3 May 1945

Yesterday Tomorrow

May 3rd, 1945 (THURSDAY)

GERMANY: The British XII Corps occupy Hamburg.

Admiral Dönitz moves his seat of government to Flensburg.

The Red Army makes contact with American troops on the Elbe, to the west of Berlin, and with British troops to the north. In the city itself it mops up the last pockets of resistance. US forces are advancing swiftly on Salzburg and Linz while British troops pursue the Germans up the Kiel Canal.

Neustadt: A tragic episode today claimed the lives of 8,000 people who had survived the hell of the concentration-camp system. The victims, mainly Jews, were survivors from Neuengamme, and Stutthof. The commandant, Max Pauly, had loaded them onto the liners CAP ARCONA, THIELBEK and Deutschland rather than hand them over in their camps to the Red Cross or the Allies.

Their hopes ended this afternoon when three RAF Typhoon ground-attack fighters swooped low over Neustadt Bay and sank the ships in a rocket attack. Most drowned immediately. A few managed to jump overboard, only to run the gamut of Nazi machine-gun fire.

U-446 scuttled near Kiel, in position 59.19N, 10.10E. Wreck broken up in 1947. 23 dead and 18 survivors.

U-1210 sunk near Eckernförde, in position 54.28N, 09.54E, by USAAF bombs. 1 dead, unknown number of survivors.

U-2521 sunk in the Flensburg Fjord, in position 54.49N, 09.50E by rockets from RAF 184 Sqn Typhoons. 44 dead, unknown number of survivors.

U-3032 sunk east of Frederica, in position 54.26,5N, 11.32,2E, by rockets from RAF 184 Sqn Typhoons. 36 dead and 24 survivors.

U-3505 bombed and sunk at Kiel.

Tegernsee: Dick Dougherty, a 24 year old Second Lieutenant forward artillery observer and 200 other American infantrymen are advancing south toward this Bavarian lakeside town. Some SS troops were firing artillery at the Americans. As Dougherty was about to give his gunners the order "Fire for effect," starting an artillery barrage that would have reduced the town to rubble he sees a German officer approach on foot carrying a white flag.

Maj. Hannibal von Lüttichau was a decorated German Panzer division tank commander recovering at Tegernsee’s crowded military hospital from brain surgery to remove fragments of an American hand grenade. When the German unit opened fire, the wounded but ambulatory major left the hospital, confronted the SS commander and persuaded him to cease fire and withdraw.

As the SS unit withdrew, Major von Lüttichau marched unarmed to confront the Americans. Through an interpreter he urgently explained that Tegernsee and the entire lake valley were sanctuary to thousands of wounded German soldiers and as many as 12,000 civilian war refugees. If the Americans returned fire, untold numbers of unarmed soldiers and civilians in the overcrowded town would surely perish. The troops had already retreated south, the major assured the Americans. To prove it, he escorted the Americans into town — an act that would have doubtless proved fatal had he been wrong.

As a result of Major von Lüttichau’s bravery, Lieutenant Dougherty's battery held its fire and the town of Tegernsee was not destroyed by an artillery barrage.

NORWAY: U-802 sailed from Bergen on her final patrol.

Lisbon: PORTUGAL observes a day of mourning for Hitler.

ÉIRE: Dublin: The prime minister of the Irish Free State, Eamon de Valera, was among several callers on the German minister here today tendering regrets on the death of Adolf Hitler. His action cannot but be seen as adding insult to the injury of continuing relations between Eire and Germany throughout the war.

On 30 April, de Valera learned that Adolf Hitler had committed suicide and he performed a diplomatically correct yet politically stupid act. Since he had paid his respects at the American legation on the death of FDR, he felt obligated to do the same at the German legation. He later wrote, "So long as we retained our diplomatic relations with Germany, to have failed to call upon the German representative would have been an act of unpardonable discourtesy to the German nation and to Dr. Hempel himself. During the whole of the war, Dr. Hempel's conduct was irreproachable. He was always friendly and inevitably correct--in marked contrast to the US minister David Gray. I certainly was not going to add to his humiliation in the hour of defeat." Furthermore, he added, "it is important that it should never be inferred that these formal acts imply the passing of any judgements good or bad." Even though he made a diplomatically correct visit as the head of the Irish government, the British and American press had a field day castigating him.

