Manila, Occupied Philippines • May 6, 1942 On Monday, December 8, 1941, Japanese forces attacked the Philippines, a largely self-governing U.S. possession, formally known as the Commonwealth of the Philippines. (December 8, Manila and Japanese time, was Sunday, December 7, east of the International Date Line, the day Japanese carrier-based planes attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in a…
Narvik, Norway • April 29, 1940 Copenhagen, Denmark’s capital, and Oslo, Norway’s capital, succumbed to German invaders on April 9, 1940, the first day of Operation Weseruebung. Though planning for Weseruebung had begun the previous December, Adolf Hitler did not order full speed ahead until British warships entered the territorial waters of neutral Norway in February…
Hollandia and Aitape, Northern New Guinea • April 21–22, 1944 The Pacific War in New Guinea, the second largest island in the world after neighboring Australia, lasted from January 1942 to several weeks past the surrender of Japan on August 14, 1945. Japanese invaders set first foot in the Australian-administered Mandated Territory of New Guinea, that is…
Washington, D.C. • April 9, 1983 On this date in 1983, National POW/MIA Recognition Day, 31 of the 67 Army and Navy nurses who had been captured by the Japanese in 1942 and interned at the Santo Tomas and Los Baños internment camps in the Philippines were honored at a White House ceremony by President Ronald…
Berlin, Germany • March 3, 1945 Round-the-clock bombing operations against Nazi Germany began on March 3, 1944, with a U.S. 800‑plane daylight raid that dropped 2,000 tons of bombs on Berlin. On this date in 1945 American bombers mounted a daylight raid on Berlin that left 3,000 people dead and 100,000 homeless. Luftwaffe bombers retaliated, attacking Britain for…
Berlin, Germany • January 18, 1942 On this date in 1942 Axis partners Germany, Italy, and Japan renewed their military and economic alliance just one and a half years into their 10‑year convention. The Tripartite Pact had come into being on September 27, 1940, when the foreign ministers of the 3 nations met in Berlin. Originally a…
RAF Ringway, Manchester, England • January 9, 1941 On this date in 1941 a prototype 4-engine heavy bomber took off from RAF Ringway in the English county of Cheshire on its maiden flight. Designed by Avro—an initialism of the company’s founder Alliott Verdon-Roe—the best-known British bomber of World War II was named after the historic county of…
Washington, D.C. • December 27, 1938 In 1938 America’s armed forces had less than 3,000 professional pilots. To speed the production of pilots outside the U.S. armed services, President Franklin D. Roosevelt unveiled the Civilian Pilot Training Program (CPTP) on this date in 1938. The program was intended, the president said, to provide a boost to…
North Cape, Norway • December 26, 1943 On this date, the day after Christmas 1943, the German battleship (aka battlecruiser) Scharnhorst and her crew of 1,968 met their fate in the Battle of the North Cape off the northern tip of Norway. At 32,100 long tons, the sleek, 771‑foot/235‑meter state-of-the-art warship fitted out with 9 11‑inch/28‑centimeter…
Adlerhorst Forward HQ, Central Hessen, Germany • December 16, 1944 “It is essential to deprive the enemy of his belief that victory is certain,” Adolf Hitler told his generals on December 12, 1944, at his rural Adlerhorst (Eagle’s Nest) headquarters near Bad Nauheim, Germany, the camouflaged western command outpost Architect of the Reich Albert Speer (pronounced “spare”)…