July 1943


The following events occurred in July 1943:

July 1, 1943 (Thursday)

July 2, 1943 (Friday)

July 3, 1943 (Saturday)

July 4, 1943 (Sunday)

July 5, 1943 (Monday)

July 6, 1943 (Tuesday)

  • The town of Boise City, Oklahoma was mistakenly bombed by a U.S. Army Air Forces plane that had taken off from the nearby Dalhart Army Air Base in Texas. The pilot, sent on a training mission to drop explosives on a practice range near Conlen, Texas, got off course, mistook Boise City for the range, and dropped five bombs on the town. Although there was slight damage to buildings, nobody was injured, and the air raid was stopped after the town was blacked out by an alert power plant worker.
  • The Battle of Kula Gulf was fought between U.S. and Japanese warships off the island of Kolombangara with an inconclusive result. The American cruiser Helena and the Japanese destroyers Nagatsuki and Niizuki were sunk.
  • Yeshwantrao Holkar II, the 33-year-old Maharaja of Indore, described as "one of the wealthiest men in the world", was granted a divorce from his American wife, the Maharanee Margaret Lawlor, in proceedings in Reno, Nevada.

July 7, 1943 (Wednesday)

July 8, 1943 (Thursday)

  • The Jamaica Labour Party, which rivals the People's National Party and is in opposition in Jamaica as of February 2015, was founded by Alexander Bustamante.
  • The German submarines U-232 and U-514 were lost to enemy action.
  • Born:
  • *Joel Siegel, American film critic for Good Morning America; in Los Angeles ;
  • *Guido Marzulli, Italian painter, in Bari
  • Died:
  • *Sir Harry Oakes, 68, American-born British entrepreneur, who was found beaten to death in his mansion in Nassau in the Bahamas. The search for Oakes, described once as one of the two wealthiest men in America, was made after he failed to appear for a scheduled golf game with the Duke of Windsor, the former King who had become the British Governor of the Bahamas. The case was never solved, and the murderer of Oakes was never discovered.
  • *Jean Moulin, 44, a leader of the French Resistance against the Nazi German occupation of France, after being tortured by the Nazi Gestapo.
  • *Edward Haight, 17, became the youngest person to ever die in the electric chair in New York, as he was executed for the September murder of two young girls ten months earlier.
  • *Levi Mosley, a seasonal farm laborer, died in a hospital in Norfolk, Virginia. When Mosley failed to report to his local draft board in December, the FBI would be called in and begin a nine-year search for Mosley, which would not end until 1953 when his death was discovered.

July 9, 1943 (Friday)

  • A German air raid killed 108 people, many of them children, in a movie theater, in the British town of East Grinstead. Schoolchildren were inside the Whitehall Cinema, watching a Hopalong Cassidy film, when air raid sirens sounded. At 5:17 pm, a wave of German bombers struck the town, leveling the theater with one bomb, followed by a second. Another 235 people were seriously injured.
  • The United States Congress recessed for the first time in four years, after the nation's legislators had passed on vacations since 1939.
  • The German submarines U-435 and U-590 were lost to enemy action in the Atlantic Ocean.
  • Born: Soledad Miranda, Spanish-born Portuguese actress; in Seville

July 10, 1943 (Saturday)

  • The Allied invasion of Sicily began as U.S., British and Canadian forces landed on the large Italian island at 0245 GMT, with the U.S. Third Infantry Division, codenamed the "Dime Force", coming ashore at the beaches of the port city of Licata. The Seventh United States Army and the British Eighth Army arrived with 180,000 men on 2,590 ships in "the largest sea-borne assault" of World War II. Defending Sicily were 230,000 Italian and 40,000 German troops. Earlier, the Allies released 147 military gliders from towing aircraft, to glide in silently. Of those, 69 were released too early and landed in the ocean, drowning 252 men. Only 12 of the 147 gliders landed in the target area.
  • The American destroyer USS Maddox was bombed and sunk off Gela, Sicily by an Italian Junkers Ju 87.
  • The Battle of Enogai began between U.S. and Japanese forces in New Georgia.
  • Born: Arthur Ashe, African-American tennis player, winner of titles at U.S. Open, Australian Open and Wimbledon ; in Richmond, Virginia

July 11, 1943 (Sunday)

July 12, 1943 (Monday)

July 13, 1943 (Tuesday)

July 14, 1943 (Wednesday)

July 15, 1943 (Thursday)

