The following events occurred in April 1943:
April 1, 1943 (Thursday)
SIGSALY, referred to as the X System vocoder or "Green Hornet", went into operation for use in secure phone conversations between U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and U.K. Prime Minister Winston Churchill. The new system, developed by AT&T's Bell Labs, encrypted speech into electronic signals that could be transmitted at the rate of 1,551 bits per second, and decrypted it at the other end, permitting the two wartime leaders to talk to each other without being understood by wiretappers.Manfred R. Schroeder, Computer Speech: Recognition, Compression, Synthesis (Springer, 2004) p108 The terminals for transatlantic calls were at The Pentagon in Washington, D.C. and in the basement of Selfridges department store in London. In the Second Battle of Sedjenane, Allied forces retook the Tunisian town of Sedjenane on the railway line to Mateur and the port of Bizerta. The remainder of the strategic locations in and around Sedjeane were retaken by the Allies by April 12. Japanese forces launched Operation I-Go, a 15-day aerial counter-offensive in the Pacific around the Solomon Islands, New Britain and New Guinea, in an effort to halt the Allied offensive following Japan's defeat in the Guadalcanal campaign. The operation did not significantly delay the Allied offensive and Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto's estimates of the damage done were overestimated. The Royal Air Force marked its 25th anniversary by presenting Churchill with honorary wings. "I am honoured to be accorded a place, albeit out of kindness, in that comradeship of the air which guards the life of our island and carries doom to tyrants, whether they flaunt themselves or burrow deep," Churchill stated. The Italian destroyer Lubiana was either sunk or stranded off the Tunisian coast and declared a total constructive loss.
April 2, 1943 (Friday)
On a visit to Germany, King Boris III of Bulgaria told German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop that the 25,000 Jews in Bulgaria would not be turned over to German control, despite the alliance between the two Axis powers. At most, the King said, the Bulgarian government might intern its Jewish citizens in camps under Bulgarian control.Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich at War, 1939–1945 (Penguin, 2010) The German submarine U-124 was shelled and sunk in the Atlantic Ocean west of Porto, Portugal by British warships, with the loss of all 48 crew.Michael Gannon, Operation Drumbeat: The Dramatic True Story of Germany's First U-boat Attacks Along the American Coast in World War II, New York: Harper Perennial, 1991, p. 23 Born: Larry Coryell, American jazz fusion guitarist; in Galveston, Texas (d. 2017)
April 3, 1943 (Saturday) The Battle of Manners Street, a riot in Wellington, New Zealand, between American servicemen and New Zealand servicemen and civilians, occurred when some of the American servicemen refused to allow Māori soldiers to enter the Allied Services Club. Dozens of people were injured but news of the riot was censored at the time. Shipwrecked steward Poon Lim was rescued by Brazilian fishermen after being adrift for 131 days as the sole survivor of a British merchant ship, the , which had been torpedoed on November 29, 1942."Chinese Steward Used Bent Nail To Fish During 131 Days Adrift", Gallup (NM) Independent, May 25, 1943, p1; "Torpedo Victim Spends 131 Days Alone on a Raft", Milwaukee Journal, May 25, 1943, p3 Born: Richard Manuel, Canadian-born pop musician for The Band; in Stratford, Ontario (d. 1986) Trond Mohn, Scottish-born Norwegian billionaire; in Buckie
Died: Conrad Veidt, 50, German-born film actor known for Casablanca, died of a heart attack while playing golf at the Riviera Country Club in Los Angeles with singer Arthur Fields and his personal physician."Heart Attack Claims Actor Conrad Veidt", The Los Angeles Times, April 4, 1943, p.I-10
April 4, 1943 (Sunday) Lady Be Good, an American B-24 bomber became lost over the North African desert after completing a bombing raid in Italy, ran out of gas, and crashed after its crew parachuted to safety. The nine member crew died of thirst, one by one, over the next eight days. For nearly 16 years, Lady Be Good would remain missing until its discovery on February 27, 1959. The bodies of the men would be found almost a year after that, on February 11, 1960.Mario Martinez, Lady's Men: The Story of World War II's Mystery Bomber and Her Crew (Naval Institute Press, 1999); "Bodies of War Plane Crew Discovered in African Desert", Oakland Tribune, February 13, 1960, p1 William Dyess was able to escape from a Japanese prisoner of war camp in the Philippines along with nine other men, and to make his way through the jungle and to a ship that transported him to Australia. Once free, Dyess would be able to reveal to the world the atrocities of the Bataan Death March that had taken place after U.S. and Philippine forces surrendered on April 9, 1942.Eugene P. Boyt David L. Burch, Bataan: A Survivor's Story (University of Oklahoma Press, 2004) p xii An American B-25 bomber on a training mission went down in Lake Murray in South Carolina. The entire crew was rescued by a boater on the lake, but the B-25 sank to the bottom of the lake for the next 62 years, finally being raised on September 19, 2005 in nearly perfect condition.Roger Manley and Mark Moran, Weird Carolinas: Your Travel Guide to the Carolinas' Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets (Sterling Publishing Company, 2007) p237 German radio announced that three former imprisoned leaders had been turned over by the government of Vichy France, to Germany, in order to stop "establishment of a counter-government"."Blum, Others Held in Reich", Milwaukee Journal, April 5, 1943, p1 Former Prime Ministers Édouard Daladier and Léon Blum, along with the former French Army commander in chief, General Maurice Gamelin, had been held in custody in France since shortly after the 1940 surrender, and would be sent to Buchenwald concentration camp until the end of the war. Born: Mike Epstein, American MLB baseball player nicknamed "SuperJew"; in the Bronx Died: Raoul Laparra, 67, French composer of the opera La Habanera, was killed in an American air raid on Paris.
