Eighty years ago this week Free India raises the flag

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 The B-24 aircraft used had been withdrawn from anti-submarine operations, the Battle of the Atlantic had swung firmly in the Allies' favour, the pending invasion of western Europe meant that local movements would soon be activated to assist the attack and the US involvement in supporting them, which had been an almost exclusively British affair, was continuing to grow.

Joseph Darnand, the head of the Milice paramilitary organisation in Vichy France, was promoted to be secretary-general for the maintenance of order, responsible for all internal security of the regime at the request of the German authorities. Darnand also held the rank of SS Oberstuermfuehrer. The Milice's main task was fighting the resistance but it also conducted savage campaigns against Jews, freemasons and democrats. Darnand was established as the right-hand man of Pierre Laval, head of the Vichy government, and this marked Vichy's final incarnation  as a pure tool of the Geman occupation