June 5th, 1945 (TUESDAY)
UNITED KINGDOM: London: Churchill rejects de Gaulle's accusation that the British incited civil war in Syria.
HMCS New Glasgow completed refit at Rosyth.
GERMANY: Berlin: The Four-Power Commission for the control of defeated Germany met today amidst the ruins of Berlin and issued its first proclamation. Germany is to be divided into four occupation zones and Berlin into four occupation sectors. The city will be administered by an inter-Allied governing authority whose decisions will have to be unanimous.Eisenhower, Montgomery, Zhukov and de Lattre de Tassigny met in a riverside club which is the Soviet delegation's HQ. In a lengthy document containing 15 articles the four powers reaffirm the complete defeat of Germany, "which bears responsibility for the war", and assume authority over all aspects of life in the country.
Details of the exact zones to be occupied by the armies of the four powers have still to be worked out, but the general outline has been agreed. Russia takes the eastern zone, Britain the north-west, the US the south-west and France the western zone. Germany's frontiers are identified as those which existed on 31 December 1937.
JAPAN: Okinawa:
- Task Groups 30.8 and 38.1 battle a typhoon which causes damage to four battleships, two aircraft carriers, two light aircraft carriers, four escort aircraft carriers, three heavy cruisers, four light cruisers, eleven destroyers, three destroyer escorts, two oilers and an ammunition ship.
- Kamikazes are again active damaging the battleship USS Mississippi (BB-41) and crippling the heavy cruiser USS Louisville (CA-28).
On 4 June, Pittsburgh began to fight a typhoon which by early next day had increased to 70-knot (130 km/h) winds and 100-foot (30 m) waves. Shortly after her starboard scout plane had been lifted off its catapult and dashed onto the deck by the wind, Pittsburgh's second deck buckled, her bow structure thrust upward, and then wrenched free. Miraculously, not a man was lost. Now her crew's seamanship saved their own ship. Still fighting the storm, and manoeuvring to avoid being rammed by the drifting bow-structure, Pittsburgh was held quarter-on to the seas by engine manipulations while the forward bulkhead was shored. After a seven-hour battle, the storm subsided, and Pittsburgh proceeded at 6 knots (11 km/h) to Guam arriving on 10 June. Her bow, nick-named "McKeesport" (a suburb of Pittsburgh), was later salvaged by the tug Munsee (AT-107) and brought into Guam.
With a false bow, Pittsburgh left Guam on 24 June bound for Puget Sound Navy Yard, arriving 16 July. Still under repair at war's end, she was placed in commission in reserve on 12 March 1946 and decommissioned on 7 March 1947. (Gordon Rottman)
The USAAF's Twentieth Air Force based in the Mariana Islands flies Mission 188: 473 B-29s attack the city of Kobe, with incendiaries and eight others hit targets of opportunity. Eleven B-29s are lost and the airmen claim 86 Japanese fighters. This attack burns over 4 square miles (10.4 square km) and damages over half of the city.