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04/01/1944 The encircled battalion of Merrill's Marauders, an elite force of American fighters, repels a Japanese assault at Nhpum Ga in northern Burma.
Hundreds of American and British bombers and fighter-bombers begin a massive pre-invasion assault on French rail lines, roads and bridges. Eisenhower wants to prevent the Germans from reinforcing the Normandy beachhead when Allied forces splash ashore in June.
American bombers make a deadly mistake by bombing Schaffhausen, a Swiss town on the Rhine 23 miles north of Zurich. Fifty people are killed and 150 injured. The United States will pay millions of dollars in compensation to Switzerland in 1949.
In Ukraine, Malinovsky's 3rd Ukrainian Army slogs to within 23 miles of Odessa.
04/02/1944 In Burma, an attempt to rescue a surrounded battalion of Merrill's Marauders is defeated by Japanese near Nhpum Ga. The British score a success in eastern India when the 17th British-Indian division fights through the last of four Japanese roadblocks near Imphal.
The War Department says that victories in the Pacific have trapped 100,000 Japanese in the Marshall island, the Bismarck archipelago, the Solomon Islands and New Guinea. The figure actually is more than 150,000.
Konev's army crosses the Pruth River and surges into northern Romania. Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov immediately offers peace terms to the Romanians.
Zhukov sends an ultimatum to the 1st German Panzer Armee surrounded in northern Ukraine: surrender by nightfall or one-third of all prisoners taken after the deadline will be executed. The Germans ignore the threat.
04/03/1944 Though the Japanese 15th Army is threatening India, Lord Louis Mountbatten, allied supreme commander in Southeast Asia, orders Stilwell to intensify his offensive in upper Burma. Mountbatten is determined to open the Ledo Road to China.
In the South Pacific, American bombers pound Japanese airfields at Hollandia, New Guinea. More than 300 planes have been destroyed at Hollandia during the past five days as MacArthur prepares to take the big Japanese base.
German super-battleship Tirpitz is severely damaged at Altenfjord, northern Norway, by planes from six British aircraft carriers. Tirpitz, damaged six months ago by British midget submarines, had been repaired and was preparing to sail when 82 planes from the flattops score 16 hits. Tirpitz is knocked out for another three months.
Elsewhere in Europe, American bombers make the first raid of the war on Budapest.
04/04/1944 The beleaguered British-Indian garrison at Kohima, in eastern India, repulses a powerful Japanese attack.
The inexperienced Indian soldiers fight like lions -- burning their hands as they replace worn-out, red-hot machine gun barrels. Kohima's surrounded defenders are on a hilltop overlooking the Imphal-Dimapur road, the only highway.
Nearby, British-Indian units near Imphal retreat when the Japanese ignite a huge brush fire.
Churchill tells Parliament that 232,000 Commonwealth soldier, sailors, airmen and civilians have been killed during the past 4 ½ years.
Gen. Charles de Gaulle is named supreme commander of the Free French forces.
04/05/1944 The Japanese 15th Army pushes to within 80 miles of Dimapur, junction of the only highway leading to Imphal and eastern India's railroad. If Dimapur falls, the Japanese have a golden opportunity to invade mainland India.
Domestically, Wendell Wilkie, the Republicans' 1944 presidential candidate, withdraws from the 1944 presidential race after losing the Wisconsin primary.
Wilkie, the "barefoot boy from Wall Street," has irritated Republicans by supporting FDR's war policies, New York Gov. Thomas Dewey is now favored to win his party's nomination.
A Government spokesman announces the United States has shipped 9.5 million tons of Lend-Lease supplies to the Soviet Union since Pearl Harbor, including 8,800 warplanes, 5,500 tanks and armored cars, 160,000 trucks and 19,000 railroad cars.
04/06/1944 The battle for Kohima grows bloodier when a British-Indian relief force is surrounded by the Japanese two miles from the beleaguered hilltop fortress.
The Allies' situation in India and Burma is a nightmare. The Japanese 15th Army has forged four encirclements, two at Kohima, a third at Imphal and a fourth at Nhpum Ga in upper Burma, where a battalion of Merrill's Marauders is surrounded.
