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11/01/1943 The Allied offensive in the Northern Solomons swings into high gear as Vice Adm. William Halsey lands 14,000 Marines at Bougainville's lightly defended Empress Augusta Bay, which the Japanese considered too swampy for airfields.
More than 60,000 Japanese are on Bougainville, but most are based at the north and south ends of the 127-mile-long island.
The Marines wipe out a 200-man Japanese outpost, move inland and begin searching for airfield sites.
11/02/1943 An American cruiser-destroyer task force wins the most visually colorful battle of the war.
Twelve American ships commanded by Rear Adm. Stanton "Tip" Merrill prevent 10 Japanese cruisers and destroyers from attacking the fleet that has landed 14,000 Marines on Bougainville.
Merrill's squadron sinks cruiser Sendai and destroyer Hatsukaze and damages several other ships.
The battle is fought at night under low clouds that vividly reflect silver flares, orange gunfire, and towering red, green and gold shell splashes.
Elsewhere, U. S. Army bombers sink three Japanese ships at Rabaul and planes from carriers Saratoga and Princeton blast Japanese airbases near the southern tip of Bougainville.
In Italy, British units of Mark Clark's 5th Army break through part of the Germans' Barbara defenses and reach the Garigliano River.
11/03/1943 More than 500 heavy bombers of the rapidly growing U. S. 8th Air Force devastate the Wilhelmshaven naval base in northern Germany. It's the 8th's biggest raid of the war, thus far.
In Italy, British troops of Mark Clark's 5th Army widen their breach in the Germans' Barbara fortifications by taking Sessa Aurunca, a town near the ancient Appian Way. Inland, the U. S. 45th Infantry throws another bridgehead over the Volturno River.
In the Soviet Union, Gen. Nikolai Vatutin's 1st Ukrainian Army begins a powerful offensive to break out of its Dnieper River Bridgehead 20 miles north of Kiev, Russia's ancient capital. Panicky Germans begin evacuating the city.
Domestically, union president John L. Lewis orders 530,000 coal miners back to work after Interior Secretary Harold Ickes approves a contract paying the miners $8.50 per day.
11/04/1943 The Allies' meat grinder offensives in Italy capture key objectives.
Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexican National Guardsmen of the 45th Infantry take Venafro, a highway junction 10 miles from Cassino, and British units overcome German strongholds on Mounts Massico and Santa Croce near the Mediterranean coast.
In the middle of the peninsula, the British take the road center at Iserna.
11/05/1943 The Japanese Navy suffers a miniature Pearl Harbor when planes from carriers Saratoga and Princeton damage cruisers Atago, Agano, Maya, Mogami, Noshiro, Takao and two destroyers at Rabaul for a loss of only 10 aircraft.
The strike prevents the ships from attacking the beachhead at Bougainville's Empress Augusta Bay where the 3rd Marine division repulses an assault by an Imperial Army regiment.
In Italy, Mark Clark's 5th Army begins a bloody 10-day attack on the Germans' Bernhard defenses south of Cassino. The Bernhard fortifications are stronger than the Barbara line that slowed the Allies to a crawl. On the eastern side of the peninsula, Montgomery's 8th Army takes Vasto, a small Adriatic port.
11/06/1943 Russia celebrates the liberation of Kiev, its ancient capital and third largest city. Stalin announces final victory is near. The victory is scored by Gen. Nikolai Vatutin's 1st Ukrainian Army which two days ago smashed the German 4th Panzer Army 20 miles north of the city.
The Russians are shocked by the Germans' deliberate destruction of Kiev's ancient buildings. They also discover Nazi execution squads have massacred more than 100,000 people, including 33,000 Jews, and dumped their bodies in Babi Yar ravine.
Maj. Erich Rudorffer, a top Luftwaffe ace, shoots down 13 Soviet planes during one mission -- the highest total ever by a pilot during one sortie.
British troops of Mark Clark's 5th Army are repulsed at Mount Camino and Mount la Difensa, two strong points of the Bernhard defense line.
In the Mediterranean, Luftwaffe torpedo planes sink three ships near Algeria, including the American destroyer Beatty.
