May 1943

May 1, 1943 (Saturday)

• More than 480,000 American coal miners walked off of the job a minute after midnight, when the United Mine Workers' contract with the nation's mining companies expired. U.S. President Roosevelt notified UMWA President John L. Lewis to cease the wartime work stoppage by 10:00 am, an order which was ignored, and then issued an Executive Order directing that "The Secretary of the Interior is authorized and directed to take immediate possession so far as may be necessary or desirable, of any and all mines producing coal in which a strike or stoppage has occurred or is threatened ...". At the time, there was only a three-week supply of coal for American steel manufacturers and ten days' supply for some railroads. The strike would resume on June 1.
• Over 800 British Empire soldiers and sailors died when the troopship Erinpura was sunk north of Benghazi by German bombers. One of the bombs struck a hold full of ammunition, and the ship went down in four minutes, taking with it 600 African troops from Basutoland, 140 Jewish soldiers from Palestine, 54 sailors from British India, and five English crew.
• In Tunisia, the Battle of Hill 609 ended as the U.S. Army's II Corps drove Germany's Afrika Korps from a strategic position. An author would note that the battle, the first clear cut victory of U.S. forces in the North African Campaign, was "the American Army's coming-of-age."
• The Ford Motor Company fired 141 employees, mostly African-American, from its aluminum and steel plants in River Rouge, Michigan, because of labor disputes.
• Count Fleet won the Kentucky Derby.
• Born: Ian Dunn, Scottish gay and paedophile rights activist, in Glasgow

  May 2, 1943 (Sunday)

• The top secret project of deception code-named Operation Mincemeat continued at the Spanish town of Huelva, where a funeral was held for Major William Martin of Britain's Royal Marines, whose body had washed ashore on April 30. Major Martin was, in reality, a homeless Welshman named Glyndwr Michael, who had died on January 28 and whose body was used to deceive German intelligence regarding the starting point for an Allied invasion.
• President Roosevelt went on nationwide radio to talk about the need to end the coal strike, then directed his comments to the strikers themselves, saying "You miners have sons in the Army and Navy and Marine Corps ... I only wish I could tell you what they think of the stoppage of work in the coal mines."
• Twenty Japanese bombers and Zero fighters carried out a significant raid on Darwin, Australia,
• The German submarine U-465 was sunk in the Bay of Biscay by a Short Sunderland of No. 461 Squadron RAAF.
• Born: Mustafa Nadarevic, Yugoslav and Bosnian actor and comedian, in Banja Luka
• Died: Viktor Lutze, 52, Chief of Staff for the SA Sturmabteilung, a day after being fatally injured in a single car accident.

  May 3, 1943 (Monday)

• The United States Supreme Court invalidated, 5–4, a city ordinance in Jeannette, Pennsylvania that required members of the Jehovah's Witnesses religious denomination to pay for a peddles' license in order to distribute religious literature. The city ordinance required each individual distributor to pay $10 per day. The ruling, in Murdock v. Pennsylvania, invalidated similar ordinances in Alabama, Arizona and Kansas as a violation of the constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion.
• The Battle of the Campobasso Convoy was fought off Cape Bon over the night of May 3–4. The result was a British victory as one Italian merchant ship and one fleet torpedo boat were sunk with the Royal Navy taking only light damage in return.
• Died: U.S. Army Lieutenant General Frank Maxwell Andrews, 59, Commander of U.S. Forces in Europe, in the crash of a B-24 bomber during bad weather in Iceland. Andrews Air Force Base, near Washington, D.C., was named in his honor.

  May 4, 1943 (Tuesday)

• A bill to eliminate federal income tax for all Americans for an entire year failed to pass by four votes, 202–206. The legislation, based on ideas proposed by New York Federal Reserve Bank chairman Beardsley Ruml, was replaced by a "pay as you go" Robertson-Forand bill that virtually eliminated the 1942 income taxes for 90% of Americans.
• The German submarine U-109 was sunk with the loss of all hands in the Atlantic Ocean by a B-24 Liberator of No. 86 Squadron RAF.
• The German submarines U-439 and U-659 collided with each other west of Cape Ortegal, Spain, and both sank.
• Died: Géo André, 53, French Olympic medalist in athletics, was killed in action in Tunisia.

