April 17 & 18 1940 The U.S, said any change in the status of the Dutch East Indies " would be prejudicial to the cause of stability, peace, and security."
18th German forces pressed their advances in Norway, breaking out of the Oslo area and advancing toward Hamar to the North.
17th 1941 Geman forces took the Sevia pass. A large R.A.F. bombing force struck Berlin. Royal Navy units bombarded the old Italian fortress of Capuzzo in Libya. A German raider sank the Egyptian steamship Zamza in the south Atlantic. About 150 Americans were umong the rescued…
18th Admiral Ernest J. King, commander in chief, U.S. Atlanyic Fleet, ordered U.S. ships and planes to attack any Axis ship within 25 miles of the western Hemisphere on the asumption it was hostile. British troops in Greece began withdrawing to Thermopyale.
1942 18th Japan was bombed by American warplanes. Sixteen B-25 bombers under the command of Lieutenant Colonel James H. Doolittle took off from the carrier Hornet to carry the war to Japan for the first time. The first attacking aircraft was launched at 8:18 a.m. about 10 hours ahead of schedule because the naval convoy had been spotted by a Japanese vessal. The range to Yokyo was thus increased to 800 statue miles instead of the planned 650, which was considered the maximum to achieve success. Some of the planes reached Tokyo during a practice air alert, and most Japanese were first confused, then startled when actual bombs started falling. Yokohama, Kobe, and Nagoya were also struck. Only one plane was hit by Anti-aircraft fire, suffering only minor damage. Eight of the aircraft bombed their primary targets. Five others had to select secondary objectives. Only one failed to drop its bombs on Japan. Favored by an uncommon tailwind, the planes continued westward ,most of them to China and safely. One landed near Vladivostok, and the crew was interned by the Russians. Two crews came down in japanese occupied China ( three men were executed by the Japanese ,five were made prisoners, and four of them were freed at the end of the war). Little damage was inflicted on the Japanese cities, but the doolittle raid gave Japanese military leaders pause and was a factor in their decision to consolidate their vast holdings rather than to expand them further. For the Allies, the attack was an antidote for the painfull doses of defeat. MacArthur formally assumed his position as supreme commander,southwest Pacific area. Australian Vice Admiral Herbert F. Leary as Allied Naval Force Commander, and U.S. General Grorge H. Bret as commander of Allied Airforces. The road to the key transportation center of Lashio in Burma was threatened when the Chinese 55th Division collapsed under heavy Japanese pressure. Field Marshal Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb was relieved of his command of German forces in the northern sector of Russia. Leeb was frustrated by Hitlers direction of the war, and Hitler was equally frustrated by the marshals inability to occupy Leningrad.
1943 Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, commander in chief of the Japanese combined Fleet, was killed when his plane was shot down just before landing at Kihili airfield at the southern tip of Bougainville. P-38s from Guadalcanal had been sent up to “get Yamamoto” after the U.S. had intercepted coded radio messages informing the appropriate Japanese military authorities of his arrival. It was surprising the Japanese did not consider the possibility that the code was compromised, for this was another instance of clear intelligence data being used by the Allied forces. No effort was made to change the code. The loss of the respected naval officer was a shock to the Japanese people and is said to have demoralized everyone. For Americans, Yamamoto was the Japanese who ordered the attack on Pearl Harbor. What was not known then is that Yamamoto opposed the war, feeling it could not be won. In what was to become known as the “Palm Sunday Massacre,” 51 Luftwaffe transports and 16 escorting fighters were shot down in about 10 minutes while attempting to ferry supplies from Europe to the hard pressed Army Group Africa. Seventy U.S. and British fighters( directed to the proper intercept point from Ultra intercepts) had little trouble pouncing on the slow, trimotor Junker 52 aircraft. Seven of the Allied planes were lost. Moscow accused the Germans of the massacre of Polish officers at Katyn : "The hand of the Gestapo can easly be traced in this hideous frameup. Australian Prime Minister John Curtin was critical of the Allied “Europe First” policy, which denied supplies to Aulstalia which was rapidly exhausting its resorces . . . the Australian government accepts the global strategy . . . but it does not accepta flow of war material, notably aircraft, that does not measure up to the requirements of a holding war. Germany and Turkey signed a trade agreement, with the Germans to recieve cotton, tobacco, and dried fruits in exchange for heavy industrial machinery,locomotives, trucks, and chemicals. The agreement is noteworthy in that Germany was more interested in consumer products than in potential war material, even in the fourth year of the war.
1944 17th Japan launched what was to be its last major offensive in China. A Division struck over the Yellow River in Honan Province in the first move of the campaign to seize Allied air bases and decimate Chinese ground forces.
18th Russian Marines recaptured Balaklava in the Crimea. Marshal Badoglio resigned as head of the Italian government, but the King requested he remain with a reconstituted cabinet.
1945 17th The U.S. promised the Soviet Union an additional 5,700,000 tons of supplies. Red Army forces began establishing a bridgehead across the Oder and Neisse Rivers in their drive for Berlin. The American Seventh Army began closing in on Nurnberg,symbolic center of the Nazi State. U.S. 30th Division units captured most of Magdeburg. German resistance was ferocios in the fighting around Nurnberg. The U.S. VI Corps raced to the Swiss border to block the German escape route from the Black Forest. French troops split the German Nineteenth Army in two by taking Freudenstadt. The U.S. X Corps landed on Mindanao in the Philippines and met little resistance. The force was concentrated at Malabang on Moro Gulf. It was the last major amphibious operation necessary to regain the Philipinnes. Japanese troops suffered heavy casualties as U.S.Marines finished taking the Motobu Peninsula on Okinowa.
18th All resistance in the Ruhr pocket ended with the surrender of 325,000 German troops under the command of Field Marshal Model. Except for the Russian surrender around Kiev in September 1941, this was the single largest capitulation of the war. The Canadian 5th Armored Division reached the Zuider Zee, completing the last offensive action of the Canadian First Army in the war. All road outlets out of Nurnberg were blocked
