10 Sqn. Four aircraft to Diepholz. All bombed. Opposition severe.

51 Sqn. Eight aircraft to Diepholz. All bombed. Opposition severe.

102 Sqn. Ten aircraft to Paderborn. One returned early, nine bombed.

Straits of Dover: Convoys attacked by about 45 Ju87s escorted by fighters. RAF Fighter Command claim 7 enemy aircraft destroyed.

London: General de Gaulle’s Free French volunteers celebrated Bastille Day on foreign soil in London today.

In the morning General de Gaulle, accompanied by Vice-Admiral Muselier, the head of his naval force, and M Labarth, the director of technical services, laid a wreath at the Cenotaph. He shouted "Vive l’Angleterre!" and then "Vive la France!" and the crowd took up his cry. Later, units of the Free French forces marched to the statue of Marshal Foch at Victoria, and 2,000 of de Gaulle’s men attended a film show. Mr. Churchill sent a message saying he looked forward to the time, "not far distant", when they would celebrate 14 July in France.

ATLANTIC OCEAN: SS Thetis A sunk by U-52 at 47.40N, 13.20W.

Submarine HMS Simoon laid down.

ASW trawler HMS Quadrille commissioned.

U.S.S.R.: German troops reach the river Luga and now threaten Leningrad directly.
Oberst Erhard Raus's grenadiers, aided by an attached group of "Brandenburg" special-operation troops driving captured Soviet trucks and dressed in Russian Army uniforms, siezed the twin bridges over the Luga River at Porechye on 14 July,1941 - thus fording the last natural obstacle to Heeresgruppe Nord's ultimate goal of the capture of Leningrad. (Russ Folsom)

Smolensk: The Katyusha mobile rocket-launcher is used in action for the first time.

MEDITERRANEAN SEA: Ju-88 bombers attack Suez from Crete damaging harbour installations and ships.

SYRIA: Saint Jean d'Acre: The armistice terms are announced. The Vichy troops would be granted 'full honours of war', and even allowed to retain their personal arms; they would be concentrated under their leaders, and those who did not wish to join the Allied corps would be repatriated by units - thus rendering any free choice almost impossible; their equipment would be handed over to the British only; moreover, the Special Troops of the Levant, made up of Syrian and Lebanese volunteers, would purely and simply be placed under British command; there was no reference at all to Free France.

U.S.A.: Submarine USS Herring laid down.

UNITED KINGDOM: London: The Free French are officially renamed the "Fighting French" today at General de Gaulle's request.

Minesweeping trawler HMS Flint launched.

Mooring vessel HMS Moorfly launched.

NORTH SEA: The civilian survivors of the U.S. freighter SS Carlton that was sunk on 5 July when it was part of convoy PQ 17 are found by the German submarine U-376. The Germans offer medical assistance, which is declined, and give the Americans rations, blankets and cigarettes. The survivors reach North Cape, Norway on 24 July and are interned.

YUGOSLAVIA: Zagreb: The Nazis murder 700 people in reprisal for the murder of the local Gestapo chief, SS Major Helm.

U.S.S.R.: Hoth's forces continue fighting in the southern sector at Kursk despite formal orders to abandon the battle. The Soviets are making rapid advances toward Orel.

PACIFIC OCEAN: The Japanese submarine HIJMS I-7 torpedoes and sinks the unarmed US freighter SS Arcata east of Dutch Harbor, Territory of Alaska, while enroute from Bethel, Alaska to Seattle, Washington. On board the freighter are a crew of 29-men and four passengers. The Japanese machine gun the life rafts but 25 of those on board the Arcata survive and are rescued.

U.S.A.: President Roosevelt directs the Joint Chiefs of Staff to abandon plans for offensive operations in the Pacific and to concentrate on GYMNAST (later renamed TORCH). (Stoler pp.84 - 87)(Marc James Small)

The motion picture "The Pride of the Yankees" is released in the U.S. This biography of New York Yankees' baseball superstar Lou Gehrig is directed by Sam Wood and stars Gary Cooper, Teresa Wright, Babe Ruth, Walter Brennan and Dan Duryea. Also appearing are New York Yankees' players Bill Dickey, Bob Meusel and Mark Koenig along with sportscaster Bill Stern; future movie star Dane Clark appears in a bit role. Cooper plays the role of Gehrig with Wright as his wife. The film is nominated for eleven Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Actor (Cooper) and Best Actress (Wright); it wins one technical award.

