April 18, 1943: Japan's Admiral Yamamoto killed when Americans discover and shoot down his airplaneApril 20, 1943: Jefferson Memorial dedicated on Jefferson's 200th birthdayApril 3, 1943: Shipwreck survivor Poon Lim rescued after 131 days adriftApril 12, 1943: Martin Bormann designated as Hitler's second-in-command
SIGSALY, referred to as the X Systemvocoder or "Green Hornet", went into operation for use in secure phone conversations between U.S. PresidentFranklin D. Roosevelt and U.K. Prime MinisterWinston Churchill. The new system, developed byAT&T'sBell Labs, encrypted speech into electronic signals that could be transmitted at the rate of 1,551 bits per second, and decrypted it at the other end, permitting the two wartime leaders to talk to each other without being understood by wiretappers.[1] The terminals for transatlantic calls were atThe Pentagon inWashington, D.C. and in the basement ofSelfridges department store in London.
In the SecondBattle of Sedjenane, Allied forces retook the Tunisian town of Sedjenane on the railway line toMateur and the port ofBizerta.
Japanese forces launchedOperation I-Go, an aerial counter-offensive in the Pacific.
TheRoyal Air Force marked its 25th anniversary by presenting Churchill with honorary wings. "I am honoured to be accorded a place, albeit out of kindness, in that comradeship of the air which guards the life of our island and carries doom to tyrants, whether they flaunt themselves or burrow deep," Churchill stated.[2]
The Italian destroyerLubiana was either sunk or stranded off the Tunisian coast and declared a total constructive loss.
On a visit to Germany, KingBoris III of Bulgaria told German Foreign MinisterJoachim von Ribbentrop that the 25,000 Jews in Bulgaria would not be turned over to German control, despite the alliance between the two Axis powers. At most, the King said, the Bulgarian government might intern its Jewish citizens in camps under Bulgarian control.[3]
The German submarineU-124 was shelled and sunk in the Atlantic Ocean west ofPorto, Portugal by British warships.
TheBattle of Manners Street, a riot inWellington,New Zealand, between American servicemen and New Zealand servicemen and civilians, occurred when some of the American servicemen refused to allowMāori soldiers to enter the Allied Services Club. Dozens of people were injured but news of the riot was censored at the time.
Shipwrecked stewardPoon Lim was rescued by Brazilian fishermen after being adrift for 131 days as the sole survivor of a British merchant ship, theSS Benlomond, which had been torpedoed on November 29, 1942.[4]
Died:Conrad Veidt, 50, German-born film actor known forCasablanca, died of a heart attack while playing golf at theRiviera Country Club in Los Angeles with singerArthur Fields and his personal physician.[5]
Lady Be Good, an American B-24 bomber became lost over the North African desert after completing a bombing raid in Italy, ran out of gas, and crashed after its crew parachuted to safety. The nine member crew died of thirst, one by one, over the next eight days. For nearly 16 years,Lady Be Good would remain missing until its discovery onFebruary 27, 1959. The bodies of the men would be found almost a year after that, onFebruary 11, 1960.[6]
William Dyess was able to escape from a Japanese prisoner of war camp in the Philippines along with nine other men, and to make his way through the jungle and to a ship that transported him to Australia. Once free, Dyess would be able to reveal to the world the atrocities of theBataan Death March that had taken place after U.S. and Philippine forces surrendered on April 9, 1942.[7]
AnAmerican B-25 bomber on a training mission went down inLake Murray in South Carolina. The entire crew was rescued by a boater on the lake, but the B-25 sank to the bottom of the lake for the next 62 years, finally being raised on September 19, 2005 in nearly perfect condition.[8]
German radio announced that three former imprisoned leaders had been turned over by the government of Vichy France, to Germany, in order to stop "establishment of a counter-government".[9] Former Prime MinistersÉdouard Daladier andLéon Blum, along with the former French Army commander in chief, GeneralMaurice Gamelin, had been held in custody in France since shortly after the 1940 surrender, and would be sent toBuchenwald concentration camp until the end of the war.
