Burning buildings in the Warsaw Ghetto, late Apr 1943 (public domain via WW2 Database)
75 Years Ago—Apr. 19, 1943: Jewish ghetto uprising begins in Warsaw; Germans initially retreat in face of armed resistance.
Belgian resistance rescues 150 Jews from a train, but 220 others die in the attack.
Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto, shortly before he was shot down and killed, Apr 1943 (public domain via WW2 Database)
75 Years Ago—Apr. 18, 1943: “Palm Sunday Massacre”—US Ninth Air Force and RAF fighters shoot down 59 German transport planes bound for North Africa.
Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto, commander of Japanese Combined Fleet, is killed when his plane is shot down by US Thirteenth Air Force P-38s over Bougainville.
Crew of US Coast Guard Cutter Spencer watch as their depth charge explodes near German U-boat U-175, 17 April 1943 (US National Archives)
75 Years Ago—Apr. 17, 1943: US Eighth Air Force: 107 B-17s bomb Focke-Wulf plant in Bremen, Germany; sixteen B-17s are lost, including ten in the 306th Bomb Group, the heaviest US loss so far.
In convoy HX-233 off Ireland, US Coast Guard cutter Spencer sinks German U-boat U-175; Spencer’s crewmen become first US servicemen to board an enemy warship underway since the War of 1812.
Molecular structure of lysergic acid diethylamide, LSD (public domain via Wikipedia)
75 Years Ago—Apr. 16, 1943: Swiss chemist Albert Hoffman accidentally ingests LSD and learns of its hallucinogenic properties.
Maj. Gen. Omar Bradley (right), commander US II Corps, and Lt. Gen. Kenneth Anderson, commander of the British First Army, April 1943 (US Army Center of Military History)
75 Years Ago—Apr. 15, 1943: Maj. Gen. Omar Bradley takes command of US II Corps; Patton is relieved to prepare for invasion of Sicily.
US 17th Airborne Division activated at Camp Mackall, NC under Maj. Gen. William Miley.
Cocoanut Grove nightclub after the fire, Boston, MA, 30 November 1942 (US Army Signal Corps photo)
75 Years Ago—Apr. 14, 1943: Stalin’s son, Yakov Dzhugashvili, dies at Sachsenhausen as a prisoner of war of the Germans.
Owner of the Cocoanut Grove, Barnett Welansky, is sentenced to 12-15 years for manslaughter for the deadly November 1942 fire in Boston (he is pardoned & released in 1946 due to terminal cancer).
WAVES personnel at the Jefferson Memorial, Washington, D.C., 1943-1945 (US National Archives)
75 Years Ago—Apr. 13, 1943: President Franklin Roosevelt dedicates the Jefferson Memorial on the 200th anniversary of Thomas Jefferson’s birth—the original statue is made of plaster and painted bronze due to wartime restrictions on metal. Roosevelt proclaims, “Today in the midst of a great war for freedom, we dedicate a shrine to freedom.”
US poster, WWII, featuring Norman Rockwell’s “Freedom of Speech”
75 Years Ago—Apr. 12, 1943: US Second War Loan Drive begins, centered around Norman Rockwell’s Four Freedoms posters.
Hitler appoints influential Martin Bormann as Secretary to the Führer.
Crew of an RAF Wellington at Kairouan Airfield, Tunisia, being briefed before a bombing raid to Sicily, 9 July 1943 (Imperial War Museum)
75 Years Ago—Apr. 11, 1943: German Gen. Rudolf Schmidt is relieved of command of Second Panzer Army when his brother is arrested by the Gestapo.
US II Corps takes Kairouan, Tunisia, and its airfield.
Bombs from B-17s hitting Italian heavy cruiser Trieste, 10 April 1943 (US Army Air Forces photo)
75 Years Ago—Apr. 10, 1943: US Twelfth Air Force B-17s sink Italian heavy cruiser Trieste at La Maddalena, Sardinia.
British Eighth Army takes port of Sfax, Tunisia.
US Department of Agriculture establishes Women’s Land Army: during WWII, 1.5 million women from non-farming backgrounds will serve on farms.
US poster for the Women’s Land Army, WWII
