On 12th May 1943 Dick joined 100 Royal Armoured Corps OCTU
at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst
Record from Service & Casualty Form 12TH MAY 1943:
C.B.T.A.* to No 1 Pre-OCTU, R.A.C.
W.E.F. 15th May ’43 posting to 162nd OCTU (HAC**) Sandhurst.
*Competency Based Training Assessment?
**Honourable Artillery Company
The Royal Military College in Sandhurst, Surrey, is now where all officers of the British Army are trained to lead soldiers. However, in World War 2 Sandhurst was used solely as the Royal Armoured Corps Training Unit OCTU from 1942.
12th May 1943 – start Churchill and Roosevelt’s Trident Conference in Washington with the British seeking commitment to the invasion of Italy and America urging the invasion of Western Europe. D-day, the target date for the Allies cross-Channel invasion of Europe was set for 1st May 1944 and the British agreed that 7 Divisions would be withdrawn from Italy before 1st November to support the forces landing in France. One of these was Dick's future fighting Division, the 50th. Roosevelt agreed to the US 14th Air Force continuing to build up air power in China to attack Japanese shipping although Stilwell, the US Commander in China and Burma, argued for more land forces to retake northern Burma. (From ‘The Second World War’ by Antony Beevor, published by Weidenfield and Nicolson 2012)
13th May 1943 – the Royal Navy begin the bombardment of Pantelleria Island between Tunisia and Sicily. This was followed by aerial bombing in early June and Allied invasion on 10th June 1943 (Operation Corkscrew) in preparation for the invasion of Sicily. (From WW2-net Timelines.)
14th May 1943 – the Government Code and Cipher School at Bletchley Park decodes a message confirming the success of the Operation Mincemeat deception.
15th May 1943 – Stalin announces the dissolution of the Comintern, the Communist International organisation working for world revolution. (From WW2-net Timelines.)
16th May 1943 – RAF bomber squadron No 617, known as ‘the Dambusters’, successfully breaches the Möhne a nd Eder dams with bouncing bombs, flooding the Ruhr valley and damaging the electricity supply to Germany’s industrial heartland. Unfortunately more than a thousand of those killed in ‘Operation Chastise’ were Allied prisoners of war (mainly from the Soviet Union).
17th May 1943 – Operation Schwartz, Germany’s 5th offensive against Marshal Tito’s communist partisans in Yugoslavia, who had liberated large areas of Yugoslavia from Axis control. 10 days later a British liaison team parachuted in to join up with the Partisans. The Allies had previously supported their rivals - General Mihailovic’s Royalist Chetnik forces, based in Serbia. By September 1943 Britain had established permanent formal liaison with the Partisans.
Large German night raid against Cardiff, believed to be in retaliation for the Dambusters raid. (From WW2-net Timelines.) Chotie's anti-aircraft unit was probably involved as planes approached the city via the Severn Estuary.
18th May 1943 – a German ‘wolf-pack attack’ begins on the merchant Convoy SC-30 but, thanks to the Bletchley Park codebreakers, no Allied ships are lost and five U-boats are sunk.
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