1943
DG Bridson's The Builders broadcast.
Eric Linklater's Socrates Asks Why broadcast.
William Ellis born in London.
Edina Maria Ronay born in Budapest. Valentino Musetti born in Pontremoli, Tuscany.
Frederick Leslie Fowell born in Liverpool.
Alfred Hitchcock's Shadow Of A Doubt - starring Joseph Cotton - released.
The Casablanca Conference of Allied leaders began. Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt discussed the eventual invasion of mainland Europe, the impending invasion of Sicily and Italy and the wisdom of the principle of demanding 'unconditional surrender.'
Michael John Attwell born in Watford.
The start of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Besieged defenders of Leningrad linked up with relieving forces. Lawrence Huntington's Women Aren't Angels - starring Robertson Hare, Alfred Drayton, Polly Ward, Joyce Heron and Mary Hinton - premiered. Paul Freeman born in Barnet. Paul Angelis born in Liverpool.
Neville Alfred Morris Buswell born in Prestubry, Cheshire.
The last German airfield at Stalingrad was taken by Red Army forces, ensuring that the Luftwaffe would be unable to supply German troops any further - not that they had been doing a particularly good job up to that point; Hitler, nevertheless, still demanded that Friedrich Paulus continue the - by now, hopeless, fight.
Ian Gordon Arthur Collier born in London.
Marlene Kathryn Kringstad born in Robbinsdale, Minnesota.
During the night of 29 to 30 January, Eddie Chapman - the legendary double agent - with MI5 officers faked a sabotage attack at the de Havilland aircraft factory in Hatfield, where Mosquito aircraft were being manufactured. German reconnaissance aircraft photographed the site and the faked damage convinced Chapman's German controllers that the attack had been successful. MI5, to reinforce this story, also had a story published in the Daily Express. Chapman's wartime exploits later inspired the 1966 movie Triple Cross and Ben Macintyre's award-winning book Agent Zigzag. Terence Sidney Lewis born in Woking. Anthony Kenneth Blackburn born in Guildford.
The first episode of Wrapped in Velvet - starring Adelaide Hall - broadcast on The Forces Programme.
Rosemarie Frankland born in Rhosllannerchrugog, Wales.
German forces finally capitulated at Stalingrad. The German public was informed of this catastrophe, marking the first time that the Nazi government had actually acknowledged a failure in the war effort.
Howard Hawks's Air Force - starring John Garfield - premiered.
Essen was bombed, marking the beginning of a four-month attack on the Ruhr industrial area. Edward H Griffiths' Young & Willing - starring William Holden, Eddie Bracken, Robert Benchley, Susan Hayward, Martha O'Driscoll, Barbara Britton, Mabel Paige and Florence MacMichael - premiered.
Gayle Hunnicutt born in Fort Worth, Texas.
The Chindits (a long range penetration group) under General Orde Wingate began an incursion into Japanese occupied territory in Burma.
Guadalcanal was finally secured; the first major achievement of the American offensive in the Pacific war.
Susan Hanson born in Preston.
Journey Into Fear - starring Orson Welles - premiered.
Rommel launched a counter-attack against the Americans in Western Tunisia; he took Sidi Bouzid and Gafsa. The Battle of the Kasserine Pass began: inexperienced American troops were soon forced to retreat. Donald Sumpter born in Brixworth.
In a speech at the Berlin Sportpalast Joseph Goebbels declared 'a Total War' against the Allies; the Nazis arrested the members of The White Rose Movement, an anti-Nazi youth group.
Michael Leigh born in Welwyn Garden City.
Harry Watt's Nine Men - starring Jack Lambert, Gordon Jackson and Frederick Piper - premiered.
George Harrison born in Liverpool.
Lance Comfort's Squadron Leader X - starring Eric Portman and Ann Dvorak - premiered.
The Human Comedy - starring Mickey Rooney - premiered. George Layton born in Bradford.
Roy Boulting's documentary Desert Victory premiered.
