British X Corps shuttling ambulances across the Garigliano River, January 1944 (US Army Center for Military History)
80 Years Ago—Jan. 17, 1944: British X Corps crosses lower Garigliano River in Italy, officially beginning the Battle of Cassino.
US Army and Marines secure Arawe area on New Britain in the Solomons.
Cdr. Frank Erickson, USCG & Dr. Igor Sikorsky, Sikorsky Helicopter HNS-1 C.G. #39040, 14 August 1944 (US Coast Guard photo 232-8)
80 Years Ago—Jan. 16, 1944: Countdown to D-day: Gen. Dwight Eisenhower assumes command of SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Forces) in London for Operation Overlord (D-day).
Japanese make final counterattack on New Britain in the Solomons, but fail.
Lt. Stewart Graham of the US Coast Guard becomes the first person to make a helicopter takeoff and landing aboard a ship underway—in a Sikorsky HNS-1 on British cargo ship Daghestan in the North Atlantic.
Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, 31 Dec 1943 (US National Archives: USA C-2182)
Lt. Gen. Ira Eaker, 1945 (US Army Air Force photo)
80 Years Ago—Jan. 15, 1944: The Allied Winter Line campaign in Italy is complete as the Germans retreat over the Rapido River to the Gustav Line.
Lt. Gen. Ira Eaker assumes command of Mediterranean Allied Air Forces (US Twelfth & Fifteenth Air Forces, as well as RAF, Italian, and French air units in the Mediterranean).
New songs in Top Ten: “My Ideal” and “Star Eyes.”
US recruiting poster for the Navy Seabees, WWII
80 Years Ago—Jan. 14, 1944: Countdown to D-day: Gen. Dwight Eisenhower arrives in London for planning of Operation Overlord (D-day).
Eligibility for the draft is restored for Japanese-American Nisei, causing mixed reactions in internment camps.
US Navy Seabees in camps in US get a sneak preview of John Wayne’s movie The Fighting Seabees.
US War Relocation Authority Center at Manzanar, CA, 3 July 1942 (Photographer: Dorothea Lange; US National Archives: 538128)
80 Years Ago—Jan. 13, 1944: Germans make large-scale arrests of Danish resistance members.
Chinese gain control of Tarung River line, driving back the Japanese in the Hukawng Valley in northern Burma.
Strike photo of Kwajalein, Marshall Islands taken by aircraft from USS Enterprise, 30 Jan 1944 (US National Museum of Naval Aviation)
80 Years Ago—Jan. 12, 1944: Germans arrest 74 members of the Solf Circle, a resistance group of German intellectuals; most will be executed.
US begins pre-invasion air strikes on Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands, as US Navy PB4Y Liberators bomb the island.
B-17G of the 94th Bomb Group at Bury St. Edmunds, England, showing damage sustained over Brunswick Germany, 11 January 1944 (USAF Historical Research Agency)
80 Years Ago—Jan. 11, 1944: In a US Eighth Air Force raid on Brunswick, the 94th Bomb Group makes a rare second run on the target and receives the Distinguished Unit Citation.
Col. James Howard of the US 354th Fighter Group shoots downs 8 German Bf 110 fighters and earns one of only six Medals of Honor awarded to Army Air Force fighter pilots in WWII, also becomes the first P-51 Mustang ace in the European Theater.
TBF Avenger aircraft from escort carrier USS Block Island severely damage German U-boat U-758 with the first use of forward-firing rockets by the US Navy.
Rocket attack on German submarine U-758 by TBF Avengers from USS Block Island northeast of the Azores, 11 Jan 1944 (US Navy photo: 80-G-222841)
Count Galeazzo Ciano, 1936, and Edda Mussolini Ciano (both photos public domain via Wikipedia)
80 Years Ago—Jan. 10, 1944: Eighteen Italian Fascist leaders are sentenced to death for opposing Mussolini, including Count Galeazzo Ciano, husband of Mussolini’s daughter, Edda; they will be executed the next day; Edda Ciano escaped to Switzerland the day before with Ciano’s war diaries; she will be secretly interned in a convent, and the diaries will be published.
Flight nurses of the 807th MAETS show their worn-out shoes after their two-month trek through Albania, 9 January 1944 (US Air Force photo)
80 Years Ago—Jan. 9, 1944: Flight nurses and medics from the US 807th Medical Air Evacuation Transport Squadron who crash-landed in Albania in November 1943 arrive back in Italy after two months behind enemy lines.
Lockheed XP-80A Shooting Star “Gray Ghost,” 1944 (USAF photo)
80 Years Ago—Jan. 8, 1944: First flight of US Lockheed XP-80 Shooting Star jet fighter at Muroc Army Air Base, CA, but it won’t be ready for combat until the war is over.
Gen. Sir Henry Maitland Wilson officially replaces Gen. Dwight Eisenhower as Supreme Allied Commander, Mediterranean.
“Another masterful installment in Sundin’s roster of WWII novels.”—Booklist starred review for Embers in the London Sky