May 24th, 1945 (THURSDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM: Corvette HMCS Baddeck departed Sheerness for Canada.
FRANCE: Paris: De Gaulle awards Montgomery the Grande Croix of the Legion d'Honneur.
GERMANY: Field Marshal Ritter von Greim, appointed commander of the Luftwaffe in the last days of the Third Reich, commits suicide.
JAPAN: Aircraft from Task Force 58 attack airfields in southern Kyushu used by Kamikaze pilots.
Off Okinawa, kamikazes are active during the day:
- The destroyer escort USS William C. Cole (DE-641) comes under attack at 1830 hours when a Nakajima Ki-43, Army Type 1 Fighter Hayabusa, Allied Code Name "Oscar," attempts a suicide run while Cole was northeast of Ie Shima and crashed within a few feet of the destroyer escort's starboard beam. The plane passed so close to the ship that one of its wingtips bent a "spoon" of a tube of a torpedo mount which had been trained to starboard.
- The high-speed transport USS Sims (APD-50, ex DE-154) is attacked by an aircraft that crashed close aboard to starboard spraying the ship with shrapnel which wounded eleven crewmen.
- A large support landing craft [LCS(L)] is also damaged.
On Okinawa during the night of 25/25 May, five Japanese transport aircraft carrying at least 69 Army commandoes, crash land on Yontan Airfield. The commandoes destroy nine aircraft (three F4U Corsairs, two PB4Y-2 Privateers and four transports) and damage another 29 (22 F4Us, three F6F Hellcats, two B-24 Liberators and two transports), ignite 70,000 US gallons (265,000 liters) of aviation fuel, kill the Marine control tower duty officer, and wound another 18 Marines before the last Japanese is killed at 1255 hours on 25 May.
The USAAF's Twentieth Air Force in the Mariana Islands flies Mission 182: During the night of 24/25 May, 25 B-29 Superfortresses lay mines in Shimonoseki Strait and at Niigata, Nanao, and Fushiki in Japan.
Mines laid by USAAF B-29 Superfortresses sink a Japanese cargo vessel off Japan.
NEW GUINEA: Australian troops surround Wewak.
CANADA: Frigate HMCS Victoriaville commenced tropicalization refit Saint John, New Brunswick.
U.S.A.: The 22-minute documentary "Target Tokyo" is released in the U.S. Narrated by future U.S. President Ronald Reagan, this film tells the story of the first bombing raid on Tokyo by Boeing B-29 Superfortress bombers of the U.S. Army Air Forces' Twentieth Air Force on 24 November 1944. Crews are followed from their training at Grand Island, Nebraska to their bombing embarkation point on the island of Saipan, Mariana Islands. From there, the B-29 attack on the Nakajima's Musashino aircraft plant outside Tokyo is depicted. Many USAAF leaders, including General of the Army Henry H. "Hap" Arnold, Commanding General USAAF, are featured in the film.