London, England · January 3, 1943 By the end of 1942 U-boats operating from ports in Germany and occupied Europe had sunk just over 1,160 ships (see Battle of the Atlantic). U‑boats claimed nearly 70 percent of all Allied and neutral shipping losses (about 7.8 million tons), and the Kriegsmarine appeared to be winning the tonnage race,…
Tinian, Mariana Islands · December 3, 1944 On this date in 1944 eighty-six B‑29 Superfortresses belonging to XXI Bomber Command, a unit of the U.S. Twentieth Air Force, left the northwestern Pacific Mariana Islands base on Tinian on their third Tokyo bombing mission. Ten days earlier 111 of these heavy bombers had launched the first raid on…
Coventry, England · November 14, 1940 On this date in 1940 the first firestorm of the war was inflicted on Coventry, England, a city of 200,000 people, during the German Blitz against that country. German “pathfinder” bombers flying along radio-direction beams targeted the medieval cathedral city and industrial-munitions center in the English Midlands. Nearly 450 bombers rained…
Northern Mariana Islands · October 12, 1944 The Pacific Theater was the largest theater of World War II. Because of its watery expanse, Army aviation engineers and Seabees had to build more than 100 airfields on islands that dotted the Pacific, from New Guinea in the south, up through Guam, the Marianas, Iwo Jima, to Okinawa. On…
SHAEF HQ, Versailles, France · September 30, 1944 On this date in 1944 staff at Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) estimated that since the start of the Normandy landings on D-Day, June 6, 1944, one million German soldiers had been killed, captured, or taken prisoner by Allied armed forces. By…
Forward German HQ in Poland · September 24, 1939 On this date in 1939 in Poland, Luftwaffe chief Hermann Goering prepared to send hundreds of aircraft to blitz Warsaw in the first major city attack of World War II, while German armored forces prepared for a ground assault on the Polish capital. At 8 a.m. the…
Hamburg, Germany · July 24, 1943 On this date in 1943 over the North German city of Hamburg, the Royal Air Force kicked off Operation Gomorrah (July 24 to August 3, 1943). British retaliation for the Luftwaffe’s firebombing of the medieval city of Coventry in the English Midlands, where 500 tons of explosives and 56 tons of incendiaries over…
Tokyo, Japan · February 24, 1945 The first appearance over Japan in June 1944 of the massive four-engine B‑29 bomber—with its service ceiling of 33,000 ft, an operational range of over 3,200 nautical miles, and a maximum takeoff weight of 133,500 lb—meant that the enemy’s home islands were squarely in the crosshairs of the war’s deadliest delivery system….
Dresden, Germany · February 13, 1945 On this night in 1945, Shrove (or Fat) Tuesday, and over the next day, Ash Wednesday, some 1,300 British and American bombers appeared over largely untouched Dresden in eastern Germany. A city of 642,000 (1939) swelled by 300,000 refugees fleeing from fighting on the Eastern Front, Dresden was the ancient capital…
London, England · January 12, 1940 On this date in 1940 the German Luftwaffe conducted its first bombing raid on London, the British capital, four months after assaulting the Polish capital, Warsaw, at the start of World War II in Europe. Five months later, on May 10, the Royal Air Force retaliated with its first strategic bombing…