  • Renzo Chierici, the Chief of Police for the Italian-occupied area of France, agreed to a demand by the German authorities to turn over all German Jews who had fled across the border.
  • The Tule Lake Segregation Center in California was created by order of the U.S. Department of War, renamed from the Tule Lake Relocation Center, one of ten internment camps for U.S. citizens with Japanese ancestry. The "Segregation Center" was selected to house those Japanese-Americans "who by their acts have indicated that their loyalties lie with Japan during the present hostilities". The internees who were classified as disloyal would be transferred to Tule Lake from the other nine camps. Included were any who had formally asked for repatriation to Japan and had not retracted their applications before July 1, 1943; persons who had failed to answer or declined to agree to serve in the U.S. armed forces if called; and any other persons who were, in the opinion of a camp director, not loyal to the United States.
  • The German submarines U-135, U-509 and U-759 were lost to enemy action.
  • Born:
  • *Jocelyn Bell Burnell, U.K. astrophysicist and radio astronomer; in Belfast, Northern Ireland
  • *The Diligenti quintuplets ; in Buenos Aires, Argentina. They were the second group of quintuplets to all survive childbirth, the Dionne quintuplets having been the first, in 1934. In 2013, all five celebrated their 70th birthday together in Argentina.

July 16, 1943 (Friday)

  • The Norwegian freighter D/S Bjørkhaug, which was hauling 1,800 German mines that had been collected by minesweepers, exploded in the harbor at Algiers, killing hundreds of people who were working on the docks.
  • Allied aircraft dropped pamphlets over the Italian mainland with the message, "Die for Mussolini and Hitler, or live for Italy and for civilization", a message reinforced by Allied radio broadcasts. On the same day, Benito Mussolini, under pressure from other members of the Fascist Party to respond to the invasion of Italy, convened the Fascist Grand Council for the first time since 1939.
  • The Air Ministry of the United Kingdom gave approval for the use of the aluminum strips referred to as "Window", as a countermeasure against German radar.
  • Nazi officials in German-occupied France ordered a roundup of the 13,000 Jews living in Paris, including 4,000 children, to be arrested and deported to the detention center at Drancy, from which they were transported to the Auschwitz extermination camp.
  • Lithuanian Jewish resistance leader Yitzhak Wittenberg voluntarily surrendered himself to the Gestapo in Vilnius in return for an agreement that the Jewish ghetto there would not be liquidated. Wittenberg died soon afterward, either being murdered or killing himself.
  • Father Marie-Benoit, a French Roman Catholic priest, met with Pope Pius XII in hopes of getting Vatican support for the transfer of 30,000 French Jews, from the Italian occupation zone at Nice, to Italy, before the area was turned over to German administration. Benoit was unsuccessful in persuading the Pope to act.
  • The German Office of High Frequency Research was created, with Dr. Hans Plendl as the director.
  • The Battle of Mount Tambu began in New Guinea.
  • The British cruiser Cleopatra was torpedoed in the Mediterranean Sea by the Italian submarine Dandolo. Repairs would take until November 1944 to complete.
  • The German submarine U-67 was depth charged and sunk in the Atlantic Ocean by U.S. aircraft based on the escort carrier Core.
  • The Batman brought the comic book superheroes Batman and Robin to film for the first time, in a 15-installment serial that would precede the feature presentation of films from the Columbia Pictures studio. Lewis Wilson, 23, appeared as Batman and Bruce Wayne, while Douglas Croft, 17, portrayed Robin and Dick Grayson.
  • Born:
  • *Jimmy Johnson, American football coach who guided the Dallas Cowboys to two Super Bowl wins; in Port Arthur, Texas
  • *Reinaldo Arenas, Cuban-born novelist, poet and dissident; in Aguas Claras
  • Died:
  • *Saul Raphael Landau, age 79–80, Polish Jewish lawyer, journalist, publicist and Zionist activist; in New York

July 17, 1943 (Saturday)

July 18, 1943 (Sunday)

  • General Harold Alexander of the British Army became the first Allied Military Governor of Sicily, as conquest of the Italian island was nearly completed. His first act was to proclaim the dissolution of all [National National Fascist Party|Fascist Party|Fascist] organizations.
  • In the only battle during World War II between an airship and a submarine, the U.S. Army blimp K-74 dropped depth charges on the German U-boat U-134, which fired its 20 mm cannons at the blimp. The K-74 was downed and its crew of ten were rescued unharmed the next day, and nobody was hurt on the U-134
  • The New Georgia counterattack ended in Japanese offensive failure.
  • Born: Calvin Peete, African-American professional golfer; in Detroit

July 19, 1943 (Monday)