The German ambassador to Eire was Eduard Hempel. Hempel was not a Nazi but rather an old style diplomat. From the beginning of the war, Hempel supported Irish neutrality and constantly warned Berlin against doing anything that would drive the Irish to join the Allied cause. He protested when the Abwehr (German intelligence) put a few bumbling agents into Eire; they were almost immediately captured and interned for the rest of the war. Hempel had a more difficult time when the Luftwaffe bombed Eire in 1941. On 1 Sep 39, Hempel gave his assurances that Germany would respect Eire's neutrality something that the British never would give.

BURMA: Prome is liberated by the British XXXIII Corps.

Rangoon: The Burmese capital has fallen. By land, sea and air the Allies today took Rangoon without a fight, thus completing a highly successful campaign orchestrated by Lord Louis Mountbatten, the supreme commander in South-east Asia, and conducted by General Sir William Slim's Fourteenth Army.

A Gurkha parachute battalion which landed two days ago at nearby Elephant Point was reinforced yesterday by the 26th Indian Division landing by assault craft in Operation Dracula. Today they entered Rangoon to be welcomed by thousands of Burmese. News that the Japanese had evacuated came when an Allied pilot saw a message painted on jail roof by PoWs: "Japs gone. Exdigitate."

Slim had sent XXXIII Corps and IV Corps, driving down the Irrawaddy and Sittang river valleys in central Burma while XV Corps advanced down the Arakan peninsula. They were racing to beat the monsoons which burst in mid-May. The main Japanese armies had been broken, but General Slim feared that suicidal defences would hold up his army until the monsoons, giving Lt-Gen Masakazu Kawabe a four-month respite and delaying the attack on Malaya.

COMMONWEALTH OF THE PHILIPPINES: Davao City, on Mindanao is taken by the US 27th Division.

JAPAN: Phase II of Operation STARVATION, the aerial mining of Shimonoseki Strait, Japan by B-29s, begins. On this night, 97 Twentieth Air Force B-29s based in the Mariana Islands drop mines in Shimonoseki Strait and the waters off Kobe, Osaka and Suo Nada.

The IJA start a large scale counterattack on Okinawa; however, their artillery gives away their positions in support of this action and they are destroyed. Previously they had remained quiet.

Off Okinawa, kamikazes sink the destroyer USS Little (DD-803) and a medium landing ship (LSM); kamikazes also damage the destroyer USS Bache (DD-470), the high-speed minesweeper USS Macomb (DMS-23), the light minelayer USS Aaron Ward (DM-34) and a large support landing craft (LCS). A Japanese assault demolition boat damages the cargo ship USS Carina (AK-74).

The USS Aaron Ward was hit by six kamikaze planes and two bombs. E6 Steward Carl Clark single-handedly manned a fire hose that normally took four men to operate and stopped a dangerous fire spreading to the ships ammunition locker. More...

Images of the damage to the Aaron Ward. (Ron Babuka)

PACIFIC OCEAN: The Submarine USS Lagarto (SS-371), CO Frank D. Latta, is sunk by a Japanese minelayer in the Gulf of Siam. All hands lost. (Joe Sauder)

CANADA:

Tug HMCS Gleneagle commissioned.

SS Green Hill Park (7,168 GRT) Canadian merchantman was damaged in Vancouver by an explosion and fire. The ship was sold, repaired, and renamed Phaeax II.

U.S.A.: The documentary short "The Battle of San Pietro" is released in the U.S. Directed by John Huston, this 33-minute film depicts the battle at San Pietro, Italy where the US army suffered over 1100 casualties.

Destroyer USS Gearing commissioned.

ATLANTIC OCEAN: U-2524 RAF 236 and 254 Sqn Beaufighters attacked the boat killing 1 man and damaging the boat. The boat was scuttled later that day. The LI refused to leave the boat and perished with it. [Oberleutnant(Ing) Werner Braun].

During an attack from a Beaufighter aircraft on a rocket penetrated into the control room of U-2503 killing the commander and 12 of his men. She was scuttled the next day.

1999: The death of Arnold Lloyd Gladson, USMC, whose post on Wake Island to this list prompted these e-mails! September 21, 1921 - May 3, 1999.

Mr. Gladson enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps in January 1942. He served 24 months in the Pacific Theater with the 2nd Marine Division, Special Weapons Company. He saw combat action in Tulagi-Gavutu-Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands in August 1943. He survived the first assault wave on Tarawa Atoll in the Gilbert Islands in November 1943. For this and other actions, Mr. Gladson received many decorations, including the Purple Heart and two Presidential Unit Citations. http://tarawaontheweb.org/gladson.htm

Semper Fi!

Yesterday Tomorrow