11/07/1943 In the South Pacific, Japanese destroyers disembark 500 troops near the American beachhead on Bougainville. Their attack on the U. S. 3rd Marine division is repulsed.
The British decide to launch another offensive in Burma. Tentatively scheduled for late December, the drive will make a second stab at Akyab, retake the Andaman Islands and try to reopen a supply line to China.
Mark Clark's American-British 5th Army in Italy makes little progress and suffers heavy casualties during assaults on the Germans' Bernhard defense line.
The Germans are well dug in on mountains south of Cassino and the Garigliano River, and the attacking Yanks and Tommies are exhausted and frozen, crouching on ledges and building rock walls to protect themselves from snipers and artillery. The attackers also are short of food and ammunition.
11/08/1943 In the Pacific, the U. S. 37th "Buckeye" division, a National Guard outfit from Ohio, reinforces the 3rd Marine division on Bougainville in the Solomons.
Frustrated by tough German defenses that inflict horrendous casualties on the American-British 5th Army, Gen. Harold Alexander -- the Allied field commander in Italy -- begins planning a surprise amphibious landing near Rome.
Alexander hopes the maneuver will force Field Marshal Kesselring to abandon his nearly impregnable defense line along the Garigliano River and Cassino, 85 miles south of Rome. At the front, the U. S. 45th Infantry takes Mt. Rotundo, a German bastion south of Cassino.
Hitler tells Nazi party leaders that Germany will fight "come what may."
11/09/1943 A three-day battle erupts on Bougainville in the Solomons as the 3rd Marines push inland and collide with the Japanese 23rd Regiment.
The Japanese will be wiped out and the Marines suffer severe casualties.
Near the Bougainville beachhead, Japanese planes damage cruiser Birmingham and troop transport President Jackson.
In the Ukraine, Gen. Nikolai Vatutin's army has raced 85 miles west of Kiev. But the Soviets are running out of gasoline, ammunition and food and the Germans are preparing a counterattack.
The Free French organize a national liberation committee in Algiers and proclaim Gen. Charles de Gaulle their leader. In the Middle East, street fighting erupts in Beirut as Lebanese Christians and Moslems proclaim the end of French rule. The French resist.
11/10/1943 A Convoy carrying 6,700 New York National Guardsmen of the 27th Infantry sails from Pearl Harbor.
It's the northern wing of an Allied amphibious force that later this month will take Tarawa, Makin and Abemama atolls in the Gilbert Islands.
11/11/1943 American carrier planes sink or damage three Japanese cruisers and destroyers at Rabaul. The raid is the first foray of carriers Essex, Bunker Hill and Independence and the new Curtis "Helldiver" divebombers.
More than 100 Japanese planes counterattack the flattops but score no hits. Thirty-three are shot down by American fighters and anti-aircraft guns.
Elsewhere, the southern wing of the Allied amphibious force that will attack Tarawa, Makin and Abemama in the Gilbert Islands sails from Efate in the New Hebrides. The convoy is escorted by battleships Colorado, Maryland and Tennessee and five Jeep aircraft carriers.
In Japan, Gen. Hideki Tojo's government begins mobilizing women to help the war effort.
11/12/1943 The Japanese Navy orders most of its ships and planes to leave Rabaul. Though 90,000 Japanese will garrison Rabaul until the end of the war, the air and naval base, once the most powerful in the South Pacific, henceforth will be an isolated backwater.
During the past three weeks, 121 carrier planes based at Rabaul have been destroyed during fruitless attacks on American ships and planes. The loss of highly trained crews has denuded the Imperial Navy's carrier groups.
Air attacks on Rabaul have sunk or damaged 12 Japanese cruisers and destroyers.
The Germans make an amphibious landing on Leros in the Dodecanese Islands and begin overwhelming a British-Italian garrison.
Churchill leaves England on the battle cruiser Renown to participate in the Cairo and Tehran conferences with Roosevelt, Stalin and Chiang Kai-shek.
11/13/1943 Allied assaults on the German Bernhard Line in Italy bog down. The GIs and Tommies are numbed by fatigue, heavy losses and cold and rain. Allied field commander Harold Alexander orders the 5th Army to take a three-week break.