Born:Mike Epstein, American MLB baseball player nicknamed "SuperJew"; in the Bronx
Died:Raoul Laparra, 67, French composer of the operaLa Habanera; in an American air raid on Paris
Lutheran pastorDietrich Bonhoeffer was arrested at the headquarters of the German military intelligence (theAbwehr) by the Nazi secret police (theGestapo) along with lawyerHans von Dohnanyi, and both were found to have incriminating materials in their possession, showing cooperation with the enemy in Britain.[10] Adolf Hitler would order the execution of Bonhoeffer, Dohnanyi, and the Abwehr director, AdmiralWilhelm Canaris, on April 9, 1945, less than a month before the conquest of Germany.
American bomber planes bombed the town ofMortsel inBelgium. The target was a local factory in which German fighter planes were being repaired. However, only four out of 216 bombs that were dropped hit the target, while the others destroyed most of the town of Mortsel, killing 936 civilians.[11]
Born:Max Gail, American television actor who portrayed Wojo Wojciehowicz, onBarney Miller; inDetroit
The Little Prince, a children's book byAntoine de Saint-Exupéry, was published. Saint-Exupéry would join the French Army later in the month, and would disappear the next year after his airplane was shot down in combat.[12]
Five members of the U.S. Army Air Forces were rescued after having been marooned on an icecap inGreenland for almost five months. The men had been on a B-17 bomber that made a crash landing while searching for another lost plane, but were kept alive with supplies dropped by ColonelBernt Balchen, an Arctic explorer and aviator.[13]
Adolf Hitler andBenito Mussolini began a four-day meeting atSchloss Klessheim nearSalzburg. Mussolini was in poor health and would spend most of the conference listening silently to Hitler's long rambling monologues; an attempt by Mussolini to bring up the possibility of making peace with the Soviets was swiftly rebuffed.[14]
The British government published a plan drawn up byJohn Maynard Keynes for a postwar economy. The plan proposed an international monetary fund which could help any nation out of temporary financial difficulties. In return, that country would have to adopt policies aimed at restoring stability.[15]
Born:Michael Bennett, American choreographer and director (A Chorus Line), and winner of seven Tony Awards; as Michael Bennett DiFiglia inBuffalo, New York (died of AIDS in 1987)
Died:
Harry Baur, 62, French character actor, killed after being tortured by the Gestapo in Berlin
Died:Philip Slier, 19, a Jewish Dutch typesetter whose letters about life in a Nazi forced labor camp would be discovered in 1997, was killed in theSobibór extermination camp
Former American college football starTom Harmon, who had joined the U.S. Army Air Corps, disappeared while flying over Surinam. The only member of his crew to survive a crash in bad weather, Harmon survived for seven days by drinking swamp water and eating rations, Harmon was able to make his way to Paramaribo and was able to rejoin his unit.[21]
Frank Piasecki made the first flight of his ownPiasecki PV-2, only the second successful American helicopter. The PV-2 "featured the first dynamically balanced rotor blades", differing it from theVought-Sikorsky VS-300, which had made its first free flight on May 13, 1940.[23]
The British destroyerBeverley was torpedoed and sunk in the Atlantic Ocean by German submarineU-188.
Martin Bormann was appointed as Secretary to the Führer, the second highest office in Nazi Germany.[25]
The British War Office made its first report on the intelligence gathered concerning Germany's missile program, with the title "German Long-Range Rocket Development".[26]
The crew ofLady Be Good; Co-pilot Toner is second from left
Eight days after he and his crewmates were lost in the Libyan desert in the crash ofLady Be Good, co-pilot and U.S. Army 2nd. Lt. Robert Toner wrote the last entry in his journal: "No help yet, very cold nite". The diary, and Toner's body, would be found nearly 17 years later.[27]
OnBudget Day in the United Kingdom,Chancellor of the Exchequer SirKingsley Wood announced that the war had cost Britain a total of £13 billion to date and was costing £15 million per day. In the new financial year excess expenditure over revenue was estimated at £2,848,614,000.[28]
The Commander of the 8th Japanese fleet broadcast a coded message concerning a tour of the fleet by the Naval Commander AdmiralIsoroku Yamamoto to begin on April 18, probably in the high security code JN25 which Allied cryptanalysts had broken.[32][33][34]
U.S. SenatorHarry S. Truman of Missouri appeared as a speaker in Chicago at the "United Rally to Demand the Rescue of Doomed Jews", calling for the United States to respond directly to the Holocaust.[35]
The Soviet Union reorganized its intelligence gathering system, setting up thePeople's Commissariat for State Security (NKGB, later the MGB) as a separate agency from theNKVD (later theKGB).Lavrentiy Beria remained in control of the NKVD, while Beria's assistant,Vsevolod Merkulov was named as the Director of the NKGB.[36] Both Beria and Merkulov, along with four other Beria loyalists, would be executed on December 23, 1953, nine months after the death ofJoseph Stalin.
