http://www.onwar.com/chrono/1944/may44/06may44.htm#
Red Army attacking Sevastopol
Saturday, May 6, 1944 www.onwar.com
On the Eastern Front... In the Crimea, Soviet forces launch their final offensive on Sevastopol. The attack begins during the night with an artillery barrage. The German and Romanian forces in the city have been adequately maintained and about 40,000 have been evacuated by sea.
In Occupied Norway... The British Home Fleet begins the first of a series of six attempts to conduct another air strike on the German battleship Tirpitz. Poor weather prevents the attack being carried out. These raids are considered to be part of one of the deception plans for D-Day, Operation Fortitude North. It involves false radio traffic designed to suggest a coming Allied landing in Norway.
In the Pacific... A Japanese troopship convoy is destroyed by the American submarine Gurnard.
In Japan... The first flight of the Mitsubishi A7M fighter (designed to replace the Zero) takes place. Technical problems and Allied bombing raids prevent mass production.
In India... Gandi is released from imprisonment on medical grounds.
http://www.etherit.co.uk/month/thismonth/06.htm
May 6th, 1944(SATURDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM: Slapton Sands: A last effort to remedy the mistakes and muddles thrown up in the succession of invasion exercises in held on the beaches of England has been made this week with Operation Fabius. This took place over five days and extended from Littlehampton in Sussex, through Hampshire and Dorset to Slapton Sands, the scene of last month’s disaster when 638 Americans were lost in a German E-boat attack during a previous D-Day exercise.
The Americans, British and Canadian forces were assigned to four separate beaches corresponding to the assault beaches in France. Two other exercises involving naval forces, took place at the same time to familiarize the invasion fleet with the boarding, disembarkation and re-enforcement plans. A third exercise, Operation Splint, handled the evacuation of wounded by landing craft.
Fabius has been judged satisfactory. Afterwards, though, Brigadier-General Norman Cota told his headquarters staff of the US 29th Division that when the real thing came along “the little discrepancies that we tried to correct on Slapton Sands are going to be magnified and are going to give way to incidents that you might at first view as chaotic. The landing craft aren’t going in on schedule and people are going to be landed in the wrong place ... The enemy will have some success in preventing our gaining lodgement. But we must improvise, carry on, not lose our heads.”
Minesweeper HMS Chameleon launched.
FRANCE: La Roche Guyon: At the German Army Group B’s HQ in north-western France, Rommel has substantially reinforced the coastal defences from the Netherlands through the Pas de Calais to Normandy. Bunkers have been built, and the beaches bristle with innumerable angle irons laced with mined stakes slanted seawards. In the Cotentin peninsula, covering the port of Cherbourg, a network of mined poles linked by wires stands as a defence against airborne landings. But the Germans are unable to agree on where the Allies will invade, so the six divisions of General Geyr von Schweppenburg’s powerful Panzer Group West have been divided between Rommel’s coastal forces and von Rundstedt’s reserves near Paris.
GERMANY: Eighteen hundred slave labourers are requisitioned from France to work on the production of rocket bombs at Dora concentration camp.
U-778 launched.
U-325 commissioned.
NORWAY: Two men from U-348 stepped on a land mine near Stavanger. One was killed, the other wounded. The boat departed for its second patrol from Bergen on the 20th. [Bootsmaat Günter Labahn].
U.S.S.R.: The final Soviet assault by troops under General Fedor Tolbukhin on the German forces in Sevastopol begins tonight with a heavy bombardment of Katyusha rockets.
INDIA: Mahatma Gandhi, imprisoned since August 1942, is released owing to ill health.
BURMA: Chinese troops attack Japanese positions at Ritpong.
Air Commando Combat Mission N0.54. 3:00 Flight Time. Hailakandi, Assam to Ritpum, Burma. Bombed village that contained Japanese troops.
Note: On this occasion we were carrying we had a full load of frag cluster bombs. Minimum altitude for releasing non parachute frags was around 2000 feet. We dropped on our target not much over 200 feet. When we landed back in Hailakandi we found the bottom of our fuselage was riddled with holes. Sgt. Zajak, who was flying as waist gunner, counted fifty-nine holes. Our pilot claimed it was from ground fire, but we knew he had just plain screwed up. (Chuck Baisden)
JAPAN: The Mitsubishi A7M1, Navy Experimental 17-Shi Ko (A) Type Carrier Fighter Reppu (Hurricane) makes its first flight. The aircraft had been under development since 1942 as a replacement for the Mitsubishi A6M, Navy Type 0 Carrier Fighter, Allied Code Name “Zeke.” The A7M1 was as manoeuvrable as the “Zeke” but was underpowered and lacked performance. Only ten of these aircraft, given the Allied Code Name “Sam,” were built by Mitsubishi at Nagoya.
CANADA:
Frigates HMCS Outremont, Cape Breton, Waskesiu and Grou arrived Loch Ewe with Convoy RA-59.
Tug HMCS Birchton launched United Shipyard Montreal.
Frigate HMCS Toronto commissioned.
Frigate HMCS Ettrick completed refit Halifax NS and assigned to EG C-3.
Frigate HMCS Toronto commissioned.
U.S.A.: Frigate USS Brownsville commissioned.
The USAAF 477th Bombardment Group (Medium) moves to Godman Field, Ft. Knox, Kentucky, where it trains with B-25 Mitchells.
ATLANTIC OCEAN: The German submarine U-66 is sunk about 290 miles (467 km) west of the Cape Verde Islands, in position 17.17N, 32.29W, by depth charges, ramming and gunfire from Eastern Aircraft TBM Avenger and FM Wildcat aircraft of Composite Squadron Fifty Five (VC-55) in the escort aircraft carrier USS Block Island (CVE-21) and by the destroyer escort USS Buckley (DE-51); 36 of the 60 submariners survive. Block Island and Buckley were part of Task Group 21.11 which has been hunting this submarine since 1 May; several attacks had been made, including three Fido homing torpedoes that were dropped on the U-boat. Finally in the early morning hours of the 6th, U-66 was sighted by the crew of USS Buckley and after an exchange of gunfire, Buckley rammed the U-boat at 0329 hours local. Many of the U-boat survivors, some with small arms, climbed on Buckley’s forecastle and the Americans, thinking they were being boarded as in the days of sail, used small arms, hand grenades, fists and a coffee cup to subdue them. Buckley backed away from the U-boat leaving five armed Germans on the escort who were promptly subdued and taken below. The U-boat started to draw ahead but then turned and hit the escort near its engine room opening a hole on the starboard side and for the second time the U-boat was raked with gunfire.
The U-boat finally sank after a salvo from Buckley’s 3-inch (76.2 mm) gun after one of the longest fights in the war.
SS Anadyr, dispersed from Convoy TJ-30, was torpedoed and sunk by U-129 about 600 miles SSE of Recife. Four crewmembers and two gunners were lost. The master and seven survivors landed at Porto de Galhinas near Recife and 39 survivors landed 20 miles south of Recife.
U-473 sunk at 0200 hrs in the North Atlantic WSW of Ireland, in position 49.29N, 21.22W, by depth charges from sloops HMS Starling, Wren and Wild Goose. 23 dead and 30 survivors.
U-765 sunk in the North Atlantic, in position 52.30N, 28.28W, by depth charges from two 825 Sqn Swordfish from escort carrier HMS Vindex and frigates HMS Bickerton, Bligh and Aylmer. 37 dead and 11 survivors.
“On the Eastern Front... In the Crimea, Soviet forces launch their final offensive on Sevastopol.”
That does it! Odessa, Dneister, Crimea! I’m going to have to go in to get my meds adjusted again...