In the Eastern Mediterranean, a German plane sinks British destroyer Dulverton.
The Soviet ambassador to Mexico gives a glimpse of the postwar era by saying the future Russo-Polish frontier will be 180 miles west of the prewar border. That means millions of Poles will have to migrate.
11/14/1943 In the South Pacific, the 3rd Marines and the Army's 37th Infantry establish a 6-mile-long perimeter around Bouganville's Empress Augusta Bay.
A near tragedy produces one of the war's most quoted lines.
It happens in mid-Atlantic as the battleship Iowa is carrying Roosevelt, Chief of Naval Operations Ernest King, Air Force Chief of Staff "Hap" Arnold and other brass to the Cairo and Tehran conferences.
An escorting destroyer, the William D. Porter, uses the Iowa as its target during a torpedo drill, but a ham-fisted sailor accidentally fires a fish at the battleship. Whistles blow, the Iowa makes an emergency turn and gunfire destroys the torpedo.
Admiral King is furious. His temper doesn't improve when Arnold asks, "Tell me, Ernest. Does this sort of thing happen often in your Navy?"
A few weeks later, the Porter is banished to Alaska's stormy Aleutian islands.
A German counteroffensive recaptures Zhitomir, a provincial capital and rail junction in the Western Ukraine.
11/15/1943 American bombers based in China heavily damage dockyards at Hong Kong, the British crown colony captured by the Japanese nearly two years ago.
Field Marshal Erich von Manstein burnishes his reputation as Germany's best general by using a handful of panzer divisions to defeat the Red Army in the western Ukraine. By attacking with small groups at several points, he creates the illusion of great strength and the Red Army hastily retreats toward Kiev. It's the second time this year von Manstein has hoodwinked the Russians by cleverly maneuvering heavily outnumbered panzers.
In Italy, Montgomery's British 8th Army throws several bridgeheads across the Sangro River and pushes toward Ortona, a small Adriatic port that's the eastern anchor of the German Gustav defense line.
11/16/1943 The badly conceived attempt by Britain's Winston Churchill to take Greece's Dodecanese islands ends as the Germans capture Leros and 9,000 British and Italians.
11/17/1943 Though the Red Army's four-month offensive in the Ukraine has been halted by German counterattacks, the Soviets continue sweeping across White Russia. The Soviets' latest advance threatens to surround the German 2nd Army near Gomel, a White Russian regional capital.
11/18/1943 In the South Pacific, Japanese troops on Bougainville suffer heavy losses during an attack on the American beachhead at Empress Augusta Bay. A platoon of the 3rd Marine division led by Lt. Steve Cibik captures a hill that dominates the battlefield. Though surrounded, Cibik and his men will hold the hill for five days before being relieved.
The RAF begins a disastrous four-month "Battle of Berlin" as 444 heavy bombers attack the German capital.
It's the first of 16 attacks that RAF Air Marshal Sir Arthur Harris erroneously believes will demolish Berlin and defeat Germany .
The 9,100 RAF sorties will devastate large areas of the city, but Berliners will exhibit the same stiff upper lips that Londoners showed during the "Blitz" of 1940. German fighters and antiaircraft guns will shoot down 600 British bombers.
11/19/1943 Hundreds of planes of the revitalized U. S. Navy pound Japanese bases in Gilbert Islands.
Vice Adm. Raymond Spruance is leading 108,000 sailors, soldiers, Marines and aviators to Tarawa, Makin and Abemama atolls in the Gilberts. His armada includes 19 aircraft carriers carrying 900 planes, 12 battleships, 73 cruisers and destroyers.
Tarawa and Abemama will be invaded by the 2nd Marines and Makin by National Guardsmen of the Army's 27th "New York" Infantry.
In the mid-Pacific, when a Japanese destroyer sinks his sub, the Sculpin, Capt. John Cromwell deliberately goes down with the boat because he fears Japanese torturers will force him to reveal details of the upcoming invasions. He wins a posthumous Medal of Honor.
Australian troops unveil a ghastly new weapon, napalm, during the battle for Sattelberg in eastern New Guinea.