Nora Golding born in Sarina, Ontario. Lynn Rachel Redgrave born in Marylebone.
Karditsa in Greece became the first city in Europe to be liberated from Nazi occupation, after a campaign fought by ELAS, the Greek People's Liberation Army.
Lynda Titchmarsh born in Newton, Lancashire.
Frederick Wehrly born in County Sligo. Magda Konopka born in Warsaw.
The first reports of The Katyn Massacre in Poland appeared in the West; reports suggest that more than twenty two thousand prisoners of war were killed by the NKVD. The Soviets eventually attempted to pin the blame for the horror on the Germans. One or two people even believed them. John Francis Christopher Ducker born in Leicester.
Victor Anthony Stanshall born in Oxford.
Albert S Rogell's Hit Parade Of 1943 - starring John Carroll, Susan Hayward and Gail Patrick - premiered.
Fritz Lang's Hangmen Also Die! premiered.
Richard Henry Simpson Stilgoe born in Camberley.
Eric Idle born in South Shields.
Carole Joan White born in Hammersmith.
George Sweeney born in London.
Jonathan Lynn born in Bristol. Peter Henry Benson born in Wallasey, Cheshire.
The only large-scale escape of Allied prisoners-of-war from the Japanese in the Pacific took place when ten American POWs and two Filipino convicts broke out of the Davao Penal Colony on the island of Mindanao in the Philippines. The escaped POWs were the first to break the news of the infamous 'Bataan Death March' and other sick war crime atrocities committed by the Japanese to the world.
Dennis Leslie Amiss born in Birmingham.
House Of Wax - starring Vincent Price - premiered.
Anthony Asquith's We Dive At Dawn - starring John Mills and Eric Portman - premiered.
Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, chief architect of Japanese naval strategy, was killed when his plane was shot down by American P38's over Bougainville.
In occupied Belgium, partisans attacked a railway convoy transporting Belgian Jews to Auschwitz.
Jacques Tourneur's I Walked With A Zombie premiered. Susanna Pulford born in London.
William Beaudine's Clancy Street Boys - starring Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Bobby Jordan and Noah Beery - premiered. The probable premiere date of Gilbert Gunn's Tyneside Story, made by the Ministry Of Information to highlight the contribution to the war effort of Tyneside's shipyards and featuring a cast drawn from Heaton's The People's Theatre.
Gay Hamilton born in Larnakshire.
Operation Mincemeat commenced. The Navy released a body - actually, a homeless Welshman, Glyndwr Michael who had died in tragic circumstances but appearing to be the (fictitious) Major William Martin of the Royal Marines - bearing false military documents in the Mediterranean. Later, the body washed up on the Spanish coast and was discovered by a local fisherman. The documents mislead the Germans about the site and timing of the forthcoming Allied invasion of France. The story of the deception, subsequently, became the basis for the 1956 movie The Man Who Never Was. Roy William Neil's Sherlock Holmes In Washington - starring Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce, Marjorie Lord and Henry Daniell - premiered. Meurig Wyn Jones born in Bangor, Wales.
William Wellman's Lady Of Burlesque - starring Barbara Stanwyck - premiered.
Billy Wilder's Five Graves To Cairo premiered.
Michael Edward Palin born in Sheffield.
Tunis captured by British First Army whilst the Americans took Bizerte. George Formby's 'Home Guard Blues'/'(When The Lads Of The Village) Get Crackin' released.
Jacques Tourneur's The Leopard Man and William Wellman's The Ox-Bow Incident premiered.
Virginia Wetherell born in Farnham.
Remaining German Afrika Korps and Italian troops in North Africa surrendered to Allied forces. George Stevens's The More The Merrier - starring Jean Arthur and Joel McCrea - premiered.
John Symon Asher Bruce born in Bishopbriggs.
Operation Chastise (the 'Dambuster Raid') took place: Six One Seven Squadron used bouncing bombs to breach German dams in the Ruhr Valley. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising ended.
The Germans launched their fifth major offensive against Tito's partisans in Yugoslavia. David John Townsend born in Chippenham.
