September 30th, 1943 (THURSDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM: This autumn's harvest looks like yielding less than last year's record-breaking crop, but in most areas productivity remains dramatically above pre-war levels. Farmers are "digging for victory" (and guaranteed markets) with such success that profound changes are now under way in the landscape itself.
Four-Fifths of Britain is a farmed landscape so changed in farming change the countryside. When the war began, about 17 million acres were grassland used for grazing livestock, with some 12 million acres as arable land to grow crops. Today the position is reversed.
The reason is simple enough. Before the war 70% of Britain's food was imported. The U-boat blockade threatened that lifeline, so intensive efforts were made to grow more food at home. Crops of potatoes, wheat and barley have virtually doubled, although all but barley will this year dip below the bumper levels of 1942.
This achievement is not without cost. Land such as chalk downs have been ploughed up, jeopardizing their wildlife. More tractors are being used, encouraging farmers to enlarge fields by removing hedgerows. More fertilizers are also being used to boost yields per acre. The government-appointed Scott committee sees "no antagonism between use and beauty". A minority is dissenting from this view.
Britain: Britain's war effort is being hampered by a wave of unofficial strikes. 9,000 engineers are out at Vickers Armstrong at Barrow-in-Furness. They have been on strike for two weeks in protest at an arbitration award of rates of pay. At a mass meeting today they voted to stay out, despite the urgings of their union, the Amalgamated Engineering Union (AEU). The local strike leaders, critical of AEU officials, demand direct negotiation with Ernest Bevin, the minister of labour, who has refused to intervene. He insists that the honour of the trade union movement is at stake.
Striking is illegal under an Order of 1940, but the impracticality of sending strikers to prison was demonstrated last year at Betteshanger colliery in Kent. More than 1,000 summonses were taken out against strikers. They were fined, while their union branch officials were sent to prison for a month. When the miners refused to pay the fines, magistrates could not have them arrested because there wasn't enough room in the prisons. On Mr. Bevin's advice, the fines were held in abeyance and the men went back to work.
The same difficulty now applies to a strike of 7,000 miners in the Lanarkshire coalfield in Scotland. It is in protest at the arrest of fellow-miners for non-payment of their fines for joining an earlier unofficial strike. The local miners' president has blamed "outside elements" for extending the stoppage. Mr. Bevin recently told the House of Commons that there were three kinds of strike occurring. One was the "last straw" type, by the men. The second type was provoked by the employers. The third type was politically inspired by Trotskyists and others opposed to the war.
"While I will not be a party to anything to weaken the legitimate trade unions in any way - I want to strengthen them - I feel that steps must be taken to see the war effort is not impeded by these activities" he declared. This year has already seen a dock strike at Liverpool, and now a strike of 16,000 workers at Rolls-Royce aero engine factory at Hillington, Glasgow, is threatened over the unequal rates of pay for women, who now make up two-thirds of the workforce.
Frigates HMS Aylmer and Shiel commissioned.
Aircraft carrier HMS Colossus launched.
Submarine HMS Sturdy launched.
FRANCE: The underground newspaper defence de la France publishes the first photographs of Nazi concentration camps.
A French agent, Andre Comps, steals blueprints of a V1 launch site to send to London.
GERMANY:
U-858 commissioned.
U-1197 and
U-1198 launched.
NORWAY: U-711 suffered a man lost during landing in Narvik. [Maschinengefreiter Heinz Schiefelbein].
SWEDEN: Stockholm: In a bold and hazardous night operation, Danish fishermen are smuggling almost all of Denmark's over 7,000 Jews across the stormy Oresund Strait to the safety of Sweden. The voyage costs £100 for each person; the price of failure is death. Among the refugees are the Nobel prize-winning atomic scientist Niels Bohr and his wife.
About 6,000 Jews and 1,400 half-Jews are at risk, and nearly 700 people married to Jews are expected to leave as well. The roundup of Danish Jews for deportation began a week ago with Gestapo agents calling on Jewish homes at night and taking whole families, including the old, the sick and children.
All Jewish private fortunes are being seized. The telephone system in Copenhagen was switched off to prevent Jews from warning one another of the Gestapo's coming.
Bohr came ashore from a Danish fishing boat at Helsingborg; he went straight to Stockholm to beg the Swedish government to help his fellow Jews. The Swedes promised asylum to all who reached their shores and sent a protest note to Germany. Swedish opinion is outraged by the latest persecutions. Even the explorer Sven Hedin, known for his German sympathies, has called them "deplorable". Pastoral letters from bishops condemning the Germans have been read out in Danish churches.
POLAND: Auschwitz-Birkenau: At least 5,400 Dutch, Belgian and French Jews have been gassed this month.
U.S.S.R.: The Soviets capture Krichev on the Sozh River.
