March 4th, 1945 (SUNDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM: U-1014 (Type IXC/41) is sunk in the Minch Channel (Hebrides), in position 55.17N, 06.44W, by depth charges from the British destroyers HMS Loch Scavaig, Nyasaland, Papua and Loch Shin. 48 dead (all hands lost). (Alex Gordon)
GERMANY:
NORWAY:
U-530 sailed from Kristiansand on her final patrol.
U-1202 sailed from Bergen on her second and final patrol.
FINLAND: Helsinki: Finland formally declares war on Germany.
BURMA: Meiktila: The town falls to the Indian 17th Division. The Japanese 15th and 33rd Armies are trapped at Manadaly. The first assault on 1 March, watched by the 14th Army commander, Lt-Gen William Slim, brought the 255th Indian Tank Brigade onto the heights above the town. Later Slim watched his own Gurkhas push into the suburbs from the north. But the ferocious defence of Major-General Kasuya's scratch garrison, his deep tunnels, and the natural defences of the towns lakes, ensured that it was three days before the last sniper was killed. Today more than 2,000 Japanese bodies lie in the streets.
VOLCANO ISLANDS: Iwo Jima: The first B-29 makes an emergency landing on the island. Fighting is still going-on between US Marines and the Japanese. (Gordon Rottman)
CANADA: Frigate HMCS Grou commenced tropicalisation refit Dartmouth , Nova Scotia.
U.S.A.: Director Mark Sandrich, 44, dies of heart disease at his home in Hollywood, California. Sandrich's directing career began in 1927 and included (1) five films with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers; (2) Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire in the motion picture "Holiday Inn" in which the song "White Christmas" was introduced; (3) the film "So Proudly We Hail" starring Claudette Colbert, Paulette Goddard and Veronica Lake about Army nurses in the Philippines in 1941-42; and (4) "Here Come the Waves" with Bing Crosby, Betty Hutton and Sonny Tufts. Sandrich won the Venice Film Award in 1937 for the Fred and Ginger film "Shall We Dance."
1949: USS Cowell (DD-167), commissioned as HMS Brighton (I-08) on 23 Sept. 1940, part of the destroyers-for-bases deal. Brighton was transferred to Russia as Zharki in 1944; today returns to the Royal Navy. (Ron Babuka)