Four inmates ofAlcatraz Federal Penitentiary attempted to escape from the prison, making it to the water when the tower guards opened fire on them. Two were killed and one hid until he was found three days later, but the body of the fourth, James Boarman, was never found.[37]
Died:Yakov Dzhugashvili, 36, Soviet Army officer and son of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, was killed while attempting to escape theSachsenhausen concentration camp inGermany, where he had been incarcerated after having been captured a prisoner of war.[38]
The U.S. Army established its first overseas "V-Mail" station in order to use the "Victory Mail" process to get letters to and from servicemen. The facility, based inCasablanca,Morocco, used the process of photographing, onmicrofilm, pre-screened letters to the United States so that mail could be transported to the U.S. with a minimum of space. V-Mail letters from the U.S. to servicemen were also put on microfilm, and enlarged prior to delivery.[39]
TheState Bank of Ethiopia was created as the new central bank in the African nation, which had recently been liberated from Italian control. The State Bank also had the authority to print banknotes and mint coins. It would be replaced in 1964 by the National Bank of Ethiopia.[40]
The Fountainhead, a novel byAyn Rand, was released by Bobbs-Merrill and would go on to become her first bestseller.[41]
The Sino-American Special Technical Cooperative Agreement was signed between the United States and the Republic of China, creating theSino-American Cooperative Organization (SACO).[42]
An LSD blotter blotter paper[43]Discoverer Hoffmann[44]
At the Sandoz laboratories inBasel,Switzerland, biochemistAlbert Hofmann accidentally ingested the drugLSD for the first time in history, and recorded the details of his experience.[45]
TheBattle of the Cigno Convoy was fought southeast ofMarettimo island in the Mediterranean Sea. The result was an Italian victory as the British destroyerPakenham was sunk while the Italians lost one torpedo boat in return.
In Mexico,Ramón Mercader, a.k.a. Jacques Monard, was sentenced to 20 years in prison for assassinatingLeon Trotsky with an ice pick in 1940.[15]
The United StatesWar Manpower Commission, headed byPaul V. McNutt, issued an order that prevented 27,000,000 civilian employees from changing jobs. Basically, an employee in an "essential activity" could not be hired to a job that was not essential to the war effort, unless he or she remained unemployed for at least 30 days. Likewise, a vital employer could not offer a higher wage rate to lure a worker from another vital employer without 30 days between jobs. Business owners and employees who violated the regulation were subject to a fine of up to $1,000 per violation and a year in prison. The manpower "freeze" was to remain in effect until the end of the war.[46]
A fleet of 117B-17 bombers of the U.S. Eighth Army Air Force raidedBremen.[18]
Horthy and Hitler in 1938
At a meeting inSalzburg with German Führer Adolf Hitler and Foreign Minister Ribbentrop, AdmiralMiklós Horthy, the Regent and Head of State for theKingdom of Hungary, refused a personal request by Germany to deliver 800,000 Hungarian Jews to the Nazis, despite the alliance between the two as Axis powers.[3]
The German submarineU-175 was depth charged and sunk in the Atlantic Ocean by the American coast guard cutterSpencer.
