Allies brought thousands of tons of equipment to the European mainland after D-Day, including this combat plane. Image by ddzphoto from Pixabay
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 Normandy on June 30, 1944, the fighting rages on. Since D-Day, the Allies have landed 630,000 troops, 600,000 tons of supplies and 177,000 vehicles. Allied losses have numbered 62,000 killed and wounded. U.S. forces abandon the airfield at Hengyang, China, in the face of a strong Japanese offensive. The U.S. breaks off diplomatic relations with Finland. In Jerome, Arkansas, a relocation center housing 8,497 interned Japanese and Japanese-American U.S. citizens closes. It is the first of the facilities established under President Roosevelt’s Executive Order 9066 to be shut down. President Roosevelt signs a bill providing for independence for the Philippines once the Japanese are removed from the islands. (The Philippines had been a Commonwealth of the U.S. since 1935.)
In France, the 1st SS Panzer Korps, part of the German Seventh Army, mounts an armored attack around Caen on July 1, 1944, but the British Second Army holds off the assault. In Italy, German forces in front of the British Eighth Army begin to withdraw. In New Hampshire, the Bretton Woods Conference convenes to deal with post-war financial and economic problems. Representatives of 44 countries at the meeting establish the International Monetary Fund for Reconstruction and Development.
German V-1 “flying bomb” attacks against England continue on July 2, especially against London, with considerable destruction and loss of life. About 7,100 Allied troops land at Noemfoor Island, Dutch New Guinea, against no resistance from the Japanese garrison stationed at an airfield there. On Saipan, in the Marianas, American troops continue their advance; Garapan village is overrun. On Europe’s Eastern Front, Soviet forces cut several rail lines running westward from Minsk, Belorussia.
Minsk, the capital of Belorussia, is captured by the Soviets on July 3, trapping 100,000 Germans in a pocket to the east. Minsk is the locale of the last large German base on Soviet soil. In Italy, Siena falls to Algerian troops fighting along with Free French forces.
On July 4 the general strike in Copenhagen that began on June 26 ends. The Germans repeal the 8 p.m. to 5 a.m. curfew that triggered the protest to avoid further popular uprisings in Denmark. The Nazis also agree to no reprisals and no firing into unarmed crowds. The Soviet 1st Baltic Front begins an offensive toward Riga, Latvia, capturing Polotsk, Belorussia, and threatening to isolate German Army Group North during its fighting retreat from Estonia. Elements of the U.S. Navy’s Task Force 58 attack Guam, in the Mariana Islands, Iwo Jima, in the Volcano Islands, and Chichijima, in the Bonin Islands, with naval bombardments.
German U-boats begin operations off the Normandy coast on July 5, sinking four small Allied warships. On the Eastern Front, in Belorussia, the Red Army begins the destruction of the German Fourth and Ninth Armies, comprising around 100,000 troops. On Noemfoor Island, Dutch New Guinea, the Japanese garrison there counterattacks the Allied beachhead but fails to make any progress.
On Saipan, on July 6, the Japanese launch the largest human-wave banzai charge of the war. The 1st and 2nd Battalions of the U.S. Army’s 105th Infantry are hit hardest, losing 650 men. However, the charge fails, and 4,300 Japanese soldiers are slaughtered. Hitler replaces Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt with Field Marshal Günther von Kluge as Commander in Chief, West. In London, Winston Churchill states that 2,754 “doodlebugs” (V-1 flying bombs) have been launched by the Germans, causing 2,752 deaths and 8,000 injuries so far. He also announces that penicillin, heretofore restricted to military use, would be available to V-1 victims. In Hartford, Connecticut, 100 children and 70 adults die in a circus-tent fire at a performance of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Over 700 others are injured. As part of a Polish national uprising, 4,200 soldiers of the Polish Home Army (Armia Krajowa), together with thousands of partisans and civilian volunteers, launch an attack against the 7,700 Germans occupying Vilnius, the largest city and capital of Lithuania. The next day, the Poles are joined by several units of the Red Army that are in the vicinity.
On July 7, on Saipan, Vice Adm. Chuichi Nagumo, commander of naval forces there (he had commanded the carriers at the Pearl Harbor attack) and Lt. Gen. Yoshitsugu Saito, the local army commander, commit suicide independently of each other as the Japanese position on the island deteriorates. In Europe, 50 heavy RAF bombers carry out a saturation raid, dropping 2,300 tons of ordnance on the German positions in and around Caen, France. 1,129 USAAF bombers attack aircraft factories and oil-processing plants in the Leipzig area of Germany.
U.S. Navy ships on July 8 shell Guam, in the Mariana Islands. Southwest of Minsk, Belorussia, Lt. Gen. Vincenz Müller, commander of the surrounded German Fourth Army, surrenders with 57,000 men. Vicious street fighting is reported as Polish Home Army soldiers and Soviet troops enter Vilnius, Lithuania. German Army Group Center’s losses have now reached 300,000 men (28 divisions) in less than three weeks. In France, British and Canadian troops reach the outskirts of Caen.
Saipan is declared secured on July 9. The Japanese lose over 27,000 troops killed. In the last stages of the battle, numerous native civilians commit suicide at the encouragement of the Japanese military. Overall, 3,116 Americans have died in the fighting; over 13,000 have been wounded. A major Soviet offensive begins east of Riga, Latvia, in order to cut off German Army Group North in the Baltic States. The 2nd Belorussian Front attacks northwest from Vitebsk, the 3rd Belorussian Front attacks west from Psovsk and the Leningrad Front attacks southwest toward Narva. British and Canadian troops capture Caen, France, in Normandy.
On July 10, Tokyo is bombed for the first time since the Doolittle Raid in April 1942. On New Guinea, the Japanese are still offering fierce resistance to the Allied advance. German and Finnish forces turn back the Red Army at Talli-Inhantala and at Vyborg Bay, Finland. Because of the dangers posed by German V-1 flying bombs, 41,000 British mothers and children are evacuated from London and head for assigned lodging in the countryside.
In Washington, D.C., President Roosevelt announces on July 11 that he will run for an unprecedented fourth term. The United States formally recognizes the provisional French government of Gen. Charles de Gaulle in London as the de facto government of France. The Red Army captures an additional 35,000 soldiers from the remnants of the encircled German Fourth Army, eliminating resistance in Belorussia east of Minsk. In Normandy, the German Tiger II heavy tank makes its combat debut.
In Italy, the Allies begin air attacks on the bridges over the Po River on July 12. In France, the U.S. First Army gets to within two miles of Saint-Lô but meets stiff German resistance. At Méautis, Normandy, France (14 miles from Sainte-Mère-Église), U.S. Army Brig. Gen. Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., son of the former president, dies of a heart attack. The only general to land by sea with the first wave of troops on D-Day (at Utah Beach), Roosevelt was, at age 56, the oldest man in the invasion. He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor.
On July 13, a German Junkers Ju 88G-1 multi-role combat plane, equipped with secret SN-2 radar, lands by mistake at Woodbridge military airfield in Suffolk, England, giving the RAF its first look at the new radar and the aircraft’s radar-detection gear. In Italy, the French Expeditionary Corps, part of the U.S. Fifth Army, engages with German forces about 20 miles south of Florence. In Asia, Japanese troops and their Indian allies continue withdrawing from India to Burma. The abortive invasion of India has cost the lives of over 65,000 Japanese and Japanese-allied Indian National Army soldiers.
