United States Army soldiers hunt Japanese infiltrators on Bougainville in March 1944. For more details on Bougainville, click on this link.
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.
U.S. Navy carrier planes cripple a Japanese naval squadron at Rabaul on November 5, forcing six cruisers to withdraw northward to Truk for repairs. In Italy, a still-unidentified aircraft drops four bombs on neutral Vatican City, near St. Peter’s Basilica. Windows and glass cases are broken at St. Peter’s, but there are no casualties. As the Red Army approaches Kiev, the Germans dynamite many old churches and public buildings in the city.
The Red Army liberates the city of Kiev, Ukraine, the nation’s capital, on November 6. Off the coast of Algeria, the destroyer USS Beatty is torpedoed and sunk by a Luftwaffe Junkers Ju 88 fast bomber. Of Beatty’s crew of 276, one sailor was fatally injured, seven were wounded and 11 wound up missing.
In the Solomon Islands, U.S. Navy Task Force 38 — including the aircraft carriers USS Saratoga and USS Princeton — is attacked by 100 Japanese aircraft on November 7. The air attack fails to achieve any hits on the carriers. Meanwhile, on Bougainville Island, a Japanese battalion is landed to the north of the beachhead held by the U.S. 3rd Marine Division; heavy fighting ensues.
On November 8, Adolf Hitler, in what will be his last speech to the Nazi Party, says “We shall go on fighting past 12 o’clock.” Radio Moscow, broadcasting news from newly liberated Kiev, reports that only one Jew is left alive in the city. Prior to the German invasion, over 140,000 Jews had lived in the Ukrainian capital.
Representatives of 44 governments, meeting in Atlantic City, New Jersey, on November 9 establish the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration to prepare for the post-war reconstruction of Europe and the Far East. In Washington, the U.S. Senate passes a bipartisan resolution calling for a federal plan “to save the Jewish people of Europe from extinction at the hands of Nazi Germany.”
The Greek island of Kos, in the Aegean, is now fully under German control. British destroyers offshore shell craft anchored in the harbor on November 10. In Hamburg, Germany, three Roman Catholic priests and a Lutheran minister— known as “the Lübeck Martyrs” (they are all from that German city) — are executed by beheading after being convicted of treason for their public opposition to the Nazis’ anti-Christian and anti-Semitic actions.
On November 11 two separate U.S. Navy carrier task forces attack the Japanese base at Rabaul on New Britain Island. Five aircraft carriers and 185 planes are involved. The Japanese lose almost 70 of their defending fighters as well as one light cruiser and two destroyers in the attack. A retaliatory Japanese air strike on the carriers fails. In the Mediterranean, an Allied convoy east of Oran, Algeria, is attacked by about 50 German aircraft. Three transports and one tanker are sunk.
