Eighty years ago this week the Black Out of Britain is finally lifted completely

 

The last vestige of serious air raid precautions, which had disrupted everyone's life in Britain since the outbreak of war, was removed. The obligation to go to full black-out conditions with no light showing when the air raid alert was sounded was lifted. The Luftwaffe had become a negligible danger although V weapons were still falling on London.

The US introduced five star rank for senior military officers: Eisenhower, Marshall, MacArthur and Arnold became Generals of the Army; Leahy, King and Nimitz became Fleet Admirals. In part this was an expedient to remove the anomaly by which Americans commanded notionally higher ranking British officers, notably Field Marshal Montgomery. The move was also emblematic of the unprecedented scale of US commitment to the Second World War. Admiral Halsey and General Bradley attained the rank but these were the last so recognised.

The Canadian government decisively won the no-confidence vote by 143 to 70  which concluded the bitter debate about the introduction of overseas service for conscripted men. The bulk of the support came from Quebec Liberals. Francophones had been the most vocal opponents of the measure.

Edward Louis Spears was sacked as the British representative in Syria and the Lebanon bringing to an end the near complete failure of a mission which had begun in 1941 with high promise. With his shining track record of liaison during the First World War and his depth of French culture, he had seemed to his friend Churchill to be the ideal man to embody alliance with the Free French but had managed to offend practically everyone beginning with de Gaulle and more recently taking in the British Foreign Office, which wanted to promote French agreement with the states of the Levant. Spears was regarded as excessively pro-Arab.