Leave without Chotie

Telegram 5^th May 1943 

 

GO STRAIGHT TO PAGHAM = RICHARD ++

 

Dick was given 7 days leave at the end of his Pre-OCTU training.

Chotie didn’t make it down to Pagham, meet up with Dick during his leave or wire him.

 

 

7^th May 1943 – Following the success of Operation Strike British forces capture Tunis and the Americans enter Bizerte in Tunisia.  This ends the Battle of Tunisia and the Axis North Africa Campaign.  On 13^th May German and Italian Forces in Africa surrendered to the Allies who took over 230,000 prisoners of war. (See WW2-net Timelines.)

 

9^th May 1943 – defectors, who may have been British agents, flew a Junkers 88 fighter bomber from Denmark to Scotland, narrowly avoiding being shot down by spitfires before landing. The plane was of great value to British intelligence because it carried the new Liechtenstein BC radar set, contributing to the development of  new Window (see Telecommunications Research Establishment)  radar interference by T.R.E. (See Wikipedia.)

 

11^th May 1943 – the withdrawal of the British and Indian armies from Maungdaw in western Burma marks the end of the British Arakan campaign. All the ground gained since September 1942 has been lost to the Japanese with c.5,000 Allied casualties. (From Chronology of World War II .)

American forces land on the Aleutian Islands in the far northern Pacific (between Russia’s Kamchatka and the USA’s Alaska). Two US Aleutian Islands, Attu and Kiska, had been occupied by the Japanese since June 1942 - the only US soil taken by the Japanese.