March 30th, 1943 (TUESDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM: Britain suspends the Arctic convoys to the Soviet Union because it cannot provide enough escorts to guard against the increasing number of German warships in Norway.
NETHERLANDS: RAF Mosquitoes bomb the Philips radio factory at Eindhoven.
BALTIC SEA Sea: U-416 (type VIIC) is sunk near Bornholm Island (precise position unknown) by a mine laid by Soviet submarine L3. The number of crew lost is not known, but the U-Boat is raised on 8 April 1943 and put back into use for training. (Alex Gordon)
U.S.S.R.: Moscow: Stalin is furious to hear that Allied convoys to Murmansk are to be suspended because of heavy losses, suspecting political rather than military motives.
TUNISIA: Allied troops of the Eighth Army today moved up to a new German defensive line in the Tunisian desert at Wadi Akarit. The ten-day battle to breach the Axis defences of the Mareth Line is over, with Montgomery a decisive victor in his first confrontation with the new Axis commander, General von Arnim.
For many observers, this was Monty's finest battle. After two days of fighting, a direct assault on the Mareth Line was proving to be fruitless, with heavy losses in men and tanks from ruthless Axis counterattacks. Then Monty revised his original plan by ordering Lt-Gen Brian Horrocks to move his tanks by night to join Maj-Gen Sir Bernard Freyberg's New Zealanders, who had begun an encircling move. The breakthrough came with the attack on the Tebaga Gap during the night 26-27 March. The movement of so many men and tanks in darkness was a move previously favoured by Rommel, but not the Allies; another tactic deployed to a greater extent than has been customary for the Allies was the use of air power to support attacking land forces.
Forward air-controllers were in the front line of the Tebaga attack, using radio to direct pilots in Spitfires and other aircraft to attack tanks and enemy defences. The land forces advanced behind an aerial barrage of cannon fire and bombs from fighter-bombers flying over them in 15-minutes relays.
Some 6,000 Axis soldiers, mostly Italian, have been taken prisoner. But although most of the Mareth defenders escaped, they have had little time to prepare new defences against the inevitable next move by Monty's masters of the desert.
Not since the age of Hannibal has such a polyglot army fought over these desolate wastelands. Men from all over the world have shared the dangers and discomfort, the defeats and the triumphs, the intense daytime heat and bitterly cold desert nights. The blood of many races and nationalities has soaked into the North African desert.
Here are the Australians who fought so stubbornly on the north flank of Alamein, with losses so huge that their government feared the loss of an entire generation; and New Zealanders whose tanks have excelled in encirclement operations and whose Maori infantrymen became as feared as the Indian Division's Gurkhas in the fighting around Tobruk. The Free French stand at Bir Hacheim brought respect even from Rommel; and few have fought more fiercely than the Palestinian detachment and the Poles.
The Greek Brigade has shown the same tenacity as it showed against the Italians and Germans in defence of its homeland.
The Scots regiments have distinguished themselves throughout the campaign, often fighting alongside South Africans and English, Welsh and Irish county regiments, happy and honoured with the rest to call themselves "Desert Rats".
ATLANTIC OCEAN: Having scuttled their ship, all but six of the crew of the German blockade runner REGENSBURG, from Rangoon, kill themselves when they are intercepted off Iceland by the British cruiser HMS GLASGOW.
ATLANTIC OCEAN: 2nd Engineer Officer Gordon Love Bastian (1902-87) rescued two injured men from the engine-room, dark and filing with water and fumes, of the sinking SS BOWMAN. (Albert Medal)