April 5, 1943 (Monday)
Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer was arrested at the headquarters of the German military intelligence (the Abwehr) by the Nazi secret police (the Gestapo) along with lawyer Hans von Dohnanyi, and both were found to have incriminating materials in their possession, showing cooperation with the enemy in Britain.John H. Waller, The Unseen War in Europe: Espionage and Conspiracy in the Second World War (I.B.Tauris, 1996) pp 308–309 Adolf Hitler would order the execution of Bonhoeffer, Dohnanyi, and the Abwehr director, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, on April 9, 1945, less than a month before the conquest of Germany. The German submarine U-635 was sunk in the North Atlantic by a B-24 of No. 120 Squadron RAF, with the loss of its entire crew of at least 44 men. The Japanese submarine Ro-34 was sunk off the Russell Islands by American destroyers O'Bannon and Strong, with all 66 of its crew. American bomber planes bombed the town of Mortsel in Belgium. The target was a local factory in which German fighter planes were being repaired. However, only four out of 216 bombs that were dropped hit the target, while the others destroyed most of the town of Mortsel, killing 936 civilians.Richard Overy, The Bombers and the Bombed: Allied Air War Over Europe 1940-1945 (Penguin, 2014) p418 Born: Max Gail, American television actor who portrayed Wojo Wojciehowicz, on Barney Miller; in Detroit
April 6, 1943 (Tuesday) The Little Prince, a children's book by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, was published. Saint-Exupéry would join the French Army later in the month, and would disappear the next year after his airplane was shot down in combat.Anita Silvey, Children's Book-a-Day Almanac (Macmillan, 2012) p96 Five members of the U.S. Army Air Forces were rescued after having been marooned on an icecap in Greenland for almost five months. The men had been on a B-17 bomber that made a crash landing while searching for another lost plane, but were kept alive with supplies dropped by Colonel Bernt Balchen, an Arctic explorer and aviator."Fliers, Stranded Five Months, Rescued by Heroic Efforts", Milwaukee Journal, May 4, 1943, p2 The German submarine U-632 was sunk in the Atlantic Ocean by a B-24 of No. 86 Squadron RAF, along with all 48 of her crew.
April 7, 1943 (Wednesday) Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini began a four-day meeting at Schloss Klessheim near Salzburg. Mussolini was in poor health and would spend most of the conference listening silently to Hitler's long rambling monologues; an attempt by Mussolini to bring up the possibility of making peace with the Soviets was swiftly rebuffed. The British government published a plan drawn up by John Maynard Keynes for a postwar economy. The plan proposed an international monetary fund which could help any nation out of temporary financial difficulties. In return, that country would have to adopt policies aimed at restoring stability. The Battle of Wadi Akarit ended in an Allied victory, with the capture of 7,000 German and Italian prisoners, and 1,289 casualties. American forces of 2nd Corps under General George Patton reached the El Guettar–Gabès road, where they linked up with the lead elements of the British 8th Army. With the Mareth Line broken in the south of Tunisia, the remaining Axis forces made a retreat to join the other Axis forces in the north.Franz Kurowski (1986). Der Afrikafeldzug: Rommels Wüstenkrieg, 1941–1943, p. 205. . The American destroyer Aaron Ward was bombed and sunk in Ironbottom Sound by Japanese aircraft. Of its complement of 208 crew, 181 were rescued by the U.S. ships Ortolan and Vireo, while 27 were dead or missing. The wreckage of Aaron Ward would be discovered more than 50 years later, on September 5, 1994, at a depth of . The German submarine U-644 was torpedoed and sunk, with the loss of all 45 crew, in the Norwegian Sea by the British submarine Tuna. Bolivia declared war against the Axis powers, becoming the 33rd nation to enter World War II on the side of the Allies."Bolivia Joins War on Axis", Milwaukee Journal, April 7, 1943, p4 Although Bolivia supplied tin to the Allies, the South American nation did not send troops overseas and had no reported casualties.I. C. B. Dear and M. R. D. Foot, eds. The Oxford Companion to World War II (Oxford University Press, 1995) Died: Alexandre Millerand, 84, President of France from 1920 to 1924 and Prime Minister in 1920.
April 8, 1943 (Thursday) The Japanese decided to answer their logistic needs by building a new railway in northern Burma using forced labour. The Detroit Red Wings defeated the Boston Bruins 2–0 to sweep the 1943 Stanley Cup Finals in four games."Wings Capture Stanley Cup — Mowers Shuts out Bruins Again, 2-0, to Clinch Playoff", Montreal Gazette, April 9, 1943, p16 The 1943 NFL draft was held in Chicago. The Detroit Lions selected running back Frank Sinkwich of the University of Georgia as the #1 overall pick. Born: Michael Bennett, American choreographer and director known for A Chorus Line, and winner of seven Tony Awards; as Michael Bennett DiFiglia in Buffalo, New York (died of AIDS in 1987) Died: Harry Baur, 62, French character actor, was killed after being tortured by the Gestapo in Berlin. Otto Hempel, 45 and Elise Hampel, 39, German opponents of the Nazi regime, were executed in Berlin. Richard Sears, 81, seven-time U.S. tennis champion, 1881–1887
April 9, 1943 (Friday)