Off the Normandy Coast, France • May 29, 1944 The German Kriegsmarine experimented with a half-dozen stealthy combat vessels that could send torpedoes crashing into Allied ships. Perhaps the most unusual was the Neger (“Negro,” a play on the name of its designer, Richard Mohr, i.e., Moor). Almost 25 ft long, the battery-powered Neger was shaped…
London, England · June 13, 1944 Beginning on this date in 1944 in London, one week after the Allied D‑Day landings in Normandy, France (Operation Overlord), the Germans unleashed their pilotless flying “retaliation weapon,” Vergeltungswaffe‑1, on England. Adolf Hitler crowed to his rocket pioneer Wernher von Braun, “This will be retribution against England. With it…
Quebec, Canada • August 18, 1943 On this date in 1943 in Quebec, Canada, President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King, along with their Combined Chiefs of Staff, set to work planning Operation Overlord, the 1944 invasion of German-occupied France. At this first of two Quebec conferences,…
Antwerp, Belgium • September 4, 1944 Almost three months after D-Day British troops, assisted by members of the Belgian resistance, entered Antwerp on this date in 1944. They seized Belgium’s port on the Scheldt River before the Germans could destroy its installations. Opening Western Europe’s largest deep-water port, whose 10 square miles of docks, 20 miles of…
Washington, D.C. · December 28, 1941 The Seabees were in effect combat engineers of the U.S. Navy, working and, when necessary, fighting on land. On this date in 1941 Rear Admiral Ben Moreell requested authority to organize a militarized Naval Construction Force, and a week later he gained permission from the Bureau of Navigation (later…
Cairo, Egypt · November 24, 1943 On this date in 1943 in Egypt, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Chinese leader Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek continued their series of talks during their Cairo Conference (November 23–27, 1943). Churchill and his party had hoped to establish a way to deal with Soviet leader…
Wolf’s Lair, Fuehrer HQ, East Prussia · October 10, 1944 Shortly after the July 1944 attempt on Adolf Hitler’s life, an adjutant of the Chief of the General Staff of the Army remarked that the 55-year-old Hitler had the “posture of an old man.” On September 24, 1944, Dr. Theodor Morell, the Fuehrer’s loyal, long-serving physician,…
London, England · October 1, 1938 The storm clouds of war in Europe seemed to have parted on this date in 1938 in London, one day after British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain had returned from his triumph in Munich. Three visits to Germany had been required to part the clouds: the first to the Berghof…
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 the…
On an English Beach · September 7, 1943 On this date in 1943, on a popular beach near a seaside village in Southwestern England, the British military not so secretly tested a giant rocket-propelled, explosive-laden contraption called the Panjandrum, known also as The Great Panjandrum. The highly experimental vehicle consisted of a pair of 10‑ft-/3‑m-high…