May 1943

May 15, 1943: "Bat bomb" experiment sets fire to Carlsbad Army Air Force base

May 3, 1943: Plane crash kills General Frank M. Andrews, Commander of U.S. Army operations in Europe

The following events occurred in May 1943:

May 1, 1943 (Saturday)

• More than 480,000 American coal miners walked off of the job a minute after midnight, when the United Mine Workers' contract with the nation's mining companies expired. U.S. President Roosevelt notified UMWA President John L. Lewis to cease the wartime work stoppage by 10:00 am, an order which was ignored, and then issued an Executive Order directing that "The Secretary of the Interior is authorized and directed to take immediate possession so far as may be necessary or desirable, of any and all mines producing coal in which a strike or stoppage has occurred or is threatened ...".^[1] At the time, there was only a three-week supply of coal for American steel manufacturers and ten days supply for some railroads.^[2] The strike would resume on June 1.^[3]
• The Ford Motor Company fired 141 employees, mostly African-American, from its aluminum and steel plants in River Rouge, Michigan, because of labor disputes.^[4]

May 2, 1943 (Sunday)

• Operation Mincemeat: At the Spanish town of Huelva, a funeral was held for Major William Martin of Britain's Royal Marines, whose body had washed ashore on April 30. Major Martin was, in reality, a homeless Welshman named Glyndwr Michael, who had died on January 28 and whose body was used to deceive German intelligence regarding the starting point for an Allied invasion.^[5]
• President Roosevelt went on nationwide radio to talk about the need to end the coal strike, then directed his comments to the strikers themselves, saying "You miners have sons in the Army and Navy and Marine Corps ... I only wish I could tell you what they think of the stoppage of work in the coal mines." ^[6]
• Died: Viktor Lutze, 52, Chief of Staff for the SA Sturmabteilung, a day after being fatally injured in a single car accident.

May 3, 1943 (Monday)

• The United States Supreme Court invalidated, 5-4, a city ordinance in Jeannette, Pennsylvania that required members of the Jehovah's Witnesses religious denomination to pay for a peddles' license in order to distribute religious literature. The city ordinance required each individual distributor to pay $10 per day. The ruling, in Murdock v. Pennsylvania, invalidated similar ordinances in Alabama, Arizona and Kansas as a violation of the constitutional guarantees of freedom of religion.^[7]
• Died: U.S. Army Lieutenant General Frank M. Andrews, 59, Commander of U.S. Forces in Europe, in the crash of a B-24 bomber during bad weather in Iceland. Andrews Air Force Base, near Washington, DC, was named in his honor.

May 4, 1943 (Tuesday)

• A bill to eliminate federal income tax for all Americans for an entire year failed to pass by four votes, 202-206. The legislation, based on ideas of proposed by New York Federal Reserve Bank chairman Beardsley Ruml, was replaced by a "pay as you go" Robertson-Forand bill that virtually eliminated the 1942 income taxes for 90% of Americans.^[8]

May 5, 1943 (Wednesday)

• The Vatican Secretary of State sent a request to the government of the Nazi-controlled Slovak Republic, requesting the exclusion of Jews "who have entered the Catholic religion" from the list of persons to be deported to Nazi concentration camps. The office of Prime Minister Vojtech Tuka gave its response on May 28, pledging that converts would be kept in local concentration camps, separate from other Jews, "and given every opportunity to fulfill their Christian religion." ^[9]
• Born: Michael Palin, British comedian, in Sheffield

May 6, 1943 (Thursday)

• Admiral Ernest J. King, the U.S. Chief of Naval Operations, ordered the creation of Naval Combat Demolition Units, after the success, in September, of a group of U.S. Navy divers who had destroyed nets that had prevented American ships from entering Morocco's Sebou River.^[10]
• Six U-boats were sunk after sinking 12 ships from Convoy ONS 5 in the last major North Atlantic U-boat "wolfpack" attack of the war.
• Born: Andreas Baader, West German terrorist and leader of the Red Army Faction, known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang; in Munich (d. 1977)

May 7, 1943 (Friday)

