Eighty Years Ago This Week

  The Quebec conference between Roosevelt and Churchill shaped allied strategy. They would seek the unconditional surrender of Italy and, in line with Churchill's wishes, agreed to extending the campaign in the Mediterranean to a full invasion of Italy. Churchill did though accept May 1 1944 as the date for Overlord, the cross-Channel invasion of France although he nursed hopes for an attack on Norway. No-one else on the allied side supported the Norway scheme although Hitler, whose grasp of psychology was better than his strategy, remained alert to the danger. The British conceded primacy in the development of nuclear weapons to the US, in practice conceding that they simply did not have the economic resources left to conduct serious activities of their own. The British Cabinet sent a formal message of thanks to RAF Coastal Command. This chiefly reflected the success of the Command's patrols against U-boats transitting through the Bay of Biscay to operate in the Atlantic which...

  The US 8th Air Force launched its first serious raid on Germany. The targets were the Schweinfurt ball-bearings factories and the Regensburg aircraft plant, deep in southern Germany well beyond fighter escort range. Because of differences in weather conditions the original plan for simultaneous attacks was abandoned so the Luftwaffe was able to bring its full strength to bear on each formation in turn. The ex pectation that the B-17s would be able to defend themselves proved illusory and casualties were  severe. Of 376 bombers, 60 were shot down and the same number were badly damaged. The targets were hit badly but speedy repairs and the use of slack capacity still present in German industry meant comparatively little output was lost. The Americans suspended daylight raids.   600 RAF Bomber Command aircraft attacked the German research station  at Pe enemünde which had been identified as the centre for the development of rocket weapons to attack Britain and th...

    The British and US armies met in Sicily near the town of Bronte. According to Allied propaganda this trapped large numbers of Germans in the pocket between the armies but this was a fiction. The Germans had withdrawn to the port of Messina in good order without informing the Italians, still notionally their allies. From Messina they began to evacuate to the mainland. The Allied failure to prioritize cutting off this exit route from Sicily cost them the opportunity to elminate 60,000 Wehrmacht troops with heavy equipment. General Patton had demonstrated his competence and drive in the Sicily campaign which gave him a claim to be the Allies' best battlefield commander, but he proceeded to undermine his own standing. In two separate incidents he slapped soldiers hospitalised with shell-shock, accusing them of simple cowardice. These became public and Patton was forced to apologize. The episode could easily have ended the career of a lesser commander, but it almost certainly h...

  The US 9th Air Force launched Operation Tidal Wave from bases in Libya recently taken from the Italians. 177 B-24 Liberator bombers were despatched to attack the oil refineries around the oil fields at Ploesti in Romania, Germany's most important source of oil. It was to be at low level and involved a round trip of 2,000 miles. The Americans had launched a small raid on Ploesti over a year before and encountered minimal opposition. Expecting the same the attack was made in daylight, but it encountered stiff reistance fom both German and Romanian fighters. 53 bombers were destroyed and 55 severely damaged. Around 500 crew were lost, either killed, POW or interned in Turkey: the worst casualties suffered in a major operation. Oil production suffered only minimal interruption. The Red Army launched a major offensive aimed at Kharkiv (Or Kharkov as it was then usually known). The Soviets outnumbered the Germans by a large margin and were able to advance with little interference. It ...