  May 5, 1943 (Wednesday)

• The Vatican Secretary of State sent a request to the government of the Nazi-controlled Slovak Republic, requesting the exclusion of Jews "who have entered the Catholic religion" from the list of persons to be deported to Nazi concentration camps. The office of Prime Minister Vojtech Tuka gave its response on May 28, pledging that converts would be kept in local concentration camps, separate from other Jews, "and given every opportunity to fulfill their Christian religion."
• The Battle of West Hubei began as Japanese forces of the 11th Army under General Isamu Yokoyama started an offensive in western Hubei province, south of the Yangtze River, against defensive positions of the Chinese National Revolutionary Army.
• The German submarine U-638 was depth charged and sunk northeast of Newfoundland by the British corvette Sunflower.
• Born: Michael Palin, British comedian, in Sheffield

  May 6, 1943 (Thursday)

• Admiral Ernest J. King, the U.S. Chief of Naval Operations, ordered the creation of Naval Combat Demolition Units, after the success, in September, of a group of U.S. Navy divers who had destroyed nets that had prevented American ships from entering Morocco's Sebou River.
• Six German submarines were sunk after sinking 12 ships from Convoy ONS 5 in the last major North Atlantic U-boat "wolfpack" attack of the war.
• Born: Andreas Baader, West German militant and leader of the Red Army Faction, known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang; in Munich

  May 7, 1943 (Friday)

• Tunis and Bizerte were liberated by Allied troops, with Bizerte falling to the Americans at 4:15 pm local time, and the Tunisian capital being conquered five minutes later by the British First Army.
• Sex symbol and film star Mae West was granted a final divorce from her husband, Frank Szatkus, whom she had married on April 29, 1911. The couple had been separated for more than thirty years.
• The German submarines U-447 and U-663 were depth charged and sunk by Allied aircraft in the eastern Atlantic and Bay of Biscay, respectively.
• Born: Peter Carey, Australian novelist, in Bacchus Marsh, Victoria
• Died: Fethi Okyar, 63, Prime Minister of Turkey, 1924–1925

  May 8, 1943 (Saturday)

• The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff approved the recommendations contained in the Strategic Plan for the Defeat of Japan, with the objective of the unconditional surrender of the Japanese Empire.
• Three Japanese destroyers were sunk on the same day. The Kagerō was bombed and sunk southwest of Rendova by American aircraft; the Kuroshio struck a mine and sank near Kolombangara in the Solomon Islands; and the Oyashio was disabled by a mine and then sunk by aircraft near Kolombangara.
• Count Fleet won the Preakness Stakes.
• The Western film The Ox-Bow Incident starring Henry Fonda premiered in New York City.
• Died: Mordechai Anielewicz, 24, Jewish leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Anielewicz, head of the resistance group Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa, apparently killed himself after the Nazi SS surrounded the ZOB command post at 18 Miła Street in Warsaw.

  May 9, 1943 (Sunday)

• Francisco Franco, the fascist dictator of Spain, which remained neutral during World War II, spoke in favor of world peace, "declaring that neither the Axis nor the Allies could destroy the other". Franco, who had won the Spanish Civil War with assistance from both Germany and Italy, spoke in the city of Almería as the Axis powers were surrendering to the Allies in North Africa.
• A Junkers Ju 88 fitted with the new Lichtenstein radar set was secretly flown from Norway to Scotland by a crew of defectors possibly led by a British intelligence agent. The analysis of this new advanced equipment and other data about the tactics of German night-fighters would be vital to the Allies.
• Died: Wilmeth Sidat-Singh, 25, African-American college football and basketball star and member of the Tuskegee Airmen, was killed after the engine of his plane failed during a training mission.

  May 10, 1943 (Monday)

• On the day that the Enabling Act of 1933 was set to expire by its terms, Adolf Hitler signed an order extending his dictatorship indefinitely. Published in the Reich Law Gazette, the decree stated "The Reich government will continue to exercise the powers bestowed on it by virtue of the law of March 24, 1933. I reserve for myself the obtaining of a confirmation of these powers of the Reich government by the Greater German Reichstag," although the German parliament was never called back into session by Hitler again.
• Hitler approved Operation Citadel, the attack on the Kursk salient, for June.
• To mark the tenth anniversary of the Nazi book burnings in Germany, the 300 largest libraries in the United States flew their flags at half-mast.
• Born: Dick Darman, Director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget 1989–1993; in Charlotte, North Carolina

  May 11, 1943 (Tuesday)

• An assault force of 3,000 troops from the 7th U.S. Infantry Division invaded Attu in the Aleutian Islands, in an attempt to expel occupying Japanese forces. The island, part of Alaska, had been renamed Atsuta by Japan, and was a supply point for the Aleutian island of Kiska, still in use by Japan for a submarine operating base.
• U.S. Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox inadvertently gave a clue that Allied forces intended to use Sicily for an invasion of Europe, potentially undermining the British disinformation campaign of Operation Mincemeat to convince German intelligence that the attack would be made from Greece and Sardinia. Ironically, Knox's comment that "Possession of Sicily by the Allies would obviously be a tremendous asset" was interpreted as an obviously clumsy attempt at deception, which Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels would describe as "baseless rumors and attempts at a smoke screen".
• The German submarine U-528 was sunk in the Atlantic Ocean by a British aircraft and Royal Navy sloop Fleetwood.