  • Italian dictator Benito Mussolini met with Germany's Adolf Hitler at the northern Italian town of Feltre to discuss Italy's withdrawal from further fighting, but Mussolini reportedly failed to bring the subject up. The two leaders agreed to mount a fighting withdrawal in Italy while the Gustav Line was formed across the 72 miles from the mouth of the Garigliano to the River Sangro south of Ortona.
  • At 11:13 in the morning, Allied airplanes dropped bombs on the ancient city of Rome, three days after the ultimatum had been made to Italy. Italian state radio reported that 166 people were killed and 1,659 injured. The attack, and the prospect of the conquest and destruction of Italy, would hasten the fall of Premier Mussolini.
  • The United States Department of War issued an order requiring that the most troublesome German prisoners of war — "Nazi leaders, Gestapo agents, and extremists" — were to be interned at the Camp Alva PW camp at Alva, Oklahoma.
  • The Warsaw concentration camp, referred to as KL Warschau was opened with barbed wire surrounding the ruins of the former Warsaw Ghetto, with a few hundred Polish prisoners and foreign Jews being put to work in destroying the remaining buildings, salvaging valuable property that may have been left in the ruins, and attempting to persuade Warsaw's remaining Jews to come out of hiding.
  • The German submarine U-513 was depth charged and sunk in the South Atlantic by Martin PBM Mariner aircraft of the U.S. Navy.
  • Born: Han Sai Por, Singaporean sculptor; in Singapore
  • Died: Yekaterina Budanova, 26, Soviet Air Force flying ace who shot down 20 German aircraft, was killed after her Yakovlev UT-1 plane was hit in aerial combat. She and fellow-Soviet Lydia Litvyak were the only two women to be recognized as "aces" for having shot down more than five aircraft.
  • Polish prisoners hanged on 19 July 1943 during the biggestpublic execution in KL Auschwitz.

July 20, 1943 (Tuesday)

July 21, 1943 (Wednesday)

July 22, 1943 (Thursday)

July 23, 1943 (Friday)

July 24, 1943 (Saturday)

  • Operation Gomorrah, the destruction of the German port of Hamburg began. British and Canadian airplanes bombed the city by night, and American planes followed during the day. By the end of the operation in November, 9,000 tons of explosives would kill more than 30,000 people and destroy 280,000 buildings. For the first time, the British forces used "Window", aluminum strips dropped to distort radar images, against the German anti-aircraft defense.
  • The Fascist Grand Council began its first meeting since 1939. In a ten-hour session that lasted into the next morning, the Council criticized Prime Minister Mussolini for his failure to prevent Italy from being invaded. At the end of the meeting, on a motion by Dino Grandi the Council voted 19 to 7 to remove Mussolini from further leadership.
  • The German submarines U-459 and U-622 were lost to enemy action.

July 25, 1943 (Sunday)

July 26, 1943 (Monday)

July 27, 1943 (Tuesday)

  • Major Joseph Duckworth and his navigator, Lieutenant Ralph O'Hair, both of the United States Army, became the first persons to deliberately fly an airplane into the eye of a hurricane. Duckworth piloted an AT-6 airplane to gather data on the storm near Houston, although according to a 1955 book by Ivan Tannehill, The Hurricane Hunters, "several of Duckworth's instructors had flown in into the same storm in B-25s, but were afraid of their boss." Storm warnings were not given for what would be called the "Surprise Hurricane", because of censorship during World War II. Although its winds had declined to what is now called a tropical storm, 19 people were killed and there was 17 million dollars of damage. "After the loss of life in this storm", meteorologist Bryan Norcross would write later, weather information has never been censored again."
  • Prince Aimone, Duke of Aosta, a member of the royal family of Italy who had been named by Benito Mussolini as King Tomislav II of the "Independent State of Croatia", renounced his rights to the throne without ever having set foot in his kingdom. When he was the Duke of Spoleto, Aimone was selected as the figurehead monarch of the puppet state, which had been set up in Axis-occupied Yugoslavia. Ante Pavelić, who ruled Croatia as its Prime Minister, accepted the King's abdication and then turned the state into a republic.
  • Government broadcasts from Rome announced that Marshal Badoglio and his new cabinet had ordered the dissolution of the Fascist Council, and that the Fascist Party would be abolished.
  • The Japanese submarine I-168 was torpedoed and sunk in the Steffen Strait by the American submarine Scamp.