Moscow: The Red Army continues to steamroller westwards. It has announced the capture of Rudnya, in the northwest and of Kremenchug, the important rail junction on the east bank of the Dnieper, 140 miles south of Kiev.
Huge forces are now massing for the final phase of the assault on Kiev, the capital of the Ukraine. Last nights communiqué says that Russian guns are shelling Gomel, and further north the Red Army has advanced six miles towards another important German base, Mogilev in White Russia. Unofficial reports from Moscow say that a fierce battle is also going on in the outskirts of Zaporozhe, at the southern end of Dnieper bend, some 50 miles from the town of Dnepropetrovsk.
This means that the Russian forces have now reached every important place along the Dnieper and that the Germans are fighting hard to maintain a toehold on the eastern bank.
More importantly, the Russians have expanded their bridgeheads on the western bank south of Kiev and have begun to link them up to form a solid base.
ITALY: Advance units of X Corps reach Naples.
Allied troops have fought their way to the gates of Naples to find that the population has risen against the German garrison. Hundreds have been killed in street fighting which was finally put down today by the Hermann Göring Panzer Division. Outside the city, the British V Corps has surrounded Mount Vesuvius; and the US VI Corps has taken Avelino. Naples seems certain to fall, but this anticipated triumph has not stilled the concern voiced by many US (and some British) commanders at the slowness of General Montgomery's Eighth Army in coming to assist the US Fifth Army at Salerno.
US Twelfth Air Force P-38 Lightnings, B-25s, and B-26 Marauders bomb road and rail and road bridges at Ausonia, Piana, Castelvenere, Amorosi, and Capua, and carry out sweeps from Bastia to Elba Island; 7 B-25s hit Benevento and surrounding rail and road communications; XII Air Support Command fighter-bombers carry out strafing and bombing missions north and northeast of Naples as Avellino falls to the US 3d Division.
During the night of 30 September/1 October, 37 RAF No. 205 (Heavy Bomber) Group aircraft bomb the Coast Road at Formia; two other aircraft drop leaflets.
INDIA: Sloop INS Hind launched.
CHINA: 2 US Fourteenth Air Force B-25 Mitchells and 4 P-40s sink an IJN auxiliary minesweeper in Kwangchow Bay.
SINGAPORE: A canoe-borne Australian Special Forces group has penetrated the heavily-protected harbour at Singapore and blown up between 37,000 and 38,000 tons of Japanese shipping in Operation Jaywick.
The operation began on the night of 26-27 September. Led by Major Ivan Lyon of the Gordon Highlanders, six "Z" Special men entered the harbour in three canoes and attached limpet mines to seven ships, all of which were sunk or badly damaged. All three canoes were clear of Singapore when the first mines exploded at 5.15am on 27 September.
The "Z" Special group was a mix of army and navy men. Its canoes, limpet mines and equipment were conveyed to a point near Singapore in the 68-ton ketch KRAIT. The ketch left Exmouth Gulf, Western Australia, on 1 September and on entering enemy waters posed as an Indonesian trading vessel. The KRAIT is a former Japanese fishing vessel, the KOKUFU MARU, seized from the Japanese in the early part of the Pacific War.
Sailing to Singapore without incident the group sighted the lights of the city on 18 September. While attaching a limpet mine to a tanker two of the crewmen became aware of a sailor watching them intently through a porthole. The froze in their task, but fortunately the sailor did not raise the alarm.
NEW GUINEA: The Australian 2/43rd Battalion lands at Scarlet Beach in the Finschhafen, Northeast New Guinea area.
USAAF Fifth Air Force B-24 Liberators and B-25 Mitchells bomb Sorong Aerodrome in Dutch New Guinea.
NETHERLANDS EAST INDIES: US Fifth Air Force B-24s and B-25s fly light raids against Boela on Ceram Island in the Moluccas Islands and Manatuto on Timor Island.
SOLOMON ISLANDS: 16 US Thirteenth Air Force B-24s, covered by 20+ P-38s and P-40s and a few USMC F4U Corsairs, pound the Kahili airfield area on Bougainville Island, hitting a supply and bivouac area northeast of the strip. 6 B-25s bomb Kakasa on Choiseul Island.
U.S.A.: The Women's Army Auxiliary Corps becomes the Women's Army Corps, a regular contingent of the U.S. Army with the same status as other army service corps.
USCGC (US Coast Guard Cutter) E.M. Wilcox foundered off Nags Head, North Carolina. There one man is lost.
Minesweeper USS Buoyant commissioned.
Destroyers USS The Sullivans, Remey, Hopewell and Hailey commissioned.
Destroyer escort USS Joyce commissioned.
Destroyer USS Samuel N Moore laid down.
Destroyers USS Cushing and Rowe launched.
ATLANTIC OCEAN: U-960 sank SS Arkhangel´sk in Convoy VA-18.
U-309 lost a crewmember in the North Atlantic while working out on the deck. [Mechanikergefreiter Erich Jungmann].