March 24th, 1944 (FRIDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM: Pit owners and miners' leaders today signed a new four-year deal to secure peace and higher output un Britain's coalfields. Under a government-sponsored plan, piece-rate wages will be more closely related to output and there will be job security until 194. About one in 20 miners will also be graded as "skilled craftsmen" able to earn well over £5 a week. Union leaders appealed tonight for a return to work by 60,000 South Yorkshire miners in dispute over their home coal allowance.
FRANCE: Airfields are attacked in the morning by 181 Eighth Air Force B-24s and 220 Ninth Air Force B-26s. In the afternoon, 146 Ninth Air Force bombers hit a marshalling yard. These aircraft are escorted by 841 Eighth and Ninth Air Force fighters.
The full weight of the Heer with massive air support, has succeeded in defeating 465 Resistance fighters of the French Maquis on the plateau of Glieres. The widespread presence of the Maquis has become a continuing source of irritation and frustration to the Vichy and German authorities.
The first attack by the Vichy Milice was a failure; but today several battalions of German soldiers, backed by the Milice, are being used in the offensive. The majority of prisoners are reported to have been brutally tortured before being executed.
GERMANY: 222 Eighth Air Force B-17s, escorted by 540 fighters, bomb Schweinfurt and Frankfurt. This is the third raid to hit Frankfurt since 18 March.
Stalag Luft III: They have been working on it for two years and now, just after dusk, the moment has arrived for the Allied airmen held in the German PoW camp at Sagan, 80 miles south-east of Berlin. The last few feet of earth are removed and the first prisoners climb out into the wood beyond the barbed wire. The 365-foot tunnel, with air vents and underground railway for moving debris, is the brain child of a Canadian mining engineer and Spitfire pilot, Wally Moody.
Two by two the men leave the tunnel and move off in different directions: south for Czechoslovakia, west for the attempt to pick up a train, and north for Baltic ports and Scandinavia. From time to time the ground beneath their feet shudders under the impact of the 4,000-pound bombs that their RAF comrades are dropping on Germany. They move warily, for the camp guard is doubled during air raids.
As dawn begins to break, a guard, startled by movement close by, fires a shot that raises the alarm. Guards, some in night clothes, swarm through the camp; 76 P oWs have escaped.
ITALY: 132 Fifteenth Air Force B-24s bomb marshalling yards at Rimini and several other targets while Twelfth Air Force A-20s, A-36s, B-25s, P-40s and P-47s bomb supply and bivouac areas, bridges, troop concentrations, etc. As part of Operation STRANGLE, the aerial interdiction of the German supply lines, aerial attacks by Allied aircraft have completely severed the rail lines from northern Italy to Rome and no rail cars enter Rome until the Allied occupation in June 1944.
Rome: In a bloody and brutal night of savagery, the SS avenged the deaths of 33 of its men in a communist partisan bombing by killing 335 hostages - ten Italians for every German. The bomb exploded in Rome's Via Rasella as a German police unit was marching past.
The victims, drawn mostly from Rome's Jewish population, had been picked from a Gestapo jail or were being detained by the Wehrmacht. They were taken by lorry to the Ardeatine Caves outside the city. Before the war the caves were mined for the volcanic material known as tuff for use in cement production. There, by torchlight, the shootings began. As the dead piled up, executioners and victims were forced to stand on bodies. The youngest victim was 15. Engineers sealed the caves. (Tony Morano)
The only person to be punished for it was Herbert Kappler, the SS officer in charge of German police and security services in Rome during the war. He was sentenced to life in prison in 1948.
BURMA: Major General Orde Charles Wingate is killed flying in a B-25 Mitchell of the First ir Commando on a return flight from the Chindit base "Broadway" Burma to India. He is replaced by General Lentaigne. The weather was bad with sudden rainstorms. The RAF had grounded its planes, but the 41 year old Wingate insisted on flying - dying, as he had lived, ignoring official advice. Some of his Chindits are grieving. Others are celebrating. In death as in life he produced mixed reactions.
An unstable crusader who had found a cause, Wingate had first achieved fame for his irregular skills, and notoriety for his brutality, in Ethiopia. His staff so hated him that when he failed to commit suicide with a razor in protest at the "betrayal of Ethiopia", Colonel Hugh Boustead said: "Bloody fool, why didn't you use a revolver?"
Yet after Wingate had put his ideas on long-range penetration into practice in Burma, Churchill wanted this "man of genius and audacity" in command.
Operation Thursday, launched three weeks ago, was designed to cut off the Japanese army in north-east Burma, and threaten its rear. Within ten days Brigadier Mike Calvert's 77th Brigade has captured Mawlu, cut all rail and road links with north-east Burma and established "strongholds" supplied by air. But Brigadier Bernard Fergusson's 16th Brigade, exhausted after a five-week march from Ledo, has failed to take the main Japanese supply base at Indaw.
Meanwhile, on the Imphal plain, Slim is mustering his forces to try to hold off against Mutaguchi's two divisions advancing on Imphal, Kohima and Dimapur. While the Japanese complain that they haven't seen their own air force in weeks. Slim has airlifted the 5th Indian Division over from the Arakan. More troops are pouring into the area from Manipur.
But the Chindits, their charismatic leader gone, are no longer sure of their objective. Having been told to cut off the Japanese facing China, Wingate appears to have decided, against orders, to shift his forces west and cut off the Japanese facing Imphal. He was well-known for never writing anything down or confiding in his subordinates; his plans, whatever they were, are a mystery, scattered over a rain-soaked Imphal hillside.
Air Commando Combat Mission N0. 37 1:40 Flight Time Broadway, Burma to Hailakandi, Assam. Took off at sunrise and flew directly to home base. Japanese aircraft attacked Broadway minutes after we had left the area.
Notes: Broadway, located in Northern Burma, was the code name for the place where the glider force landed during Operation Thursday. Personnel from the glider forces made the field serviceable for transport aircraft i.e. C-47s. *By Thursday of March 11 7,023 men, 132 horses, 994 mules and 220 tons of supplies had been airlifted into this base without Japanese interference. *Military History Series 86-1 First Air Comando Group Any Place, Any Time, Any Where (Chuck Baisden)
SOLOMON ISLANDS: Bougainville: 300 Japanese died today as 2,000 troops launched a suicidal attack against the Allied beach-head at Torokina, on Bougainville Island. The attack reflects Japan's increasingly desperate situation in the Solomons. Its main base for the area, at Rabaul, was bombed today for the 50th day in succession, with Allied planes dropping 150 tons of explosives on Rabaul's three airfields. The daytime offensive at Torokina was rebuffed, with US losses given as four dead and 47 wounded.
JAPAN: US Battleships under Admiral Lee bombard Okinawa.
U.S.A.: The motion picture "The Clock" is released. Directed by Vincente Minnelli, this romantic drama stars Judy Garland, Robert Walker, James Gleason and Keenan Wynn.