Reinforcements are on the way, U. S. and RAF transports airlift the 7th British-Indian division to eastern India, and the 17th British-Indian division completes a fighting retreat to Imphal.
Domestically, the Office of War Information says the Army has reached its planned strength of 7.7 million men and women but will need 75,000 - 100,000 replacements per month.
04/07/1944 Plans for Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of Normandy, near completion.
Three airborne divisions will make night jumps on the eastern and western flanks of five beachhead. The Americans will storm "Omaha" and "Utah" beaches and the British and Canadians "Gold", "Juno" and "Sword" beaches. Eisenhower plans to land 900,000 men during the first three weeks and 1.7 million men during the first two months.
Twenty U. S. infantry, armored and airborne divisions are concentrated in southern England for the invasion.
04/08/1944 The Red Army opens its third major offensive of the year as Gen. Feodor Tolbukhin's 4th Ukrainian Army attacks German-Romanian defenses at the northern end of the Crimean peninsula.
Tolbukhin has 470,000 Men, 6,000 Guns, 600 tanks and 1,250 planes. Another Soviet force in the eastern Crimea will join the attack tomorrow. The hapless German-Romanian 17th Army is outnumbered 2-to-1, has only 200 tanks, not much artillery and only 150 planes.
Elsewhere, Zhukov and Konev's armies take hundreds of towns and villages in northern Romania as the slog forward on a 60-mile front. Further north, Zhukov's outriders reach the pre-war frontier of Czechoslovakia. The Luftwaffe loses another top ace when American fighters knock down Oberleutnant Josef Zwernemann, victor of 126 aerial combats.
04/09/1944 Shortages of supplies and ammunition force the Japanese to pull back from Nhpum Ga in upper Burma, where a battalion of Merrill's Marauders has been besieged for two weeks. Nearly half the American jungle fighters have been killed, wounded or incapacitated by disease.
The Japanese 15th Army cuts Imphal's last link to India. Henceforth, all supplies will have to be airlifted.
The Red Army routs the out manned and outgunned German-Romanian 17th Army in the Crimea.
A two-pronged attack, by Gen. Feodor Tolbukhin's forces in the north of the peninsula and Gen. Andrei Yeremenko's troops near Kerch, cause a panicky retreat by the Germans and Romanians toward the Black Sea fortress of Sevastopol.
In northern Ukraine, Gen. Hans Hube's 1st Panzer Armee breaks out of a Soviet encirclement and rejoins Wehrmacht forces in eastern Poland.
04/10/1944 Gen. William Slim, the unflappable British field commander in eastern India, orders another reinforcement column to rescue two British-Indian units besieged by the Japanese near Kohima. Slim is confident he can hold Imphal and Dimapur, defeat the Japanese 15th Army and launch a counter-offensive to retake Burma.
Malinovsky's 3rd Ukrainian Army takes Odessa, the Soviet Union's second largest seaport after Leningrad. Nearly 25,000 Germans escape by ship to Romania.
In Italy, the U. S. 85th "Custer Division," an infantry outfit with a large number of draftees, gets its first taste of combat near Minturno and Castelforte, not far from Cassino. The 85th's performance impresses Army Chief of Staff George Marshall, who says the Army's training programs are producing first-class fighting soldiers.
04/11/1944 The Red Army rolls into the heart of the Crimea as the German-Romanian 17th Army retreats toward Sevastopol.
Morale on both sides is high: exuberant Soviets are certain of victory, the Axis forces are confident Hitler will send ships to rescue them.
Tolbukhin's fast-moving 4th Ukrainian Army takes Dzhanskoy, the northern Crimea's principal road and rail junction. Gen. Andrei Yeremenko's forces take Kerch, an ancient Russian fortress in eastern Crimea.
Low-flying RAF bombers gut Gestapo headquarters in The Hague, Holland, destroying dossiers on the Dutch resistance.
In nearby Amsterdam, a 14-year-old girl named Anne Frank writes in her diary: "Who has made us Jews different to all other people? Who has allowed us to suffer so terribly up to now?" She answers her questions with: "It is God that has made us as we are, but it will be God, too, who will raise us up again."
