June 1943

June 1, 1943 (Tuesday)

• The American liberty ship SS John Morgan was setting out from Baltimore on its maiden voyage with a cargo of explosives, and accidentally rammed the tanker SS Montana, which was entering the harbor. Sixty-five of the 68 men on the Morgan were killed in the blast, while 18 of the 82 men on the Montana were burned to death in the subsequent blaze. The U.S. Navy waited five days before releasing the news.
• British Overseas Airways Corporation Flight 777, a DC-3 airplane on a scheduled passenger flight, was shot down over the Bay of Biscay during an encounter with eight German Junkers Ju 88s. All 17 persons aboard perished, including the film actor Leslie Howard, who had starred as Ashley Wilkes in Gone with the Wind. There was speculation that the downing was an attempt to kill British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and that the Germans may have mistakenly believed that he was aboard.
• When the truce called by the UMWA in the coal mine strike expired at 12:01 am, union miners walked off of their jobs for the second time in five weeks. John L. Lewis ordered the men to return to work at the end of the week.
• Born: Kuki Gallmann, Italian author who wrote of her experiences in Kenya, including her book I Dreamed of Africa; in Treviso

  June 2, 1943 (Wednesday)

• Liquidation of the Lwów Ghetto, located in German-occupied Poland, was completed, with the last surviving Jewish residents deported to the nearby Janowska concentration camp. At one time, there had been 160,000 Jews in Lwów which the Germans had renamed Lemberg. Nearly all of the former dwellers would be killed by November. After the Soviet victory in World War II, the city would become part of the Ukrainian SSR and renamed Lvov.
• The German submarines U-105, U-202, U-462 and U-521 were all lost to enemy action in the Atlantic Ocean.
• The comedy film Hit the Ice starring Abbott and Costello was released.
• Born:
• *Ilaiyaraaja, Indian classical musician and film score composer; as Raja Gnanadhesikan in Pannaipuram, Theni District, Madras Presidency.
• *Blinky Palermo, German abstract artist; in Leipzig
• Died:
• * Nile Kinnick, 24, winner of college football's Heisman Trophy in 1939 at the University of Iowa. Kinnick, who had passed up on an NFL career, disappeared when his F4F Wildcat fighter plane crashed during a training mission. He ditched in the ocean off of the coast of Venezuela when his plane began leaking oil while he was returning to the aircraft carrier USS Lexington.
• *John Frank Stevens, 90, American engineer, chief engineer on the Panama Canal
• *Dr. Allan Roy Dafoe, 60, Canadian physician to the Dionne quintuplets

  June 3, 1943 (Thursday)

• The "Zoot Suit Riots" began when 11 U.S. servicemen, on shore leave in Los Angeles, got into a fight with a group of Mexican-American youths. The next day, about 200 servicemen, mostly U.S. Navy sailors, rode in taxis to the Hispanic neighborhoods in East L.A. and began attacking non-white residents; by June 7, thousands of civilians were involved in the fighting. The U.S. Navy and U.S. Army barred military personnel from venturing into downtown L.A., ending the riots.
• The French Committee of National Liberation was formed with headquarters in Algiers and Generals Charles de Gaulle and Henri Giraud as co-presidents.
• The Battle of West Hubei in China ended in a tactical draw.
• Inventor Robert Hurley filed a patent application for the pocket protector, designed for carrying ink pens in shirt pockets. Hurley would be awarded U.S. Patent No. 2,417,786 on March 18, 1947 for his "Pocket Shield or Protector".
• The Hot Springs Conference in Hot Springs ended.

  June 4, 1943 (Friday)

• A coup d'état in Argentina ousted President Ramón Castillo, who had insisted on strict neutrality during World War II and continued to maintain diplomatic relations with the Axis powers. Castillo fled from Buenos Aires to a warship and resigned the next day, surrendering to military forces at La Plata. General Arturo Rawson was named by military as the new President of Argentina on Saturday but, after three days, announced on Monday that he would decline to be sworn in to office and would yield the position to General Pedro Ramirez.
• Henri Giraud was appointed Commander-in-Chief of Free French Forces.
• The German submarine U-308 was torpedoed and sunk in the Norwegian Sea by the British submarine Truculent, while U-594 was sunk west of Gibraltar by a rocket attack from a Lockheed Hudson of No. 48 Squadron RAF.
• Born:
• *John "Burgo" Burgess, Australian TV show host
• *Joyce Meyer, American evangelist; in St. Louis
• Died: U.S. Army Major Kermit Roosevelt, 53, American explorer and author, and son of former U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt; by a self-inflicted gunshot wound while serving in Alaska at Fort Richardson.