• Tunis and Bizerte were liberated by Allied troops, with Bizerte falling to the Americans at 4:15 pm local time, and the Tunisian capital being conquered five minutes later by the British First Army.^[11]
• Sex symbol and film star Mae West was granted a final divorce from her husband, Frank Szatkus, whom she had married on April 29, 1911. The couple had been separated for more than thirty years.^[12]
• Born: Peter Carey, Australian novelist, in Bacchus Marsh, Victoria
• Died: Fethi Okyar, 63, Prime Minister of Turkey, 1924–1925

May 8, 1943 (Saturday)

• The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff approved the recommendations contained in the Strategic Plan for the Defeat of Japan, with the objective of the unconditional surrender of the Japanese Empire.^[13]
• Born: Pat Barker, British woman novelist, as Patricia Drake in Thornaby-on-Tees
• Died: Mordechai Anielewicz, 24, Jewish leader of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Anielewicz, head of the resistance group Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa, apparently killed himself after the Nazi SS surrounded the ZOB command post at 18 Miła Street in Warsaw.^[14]

May 9, 1943 (Sunday)

• Francisco Franco, the fascist dictator of Spain, which remained neutral during World War II, spoke in favor of world peace, "declaring that neither the Axis nor the Allies could destroy the other". Franco, who had won the Spanish Civil War with assistance from both Germany and Italy, spoke in the city of Almería as the Axis powers were surrendering to the Allies in North Africa.^[15]
• Died: Wilmeth Sidat-Singh, 25, African-American college football and basketball star and member of the Tuskegee Airmen; after the engine of his plane failed during a training mission.

May 10, 1943 (Monday)

• On the day that the Enabling Act of 1933 was set to expire by its terms, Adolf Hitler signed an order extending his dictatorship indefinitely. Published in the Reich Law Gazette, the decree stated "The Reich government will continue to exercise the powers bestowed on it by virtue of the law of March 24, 1933. I reserve for myself the obtaining of a confirmation of these powers of the Reich government by the Greater German Reichstag," although the German parliament was never called back into session by Hitler again.^[16]
• Born: Dick Darman, Director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget 1989–1993; in Charlotte, North Carolina (d. 2008)

May 11, 1943 (Tuesday)

• An assault force of 3,000 troops from the 7th U.S. Infantry Division invaded Attu in the Aleutian Islands, in an attempt to expel occupying Japanese forces. The island, part of Alaska, had been renamed Atsuta by Japan, and was a supply point for the Aleutian island of Kiska, still in use by Japan for a submarine operating base.^[17][18]
• U.S. Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox inadvertently gave a clue that Allied forces intended to use Sicily for an invasion of Europe, potentially undermining the British disinformation campaign of Operation Mincemeat to convince German intelligence that the attack would be made from Greece and Sardinia. Ironically, Knox's comment that "Possession of Sicily by the Allies would obviously be a tremendous asset" was interpreted as an obviously clumsy attempt at deception, which Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels would describe as "baseless rumors and attempts at a smoke screen".^[19]

May 12, 1943 (Wednesday)

• TRIDENT, the first wartime conference in Washington, DC, between U.S. President Roosevelt and U.K. Prime Minister Churchill, began, running for 16 days. Churchill and his entourage had arrived in Washington from New York the night before after being secretly transported across the North Atlantic Ocean on the RMS Queen Mary.^[20]
• Colonel General Hans-Jürgen von Arnim and General Giovanni Messe, commanders, respectively, of the German Army and the Italian Army in North Africa, both surrendered themselves to the Allies, although Arnim refused to sign terms of unconditional surrender of German forces. Arnim and many of his troops had been cornered at the Cap Bon peninsula in Tunisia, near the town of Ste. Marie du Zit, by the 4th Indian Division of the British forces.^[21][22]
• Maliq Bushati, the figurehead Prime Minister of Albania during Italian occupation, was replaced by Eqrem Libohova.^[23]
• Died: Szmul Zygielbojm, 48, Jewish-Polish politician, by an overdose of pills while in exile in London. His suicide note closed with the words, "having failed to achieve success in my life, I hope that my death may jolt the indifference of those who, perhaps even in this extreme moment, could save the Jews who are still alive in Poland".^[24]

May 13, 1943 (Thursday)

• The North African Campaign came to an end after nearly three years, as the 164th Infantry Division of Germany's Afrika Korps laid down its weapons and its commander, Major General Kurt Freiherr von Liebenstein became the last of the Axis officers to surrender in Africa. The commanding British Field Marshal, Sir Harold Alexander, sent word to Prime Minister Churchill, saying that "It is my duty to report that the Tunis campaign is over. All enemy resistance has ceased." During the week, 150,000 Germans and Italians became prisoners of war of the Allies.^[25]