04/12/1944 Capt. Richard Bong of Superior, Wisconsin, a Lockheed P-38 fighter pilot, shoots down three Japanese planes over New Guinea and increases his victory total to 28. Bong is the first U. S. Air Force pilot to surpass Capt. Eddie Rickenbacker, America's World War I ace-of-aces, who downed 26.
A hastily organized flotilla begins evacuating German and Romanian troops from Sevastopol in the Crimea as the Red Army swoops toward the city.
During the next four days, nearly 70,000 men of the 17th German-Romanian Army will be sea-lifted to Romania.
Italian King Victor Emmanuel III abdicates and names his son Umberto Regent. The transfer of power will occur when the Allies occupy Rome.
04/13/1944 More than three-quarters of the Crimea falls to the Red Army as fast-moving tanks and motorized infantry close in on Sevastopol, a naval base near the peninsula's southwestern tip.
04/14/1944 A British-Indian relief column crashes through one of the two Japanese encirclements in eastern India. But the still surrounded Kohima garrison is near the end of its tether.
Navy Secretary Frank Knox announces that the courtsmartial of Adm. Husband Kimmel and Gen. Walter Short -- Navy and Army commanders during the attack on Pearl Harbor -- will not be held at this time.
Eisenhower wins a festering argument with his air commanders over the missions Allied heavy bombers will fly during the Normandy invasion. Ike wants the heavies to be diverted from raids on Germany to French and Belgian railroads and highways. The Joint Chiefs of Staff agree with Ike and issue the order.
04/15/1944 A Japanese troop convoy sails from Shanghai, China, with 20,000 reinforcements for New Guinea, Nearly half of its troops will be drowned when subs Jack and Gurnard torpedo four transports near the Philippines and Dutch East Indies.
In the Burma-India theater, Supreme Allied Commander Lord Louis Mountbatten moves his headquarters from New Delhi, India, to Ceylon due to the worrisome Japanese offensive in eastern India.
Zhukov's 1st Ukrainian Army takes Tarnopol, an ancient Polish border fortress, after two-month siege.
Domestically, the 27,000-ton aircraft carrier Hancock is commissioned at Quincy, Massachusetts, the 18th large or medium-sized flattop to join the fleet since Pearl Harbor.
04/16/1944 MacArthur -- who won three Republican delegates in the Wisconsin primary -- denies he's a presidential candidate.
Domestically, the 45,000-ton battleship Wisconsin is commissioned at Philadelphia Navy Yard.
The Allied naval plan for the D-Day landing in Northern France is completed.
More than 6,000 ships -- including 1,211 warships, 2,727 transports and 2,500 landing craft -- will comprise the mightiest armada of all time. The invasion's 150,000-man first wave will seize two air heads and a 60-mile beachhead at Normandy.
In Russia, the 17th German-Romanian Army abandons vast quantities of arms and equipment as it flees to Sevastopol.
The Soviets' pursuing 4th Ukrainian Army takes Yalta, a famous Black Sea resort.
04/17/1944 Alarmed by construction of B29 bomber bases in China, the Japanese launch a major offensive to capture the U. S. 14th Air Force's airfields.
Four 9,000-foot runways are being built by 500,000 Chinese peasants near Chengtu in central China. From there, the B29s can reach the Japanese home islands. The Japanese hope to topple Chiang Kai-shek's shaky government and steal China's summer rice harvest.
Another Japanese attack nearly overruns the surrounded British-Indian garrison at Kohima. The Japanese are driven back after desperate hand-to-hand fighting.
Domestically, Secretary of War Henry Stimson announces the Army will need another 750,000 men by year's end.
A Lockheed Constellation flown by Howard Hughes establishes a coast-to-coast speed record by flying from Burbank, California, to Washington, D. C., in six hours and 58 minutes.
04/18/1944 Gen. Feodor Tolbukhin's 4th Ukranian Army reaches the outskirts of Sevastopol and takes Balaklava, scene of the charge of the Light Brigade during the Crimean War. The 17th German-Romanian Army is trapped in Sevastopol and awaiting evacuation by ship.
