March 11th, 1945 (SUNDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM: Wales: Cardiff: 66 German PoWs broke out of a camp at Bridgend, Glamorgan, at 4am, having tunnelled 45 feet under the barbed wire. The tunnel began inside a hut and ended in a ploughed field. Elaborate preparations had been made for weeks. By tonight, 43 of them had been recaptured as police, former Home Guards and Land Girls with pitchforks searched 100 square miles of lonely wooded country. Many were found hiding on farms.
Destroyer HMCS Sioux departed Clyde with Convoy JW-65 for Kola Inlet.
Corvette HMCS Chambly departed Londonderry for refit Louisburg , Nova Scotia.
GERMANY: USN landing craft are used to cross the River Rhine at Bad Neuenahr.
The RAF has laid waste to the Krupp works at Essen, symbol of the German war machine. In a half-hour bombardment, 1,079 heavy bombers poured 4,661 tons of explosive onto a 2,000-acre site, killing 897 civilians. Later a British officer claimed: "Krupp's has been written off." Some Allied intelligence teams have concluded that the impact of strategic bombing on German war production has been less than decisive. American studies show that the Dresden raid hit the output of the German cigarette industry but not much else.
JAPAN: 285 of 310 XXI BC B-29s dispatched bomb Nagoya urban area with incendiary bombs at altitudes from 5,100ft to 8,500ft destroying 2.05 square miles. Six B-29s attack a secondary target. One B-29 is lost.
BONIN ISLANDS: Iwo Jima: 16 P-51s of the 15th Fighter Group take off to attack Chichi Jiima and Haha Jima (Father and Mother islands). General Moore flies as an observer. The formation divides eight tons of bombs between Susaki Airfield and Futami Ko on Chichi Jima.
PACIFIC OCEAN: The carrier USS Randolph is damaged by a kamikaze attack while in the fleet anchorage at Ulithi.
This was a special attack called the Tan Operation, launched by the Azusa Special Attack Unit of the Fifth Air Fleet on Kyushu. At least the guide planes came from Kanoya, but I don't know about the main attack force. The main force consisted of twenty-four Frances twin-engine bombers, likely the only IJN aircraft with the range to reach Ulithi. Thirteen of them dropped out along the way because of engine trouble, which might say a good deal about Japanese manufacturing or maintenance quality at that stage of the war. (Keith Allen)
Extract from Jim Verdolini's Diary:
March 11, 1945. Ulithi Atoll, Western Caroline
We are at fleet anchorage after returning from Iwo Jima, and Japanese areas.
2000 hours(8PM). I had just been relieved from watch in Rdo1, (which is our main radio room in the Island structure) and had started walking aft, on the flight deck. My rack(bed), and also my GQ (general quarters) battle station, was Rdo#3. Radio 3 was a small emergency transmitter room on the Gallery deck, just under the flight deck, starboard side above the fan tail.
Normally I would write letters, and listen to Tokyo Rose, because she had the best Big Band music. I slept in RDO#3, because it was a lot cooler up there, than down on the 2nd deck, and also because it was my battle station. As I started aft, I heard music from the movie on the hangar deck. It was the Polonaise. I went down to the hangar deck, and stood at the rear, until it ended, at about 2007. I then started to walk aft on the hanger deck, to Rdo3. Suddenly, there was a terrific white flash, explosion, and the ship shook violently! I was knocked flat on my behind. When I jumped up, there were men lying all over the place. A man just behind me had his head covered in blood, and when I stepped back to look down at him, I saw he was dead. Then GQ was sounded, the claxon going...bong, bong,bong,bong. " All hands, man your battle stations". The first few moments, we thought the ship might be going down. Fire, and 20mm cannon shells were exploding all over. The sprinkler system had automatically gone off, and we were drenched. Smoke was terrible. I saw a Marine Lt., and told him that my battle station was in flames, so he told me to help move planes out of the fire, and help the wounded. By this time, we knew what happened. A twin engine Japanese bomber, named Frances, dove into our starboard quarter aft, just outside Rdo#3, her bombs exploded both at impact, and a 2000# exploded on the hangar deck just forward of the fan tail.
The entire fantail area was aflame.
I helped move planes out of the fire, then a corpsman grabbed me, and told me to hold some guy' s stomach in, while he got a doctor.
This guys intestines were bubbling out, and I was so scared, I kept trying to push with both hands, but blood was so slippery, and my hands were shaking so badly, and the smell was so bad, that I yelled for that corpsman, and by that time he had the doctor.
My eyes were stinging me, and the smell of burned bodies, and the smoke was awful. It took about 2 hours for the fire to be brought under control. Then I went back to Rdo#3, but there was just a big hole outside, and our steel hatch had disappeared. They were bringing 3 bodies out, but we could not identify them. Later found out they were flight deck crew. I believe they were guys from the catapult group, who had gone into Rdo#3 to listen to music.
No radiomen were in there. I would have been, if I hadn't stopped to listen to music. I then went up to Rdo#1, and as soon as I walked in, the Chief started screaming at me! "You will be court-martialed", etc. etc. The Communications Officer took me aside, and explained. Seems the Chief had thought I was in RDO#3, and he was crying. When I walked in he was embarrassed, so he lit into me. I was filthy dirty, but I wasn't going below decks to get a shower. I just went up to Rdo2, and one of the guys gave me a mat, and I slept behind the transmitters. Next morning, when I awoke, my eyes were swollen and my face was beet red, so they sent me to sick bay.
Seems I had flash burn from the explosion. It did not last long. I went back to RDO3 to see if I could find my ring, that Bernice, (my girl friend) had given me. But the typewriters were melted, and the cabinet I kept it in was gone. The smell was so bad, I did want to not stay there very long, and right about then, they called GQ again, and I had no idea where to go, so I stayed right there. It was my GQ station, even though there wasn't anything left in there. It was just an alert, and they blew (bugle) retreat from GQ. We lost 30 men, and over 100 wounded. There were parts of three Japanese Kamakazi crewmen in the Frances. They said that a body was found in the port catwalk -decapitated.
Their flight originated from a Jap naval base at Kagoshima on the main island of Kyushu - 1500 miles north. Also found out later that there were a lot more planes that had started for Ulithi, but only three planes made it. One hit us, another crashed forward of the ship in the water, and the third crashed on Falalop Island.
The battleship that had the radar duty for the fleet anchorage, had picked up three blips on their radar but, since only Yap was 90 miles SE of us, and Yap was destroyed, the guy decided the blips were friendly?
You might know, they picked my ship, out of hundreds.
The battleships were at anchor all around us, plus other carriers, dozens of destroyers, many cruisers. If that plane had hit forward, and exploded on the hangar deck, the death toll would have been horrendous. There were over 500 at the movie. Guess I will never forget March 11th.
CANADA: HMCS Ottawa (ex-HMS Griffin, a Greyhound or G-class fleet destroyer known in the RCN as River-class, was damaged in a collision off of Halifax with HMCS Stratford, a Bangor-class minesweeper. Both ships suffered considerable damage to their bows. Repairs to Ottawa were not completed until Apr 45. Stratford was refitted from May to Aug but was inactive after the collision and was finally paid off on 04 Jan 46.
U.S.A.: Frigate USS Alexandria commissioned.
Large cruiser USS Hawaii launched.