July 28, 1943 (Wednesday)

  • In the greatest single-day loss of life in wartime, up to then, more than 30,000 residents of the German port city of Hamburg were killed when British bombers carried out Operation Gomorrha during the night of July 27 and 28th. Because of unusually dry conditions, the high combustibility of buildings in the working class neighborhoods of Billwärder-Ausschlag, Borgfelde and Hamm, and the use of more than 1,000 tons of incendiary bombs, a firestorm was created, bringing powerful winds to spread the destruction. Most of the victims died from carbon monoxide poisoning inside basement shelters, and it took two days for the streets to cool down enough for rescue teams to look for survivors. "At the heart of the apocalyptic fire", author Frederick Taylor would write later, "there were no survivors found, none at all."
  • American Airlines Flight 63, from Louisville to Nashville, crashed near the town of Trammell, Kentucky, killing the twenty people on board.
  • U.S. Army General Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces, made a radio broadcast to Italy, urging the Italian people to follow up the overthrow of Mussolini by withdrawing from the Axis powers. "You can have peace immediately, and peace under the honorable conditions which our governments have already offered you," said Eisenhower. "We are coming to you as liberators ... As you have already seen in Sicily, our occupation will be mild and beneficient ... The ancient liberties and traditions of your country will be restored."
  • President Roosevelt gave a fireside chat on the fall of Mussolini. Roosevelt vowed that the fallen dictator "and his Fascist gang will be brought to book, and punished for their crimes against humanity. No criminal will be allowed to escape by the expedient of 'resignation.' So our terms to Italy are still the same as our terms to Germany and Japan --'unconditional surrender.'"
  • At the Old Bailey in London, Communist Party member Douglas Springhall was sentenced to seven years in prison for obtaining information about munitions "calculated to be useful to the enemy." Justice Oliver told Springhall, "I do not think, on your record, it is likely that your purpose was to communicate these things to Germany, but to communicate them to someone I have no doubt whatever."
  • The Japanese destroyers Ariake and Mikazuki were bombed and sunk off Cape Gloucester, New Guinea by American B-25 Mitchell aircraft.
  • The German submarines U-159 and U-404 were lost to enemy action.
  • IKEA, now the world's largest retailer of furniture, was founded in Sweden by a 17-year old carpenter, Ingvar Kamprad, with the concept of selling items at a lower price, for the purchaser to assemble. Kamprad coined the name from his initials, and his address of the Eimtaryd farm near the village of Älmtaryd.
  • Born:
  • *Bill Bradley, Hall of Fame basketball player and politician, in Crystal City, Missouri
  • *Richard Wright, British musician, in Harrow, London
  • *Mike Bloomfield, American composer and guitarist, in Chicago

July 29, 1943 (Thursday)

  • The Alaskan island of Kiska was evacuated by the remaining 5,183 Japanese officers, enlisted men and civilians who had occupied the American territory. U.S. ships had been diverted away from the island between July 23rd and 26th, when American radar detected what appeared to be a convoy of seven reinforcement ships. With the U.S. warships away from Kiska, the Japanese escaped to their own rescue ships within 55 minutes. When Allied troops arrived on August 15, they were surprised to find that the island was deserted.
  • The British government announced that women under the age of 50 must register for war work.
  • The Italian submarine Pietro Micca was sunk at the entrance to the Adriatic Sea by the British submarine Trooper.
  • The German submarine U-614 was depth charged and sunk northwest of Cape Finisterre by a Vickers Wellington of No. 172 Squadron RAF.

July 30, 1943 (Friday)

  • The world's first jet-powered bomber airplane, the German Arado Ar 234, made its first flight.
  • France renounced the concession that it had held to Chinese territory in Shanghai since 1849.
  • Igor Kurchatov, the Soviet physicist assigned to developing the first nuclear bomb for the U.S.S.R., reported to Deputy Premier Vyacheslav Molotov that the program had advanced significantly from secrets gathered in espionage against the United States.
  • Six German submarines were all lost to enemy action on the same day.
  • Died: Marie-Louise Giraud, 39, a French housewife who had been convicted of carrying out 27 abortions, became the last woman in France to be executed by guillotine, with her sentence carried out by the Nazi occupation government.

July 31, 1943 (Saturday)

  • The Battle of Troina began on the island of Sicily.
  • The Brazilian passenger ship and freighter Bage, largest commercial ship in Brazil's fleet, was torpedoed and sunk off the coast of the Sergipe state. The Bage was carrying 129 passengers and 102 crew, and was en route from Belém to Rio de Janeiro when it was struck by a German U-boat. Seventy-eight people did not survive the voyage.
  • The five-month Allied strategic bombing campaign known as the Battle of the Ruhr ended in Allied victory.
  • General Henri Giraud was designated as commander-in-chief of the French Resistance forces, as the new National Committee of Liberation held its first meeting, establishing a government in French Algeria. General Charles de Gaulle was named as President of the Committee.
  • The German submarine U-199 was depth charged and sunk in the South Atlantic by American aircraft.
  • "You'll Never Know" by Dick Haymes hit #1 on the Billboard singles chart.
  • Born: William Bennett, American politician, conservative pundit and political theorist; in Brooklyn, New York City