04/19/1944 A task force that includes American carrier Saratoga and British flattop Illustrious bombs Japanese airfields at Sabang, Sumatra. The Royal Navy's first offensive strike in the Southwest Pacific in two years sinks a cargo ship and destroys 27 planes.
The Japanese offensive in China gathers momentum as the 12th Army pushes down the Peking-Hankow Railroad toward four B-29 bases of the U. S. 14th Air Force. The Japanese easily defeat Chiang Kai-shek's poorly led, equipped and trained army.
Action along the Soviet front subsides as spring mud and floods make movement impossible. The exception is the Crimea, where Tolbukhin's 4th Ukrainian Army is closing on Sevastopol.
Two years ago, the Axis overwhelmed a 100,000-man Red Army garrison in Sevastopol after a bloody, eight-month siege. Now, the Soviets are the attackers and the Germans the defenders.
04/20/1944 In storybook fashion, a battalion of the British Royal Berkshires breaks the 23-day siege of Kohima and rescues the nearly comatose remnants of the town's garrison. Kohima's survivors are immediately evacuated to India, but the battle continues with the Berkshires and other Allied units attacking the Japanese.
Soviet planes, destroyers, subs and torpedo boats attack German and Romanian ships evacuating the 17th German-Romanian Army from Sevastopol. During the next three weeks, the Soviets will sink 10 Axis ships, but the sea lift will rescue more than 42,000 troops.
Hitler gets bad news on his 55th birthday when Turkey halts vital chrome shipments to German war industries.
04/21/1944 Planes from 12 American carriers pound Japanese air bases on New Guinea as a 217-ship fleet carrying MacArthur and 84,000 men nears Hollandia and Aitape, New Guinea.
Enemy airbases at Sarmi and Wakde in western New Guinea get a second bashing with night bombardments by cruisers Biloxi, Mobile, Santa Fe and five destroyers.
German Field Marshal Ferdinand Schorner begs Hitler to evacuate the 17th German-Romanian Army from Sevastopol. Once again, Hitler ignores a top military commander. He orders "Fortress Sevastopol" to hold out for eight weeks to discourage Turkey from joining the Allies. Hitler doesn't know that the Turks have already decided to remain neutral.
04/22/1944 MacArthur springs a brilliant surprise with landings at Hollandia and Aitape, New Guinea. Hollandia's rear-echelon headquarters and airfield complex are 450 miles behind Japanese lines.
In China, the Japanese take Chengchow, a railroad center.
04/23/1944 MacArthur's twin blows at Hollandia and Aitape, New Guinea, are overwhelming successes. Feeble opposition is encountered as the Army's 24th, 32nd and 41st Infantry divisions expand beachheads. The Aitape operation takes the big Japanese-built airfield at Tadji.
In eastern India, the British, having broken the siege of Kohima, try to surround and overwhelm Japanese forces in the village and nearby hills.
In Europe, Hitler and Mussolini begin a two-day conference at the Fuhrer's Wolf's Lair headquarters in East Prussia.
04/24/1944 The U. S. War Department predicts Japan won't collapse until its home islands are invaded.
Hitler stuns the 17th German-Romanian Army in Sevastopol by ordering it to fight to the last man. The 17th commander bitterly protests, saying the Fuhrer's decision is a death sentence. He recommends speedy evacuation to Romania.
Fighting flares in Italy's Anzio beachhead as an American surprise attack lunges two miles toward Cisterna and the Appian Way, the main road to Rome.
The British government bans overseas travel to prevent pre-Normandy invasion information leaks. And 400 French civilians die when American bombers hit the center of Rouen instead of the city's rail yards.
04/25/1944 The battle of Kohima flares as British-Indian units push through jungle-covered mountain to surround the Japanese 31st division. The British are trying to drive the Japanese from the Kohima-Imphal road and crack through Japanese forces besieging Imphal.
On New Guinea, elements of the U. S. 24th "Victory" Infantry division close in on two Japanese airfields at Hollandia.
Another Army outfit gets its first whiff of combat as California and Utah National Guardsmen of the 40th "Grizzly" Infantry battle Japanese units on New Britain in the South Pacific.
