May 26th, 1945 (SATURDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM: Corvettes HMCS Lachute and West York departed Londonderry as escort for Convoy ON-305.
GERMANY: Lüneberg: Sergeants Ray Weston and Bill Ottery bury Himmler in an unmarked grave.
BURMA: Allied forces occupy Bassein, 90 miles west of Rangoon.
JAPAN: The USAAF's Twentieth Air Force in the Mariana Islands flies Mission 184: During the night of 26/27 May, 29 B-29 Superfortresses mine waters in Shimonoseki Strait and at Fushiki, Fukuoka, and Karatsu, Japan.
Emperor Hirohito and the Japanese imperial family escaped with their lives today as flames started by B-29 fire-bomb attacks surrounded their main palace in Tokyo and destroyed the nearby business district of Marunouchi. Twenty-six Marianas-based B-29s were lost.
Later Tokyo Radio confirmed US Army Air Force claims that parts of the imperial palace and Omiya palace had been damaged, but said that both the emperor and empress were safe and uninjured. The raid was the second in 48 hours, with 464 B-29 Superfortresses dropping 4,000 tons of incendiaries on the Marunouchi district just south of the imperial palace. With scores of new buildings - many supposedly fire and earthquake proof - the area was, until today, the pride of modern Japan.
The Tokyo raid came as Japanese flyers, absent from combat in recent weeks, launched desperate mass Kamikaze attacks on US ships off Okinawa plus bizarre suicide raids on the island's Yontan and Katena airfields. Planes deliberately crash-landed on the two airstrips before heavily-armed commandos jumped out with orders to cause maximum damage. All were killed immediately. Offshore, Japanese flyers damaged 11 US ships, sacrificing 111 aircraft in the attack.
Kamikazes are again active off Okinawa damaging two ships:
- High-speed minesweeper USS Forrest (DMS-24, ex-DD-461) is attacked by three aircraft. AA fire downs two but the third crashes her starboard side at the waterline, killing five and wounding 13 of her crew. The ship remains afloat and heads for Kerama Retto for repairs.
- The submarine chaser PC-1603 is damaged.
CANADA: Frigate HMCS Royalmount begins tropicalization refit Sydney , Nova Scotia.
U.S.A.: The US government cancels the 98 out of 100 Hughes D-5s. Also known as the F-11 it had two Pratt and Whitney R-4360 engines driving eight bladed contra-rotating propellers. (John Nicholas)
Destroyer USS Steinaker commissioned.
1946: USS Conway (DD-70), was commissioned as HMS Lewes (G-68) on 23 October, 1940, part of the destroyers-for-bases deal. Lewes outlives all of her sisters in British service; stripped of valuable scrap and scuttled off Sydney, Australia. (Ron Babuka)
1971: Major Audie L. Murphy dies. Born June 20, 1924; he entered the US Army as a Private. Serving with the 3rd Infantry Division in North Africa, Italy and Europe, he was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross; the Silver Star with Oak Leaf Cluster; the Legion of Merit, the Bronze Star with Oak Leaf Cluster; the Purple Heart with Second Oak Leaf Cluster and the Medal of Honor.
After leaving the Army, he will become a star in many Western Movies. (Bill Howard)