May 14, 1943 (Friday)

• The AHS Centaur, an Australian hospital ship, was torpedoed and sunk near North Stradbroke Island, off of the coast of Queensland, by Japanese submarine I-177, killing 268 of the 363 persons on board. There were no patients on board at the time, but the ship was carrying 245 Australian and British medical personnel.^[26]
• The new Mark 24 Mine, a torpedo designed to use electronics to guide itself to a target after being dropped from an airplane was successfully used for the first time in combat, destroying two German submarines on the same day. U-266 was destroyed in the North Atlantic by a Mark-24 dropped from a B-24 Liberator bomber, while U-657 was destroyed near Cape Farewell, Greenland by a bomb dropped from a PBY Catalina flying boat.^[27]
• The U.S. Public Roads Administration reported that only a few states were observing the 35 mile per hour speed limit that had been imposed nationally during wartime, with vehicles traveling as fast as 45 mph in Minnesota.^[28]
• Born: Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, President of Iceland from 1996, in Isafjoerdhur; and Jack Bruce, Scottish musician and songwriter, in Bishopbriggs

May 15, 1943 (Saturday)

• Sidi Muhammad VII al-Munsif, the Bey of Tunis, was forced to abdicate by France's General Henri Giraud. Replacing al-Munsif was his son, Muhammad al-Amin. Two days later, the al-Munsif would be put on a ship and sent to Madagascar, along with his harem of 25 wives. The Bey had elected to remain in Tunis after the Axis occupation began and had collaborated with the German authorities, who had made him a figurehead King of Tunisia.^[29]
• At an airbase at Carlsbad, New Mexico, Dr. Louis Fieser, the chemist who had developed napalm, conducted the first test of the experimental "bat bomb", with a timed 0.6 ounce explosive attached to a Mexican free-tailed bat. After a demonstration with dummy bombs showed that the bats would, as planned, seek shelter in buildings, Dr. Fieser attached live explosives to six dormant bats for a demonstration in front of cameras. The bats woke up before detonation, then flew towards the wooden control tower, barracks, and other buildings and set a fire that destroyed much of the base.^[30]

May 16, 1943 (Sunday)

• Operation Chastise by nineteen bombers of the Royal Air Force on German dams in the Ruhr valley industrial region, causing massive flooding and loss of life. The Moehne River dam and the Eder dam contained two-thirds of the water stored for the Ruhr basin.^[31] German radio reported that at least 711 people were confirmed dead, and claimed that 341 of them had been Allied prisoners of war.^[32] "That night", German Armaments Minister Albert Speer would write later, "employing just a few bombers, the British came close to a success which would have been greater than anything they had achieved hitherto with a commitment of thousands of bombers. But they made a single mistake which puzzles me to this day: They divided their forces and that same night destroyed the Eder Valley dam, although it had nothing whatsoever to do with the supply of water to the Ruhr." ^[33]
• Warsaw Ghetto Uprising: SS Polizeifuhrer Jürgen Stroop sent his triumphant dispatch to Berlin, announcing that "The former Jewish quarter of Warsaw is no longer in existence. The large-scale action was terminated at 2015 hours by blowing up the Warsaw Synagogue ... Total number of Jews dealt with 56,065 including both Jews caught and Jews whose extermination can be proved." The operation had been commenced on April 19.^[34]

May 17, 1943 (Monday)

• The BRUSA Agreement was signed between the governments of Britain and the United States to exchange personnel and wartime intelligence between the cryptanalysis agencies of the two nations, along with those of Canada and Australia.^[35]
• The ten surviving RAF bombers out of 19 from the "Dam Busters" returned, though only six would survive to the end of the war.^[36]
• The United States Army contracted with the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School to develop the computer ENIAC.
• The Memphis Belle's crew became the first aircrew in the 8th Air Force to complete its 25-mission tour of duty. The aircraft and crew, first to survive their tour, returned to the United States to assist in publicity for the sale of War Bonds.^[37]
• Born: Tuanku Syed Sirajuddin, King of Malaysia from 2001 to 2006, and Raja of Perlis since 2000; in Arau
• Died: Montague Love, 66, British actor