Luftwaffe dive bombers raided the North African port ofAlgiers. Fifteen CatholicReligious Sisters perished at their prayers as the bombs demolished an orphanage. The fifteen who died and three sisters who were severely wounded remained behind to pray when the raid started while other sisters led sixty orphans from the building to the safety of anair raid shelter. Among the victims was Mother Superior Marie Duval, who had been at the convent for 31 years. GeneralHenri Honore Giraud, civil and military commander-in-chief of French North and West Africa, awarded Duval the FrenchLegion of Honor posthumously, stating: "On April 17, 1943, she was a victim of German barbarism, as were fourteen of her sisters."[47]
AdmiralIsoroku Yamamoto, the Commander-in-Chief of the Japanese Navy and the architect of the December 7, 1941, attack onPearl Harbor, waskilled when the plane that he was on was shot down by U.S. Army fighter pilotRex T. Barber. American naval intelligence had intercepted and decoded a Japanese message that included the itinerary for an inspection tour that Yamamoto was making of theSolomon Islands. The body of Yamamoto, who was mortally wounded byBougainville Island, was found the next day by a Japanese search party.[48]
Fourteen German citizens associated with theWhite Roseanti-Nazi resistance group are found guilty and promptly executed for crimes against theNazi regime.[49]
At 8:00 am, SS PolizeifuhrerJürgen Stroop commenced the final destruction of theWarsaw Ghetto and breaking of theWarsaw Ghetto Uprising, with German SS troops fighting the Jewish resistance. The operation would not be completed until May 16.[50] The Jewish defenders would kill 16 Germans and wound 85.[51]
BiochemistAlbert Hofmann followed up his accidental experience of three days earlier by intentionally ingesting 250 μg oflysergic acid diethylamide in an attempt to bioassay the substance.[53]
Winston Churchill announced in the House of Commons that restrictions on the ringing of church bells throughout Britain would be lifted now that the threat of German invasion had passed.[15]
In Tunisia,Bernard Montgomery approved an uncharacteristically aggressive series of small attacks against strongly defended Axis positions atEnfidha. Heavy Allied casualties resulted.[18]
The RAF marked Hitler's 54th birthday by bombing Berlin and three other cities.[15] Hitler himself passed the day quietly at theBerghof.[55]
The bombing ofAberdeen killed 98 civilians and 27 servicemen. The attack was the worst of 34 separate German air raids on the Scottish city.[57]
AdmiralMineichi Koga became the new Commander of the Japanese Navy, succeeding the late Admiral Yamamoto.[58]
Captain Frederick M. Trapnell became the first U.S. Navy aviator to fly a jet airplane, when he took up the Bell P-59 from the Muroc Army Air Field (nowEdwards Air Force Base) in California. Colonel Laurence C. Craigie of the U.S. Army had flown the P-59 on October 2, 1942.[59]
The American submarineGrenadier was bombed by Japanese aircraft in theStrait of Malacca and scuttled the next day.
The British submarineSplendid was shelled and damaged offCorsica by German destroyerHermes and was scuttled to prevent capture.
TheFire Department of New York (FDNY) responded to a fire on the munitions shipSS El Estero that threatened to destroy the port. The ship had been loading torpedoes at a pier used by the U.S. Army, caught fire, and began drifting after burning through the lines that tied it to the dock. The FDNYfireboat,Fire Fighter spent seven harrowing hours towing the ship away and then inundating it with enough water to sink it. An explosion of the ship could have set off a chain reaction that would have blown up other ammunition ships, tanks of natural gas, gasoline and oil on the shore, and "the largest ammunition dump in the U.S.", located on the New Jersey shore. Twelve years later, an author would describe the event as "the night New York City almost blew up".[62]
TheBattle of Hill 609 began between American and German forces in Tunisia.
Because of German labor needs occasioned by World War II,Heinrich Himmler directed concentration camps to avoid murdering those persons who were able to work, and to make it a priority to execute "the mentally ill who could not work".[64]
SSKamakura Maru, a Japanese troop ship that had been converted from the ocean linerChichibu Maru, was torpedoed and sunk in the Pacific Ocean by the American submarineUSSGudgeon, with the loss of 2,035 of the 2,500 people on board.[65]
The Allied shippingConvoy ONS 5 of 42 ships strong with 7 escorts, was attacked by over 40 German U-boats. Over the days, the convoy lost 13 ships totaling 63,000 tons, the escorts had inflicted the loss of 7 U-boats. This period is considered a turning point in theBattle of the Atlantic (known asBlack May).[66]
The American freighter SSMcKeesport was torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine, leading to a sea battle that continued over the next several weeks, during which 47 German U-boats were sunk.[67]
The German submarineU-332 was depth charged and sunk in the Bay of Biscay by a B-23 ofNo. 224 Squadron RAF.