In Russia, the Germans recapture Zhitomir, a rail center 75 miles from the pre-war Polish frontier.
11/20/1943 The 2nd Marine division storms Tarawa in the Central Pacific's Gilbert Islands. A regiment of the Army's 27th "New York" Infantry division has an easier time landing on Makin.
Tarawa's 4,600 Japanese Marines and Korean laborers have turned 3-mile-long Betio island into a concrete and coconut log fortress studded with artillery and machineguns
The Marines are hampered by an inadequate pre-landing bombardment and poorly aimed and badly timed carrier air strikes. Hundreds of Marines are killed or wounded when a low tide forces them to wade across a half-mile-wide coral reef to Betio's beaches.
By nightfall, 1,500 of the 5,000 assaulting Marines are casualties and the survivors are precariously clinging to 1,000 yards of beach and part of Betio's airfield. The 27th fares better against Makin's 600 defenders, but the GIs are making slow progress.
Near Tarawa, carrier Independence is badly damaged by a Japanese torpedo bomber.
11/21/1943 The 2nd Marine division is suffering heavy casualties on Tarawa's Betio island but begins overcoming Rear Adm. Keiji Shibasaki's 4,600-man garrison that has sworn to fight to the death.
Some officers have urged Adm. Spruance to call off the operation, but he refuses. In the morning, Marine reinforcements again are badly cut up as a low tide forces them to wade across a half-mile-wide coral reef When the tide rises at noon, landing craft bring in more Marines, tanks, bulldozers and artillery.
Aided by naval gunfire and air strikes, the Marines destroy Japanese pillboxes and bunkers with hand grenades, TNT and flamethrowers, then storm across the 600-yard-wide island.
By sundown the Japanese defenders are split into two pockets, and Col. David Shoup, the assault's commander, radios "We are winning."
On Makin, 85 miles away, GIs of the 27th "New York" National Guard division capture several Japanese fortifications and overrun much of the atoll's largest island, Butaritari .
11/22/1943 The end is in sight on Tarawa's Betio Island as the 2nd Marine division, naval gunfire and carrier planes knock out Japanese strong points one-by-one. Tarawa's commander, Rear Adm. Keiji Shibasaki, is killed in his headquarters bunker. Many Japanese die during a desperate night banzai charge. Others commit hara-kari.
On Makin, most Japanese strong points on the atoll's largest island, Butaritari, are taken by GIs of the 27th "New York" National Guard division.
Roosevelt, Churchill and Chiang Kai-shek begin a four-day conference in Cairo, deciding the Japanese must give up all the land the have overrun in China and all the Pacific islands the have seized since 1918.
11/23/1943 The 2nd Marine and 27th "New York" National Guard smash the last Japanese strongholds on Tarawa's Betio island and Makins' Butaritari island.
Of the 18,300 Americans who assaulted Betio, 1,085 have been killed and 2,233 wounded. Of the 4,600 Japanese marines and Korean laborers on the island, only 146 have been taken alive.
During the next week, dozens of thirst-crazed Japanese will crawl from Betio's rubble and make suicide attacks. The American public will be stunned when it learns of the ferocity of the fighting and Marines' terrible losses.
11/24/1943 The American escort carrier Liscome Bay is torpedoed and sunk by Japanese sub I-175 near Makin in the Gilbert Islands. The ship's ammunition magazine explodes and 644 of her 900 crewmen are lost.
In the South Pacific, American destroyers commanded by Capt. Arleigh Burke smash a five-ship Tokyo Express near New Ireland, north of the Solomons, sinking destroyers Makinami, Onami and Yugiri. Burke's ships are unscratched in the last naval battle of the 16-month Solomons campaign.
Hitler errs badly when the Luftwaffe demonstrates a prototype Messerschmitt 262 Komet jet fighter. He orders the jet to be used as a bomber, not a fighter.
Domestically, the Senate asks for an investigation of Patton's GI slapping incidents.
11/25/1943 In the Central Pacific, Commander Edward "Butch" O'Hara, a Medal of Honor fighter pilot, is shot down and killed, probably by the gunner of an American torpedo plane.
