Soldiers along the Gustav Line, one of the many turning points in World War II. Youtube.
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.
In Europe, 800 bombers of the U.S. 8th Air Force on May 12, 1944, carry out attacks against synthetic-fuel plants at Leuna, Merseburg, Lützkendorf, and Zeitz, in Germany, and Brüx, in Czechoslovakia. The remains of the German Seventeenth Army in Crimea are destroyed, with the Russians taking 36,000 Axis troops prisoner. In Asia, large numbers of Chinese troops, having crossed the Salween River, invade northern Burma.
In Italy on May 13, the Allies take Sant’Angelo and Castelforte, opening the way to Rome. In Ukraine, Soviet forces complete their occupation of the Crimean Peninsula, the Germans having evacuated over 150,000 soldiers by air and sea over the past several weeks. The American destroyer escort USS Francis M. Robinson sinks the Japanese submarine RO-501 south of the Azores in the North Atlantic. (Formerly the German U-1224, the sub had been one of two transferred in German waters to the Imperial Japanese Navy. After its crew was trained by Kriegsmarine submariners, RO-501 was heading to the Pacific when it was caught.)
In Italy, Free French and French colonial troops break through the Germans’ Gustav Line, on the Cassino front, on May 14. The Luftwaffe conducts a 91-plane night raid on Bristol and its surrounding countryside in southeastern England.
On May 15, the Germans begin withdrawing from the Gustav Line to new positions, called the Adolf Hitler or Dora Line, some 30 miles south of Rome. In London, King George VI, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, U.S. Army Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander, and British Army Gen. Bernard Montgomery, Commander of Ground Forces in Operation Overlord, meet to discuss D-Day plans. In Hungary, under the guidance of SS officials, the deportation of the first of 440,000 Jews to concentration camps in Poland begins. They will be sent at the rate of 4,000 per day.
Aircraft of the RAF’s Coastal Command sink five German U-boats off the coast of Norway on May 16. Soviet aircraft bomb German positions in Minsk, Belorussia.
On May 17, Merrill’s Marauders (the U.S. Army’s 5307th Composite Unit (Provisional)), along with Chinese troops, capture the important airfield at Myitkyina, Burma, about 250 miles north of Mandalay, after a three-week, hundred-mile jungle march. Allied bombers attack oil installations at Japanese-occupied Surabaya, on Java, in the Dutch East Indies.
In Italy, the Battles of Monte Cassino conclude on May 18 with an Allied victory, as the Polish 2nd Army Corps takes the abbey and British forces capture the town; after 123 days of fighting, the Germans depart the area. Off Papua-New Guinea, Japanese resistance ends in the Admiralty Islands.
On May 19, German submarine U-960 is sunk in the Mediterranean northwest of Algiers by depth charges from British aircraft and two U.S. Navy destroyers.
The U.S. Fifth Army captures Gaeta, 89 miles southeast of Rome on May 20. Elements of the Fifth Army’s II Corps enter Fondi, about 13 miles to the northwest. A record 5,000 Allied bombers raid 12 railway targets and nine airfields in northern France and Belgium. A German V-2 rocket, on a test flight, lands near the Bug River about 80 miles east of Warsaw. Polish resistance fighters find the rocket, haul it away and hide it before German troops arrive to recover it. The rocket is later disassembled and shipped to London for examination.
In Italy, a small American force on May 21 makes an amphibious landing at Sperlonga, on the Tyrrhenian seacoast, having embarked at Gaeta, some 12 miles farther south. The U.S. Army’s II Corps captures and occupies the adjacent town of Fondi, 62 miles southeast of Rome, while the French Expeditionary Corps takes Campodimele, 10 miles to the east. In Hawaii, an explosion on a landing craft (LST-353) at Pearl Harbor kills 132 sailors and Marines and injures 380. Six additional LSTs are sunk.
In Italy, the U.S. Fifth Army continues its advance on May 22. The U.S. II Corps moves out of Fondi, following Route 7 northward along the coast. The French Expeditionary Force captures Pico, around 9 miles north of Campodimele. In the Sulu Sea, an American submarine discovers the Japanese fleet concentrating near Tawi-Tawi, the Philippines. In Iceland, a four-day referendum ends with 98% of voters approving a split from Denmark and the founding of the Republic of Iceland.