Died: Canadian soldierAugust Sangret, 29, was hanged in London'sWandsworth Prison, after being convicted of killing his girlfriend Joan Wolfe, in what was called "The Wigwam Murder".[68]
The British submarine HMSSeraph surfaced off of the coast of Spain, near Huelva, and dumped the body of "Major Martin" into the Mediterranean Sea as part of theOperation Mincemeat, to deceive German intelligence on plans for an Allied invasion of the continent.[69]
^abcRichard J. Evans,The Third Reich at War, 1939–1945 (Penguin, 2010)
^"Chinese Steward Used Bent Nail To Fish During 131 Days Adrift",Gallup (NM) Independent, May 25, 1943, p1; "Torpedo Victim Spends 131 Days Alone on a Raft",Milwaukee Journal, May 25, 1943, p3
^Mario Martinez, Lady's Men: The Story of World War II's Mystery Bomber and Her Crew (Naval Institute Press, 1999); "Bodies of War Plane Crew Discovered in African Desert", Oakland Tribune, February 13, 1960, p1
^Eugene P. Boyt David L. Burch,Bataan: A Survivor's Story (University of Oklahoma Press, 2004) p xii
^Roger Manley and Mark Moran,Weird Carolinas: Your Travel Guide to the Carolinas' Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets (Sterling Publishing Company, 2007) p237
^"Blum, Others Held in Reich",Milwaukee Journal, April 5, 1943, p1
^John H. Waller,The Unseen War in Europe: Espionage and Conspiracy in the Second World War (I.B.Tauris, 1996) pp 308–309
^Richard Overy,The Bombers and the Bombed: Allied Air War Over Europe 1940-1945 (Penguin, 2014) p418
^"Katyn Forest, Massacre in ",Encyclopedia of War Crimes and Genocide, Leslie Alan Horvitz and Christopher Catherwood, eds., (Infobase Publishing, 2009) p261
^Simon Berthon and Joanna Potts,Warlords: An Extraordinary Re-Creation of World War II Through the Eyes and Minds of Hitler, Churchill, Roosevelt, And Stalin (Da Capo Press, 2006) p181
^Edwin S. Gaustad,Sworn on the Altar of God: A Religious Biography of Thomas Jefferson (Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1996) pp 181–182; "Jefferson Shrine Dedicated By FDR",Miami Dalily News, April 13, 1943, p1
^David Kahn,The Codebreakers: The Comprehensive History of Secret Communication from Ancient Times to the Internet (Simon and Schuster, 1996) p595
^Robert C. Ehrhart, et al.,Piercing the Fog: Intelligence and Army Air Forces Operations in World War II (Air Force History and Museums Program, 1996) pp 270–271
^Stephen Budiansky,Battle of Wits: The Complete Story of Codebreaking in World War II (Simon and Schuster, 2000) pp 319–320
^Michael J. Cohen,Truman and Israel (University of California Press, 1990) pp 36–37
^David E. Murphy, Sergei A. Kondrashev and George Bailey,Battleground Berlin: CIA Vs. KGB in the Cold War (Yale University Press, 1997) p29
^John Horgan,Rational Mysticism: Spirituality Meets Science in the Search for Enlightenment (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2004) p141; Jan Dirk Blom and Iris E.C. Sommer,Hallucinations: Research and Practice (Springer, 2011) p308
^"FREEZE 27 MILLION TO JOBS",Chicago Sunday Tribune, April 18, 1943, p1
^Moshe Arens,Flags Over the Warsaw Ghetto: The Untold Story of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (Gefen Publishing House, 2011) p318; Israel Gutman,The Jews of Warsaw, 1939–1943: Ghetto, Underground, Revolt (Indiana University Press, 1989) pp 364–365
^Paul Johnson,A History of the Jews (HarperCollins, 1988) p509
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