UNITED KINGDOM: Frigates HMS Murchison and Enard Bay launched. (Dave Shirlaw)
NETHERLANDS: The German Fifteenth Army is in full retreat from the southern Netherlands, with troops packing the ferries across the Maas and crowding the last two bridges at Moerdijk. Two German columns, a six-mile-long one approaching the bridges and a second, 12 miles long, beyond the river, are being attacked from the air. The final battle to clear the approaches to Antwerp is about to start. Most of the Beveland isthmus has been cleared, but German positions on Walcheren, at the entrance to the Scheldt estuary, must be taken before the port can open.
The Americans, who captured Aachen ten days ago, today appointed a non-Nazi burgomeister; he cannot be named, because the Nazis have threatened death to relatives of anyone who takes office under the Allies.
Further south, Patton's US Third Army is stalled for the time being on the Moselle. Aggrieved at being assigned lowest priority for supplies of fuel, he has sent his officers foraging among the dumps of the US First Army; they have returned with "quite a bit of gasoline". Though Patton is authorised only to carry out "continuous reconnaissance", he intends to push for the Saar.
The French First Army is pushing into the Vosges with the aim of seizing the Belfort Gap and striking north to Strasburg.
GERMANY: Overnight Cologne was blitzed by 493 RAF heavy bombers. The raid in which 3,451 tons of bombs and 610 tons of incendiaries were dropped killed 554 Germans.
Britain said that the destruction was necessary to ensure that Cologne was not used as an "advance base". In other raids aimed at oil refineries, 671 US bombers attacked eleven targets. A planned raid by 459 B-17s on the oil plant at Luena had to turn back because of bad weather.
U-2541 laid down.
U-2346 launched.
U-2517 commissioned. (Dave Shirlaw)
DENMARK: The RAF uses a precision attack to bomb the
Shellhus (Shell Oil Building) in Copenhagen. This is the headquarters of
the Gestapo in Denmark. The successful raid, mounted at the request of the
Danish underground, destroys Gestapo records. The aid to the Danish resistance
is weighed against the perils of the mission. Despite the location near a
school, the raid is executed against very high odds of success by Mosquito
bombers.
Unfortunately, the school was bombed by mistake. More than 80 people were
killed, almost all of them children. Today the Shellhus has been rebuilt, and
there is a plaque above the main door honoring the RAF fliers who didn't return
from the mission. This raid is covered thoroughly in Danish schools; everybody
there is familiar with it. (Julian Gomez)
Aarhus, Jutland: A young Danish pastor tortured to breaking point be the Gestapo
at Aarhus university was set free by the raid, led by the same Australian
squadron that hit Amiens jail. The raid also destroyed archives that threatened
the continued existence of Denmark's resistance network.
A total of 24 Mosquitoes flew over the North Sea at sea level in response to coded pleas from Danish patriots for help. Their bombs struck as Pastor Harald Sandbaek was about to tell what he knew. His torturers were killed. When compatriots dug him free, he begged them to kill him rather than risk his recapture. They smuggled him to Sweden instead.
POLAND: Auschwitz-Birkenau: The gas chambers are closed down. The last transport, 1,700 Jews from Theresienstadt, was gassed yesterday.
BALTIC SEA: U-475 sank Soviet landing craft SB-2. (Dave Shirlaw)
GREECE: Salonika is evacuated by the Germans.
PACIFIC OCEAN: 1700 hours: Submarine USS Seahorse (SS-304) sinks a sampan at 31-19 N, 134-13 E.
2200 hours: Submarine USS Rasher (SS-269) sinks a tanker at 01-25 N, 120-46 E. (Skip Guidry)
U.S.A.:
Destroyer escorts USS John L Williamson and Bivin commissioned.
Minesweeper USS Hazard commissioned.
Coast Guard-manned FS-140 was accepted and was used for training at Pascagoula, Mississippi; Tampa, Florida, Brownsville, Texas; Gulfport, Mississippi; Mobile, Alabama; Corpus Christi, Texas; Pensacola, Florida, etc.
Coast Guard-manned Army vessel FS-141 was commissioned while in the Southwest Pacific area in October 1944, with LT W.J. Holbert, USCGR, as commanding officer. She was assigned and operated in the Southwest Pacific area in the Philippines and Hawaii. Exact date estimated. (Dave Shirlaw)