May 18, 1943 (Tuesday)

• With an Allied invasion of Italy imminent, Pope Pius XII sent an appeal to U.S. President Roosevelt, asking that American bombers spare the destruction of Rome, noting that its "many treasured shrines of religion and art" were "the precious heritage not of one people but of all human and Christian civilization".^[38]
• Having captured Tunisia, the Allies began the bombing of the Italian island of Pantelleria, 100 miles from Tunis.^[39] Pantelleria would be invaded without opposition on June 11, and would serve as a base for attacks on the larger Italian island of Sicily, 60 miles away.^[40]
• Born: Jimmy Snuka (James William Reiher), Fijian-born American professional wrestler

May 19, 1943 (Wednesday)

• German Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels declared that, after 60 days of work, Berlin was now Judenfrei— free of Jews.^[41]
• Born: Helena Quinn, Australian-born American theoretical physicist,in Melbourne
• Died: Kristjan Raud, 77, Estonian painter

May 20, 1943 (Thursday)

• Joseph E. Davies, the former American ambassador to the Soviet Union, met secretly with Soviet Premier Stalin to deliver a letter from U.S. President Roosevelt, proposing "an informal and completely simple visit for a few days between you and me" during the summer, "either on your side or my side of the Bering Straits".^[42] The invitation was kept secret even from British Prime Minister Churchill.^[43]
• The United States Court for China, a federal civil and criminal court that had been based in Shanghai since 1906, ceased operations upon the ratification by the U.S. of a treaty with China, signed on January 11 relinquishing extraterritoriality privileges.^[44]
• Died: John Stone Stone, 73, American physicist and inventor

May 21, 1943 (Friday)

• The government of Bulgaria, under pressure from its Axis partner, Germany, agreed to surrender the 25,000 Jewish residents of Sofia for deportation to concentration camps. Within three days, massive protests were organized and the plan was foiled. The city's Jews were resettled in labor camps within Bulgaria, with the men to be used for public works, but no further attempts at extermination were made.^[45]
• Tokyo Radio announced the April 18 death of the commander of Japan's Navy, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, who had been killed when his plane was shot down over the Solomon Islands by an American fighter plane. The announcer, whose voice broke, said that Yamamoto "engaged in combat with the enemy and met a gallant death on a warplane", giving the first reports of the military leader's death, which had not been announced in the United States.^[46] President Roosevelt, who had ordered Operation Vengeance, was asked by reporters for a comment, and his sarcastic official statement was "Gosh!".^[47]

May 22, 1943 (Saturday)

• The Comintern was dissolved in Moscow. The Communist International, which had been founded with the goal of "formenting of world revolution", was voted out of existence by its executive committee, and an announcement was made in Pravda.^[48][49]
• Born: Betty Williams, Northern Irish political activist, 1976 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, in Belfast
• Died: Helen Taft, 81, First Lady of the United States 1909–1913, widow of President William Howard Taft

May 23, 1943 (Sunday)

• The heaviest air raid in history, up to that time, began as the Royal Air Force dropped 2,000 tons of bombs on Dortmund, toping the record of 1,500 tons dropped on Duisburg on May 12.^[50]

May 24, 1943 (Monday)

• After Allied forces in the North Atlantic sank 22 of the 60 German U-boats in the first two weeks of May, Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz ordered the remaining submarines to halt their attacks on Allied convoys, and to make "a temporary shift of operation to areas less endangered by aircraft". Because of an improvement in Allied radar and in air patrols, "Black May" would see the sinking of 41 of the German subs in a single month.^[51]
• Died: Parker Corning, 69, seven-term U.S. Congressman and businessman who "once a millionaire many times over, died essentially broke" ^[52]

May 25, 1943 (Tuesday)

• At the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, a group of 1,035 Gypsies (507 men and 528 women) were killed in a single day. SS personnel, armed with lists of the persons to be exterminated, went around to each of the barracks, and took the condemned to the gas chambers.^[53]
• Born: Jessi Colter, American singer and composer, in Phoenix, Arizona; and Leslie Uggams, American singer and actress, in New York City

May 26, 1943 (Wednesday)

