SHAEF HQ, Reims, France • February 21, 1945 On this date in 1945 U.S. fighter-bombers attacked the Berghof, Adolf Hitler’s three-story Alpine retreat on the 6,700‑foot/2,042‑meter Obersalzberg near Berchtesgaden on the Bavarian-Austrian border. The Berghof, bought and developed with royalties from the sale of Hitler’s crackpot political testimony, Mein Kampf (My Struggle), served as an…
London, England • February 20, 1944 On this date in 1944, while Soviet armed forces were ridding their country of the German Wehrmacht (German armed forces) on the Eastern Front, U.S. and British air forces embarked on Operation Argument in the skies over the Western Front. Unofficially dubbed “Big Week,” Operation Argument was an intensive…
Dresden, Germany • February 13, 1945 On this night in 1945, Fat (or Shrove) 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, 120 miles/310 kilometers south…
Savannah, Georgia • January 28, 1942 On this date in 1942 the fledgling U.S. Eighth Air Force was activated at Savannah Air Force Base in Georgia. Second-in-command Brig. Gen. Ira Eaker was sent to England to form and organize its bomber command, the VIII Bomber Command. An advanced detachment was established at RAF Bomber Command…
South West Pacific Area HQ, Brisbane, Australia • January 24, 1944 On this date in 1944 an advance party of the 93rd Infantry Division landed on the Pacific Island of Guadalcanal, the first African American (“colored” was the term used at the time) infantry unit to see action in World War II. Reactivated on May 15, 1942, at…
London, England • January 2, 1945 In the 19th century the Bavarian city of Nuremberg, long associated with gingerbread, sausages, handmade toys, and Christkindlmaerkte (Christmas markets), had become an important industrial center with companies such as engineering and manufacturing giants Siemens and MAN. Both firms contributed mightily to Germany’s war effort—Siemens by producing everything from…
Washington, D.C. • December 31, 1943 By this date in 1943 Boeing delivered its 92nd B‑29 Superfortress to the U.S. government after the giant bomber began rolling off the assembly line the previous September. Even before the country was at war and government funds had been allocated, Boeing had produced a prototype of the long-range…
San Diego, California • December 29, 1939 On this date in 1939 a prototype 4‑engine heavy bomber took off from San Diego’s Lindberg Field on its maiden flight. The flight lasted 17 minutes. Designed by Consolidated Aircraft, the prototype was initially known in-house as Model 32. Besides its distinctive twin tails and slab sides that allowed for…
Tinian, Mariana Islands • December 3, 1944 On this date in 1944 86 4-engine 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 4‑engine heavy bombers had launched the…
Honolulu, Hawaii • October 29, 1943 In World War II’s Pacific Theater, sea mines—explosive underwater devices that damaged, sank, or deterred Japanese warships, submarines, and maritime commerce—were weapons that had difficulty gaining the same respect as guns, bombs, and torpedoes enjoyed in the U.S. arsenal. Over time, however, a small number of mining advocates in…