew of 13 commanded by Lieutenant John F. Kennedy, was traveling through the Blackett Strait in the Solomon Islands, when it was rammed and sunk by the Japanese destroyer Amagiri. Though two of the crew were killed, Kennedy and the other ten men swam three miles to a small island and then to Olasana Island, both of which were uninhabited. Kennedy and Ensign George H. R. Ross would make their way to Naru Island where they were found by natives Biuku Gasa and Eroni Kumana who delivered a message that Kennedy had carved on a coconut to the PT base at Rendova Island. The PT-109 survivors were rescued on August 8, and Kennedy received the Navy and Marine Corps Medal for his heroism.
• Soviet partisan fighters began using a new weapon, land mines made of plastic, to fight the German occupiers. Reportedly, the partisans placed 8,422 of the mines along railway tracks in the Belarusian SSR.
• The German submarine U-106 was depth charged and sunk northwest of Cape Ortegal, Spain by Short Sunderland aircraft of No. 228 Squadron RAF.
• Born: Max Wright, American TV actor who portrayed Willie Tanner on ALF; in Detroit

  August 3, 1943 (Tuesday)

• Operation Rumyantsev began as the Soviet Army started an offensive against the German XI Corps to recapture Kharkov.
• The Mirgorod direction offensive began.
• The U.S. state of Georgia lowered the legal voting age from 21 to 18, becoming the first state in the union to grant 18-year-olds the right to vote. The amendment to the state constitution was one of 28 that was approved in a referendum.
• General George S. Patton was visiting the 15th Evacuation Hospital in Nicosia, Cyprus, when he encountered Private Charles H. Kuhl, who was in the hospital for malaria and dysentery as well as for shell shock. Patton asked Private Kuhl what he was in for, and Kuhl replied, "I guess I just can't take it." Patton lost his temper and struck Kuhl with his gloves. On August 10, Patton would strike another soldier, and the incidents became public knowledge.
• The German submarines U-335, U-572 and U-706 were all lost to enemy action.
• Born:
• *Clarence Wijewardena, Sri Lankan pop musician ; in Haputale
• *Steven Millhauser, American novelist known for Martin Dressler: The Tale of an American Dreamer; in New York City

  August 4, 1943 (Wednesday)

• British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and his cabinet ministers made what one commentator would call "one of his most important but least known decisions", electing not to ship British wheat to the colony in India, "thereby condemning hundreds of thousands, or possibly millions, of people to death by starvation". At the time, there was a famine in the Bengal province.
• At the German V-2 rocket plant at Peenemünde, the decision was made to employ concentration camp inmates as slave labor to build the missiles. For every non-Jewish German employee, there would be at least ten camp inmates supplied by the SS.
• The Battle of Munda Point, fought at New Georgia in the Solomon Islands, ended after five weeks with a U.S. victory over Japan.
• The German submarine U-489 was depth charged and sunk in the North Atlantic by a Consolidated PBY Catalina of No. 423 Squadron RCAF.
• The Progressive Conservatives under George Drew defeated the Liberal government of Premier Harry Nixon in a general election, forming a minority government. The result was 42 years of uninterrupted government by the Tories in the Canadian province of Ontario. The election was also notable for a breakthrough by the social democratic Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, led by Ted Jolliffe.
• In the port of Algiers, the cargo ship Fort La Montee caught fire and exploded after being towed out to sea. The British destroyer HMS Arrow took heavy damage from the explosion and was later declared a constructive total loss.
• Born:
• *Bjørn Wirkola, Norwegian ski jumper, and winner of two World Championships in 1966; in Alta Municipality
• *Margaret Lee, British-born actress who became a star in Italian action films such as Se tutte le donne del mondo ; in Wolverhampton, Staffordshire

  August 5, 1943 (Thursday)

• The United States Women Airforce Service Pilots was formed, consolidating the Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron and Women Airforce Service Pilots.
• John F. Kennedy and his crewmates from PT-109 were found by two Solomon Islands coastwatchers, Biuku Gasa and Eroni Kumana, who arrived at Nauru in a dugout canoe, and then paddled back to Olasana Island to bring rescuers. Nearly fifty years later, National Geographic News would note that "Without the heroic efforts of two local South Pacific scouts, Lt. John F. Kennedy likely would never have made it to the end of World War II, much less the U.S. Presidency."
• Soviet troops recaptured the city of Orel from German forces after a 23-day battle.
• The German submarine U-34 collided at Memel with the submarine tender Lech and sank with the loss of four of 43 crew.
• Jean Monnet of France, best known for creating the Monnet Plan for post-war reconstruction of Europe and for his role in the founding of the European Coal and Steel Community, a forerunner of the European Union, told the French Committee for National Liberation in Algiers, the government-in-exile, that "there will be no peace in Europe if the States are reconstituted on the basis of national sovereignty" and that "the countries of Europe are too small to guarantee their peoples the prosperity that modern conditions make possible and consequently necessary".
• Died: Eva-Maria Buch, 22, and Rose Schlösinger, 36, German members of Die Rote Kapelle, a resistance group, were executed by guillotine at the Plötzensee Prison in Berlin.

  August 6, 1943 (Friday)

• The two day Battle of Vella Gulf began. The result was a U.S. victory as the Japanese destroyers Arashi, Hagikaze and Kawakaze were all sunk.
• The Munda Airfield was captured by American forces, giving the United States control of the island of New Georgia.
• The Battle of Troina in Sicily ended after six days of fighting led by General George S. Patton as American forces triumphed over the Axis defenders and breaking through the second Axis line of defense, the Etna Line.
• The liquidation of the Vilna Ghetto, where the Jewish residents of the city of Vilnius had been confined, began. The Nazi occupiers of the Soviet Union removed the first 1,000 of the 50,000 Jewish residents, with 20,000 of the adults transported to Estonia to work as slave labor at the concentration camps in Klooga and Lagedi. The Germans encountered resistance during the first deportation, and after killing those who had taken up arms, sent Estonian Jew Herman Kruk to convince residents that the deportation "meant not extermination but work" Kruk himself would die in the Lagedi camp on September 18, 1944.
• The Battle of Belgorod ended in Soviet victory over the German invaders, while the Germans fell back to Bogodukhov for further fighting.
• U.S. Army Private Walter J. Bohn, convicted of the January 8 rape of a housewife in Alexandria, Louisiana, was hanged at nearby Camp Claiborne after being found guilty of rape by a military court.