  June 5, 1943 (Saturday)

• Pierre Laval, the puppet chief of government for Nazi occupied France, told his countrymen in a radio broadcast that an additional 200,000 Frenchmen needed to be sent to Germany to assist in war production.
• A state funeral was held in Japan for Isoroku Yamamoto.
• A squad of chemical warfare soldiers, making sure the wind was away from spectators, exploded small vials of mustard, chloro-picrine, lewisite and phosgene gases in a simulated air raid in New York City, to test the ability of civil defense workers to recognize the different chemical agents.
• The German submarine U-217 was depth charged and sunk in the Atlantic Ocean by an American Grumman TBF Avenger from the escort carrier USS Bogue.
• Josef Mengele was promoted to Chief Medical Examination Officer at Auschwitz in Poland.

  June 6, 1943 (Sunday)

• The new French Committee of National Liberation made a radio broadcast from Algiers pledging to abolish the "arbitrary powers" imposed by the Vichy government and to restore "all French liberties, the laws of the Republic and the Republican regime."
• Count Fleet won the Belmont Stakes to complete the Triple Crown of Thoroughbred Racing. The thoroughbred had won the Kentucky Derby on May 1, and the Preakness Stakes only one week later, on May 8.
• Ohio University student Paul Newman, who had enlisted in the U.S. Navy four days before his 18th birthday, was called up for active duty. The future Oscar-winning film actor, nicknamed "Gus" Newman, enrolled in the pilot training program but was soon kicked out because it was discovered that he was color blind.
• Born: Richard Smalley, American chemist and physicist, winner of 1996 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for being a co-discoverer of buckminsterfullerene; in Akron, Ohio

  June 7, 1943 (Monday)

• General Arturo Rawson decided not to take office as President of Argentina after failing to get support from other officers, and yielded to General Pedro Ramirez.
• Born:
• *Chan Hung-lit, Chinese actor in the Hong Kong film and television industries; in Shanghai
• *Nikki Giovanni, American poet, in Knoxville, Tennessee
• *Superstar Billy Graham, professional wrestler, in Phoenix, Arizona

  June 8, 1943 (Tuesday)

• Ammunition in the magazine on the Japanese battleship Mutsu, exploded during extremely hot weather, while the ship was anchored in the harbor at Hashirajima, killing 1,222 people including 1,121 of the 1,474 member crew.
• The Battle of Porta between the Royal Italian Army and the Greek People's Liberation Army began.
• Born: Colin Baker, British TV actor best known as the sixth Dr. Who; in London

  June 9, 1943 (Wednesday)

• The first automatic payroll tax in the United States was implemented by the passage of the Current Tax Payment Act of 1943, which was signed into law the next day. Under the new procedure, employers deducted the taxes from the employees' checks, then paid the equivalent amount to the federal government at the end of the month, replacing the system of employees paying taxes on their salaries at the end of each tax year.
• James F. Byrnes, the director of the U.S. Office of War Mobilization, told a press conference that he had no intention to be the Democratic nominee for Vice-President in 1944 if President Franklin Roosevelt pursued a fourth term.
• The Battle of Porta between the Royal Italian Army and the Greek People's Liberation Army ended in Thessaly. Italian forces burned down the villages of Porta, Vatsinia, Chania, and Ropotania.
• Three days before his 19th birthday, future United States President George H. W. Bush became the youngest aviator in the U.S. Navy.

  June 10, 1943 (Thursday)

• The Pointblank directive was issued by the Combined Chiefs of Staff of the Allied powers, to implement Operation Pointblank, the code name for the constant Combined Bomber Offensive. The highest priority target to be destroyed was Germany's aircraft industry, followed by producers of ball bearings, petroleum, grinding wheels and abrasives. The U.S. Eighth Air Force bombed Germany during daylight and the UK's Royal Air Force Bomber Command conducted heavier bombing at night.

• Germany and Italy gave diplomatic recognition to the new government of Argentina, the only nation in the Western Hemisphere that still maintained relations with the Axis powers. That night, however, the new regime of General Pedro Ramírez decreed that the German, Italian and Japanese would no longer have permission to transmit up to 100 words in code to their capitals, a privilege that had been extended back in December. The U.S. and the U.K. gave recognition to the Ramírez government the next day.
• The Berlin Gemeinde, the last Jewish hospital in the German capital, was closed, and its 200 employees and 300 patients were sent to Theresienstadt on June 16.