Posted on 01/28/2014 4:07:04 AM PST by Homer_J_Simpson
28 January. A combat patrol from the 1st Battalion, 128th Infantry engaged in a fire fight with about a hundred enemy in the vicinity of Teteri. Forty-three Japs killed. We lost 8 killed (including Lieutenant Colonel Clarkson, CO, 1st Bn., 128th Infantry) 9 wounded, 6 missing.
Major General H.W. Blakeley, USA, Ret., The 32d Infantry Division in World War II
Winston S. Churchill, Closing the Ring
http://www.onwar.com/chrono/1944/jan44/f28jan44.htm
Soviets trap 56,000 Germans
Friday, January 28, 1944 www.onwar.com
German forces assemble for relief of the Korsun Pocket [photo at link]
On the Eastern Front... South of Leningrad, forces of the Soviet Volkhov Front capture Lyuban and other small towns to the south. Field Marshal von Kuchler, commanding German Army Group North orders the German 18th Army (Lindemann) to retire to the line of the Luga River in order to prevent it from being encircled by the advancing Soviet forces. In the Ukraine, elements of Soviet 6th Tank Army (Kravchenko), part of 1st Ukrainian Front, and 5th Guards Tank Army (Rotmistrov), part of 2nd Ukrainian Front, link up near Zvenigorodka and complete a double envelopment of elements two corps (German 11th and 42nd Corps) of the German 8th Army (Wohler), part of Army Group South (Manstein). Approximately 56,000 German troops are now cut off southwest of Cherkassy. Field Marshal Manstein immediately assembles armored forces from 1st Panzer and 8th Armies to relieve the trapped forces.
http://www.etherit.co.uk/month/thismonth/28.htm
January 28th, 1944 (FRIDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM: London: Official statements concerning the sickening cruelty of the Japanese towards prisoners of war were made today in Britain and the United States. The British foreign secretary, Anthony Eden, said: “Let the Japanese government reflect in time to come that the record of their military authorities in this war will not be forgotten.” The House of Commons and both houses of Congress heard blood-curdling accounts of the inhuman conditions the prisoners are kept in - without sufficient food, water or shelter - and barbarous tortures used by guards.
Frigates HMS Waldegrave and Whitaker commissioned.
Frigate HMS Halladale launched.
GERMANY: U-1272 commissioned.
CANADA: Corvette HMCS Kitchener completed refit Liverpool, Nova Scotia.
U.S.A.: A memo signed by General Walter Bedell-Smith, Chief of Staff to the Supreme Allied Commander, General Dwight D. Eisenhower: “It is highly desirable that the [French] division should be composed of white personnel, which points to the second armoured division, which has only one quarter native troops and is the only French division which could be made 100 per cent white.”
This is in reference to the French division which will be part of the Allied invasion force at Normandy. (Henry Sirotin)
Destroyer escort USS Wingfield commissioned.
Destroyer escort USS Le Ray Wilson launched.
ATLANTIC OCEAN:
U-271 Sunk west of Limerick, in position 53.15N, 15.52W, by depth charges from a US Consolidated PB4Y-1Liberator aircraft (VB-103/E, based in St. Eval, Cornwall under operational control of RAF No. 19 (General Reconnaissance) Group, RAF Coastal Command). The PB4Y crew caught U-271 on the surface and dropped six depth charges causing the sub to settle by the stern and sink. 51 dead (all hands lost).
U-571 Sunk west of Ireland, in position 52.41N, 14.27W, by depth charges from an Australian Shorts Sunderland MKIII aircraft (RAAF-Sqdn 461/D, out of Pembroke Dock, Wales). 52 dead (all hands lost). Unlike many U-boats, which during their service lost men due to accidents and various other causes. U-571 did not suffer any casualties (we know of) until the time of her loss. (Alex Gordon and Jack McKillop)
The “Minute Woman” shoe, next to the article about Burma, is in fashion again. I’d have gotten a pair myself a couple of months ago, but PayLess didn’t have them in my size.
I was 10 years old when I lost my grandmother Brown in Deming, NM. As my dad and I walked through the graveyard he pointed out the stones of members of New Mexico National Guard who had perished at Bataan. I never forgot.
There’s a book out about the rescue of some of the survivors of the Bataan Death March. The details are horrifying.
Thanks. You are correct. The one I read was “Ghost Soldiers: The Epic Account of World War II’s Greatest Rescue”, by Hampton Sides. A very good account of how the local patriots helped prevent near disaster and turn rescue into success.
Yes, the very one. I couldn’t remember the title, this early in the morning ;-). I checked out the recorded book, so my whole family heard parts of it.
Shorts Sunderland MkIII
PB4Y-1 Liberator
Thanks for posting those pics of the aircraft that sank the subs on this date. My uncle flew a Navy Liberator in the Pacific.
There were several from Deming, they used to go talk to area school children, and college History classes until the last of them became too disabled to be able to do it. My brother had a high school teacher that was a survivor. Their stories need to be told, and others.
We had an acquaintance in Tulsa, head of the local Veterans’ Historical Society, who had been at the liberation of one of the Nazi concentration camps. He gave a lot of talks to schools and community groups.
“U-571 Sunk west of Ireland, in position 52.41N, 14.27W, by depth charges from an Australian Shorts Sunderland MKIII aircraft (RAAF-Sqdn 461/D, out of Pembroke Dock, Wales). 52 dead (all hands lost)”
A different ending than the movie.
My uncle was present at the liberation of a camp. Mom has a shoebox full of his photos depicting the vile horror.
Those images were burned into my brain the first time I viewed them at 12 years of age and is the main reason I have no desire to nor every seen Schindler’s List.
I haven’t seen it, either. The gentleman in Tulsa said that his division commander insisted that as many soldiers as possible view the camp, because he anticipated Holocaust denial before they even had a clear idea of all that had happened.
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