• Edwin Barclay, the President of Liberia, was welcomed by U.S. President Roosevelt to the White House, along with President-elect William Tubman. That evening, the African leader "became the first member of his race to spend the night as a guest at the Executive Mansion".^[54] In the next 45 years, Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie I (in 1954 and 1963), Haitian President Paul Magloire (1955), and entertainer Sammy Davis, Jr. (1973), along with their families, would be the only other black overnight dignitaries at the White House.^[55]
• U.S. President Roosevelt ordered striking workers at three rubber companies in Akron, Ohio, to return to work. In a telegram to union leaders, Roosevelt said that unless production resumed at noon the next day, "your government will take the necessary steps to protect the interests of the nation". Nearly all of the employees at Goodyear Tire, Firestone Tire and General Tire reported for work the next day, although only a few at B.F. Goodrich complied.^[56]
• Died: Edsel Ford, 49, American businessman, philanthropist, and President of Ford Motor Company

May 27, 1943 (Thursday)

• The U.S. Office of War Mobilization was established by President Roosevelt under Executive Order No. 9347. James F. Byrnes would be named as the first Director.^[57]
• The Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC) was given additional powers to punish discrimination, under Executive Order No. 9346.^[58]
• The U.S. War Production Board issued an order that all contractors engaged in was production were barred from practicing racial discrimination.^[59]
• "Nazi cultural functionaries" in German-occupied Paris removed the paintings of disapproved artists from the Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume, and burned them in the museum's courtyard. Destroyed were works by André Masson, Joan Miró, Francis Picabia, Max Ernst, Fernand Léger and Pablo Picasso.^[60]
• At the Polish city of Tluste, now part of the Ukraine, liquidation of the Jewish population was carried out by the German SS, with 3,000 persons killed in a single day. The people were gathered in the town square, then led in groups of at least 100 to 200 to the town's Jewish cemetery, where they were shot.^[61]
• Born: Bruce Weitz, American TV actor (Hill Street Blues), in Norwalk, Connecticut
• Died: Arthur Mee, 67, British educator and children's author who created The Children's Encyclopædia in 1908, which was published in the United States as The Book of Knowledge

May 28, 1943 (Friday)

• Aaron Copland's ballet Rodeo was performed for the first time, with symphonic accompaniment by Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops.^[62]
• After the Japanese forces on Attu Island had been reduced from 2,500 to 1,000 in the fight with the United States, the remaining group decided to launch suicide attacks on the American forces.^[22]

May 29, 1943 (Saturday)

• Norman Rockwell's illustration of Rosie the Riveter was introduced, on the cover of the Memorial Day issue of the Saturday Evening Post. Rockwell's inspiration was a 1942 song written by Redd Evans and John Jacob Loeb, and recorded by Kay Kyser, and the model for the painting was a 19-year-old telephone operator from Arlington, Vermont, Mary Doyle.^[63]

May 30, 1943 (Sunday)

• After 19 days of fighting, the United States recaptured Alaska's Attu Island from the Japanese Army, annihilating the remaining fighters "except for a few snipers".^[18][64] The Japanese soldiers who weren't killed in battle committed mass suicide, and a search of the island found no survivors. Of the 2,500 Japanese who originally tried to hold the Alaskan island, only 28 prisoners were alive at the battle's end, while the American losses were 600 dead.^[22]
• In a German air raid on the British coastal town of Torquay, a church was bombed, killing 35 children and four Sunday school teachers.^[65]
• The four team All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL), the first and last professional baseball league with women players, made its debut, with the South Bend Blue Sox (Indiana) beating the Rockford Peaches (Illinois), 1-0. In the game with the two Wisconsin teams Kenosha Shamrocks beat the Racine Belles, 8-6.^[66]
• Dr. Josef Mengele began his service as a medical officer in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, and spent the next 19 months conducting bizarre surgical experiments on the captive patients.^[67]
• Born: Gale Sayers, American NFL running back and Hall of Famer, in Wichita, Kansas; and James Chaney, African-American American civil rights worker, in Meridian, Mississippi (killed 1964)

May 31, 1943 (Monday)

• The "Zoot Suit Riots" erupted between military personnel and Mexican American youths in East Los Angeles.^[68]
• Born: Joe Namath, American NFL quarterback and Hall of Famer, in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania; and Sharon Gless, American TV actress (Cagney & Lacey), in Los Angeles
• Died: Helmut Kapp, German Gestapo official

References