Operation Outward was responsible for launching over 99,000 balloons that did considerable damage in Germany. Most of the balloons were launched by the British Women’s Royal Naval Service. youtube.com Click to enlarge.
By: Phil Kohn. Dedicated to the memory of his father, GM3 Walter Kohn, U.S. Navy Armed Guard, USNR, and all men and women who have answered the country’s call in time of need. Phil can be contacted at ww2remembered@yahoo.com.
On March 20, the British initiate “Operation Outward,” a program to attack Germany with free-flying, hydrogen-filled balloons either trailing a wire (to short-circuit high-voltage electric transmission wires) or carrying an incendiary device (to start fires). Over 99,000 of these balloons will be launched through September 1944. Reports indicate that the program is quite successful in that fires are started, local electricity grids are disrupted and the Luftwaffe uses up precious resources by assigning fighter planes to shoot the balloons down. Arctic Convoy PQ13 sets sail from Iceland to Murmansk, in the Soviet Union, but is set upon by German U-boats, aircraft and destroyers. Five of the 19 convoy ships are lost. In Occupied Poland, 100 Poles are collected by SS troops from a labor camp in Zgierz, just north of Łódź, and shot. In Australia, Gen. Douglas MacArthur meets with reporters north of Adelaide, in South Australia. He says: “The President of the United States ordered me to break through the Japanese lines and proceed from Corregidor to Australia for the purpose, as I understand it, of organizing the American offensive against Japan, a primary object of which is the relief of the Philippines. I came through and I shall return.”
The last British cavalry charge in history occurs on March 21 when a horse-mounted patrol of 60 Sikhs of the Burma Frontier Force attack Japanese infantry at Taungoo, Burma. Most of the Sikhs are killed. In Russia, German troops surrounded at Demyansk, around 230 miles northwest of Moscow, attempt a breakout. In Berlin, Hitler orders Ernst “Fritz” Sauckel, Nazi General Plenipotentiary for Labor Deployment, to obtain workers for the German war effort “by whatever means necessary.” The Twentieth Century-Fox spy film “Secret Agent of Japan,” starring Preston Foster and Lynn Bari, premieres in New York City. It is the first movie to include the attack on Pearl Harbor as part of its plot.
A convoy bearing needed supplies — fragmented after heavy losses to the Luftwaffe and Italian naval forces — reaches Malta on March 22. The island suffers continued heavy bombing attacks from the Germans. In Asia, Allied forces abandon the Magwe airfield in Burma, 100 miles east of Akyab, a deep-water port on the Bay of Bengal. The British government — fearing that a destabilized India might encourage a Japanese invasion — sends Stafford Cripps, a member of the British War Cabinet, to India to negotiate constitutional proposals for a post-war India. Cripps meets with Mahatma Gandhi, who claims to speak for all Indians, and Mohammad Ali Jinnah, who claims to speak for Muslims in the country. During the talks, Cripps proposes self-government for India after the war in exchange for its loyalty during the conflict. Cripps’s proposals are deemed too radical by prime minister Winston Churchill and the British Cabinet and too conservative by Gandhi and Jinnah, and nothing comes of the effort. From England, the BBC begins transmitting news bulletins in Morse Code to Occupied Europe to benefit resistance fighters there.
On March 23, Japanese troops begin occupying Port Blair in the Andaman Islands, located in the Bay of Bengal, about 780 miles from Calcutta, India. Adolf Hitler issues Führer Directive Number 40, creating the “Atlantic Wall,” a system of coastal defenses and fortifications to protect against a potential Allied invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe from Great Britain. In the U.S., troops begin rounding up Japanese-Americans on the West Coast for relocation to camps in the Sierra Nevada Mountains and points farther inland.
Fighting between Japanese and Chinese forces at Oktwin, Burma, comes to an end on March 24 as the Chinese withdraw to their main defensive line at Toungoo, Burma, nine miles away. The British minesweeper HMS Sharpshooter rams and sinks German sub U-655 in the Barents Sea off the northern coast of Norway.
The RAF on March 25 dispatches bomber raids against targets in France and Germany.
Authorities in Berlin on March 26 mandate that Jews living in the city must clearly identify their houses. German authorities begin deporting Jews to the Auschwitz II-Birkenau extermination camp near Oświęcim, Occupied Poland. The first to arrive: 999 Jewish women from Slovakia. In Occupied Belorussia, the Germans launch “Operation Bamberg,” an offensive against partisans. Within 12 days, over 4,100 anti-Nazi fighters are killed. In Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, police announce that they have arrested over 200 operatives of a Nazi spy ring in the country. In the Mediterranean, the British destroyer HMS Jaguar is torpedoed and sunk by German sub U-652 off Sidi Barrani, Egypt. Lost are 193 crewmen; 53 survive