Singers Helen O'Connell and Bob Eberly sing their last duet together when they recorded the famous song "Brazil" with the Jimmy Dorsey Orchestra.

Destroyer USS Bearss laid down.

Destroyer escort USS Pope laid down.

BRAZIL declares war on Italy and German. This action is taken after the sinking of several Brazilian ships during the past week.

ATLANTIC OCEAN: Italian submarine Pietro Calvi sunk south of the Azores by sloop HMS Lulworth. Lulworth forced the submarine to the surface by depth charging and then shelled the Pietro Calvi rending it incapable to dive. In the end the Italians abandoned ship and scuttled the submarine.

ITALY: In Sicily, British forces attempting to establish a bridgehead at the Primosole bridge on the Simeto River near Lentini continue to face strong opposition.

US forces capture Biscari airfield and Niscemi on Sicily, while British forces capture Vizzini.

In the air during the night of 13/14 July, Northwest African Strategic Air Force Wellingtons bomb Palermo and Messina, and C-47 Skytrains drop paratroops in advance of Allied troops to secure a bridge at Primosole. 

U.S.S.R.: The Germans begin a general retreat from Kharkov. Manstein has persuaded Hitler to relax his "stand firm" policy.

The greatest tank battle the world has yet seen has ended in defeat for Hitler's Panzers. The open country round the village of Prokhorova, south-east of Kursk, is littered with the smoking hulks of tanks and guns and the wreckage of aircraft.

Hundreds of T34s of General Pavel Rotmistrov's Fifth Guards Army charged the heavier Panthers and Tigers of the SS Panzer Korps. In General Guderian's words, "they scurried like rats across the battlefield" and swarmed around the Germans, firing at point-blank range into their flanks.

Soon, according to Rotmistrov, "the earth was black and scorched with tanks like burning torches". The wounded driver of one burning Russian tank deliberately drove it into a Tiger so that both were destroyed in a terrible fireball.

There were nearly 2,000 tanks engaged in the battle and after some eight hours, when darkness fell on the battlefield, both sides had lost half their strength.

The Germans can claim to have inflicted as much damage as they have suffered, but they have shot their bolt. They have lost the Battle of Kursk, and with it they have almost certainly lost the war on the eastern front.

A counter-attack by the Red Army at  Orel to the north of Kursk, on 12 July, contributed to the German downfall.

Hitler is well aware of the importance of this defeat. Throughout the long planning for Citadel he insisted "there must be no failure", and all the offensive power that Germany could assemble was thrown into the battle. In an order of the day read out to troops on 4 July, he said: "You will be taking part in great offensive battles, whose outcome may decide the war." He went on to say: "Your victory will convince the whole world more than ever that all resistance to the German army is, in the end, futile."

Guderian, advising against Citadel, told him that it was a matter of profound indifference to the world whether they held Kursk or not. Hitler, for once, agreed with him: "You are quite right. Whenever I think of this attack my stomach turns over."

Krasnodar: The trial has opened here today of 11 Germans accused of the mass murder of Soviet citizens - mainly Jews - while this city in the west Caucasus was occupied by the German army.

Terrible details were revealed of the use of "murder vans" in which victims were locked and then gassed by exhaust fumes fed into an airtight compartment as the van was driven to a huge ditch outside the city. By the time it arrived, all its passengers were dead and were thrown into the ditch.

It was said in evidence that 7,000 people had been killed in this fashion in Krasnodar in addition to indiscriminate shootings and hangings of anyone of daring to show disrespect to the Third Reich.

In scenes of much emotion, one witness said that "men, women and children were bundled into the van without discrimination". Patients in the local hospital "were brought out on stretchers and the Germans flung them in too."

The Russian authorities have invited western correspondents to cover the trial, and it has something of the trappings of a "show trial". They intend to make it quite clear to those Germans responsible for the appalling crimes committed on Russians that they will not escape justice. This is the first war crimes trial. There will be many more.

