Clark Field, Philippines • May 29, 1945 On this date in 1945 3 test versions of the B‑32 4‑engine Dominators made their first combat appearance in World War II. Leaving Clark Field 60 miles/97 kilometers north of the Philippine capital of Manila, the Dominators targeted a Japanese supply depot less than a flight hour away. Four more B‑32 field…
Berlin, Germany • May 28, 1938 On this date in 1938 Adolf Hitler informed his senior military commanders of his plans to march into neighboring Czechoslovakia and erase that country from the map. No serious objections were raised by those who heard the German dictator ring the death knell for Czechoslovakia and for the European…
Hashirajima Anchoring Area, Hiroshima Bay, Japan • May 27, 1942 A little over 4 months after Japan devastated the U.S. Pacific Fleet riding at peaceful anchor at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, Japanese Shōwa Emperor Hirohito and his Army and Navy staff officers received a rude calling card from Lt. Col. James “Jimmy” Doolittle and 79 other airmen of…
Fallersleben (Wolfsburg), Lower Saxony • May 26, 1938 On this date in 1938 near Fallersleben in the German state of Lower Saxony, Chancellor Adolf Hitler and Nazi dignitaries laid the foundation stone for the KdF-Wagen car factory. The state-owned factory was placed under the umbrella of the Nazi Party’s German Labor Front (Deutsche Arbeitsfront, or…
Operation Olympic was the U.S. high-casualty plan to invade Japan’s southernmost Home Island, Kyushu. It was never put into operation due to Japan’s capitulation and unconditional surrender in August and September 1945
Berlin, Germany • May 24, 1943 In June 1942 German submarines sank 637,000 tons of British shipping—a greater total than in any previous or subsequent month. So many prowling U‑boats made it hard for merchant convoys sailing in the major trans-Atlantic traffic lanes to evade detection. The next year, in March, Atlantic U‑boats sank 82 ships…
Muerwik, near Flensburg, Northern Germany • May 23, 1945 Twenty-three days after German dictator Adolf Hitler had committed suicide under the rubble of his Reich capital, and sixteen days after military emissaries from Reich President Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz’s government agreed to the unconditional surrender of all German armed forces, a telephone call reached the admiral’s…
Berlin, Germany • May 22, 1939 On this date in 1939 Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy signed the “Pact of Steel” (German, Stahlpakt; Italian, Patto d’Acciaio). The pack, known formally as the “Pact of Friendship and Alliance,” tied the 2 dictatorships in a 10‑year military and political alliance and stipulated, among other things, that neither…
London, England • May 21, 1941 On this date in 1941 the German heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen and the German battleship Bismarck set out from occupied Norway into the main Atlantic shipping lanes, there to act as long-distance commerce raiders. It was the maiden combat voyage of Nazi Germany’s monstrous battleship, the most lethal weapon…
Crete, Eastern Mediterranean • May 20, 1941 With the start of marathon German operations against the Soviet Union, codenamed Operation Barbarossa, a month away, Adolf Hitler needed to ensure that his oil supplies in and around Ploiești, Romania, where he had sent a German “military mission,” would not come under Allied bomber attack from stationary…
