August 8th, 1943 (SUNDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM: The USAAF's VIII Air Support Command in England flies Mission 15: 36 B-26B Marauders are dispatched to Nord Airfield at Poix, France but the formation is turned back by weather.
GERMANY: An announcement of extensive evacuations of women, children, and elderly from Berlin. (Glenn Steinberg)
ITALY: SICILY:
US forces are landed east of Sant Agata. Sant Agata and Cesaro Island fall because of this flanking movement. British forces capture Bronte and Acireale.A week-long Allied bombing campaign against northern Italy commences.
(Glenn Steinberg)
SPAIN: Generalissimo
Francisco Franco makes a cunning reply to August 2 telegram of Don Juan de Borbon y
Battenberg, Infante of Spain, Count of Barcelona (Glenn Steinberg)
SOLOMON ISLANDS: Rendova: A patrol torpedo (PT) boat commander today
told how two Solomon Islanders and a coconut shell saved the lives of his crew after they
had been stranded for a week and given up for dead.
Lt John F Kennedy, the commander of PT-109, described the ordeal after his PT boat had
been sliced in half by the Japanese destroyer Amagiri in waters off the Japanese-occupied
island of Kolombangara on 1 August. Eleven of the 13 crew survived the impact, although
one was injured.
After five hours clinging to the wreckage they managed to reach an island from which
Kennedy, the son of a former US ambassador to Britain, swam out to sea and spent a
fruitless night in the water hoping to flag down another PT boat.
Two days later PT-109's crew swam to what the natives know as Plum Pudding Island, 200
yards wide and covered in palm trees, in search of food. But Kennedy and another crew
member had to swim to a third island before eventually meeting two natives with a canoe.
They gave them a coconut shell inscribed with the message "Nauru Island, Native knows
posit. He can pilot, 11 alive, need small boat ", and begged them to take it to the
US base on Rendova. Within a day help was at hand.
On Kolombangara Island in the Solomon Islands, 23 B-25 Mitchells, with P-38s, and P-39Airacobras of the USAAF's Thirteenth Air Force, and US Marine Corps F4U Corsairs as cover,
bomb Vila and Buki harbour.
U.S.A.: Minesweeper USS Serene laid down. Submarine USS Bluegill launched. Destroyer escort USS Marts launched. Destroyer escort USS Pennewill launched. Minesweeper USS Scuffle launched.
ATLANTIC OCEAN:
U-262 shot down two aircraft
from USN VC-1 Sqn.
U-664 shot down an aircraft
from USS Card.