U.S.S.R.: Moscow: The Swastika standard of the 1st SS Panzer Adolf Hitler Division - once Hitler's personal bodyguard - was thrown to the ground before Lenin's tomb in Red Square today. The Soviet leaders watched from the top of the tomb as 200 captured flags were carried into the rain-soaked square by soldiers who threw them down to the rumble of hundreds of drums. Marshal Georgi Zhukov led the parade, riding a white horse, the traditional Russian mount for a conquering hero. Speaking later to the huge crowd, Zhukov said that the Red Army was the most powerful in the world, but Russia must not become "conceited or complacent."

JAPAN: U.S. Twentieth Air Force Mission 221: During the night of 23/24 June, 26 B-29s mine the Japanese harbors of Fukuoka, Karatsu, Sakai, and Niigata; one B-29 is lost.

Mining operations by Consolidated PB4Y-2 Privateers of the U.S. Navy's Patrol Bombing Squadron One Hundred Eighteen (VPB-118), based at Yonton Airfield, Okinawa, continue in waters off Korea.

RYUKYU ISLANDS: IE SHIMA: VII Fighter Command, United States' Seventh Air Force bases the 507th Fighter Group flying P-47Ns on this island.

BONIN ISLANDS: IWO JIMA: Two Bettys (Mitsubishi G4M Navy Type 1 Attack Bombers) cause small damage before being destroyed by the islands' defences.

BORNEO: British and US aircraft drop a thousand tons of bombs on Japanese positions.

CANADA: Lt Cornelius Burke RCNVR awarded Bar to DSC. Lt Charles Roger PARKER RCNVR awarded DSC.

HMC ML 102 paid off.

1949:     USS Crowninshield (DD-134), commissioned as HMS Chelsea (I-35), as part of the destroyers-for-bases deal on 9 Sep. 1940. Chelsea had been transferred to Russia as Dzerki in 1944. She returns to the Royal Navy today. (Ron Babuka)