Paris radio on May 23 reports that the French railway system is in chaos, the disruptions caused primarily by Allied bombing. Gen. Hans Cramer, the last German commander of the Afrika Korps, who had been captured in May 1943, arrives in Berlin. Imprisoned in a POW camp in Wales, his deteriorating health due to asthma spurs the British to repatriate him to Germany through the Swedish Red Cross. He is brought first from Wales to London, with the route taken bringing him through the southwest and south of England. Along the way, he is allowed to see the massive buildup of tanks, planes, ships and personnel being readied for the D-Day invasion. What he doesn’t know is the exact area of England he is being driven through. He overhears — seemingly by accident (but, actually, on purpose) — that the locale is Kent, in southeastern England. This is what Cramer reports to his seniors in Berlin, adding credence to Allied propaganda and misinformation that the invasion will take place in the Calais area, in the north of France. (The materiel buildup that Cramer sees is in Devon, much farther to the southwest, opposite the Normandy coast.)
In Italy, on May 24, Canadian troops break through the German lines in the Liri Valley, triggering a German retreat. The Canadians capture Pontecorvo, west of Cassino, while U.S. troops take Terracina, on the Tyrrhenean Sea, about 55 miles southeast of Rome. The retreating Germans are subjected to heavy air attacks. In Përmet, Albania, King Zog is deposed, and Enver Hoxha becomes the head of a new Albanian anti-fascist government. Iceland begins to sever ties with Denmark. In Parma, Italy, the Nazi-puppet Italian Social Republic publicly executes two captured admirals of the Acqua Regia – Inigo Campioni and Luigi Moschera – for refusing to recognize Mussolini’s government as legitimate and to collaborate with it.
On May 25 in Italy, the Germans are in retreat in the Anzio area. Patrols of the U.S. Fifth Army’s II Corps link up with troops from the U.S. Sixth Army from the beachhead at Anzio to the south. The U.S. Fifth Army continues its drive northward toward Rome. In China, after almost two weeks of combat between 500,000 troops of the Imperial Japanese Army and 390,000 soldiers of the National Army of the Republic of China, the Battle of Central Henan comes to an end in a victory for the Japanese. They capture the strategic city of Luoyang, the one-time capital of China. The Japanese continue southward toward the Indochina border.
Charles de Gaulle on May 26 proclaims his Free French movement to be the “Provisional Government of the French Republic.” Though the new government wins recognition from Czechoslovakia, Poland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Yugoslavia and Norway, Roosevelt and Churchill are furious over de Gaulle’s premature action and refuse recognition. They retaliate by excluding de Gaulle from the final planning for Operation Overlord. In China, having captured Luoyang, the Japanese launch a major, two-pronged attack from Canton and Hankow against the airbases of the U.S. 14th and 20th Air Forces in China. Some 620,000 Japanese troops are involved in the operation to stop the launching of air raids against Japan from along the Chinese coast.
On May 27, “Operation Hurricane” begins: 12,000 American troops land at Biak, Dutch New Guinea, site of a key Japanese air base. Gen. Douglas MacArthur states, “This marks the strategic end of the New Guinea Campaign.”
Allied forces continue their offensive in Italy. The Canadian I Corps captures Ceprano on May 28.
The American escort carrier USS Block Island is sunk by the German submarine U-549 in the North Atlantic off the Canary Islands on May 29. Six crewmen are killed, but 951 are rescued by escorting vessels. U-549 is itself sunk by two destroyer escorts shortly after the torpedoing of Block Island, the only American aircraft carrier to be sunk in the Atlantic Ocean during the war. The U.S. 8th Air Force attacks airplane-production plants at Marienburg and Posen, in eastern Germany, the maximum range of its aircraft.
In Europe, German forces on May 30 attack units of the Soviet 2nd Ukrainian Front north of Jassy, the second-largest city in Romania, and make some headway. Units of the British Eighth Army capture Arce, Italy, in the central Liri Valley.
The Japanese — having suffered heavy losses and experiencing severe problems in maintaining their supply lines — begin retreating from Imphal on May 31, ending their invasion of India. The Red Army repels a heavy German counterattack in southern Ukraine. In Moscow, Stalin gives the go-ahead to “Operation Bagration” (the Soviet summer offensive) intended to destroy German Army Group Centre in Belorussia. In the Pacific, the American destroyer escort USS England sinks the Japanese submarine RO-105 in the Bismarck Sea northwest of New Ireland, its sixth enemy submarine in 12 days, a record for one ship in the war. In Italy, the Canadian I Corps captures Frosinone, the British X Corps takes Sora, and the U.S. VI Corps, around Anzio, captures Velletri and Monte Artemiso.
On June 1, British troops capture Frosinone, in central Italy. German authorities in occupied areas warn citizens that giving aid to downed Allied pilots is a punishable crime. The BBC transmits a coded message to French resistance fighters — the first line of the poem “Chanson d’automne” (“Song of Autumn”) by Paul Verlaine: “The long sobs of the autumn violins . . .” — warning that the invasion of Europe will occur within two weeks.