Patton starts another controversy during a speech to women sponsors of a British soldier's club. He says it's the destiny of the United States and Britain to rule the world after the war. Diplomats scramble to soothe the outraged Soviet Union.
04/26/1944 American forces at Hollandia, New Guinea, take two Japanese-built airfields. Further east the 5th Australian division takes the Japanese base at Alexishafen.
Patton's remarks that the United States and Britain will rule the postwar world causes an uproar in the United States.
Left-wingers accuse Patton of insulting the Soviet Union. Republicans charge he's improperly supporting FDR's grandiose foreign policy. Secretary of War Henry Stimson says Patton's remarks are his personal opinions, not the views of the War Department.
Planes from Royal Navy carriers sink three German cargo ships near Bodo, Norway.
British commandos and Greek Guerrillas ambush and kidnap Gen. Heinrich Kreipe, commander of German forces on Crete.
After a 17-day cross-island trek, Kreipe will be taken to Egypt by boat.
04/27/1944 Rains turn eastern India into a swamp and impede British-Indian attacks at Kohima. During the next five weeks, Kohima will be a rainy, muddy nightmare and both sides will be riddled by malaria and dysentery.
American sub Bluegill torpedoes and sinks Japanese cruiser Yubari in the western Pacific.
German torpedo boats cross the English Channel and sink two American tank landing ships and damage a third. Nearly 750 GIs and sailors perish in the "Battle of Slapton Sands," named for a nearby training area.
Worried about the impact on the D-Day troops' morale, the Army and Navy hush up the Slapton Sands disaster.
The Luftwaffe loses another top gun as Maj. Kurt Ubber, victor of 110 combats, is downed near Reims, France, by American P-47 Thunderbolts.
04/28/1944 American planes in China pound Japanese forces threatening the bases of Gen. Clair Chennault's 14th Air Force. Chennault mistakenly believes his planes can stop the advance by smashing the Yellow River bridges.
Stateside, Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, 70, Republican vice-presidential candidate in 1936 and one of Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders, succumbs to a heart attack.
More than 2,000 American planes attack railroads and highways in Normandy, northern France and Belgium. To distract the Germans from the D-Day beaches, only one-third of the targets are in Normandy.
Hitler is convinced the Allies will land near Calais, only 22 miles from Dover, England. To smash the invasion, he has positioned much of his army near Calais.
German torpedo boats sink Canadian destroyer Athabaskan near Brest, France.
04/29/1944 Planes from 12 American carriers begin a two-day assault on Truk in the central Pacific.
Nearly 100 Japanese planes are destroyed, naval facilities wrecked and fuel and ammo dumps destroyed. Twenty-six American planes are shot down, but the submarine Tang rescues some of the crews by daringly sailing into Truk lagoon.
Eisenhower considers shelving Patton, but Patton is the key figure in an elaborate deception designed to convince the Germans that Allied forces will land near Calais.
Patton commands a fictitious army group supposedly camped in southeast England. The phantom army has dummy camps, phony landing craft and a radio network that issues fake orders.
Hitler and the German commander in France, Field Marshal Gerd von Runstedt have fallen for the scheme.
The 27,000-ton carrier Bon Homme Richard is launched at Brooklyn Navy Yard, the 22nd large or medium flattop sent down the ways since Pearl Harbor.
04/30/1944 Gen. "Vinegar Joe" Stilwell's Chinese-American army resumes its offensive by thrusting toward Myitkyina, the main Japanese base in upper Burma.
During the next three weeks, Stilwell's forces will march across a 6,000-foot, jungle-covered mountain range on trails known only to Burmese guides. It's another chapter in Stilwell's audacious drive to carve the Ledo Road from India to China.
An American task force with eight cruisers blasts Japanese bases in Satawan Islands, southeast of Truk.
The naval air strikes and bombardments are to prevent Japanese reinforcements from opposing MacArthur's leapfrog attacks in New Guinea.
American and British planes intensify the pre-invasion attacks on rail lines and highways in northern France and Belgium.
Their goal is to slash German military traffic to Normandy by two-thirds.