INDIAN OCEAN: At 0236, the unescorted Robert Bacon was hit by a torpedo from U-178 about 35 miles off the Mozambique Light. A first torpedo was seen to cross the bow, but a second struck the port side at the #2 hatch in one of the fuel bunkers. The explosion threw oil and water into the air, destroyed steam lines and caused a 10° list to starboard. The engines were secured and the nine officers, 35 crewmen and 27 armed guards (the ship was armed with two 3in and eight 20mm guns) abandoned ship in three lifeboats and three rafts, because two other lifeboats filled with oil and water were unusable. At 0314, a first coup de grâce hit the starboard side but she remained afloat. She sank by the bow ten minutes after being hit on the starboard side aft by a second coup de grâce at 0443. The U-boat surfaced and questioned the survivors in one of the boats, giving them the direction to land and wished good luck before leaving. This boat set sail and reached on 16 July Mozambique, where a tug took them in tow to the pier. 14 survivors in a second boat were picked up by the British steam merchant English Prince and landed at Beira. The men in the last boat were rescued by the British steam tanker Steaua Romana on 27 July and landed at Durban. All rafts reached land, the first after 14, another after 20 and the last 44 days after the sinking. Two crewmen and two armed guards were lost with the ship and another crewman died ashore from exposure.

 

NEW GUINEA: As a result of the air offensive against Wewak and satellite airfields, Japanese airpower on New Guinea is sufficiently neutralized for four Allied destroyers to proceed along the coast from Milne Bay to Finschhafen.

The Ellice Islands in the Central Pacific are occupied beginning today through to the 28th by US forces. Work begins immediately on constructing airfields.

ALEUTIAN ISLANDS: In the Aleutian Islands, the destroyer USS Monaghan (DD-354) fires 100 rounds of 5-inch (127 mm) shells at Japanese positions at Gertrude Cove on Kiska Islands. The Japanese do not return fire.

U.S.A.: Submarines USS Sterlet, Pomfret, Plaice laid down.

Destroyer escort USS Frederick C Davis commissioned.

The motion picture "For Whom The Bell Tolls," based on the Ernest Hemingway novel, is released in the U.S. Directed by Sam Wood, the film stars Gary Cooper, Ingrid Bergman, Akim Tamiroff , Katina Paxinou and Duncan Renaldo; Yvonne De Carlo appears in an uncredited bit part. The plot is about an American mercenary in the Spanish Civil War tasked with blowing up a bridge. The film is nominated for nine Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Actor (Cooper), Best Actress (Bergman), Best Supporting Actor (Tamiroff), and Best Supporting Actress (Paxinou); Paxinou is the only winner.

CANADA: Corvette HMCS Cobourg launched Midland, Ontario.
Frigate HMCS Stormont launched Montreal, Province of Quebec.
 

ATLANTIC OCEAN: TBF Avengers and F4F Wildcats of Composite Squadron Twenty Nine (VC-29) in the auxiliary aircraft carrier USS Santee (ACV-29) sink U-160 south of the Azores at 34-02N 26-02W.

Sailing ship Harvard sunk by U-572 at 10.05N, 60.20W.

Mission 472: In a morning mission 319 B-17s drop 3,700 containers of supplies to French interior forces in southern France; they claim 5-2-2 Luftwaffe aircraft. Escort is provided by 465 P-47 Thunderbolts and P-51s; they claim 4-0-1 Luftwaffe aircraft.

Mission 473: During the evening 131 B-24s are dispatched to hit airfields; 54 hit Montdidier Airfield and 39 hit Peronne Airfield; 40 other B-24s fail to bomb because of failure of blind-bombing equipment. Escort is provided by 79 P-38s and P-51s.

Ninety four P-38s fly fighter-bomber missions against rail targets east and southeast of Paris; they claim 2-0-0 Luftwaffe aircraft; a P-38 is lost.

Rescue tug HMS Turmoil launched.

Submarine HMS Selene commissioned.

Destroyer HMS Wrangler commissioned.

FRANCE: The mine sweeping of the western section of Cherbourg harbour is completed. (Steve Badsey)(169)

Lt. Gen. Ben Lear assumes command of the US Army Ground Forces following McNair's death. He will hold the post until 20th January, 1945. (Marc James Small)

Weather again curtails operations by the USAAF's Ninth Air Force; 62 B-26s and A-20 Havocs, using Oboe, bomb a railway embankment at Bourth and rail bridge at Merey; fighters provide escort and fly armed reconnaissance over widespread areas of northwestern France, attacking bridges, trains, rail lines, and military transport targets; 85 enemy fighters give battle near Brezolles and Alencon; six fighters are claimed by US fighters, against five U.S. aircraft; the IX Tactical Air Command strafes and bombs defended positions ahead of the US First Army; and fighters cut rail lines in the L'Aigle-Alencon area, bomb troop concentrations near Periers, and marshalling yards at Chateaudun and Aube-sur-Rile.