Elsewhere, bombers of the China-based U. S. 14th Air Force destroy 42 Japanese planes during a raid on Formosa. The 9th Australian division takes Sattelberg, the last Japanese base in eastern New Guinea.
The Allies plan two attacks in Italy to break the German Gustav line, a belt of fortifications 85 miles south of Rome.
Next week, Gen. Mark Clark's American-British 5th Army will renew its assault south of Cassino. An elite American-Canadian unit commanded by Col. Robert Frederick will lead the way.
Soon to be called "The Devil's Brigade," Frederick's First Special Service Force will attack Mt. la Difensa, a peak eight miles south of Cassino that the Germans believe is unclimbable.
If those attacks fail, the next maneuver will be a mid-January amphibious landing at Anzio, 35 miles south of Rome, to outflank the Germans.
11/26/1943 A nine-boat Japanese sub squadron suffers disastrous losses while attacking the enormous American fleet in the Central Pacific. The squadron has only one success, but U. S. destroyers and planes destroy six of the nine subs.
11/27/1943 In the Pacific, Admirals Nimitz and Spruance and top Marine and Army commanders inspect Tarawa's rubble-strewn Betio island.
Nimitz is stunned to discover many Japanese fortifications intact. He decides future Marine assaults must be preceded by pulverizing naval and air bombardments.
The British 8th Army expands its bridgehead across the Sangro River on the Adriatic side of the Italian peninsula and prepares to assault the German Gustav line. The 8th's goal is Pescara, Adriatic terminus of a road that runs across Italy to Rome.
It will be Gen. Bernard Montgomery's last battle with his "Desert Rats." Monty will return to England later this month to command British forces during the liberation of France. His last battle with the 8th will be a failure.
In a rare appearance in the Italian theater, Luftwaffe bombers blast Naples.
11/28/1943 Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin begin a four-day conference in Tehran, with Stalin promising the Soviet Union will attack Japan after Germany is defeated.
Roosevelt and Churchill confirm the western Allies will invade northern France next spring and land in southern France during the summer. Stalin says the Red Army will launch a major offensive to coincide with the landings in northern France.
In Italy, Montgomery's 8th Army assaults the eastern end of the German Gustav line. Aided by artillery, the 2nd New Zealand and 8th Indian divisions crack German defenses along the Sangro River and advance toward Ortona, an Adriatic port that's one of the Gustav line's linchpins.
The German counteroffensive in northern Ukraine traps a large Red Army force in Korosten, a station on the Kiev-Warsaw rail line. It's one of the Wehrmacht's few 1943 successes in Russia.
11/29/1943 In the South Pacific, a U. S.-Australian destroyer squadron bombards Gasmata in western New Britain. It's the beginning of an Allied effort to seize the western end of 325-mile-long island without challenging Rabaul's 91,000-strong garrison on the island's eastern end.
In the Central Pacific, planes from the escort carrier Chenango sink Japanese sub I-21.
The Navy commissions the 27,000-ton aircraft carrier Hornet II, namesake of the flattop lost last year during the Guadalcanal campaign.
Gen. Mark Clark's American-British 5th Army renews its offensive in Italy with probing attacks by the U. S. 34th "Red Bull" and 45th "Thunderbird" divisions. A full assault on the Germans will come in three days.
The British 8th Army breaks the eastern end of the Germans' Gustav line and plods toward Ortona, an Adriatic port and German stronghold.
11/30/1943 In the South Pacific, U. S. 6th Army commander Walter Krueger picks Arawe for the Allies' first landing on New Britain.
Krueger, whose German parents brought him to the United States as a child, is the only foreign-born officer to command an American army during World War II.
The Arawe landing is scheduled for December 15.
Lt. Gen. Alexander Vandegrift -- commander of the 1st Marine division at Guadalcanal and the 3rd Marine division during the landing on Bougainville -- is named commandant of the Marine Corps.
Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin end their four-day conference at Tehran with discussions on postwar Poland and Finland. Stalin wants Poland moved westward by giving a 180-mile strip of pre-war Poland to the Soviet Union and a 100-mile strip of eastern Germany turned over to the Poles.
Finland would lose territory but retain independence.
