February 23rd, 1945 (FRIDAY)
NORTH SEA: Destroyer FS La Combattante (ex-HMS Haldon) mined and sunk.
BELGIUM: Capt Edwin Swales (b.1915), SAAF, who had hit his target despite severe damage to his Lancaster, told his crew to bale out just before the plane plummeted to earth, killing him. (Victoria Cross)
GERMANY: The US 1st and 9th Armies begin heavy attacks along the Rühr, especially in the Jülich and Düren areas. The US 7th and 3rd Armies also attack.
Roer River: In a single days fighting, Lt-Gen William Simpson's Ninth Army has put 28 infantry battalions across the Roer. Seven tank-bearing bridges are almost complete. Bright moonlight made a smoke-screen necessary for the assault, Operation Grenade began, at 3.30am. Simpson took the Germans off balance by attacking after they had sent some troops to the Reichswald. No serious counter-attack has yet been made, and Simpson will now head towards Dusseldorf.
U-2367 launched.
NORWAY: U-853 sailed from Stavanger on her final patrol.
POLAND: Poznan falls to the Russians. The Festung [Fortress City] in western Poland is 100 miles behind the Russian front line. Assault troops scaled rope-ladders and climbed over the walls of the inner citadel while sappers dashed forward with dynamite to blast open the defences. The garrison finally surrendered after its commander shot himself. The capture of Poznan's railway network will make it much easier for Zhukov to build up his forces to attack Berlin.
TURKEY: Diplomatic relations between Ankara and Berlin are suspended today. (Mike Yared)
IWO JIMA: Mt. Suribachi on Iwo Jima is captured. The flag raising atop Mt. Suribachi is pictured around the world. Inspite of the capture of this extinct volcano, the fight for the island continues.
This picture became the model of the statue commemorating the event built after the war in Washington, DC. US Secretary of the Navy Forrestal is quoted as saying: "This picture will assure the existence of the US Marine Corps."
After four days of exceptionally fierce fighting that has cost 2,500 American lives, US marines today managed to raise the Stars and Stripes on top of Mount Suribachi, the vantage point controlling the southern end of Iwo Jima.
The event was greeted with shouts and whistles from below as the 30,000 men of the 4th and 5th Marine Divisions were able to raise their heads. They had been pinned down flat on their bellies by intense enemy artillery since landing on this barren volcanic rock of an island. The flag was raised at 10.20 am today by a group from the 28th Regimental Combat Team of the 5th Marines, using a discarded drainpipe for a flagpole. Shortly afterwards several Japanese soldiers emerged from hidden tunnels. They were killed by the marines, who had clawed and fought their way up the 550-foot summit.
But the fight for Iwo Jima, just four miles by two in size, is not over yet. Despite the American capture of one airfield on the first day, two more are still held by the Japanese. They are just as keenly aware as the Americans of Iwo's strategic value as a stepping stone for intensifying the B-29 bombings of Japan. Prior to Iwo's invasion, Japan's military chiefs in Tokyo - 650 miles away - even contemplated how much explosive it would take to sink the island into the sea. Instead it opted for Iwo's 21,000 defenders to be dug into an elaborate 11-mile network of caves and tunnels that has already survived 75 days of aerial bombardment and a three-day naval softening-up bombardment in which 40,000 shells were fired.
CAROLINE ISLANDS: The British Pacific Fleet, renamed Task Force 57, sails for Okinawa.
COMMONWEALTH OF THE PHILIPPINES: 125 men from the 11th US Airborne Division, 511th PIR, B Co., is dropped at Los Banos in Luzon to rescue prisoners. With the aid of Filipino guerillas attacking from the outside they rescued 2,000 emaciated prisoners.
Struggling to survive when the 11th Airborne jumped in was 29-year-old Jesuit priest James Reuter from Elizabeth, New Jersey, USA.
"They [the troops] did pick up a communiqué that we were
supposed to be executed," Reuter said.
"We were eating things that you wouldn't normally eat," such as banana skins and
corncobs, he said.
Reuter described the atmosphere when the American troops finally stormed the
prison.
"Bullets were whistling through the barracks, and all of our guards were killed in about 15 minutes," he said. "The planes kept circling . and we didn't know who they were. . We thought it was Japanese war games or something."
(Mike Yared and Drew Philip Halevy)
PACIFIC OCEAN: Off the coast of Indochina: USS Flounder and USS Hoe collide. Both submarines will survive and become the only known instance in which 2 submarines collided while underwater during WWII. (John Nicholas)
ATLANTIC OCEAN: Ju-88 bombers sink the SS Henry Bacon of convoy RA-64. This will be the last Allied merchant ship sunk by German aircraft.
SS Point Pleasant Park (7,136 GRT), Captain Owen Owen, Master, Canadian Park Steamship Co. freighter was sunk by a torpedo and gunfire from U-510, Kptlt Alfred Eick, Knight's Cross, CO, off Cape Town, South Africa, in position 29.42S, 009.58E. She had detached from a convoy a day earlier and was proceeding alone to a South African port. Nine of her crew of fifty-eight men was lost. The survivors were adrift for nine days before a fishing vessel and SAS Africana rescued them. U-510 was enroute to Germany with a load of tungsten from the Far East when she encountered Point Pleasant Park. After a successful patrol in Brazilian waters, U-510 left Lorient on her second patrol assigned as one of the Monsun boats. Eick operated for a few months in the Indian Ocean before heading back in Jan 45 with a load of important goods (tin, quinine, etc.) on board. After being supplied with oil southeast of Madagascar by KKpt Oesten's U-861, who was short of fuel herself, U-510 ran out of fuel in the North Atlantic, but somehow managed to reach base at St. Nazaire. Alfred Eick was in French captivity from May 45 to 26 Jul 47. After his release, he studied business management at the University of Hamburg later worked as a tax adviser.