Paris: A revolt of prisoners in the Santé prison occurs amongst the long term offenders. Political detainees do not react. The men set fire to their cells.

NORTH SEA: 2 British escort carriers and 3 fleet carriers, HMS Duke of York and supporting escorts of the Home Fleet under Admiral Moore sail toward Norway. Their mission, the German battleship Tirpitz in Kaafiord. The air attacks are heavily attacked on approach and the raid today is unsuccessful with heavy British losses.

NETHERLANDS: Dutch born Heinrich Boere and another man of the SS "Special Command Feldmeijer", take part in an operation codenamed "Silbertanne" or "Silver Pine" which will target 54 civilians in retaliation for the killing of prominent Dutch nazis by Dutch resistance fighters. "They were civilians who had a certain standing in civilian life, who were opposed to the German occupation and who were suspected of being part of the resistance." (Ulrich Maass, senior state prosecutor in the Dortmund public prosecutors office. Der Spiegel 15/4/2008)

GERMANY: U-2334, U-3506 laid down.

SWEDEN: The Soviet ambassador to Sweden, Alexandra Kollontai (who already played an important role in the negotiations that ended the Winter War in 1940) lets it to be known that Soviet Union is still prepared to discuss peace with Finland. Thus Soviets no longer demand unconditional surrender.

U.S.S.R.: Jassy falls to Malinovsky's troops. Pinsk falls to the Red Army.

ITALY: The Fifteenth Air Force dispatches 430+ B-17s and B-24s to attack  4 oil refineries at Budapest and Petfurdo, Hungary and the marshalling yard at Mantua, Italy; P-51s and P-38s provide escort. 

P-51s fly an uneventful sweep of the Budapest area; and in Italy, P-38s strafe trains north of La Spezia and dive-bomb Ghedi Airfield. 

COMMONWEALTH OF THE PHILIPPINES: The submarine USS Nautilus (SS-168) lands two men and 30 tons of supplies for the Filipino guerillas off Lagoma, Leyte Island.

JAPAN: The government announces decrees conscripting women between 12 and 40 for war work.

US Navy PB4Y Liberators of Bombing Squadron One Hundred Nine (VB-109), based at Isley Field, Saipan, attack airfields on Iwo Jima, Chichi Jima and Haha Jima Islands. This is the first attack by land based aircraft against these islands. 

NEW GUINEA: Commodore Collins Task Force TF 74, two cruisers and six destroyers start a long-term bombardment of Japanese positions near Aitape. The Task Force is mostly Australian.

MARIANAS ISLANDS: Seventh Air Force P-47 Thunderbolts based on Saipan again hit Tinian Island.

Battleships join the cruisers and destroyers during the preinvasion bombardment of Guam.

Underwater Demolition Team Three (UDT-3) in high-speed transport USS Dickerson (APD-21) begins a reconnaissance of the landing beaches on Guam.

The Japanese submarine I-6 is sunk by destroyer USS WILLIAM C. MILLER (DE-259) off Saipan. (Marc James Small)(220, 221 and 222)

CANADA: Corvette HMCS Petrolia commissioned.

U.S.A.: General Henry H. "Hap" Arnold, Commanding General U.S. Army Air Forces, sends a memorandum to the Joint Planning Staff calling attention to the Nakajima Ki-84 Army Type 4 Fighter (Allied Code Name "Frank"), a new and heavily armed fighter with which the Japanese might be able to inflict prohibitive losses on B-29s over the home islands; therefore he recommends that Iwo Jima be seized so that the airfields on the island can be used as an emergency landing field for B-29 Superfortresses bombing Japan and provide bases for P-51s to escort the Superfortresses to Tokyo.

Destroyer USS Gurke laid down.

Coast Guard-manned Army vessel FS-390 was commissioned at Los Angeles with LT G. E. Oliver, USCGR, as first commanding officer. He was succeeded on 28 September 1945 by LTJG John L. Murchison, USCGR. She was assigned to and operated in the Southwest Pacific and Western Pacific areas including Manila, Batangas, etc. She was decommissioned 15 October 1945.

ATLANTIC OCEAN: U-415 sunk at 0915 near Brest, west of the torpedo-net barrier, in position 48.24N, 04.30W, by a mine. 2 dead, unknown number of survivors.