Eighty Years Ago This Week

      The US commander General Mark Clark overrode the objections of some of his generals and the British to try to breach the German Gustav Line in Italy with a night attack by one US division across the Gari river. It was an abject failure and cost the Americans 1,200 casulaties. It was not possible to pull all the survivors back across the river and the Germans took some 900 PoWs. In Operation Shingle two Allied divisions made an almost unopposed landing at Anzio to draw German troops from the Gustav Line or even to seize Rome 60km away. Churchill had strongly advocated the move but shortage of landing craft limited the size of the attack. AM Sir Arthur "Mary" Coningham was given command of 2nd Tactical Air Force tasked with direct support for Overlord ground forces. Under ACM Sir Arthur Tedder, whom Eisenhower had chosen as his Deputy Supreme Commander, he had led the RAF in Africa where it had played a crucial role in the defeat of the Germans as part ...

  Britain unveiled the Brabazon airliner, the standard bearer of national hopes for civil aviation postwar. It was vast but carried only 100 passengers, each having as much space as a small car. The designed assumed that long-distance air travellers would insist on comfort comparable to that in the first class of ocean liners Compared to the US C-54 and Constellations already flying it was a non-starter. So much of Britain's industrial resources had been turned over to making military aircaft that peacetime economic prospects depended crucially on supplying airliners. T he USAAF publicized the fact that the P-51B Mustang fighter had sufficient range to escort bombers deep into Germany and had already flown such missions. The USAAF could now draw Germany's depleted day fighter resources into battle, inflicting attrition that would bring air superiority for Overlord. It was a vital turning point in the air war but it had not been planned. Range had not been part of the specifica...

  T he first "Bevin boys" conscripted into work in the coal mines had just started training, when the Mineworkers' Federation admitted that it was pulling back from its earlier demand for full state control of the mines. But it would not accept management regaining the right to suspend miners for "indiscipline." The government's Conservative candidate lost by only 221 votes the Skipton by-election to the Common Wealth party. The anti-government vote had been split by an "independent Labour" candidate who polled 3,000 votes. This was Common Wealth's second by-election win. Common Wealth's idealistic and ill-defined programme was far less a factor than war-weariness and public resentment at the lack of effective political debate. The economist Sir William Beveridge kept up the pressure on the government to implement his programme for a welfare state. He said abolition of want was the first priority in peace: want was waste of human capital; w...

Subhash Chandra Bose raised the flag of his Jai Hind (Free India) movement  at the town known to the British as Port Blair on the Andaman Islands. They had been developed as a penal settlement and were the only part of British India to be occupied by the Japanese. They formally transferred them to Jai Hind which had come into being under their auspices, but they remained under Japanese military control. Bose spent only one night there and was held from any contact with the local inhabitants who were subject to savage repression by the Japanese occupiers. In 2018 Ross Island was renamed in his honour by the Indian government. The US 8th Air Force launched Operation Carpetbagger to drop supplies and agents to resistance  groups mainly affiliated to the clandestine OSS. This showed how the war was evolving. The B-24 aircraft used had been withdrawn from anti-submarine operations, the Battle of the Atlantic had swung firmly in the Allies' favour, the pending invasion of western ...