Hilton Stewart Paterson Valentine born in North Shields. Action In The North Atlantic - starring Humphrey Bogart - premiered.
Michael Curtiz's Mission To Moscow premiered.
Karl Dönitz ordered the majority of U-boats to withdraw from the Atlantic because of heavy losses to new Allied anti-submarine tactics.
Priscilla Maria Veronica White born in Vauxhall, Liverpool.
A BOAC plane on a scheduled passenger flight from Lisbon to Bristol, was shot down over the Bay of Biscay by German Junkers; all seventeen persons on board, including the actor Leslie Howard, were killed. There has been - entirely unproven - speculation that the downing was an attempt to kill Winston Churchill, as the Germans may have had (inaccurate) information that he was aboard.
Kevork Malikyan born in Diyarbakır, Turkey.
Colin Baker born in London.
Michael Vivian Fyfe Pennington born in Cambridge.
Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's The Life & Death Of Colonel Blimp - starring Anton Walbrook, Deborah Kerr and Roger Livesey - premiered.
Malcolm John Taylor born in Horsforth, Yorkshire.
Val Guest's first film Miss London Ltd - starring Arthur Askey, Evelyn Dall, Anne Shelton and Richard Hearne - premiered.
Judith Barker born in Oldham.
The Constant Nymph - starring Joan Fontaine and Charles Boyer - premiered.
Maureen O'Brien born in Liverpool.
Germany launched Operation Citadel and attacked Soviet forces around the Kursk Bulge, one of the largest armoured battles in history. For the Germans, the battle was the final strategic offensive that they were able to launch on the Eastern Front. Their extensive loss of men and tanks ensured that the victorious Red Army enjoyed the strategic initiative for the remainder of the war. The Soviet government had foreknowledge of German intentions, provided in part by the British intelligence service and Tunny intercepts from Bletchley Park. Aware in advance that the attack would fall on the neck of the Kursk salient, the Soviets built a defence in depth designed to wear down the German armoured spearhead.
Gary Waldhorn born in Paddington.
Walter Dornberger briefed Hitler on the development of the V-2 rocket, who approved the project for 'top priority.'
The Allied invasion of Sicily began.
Lawrence Huntingdon's Warn That Man - starring Gordon Harker, Raymond Lovell, Jean Kent and Finlay Currie - premiered.
Sam Woods's adaptation of For Whom The Bell Tolls - starring Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman - premiered.
Leslie Goodwins' Mexican Spitfire's Blessed Event - starring Lupe Velez - premiered.
The Allies bombed Rome for the first time. Bethan Morris born in Gorseinon, Wales. David Griffin born in Richmond, Surrey.
Wendy Emerton born in Middlesbrough.
US forces under General Patton captured Palermo, the capital of Sicily.
Hamburg was heavily bombed in Operation Gomorrah, at the time the heaviest aerial assault in the history of aviation. British and Canadian aeroplanes bombed the city by night and American planes followed during the day. By the end of the operation - in November - nine thousand tons of explosives would kill more than thirty thousand people and destroy over two hundred thousand buildings. For the first time, the British forces used 'Window', aluminium strips dropped to distort radar images, against the German anti-aircraft defence.
Michael Philip Jagger born in Dartford. American-born poet Ezra Pound was indicted for treason for making radio broadcasts from Italy for the Axis powers; also indicted were Robert H Best, Fred W Kaltenbach, Douglas Chandler, Edward Delaney, Constance Drexel, Jane Anderson and Max Otto Koischwitz. Attorney General Francis Biddle said that any of the eight, all indicted in absentia, would be brought to trial when caught.
Future US President Lieutenant John Kennedy's PT-109 was rammed in two and sunk off the Solomon Islands. Kennedy's subsequent actions to save his surviving crew made him a war hero in America. Paul Greenwood born in Stockton-On-Tees. Sandra Gough born in Manchester.
Jules Dassin's Young Ideas - starring Susan Peters, Herbert Marshall and Mary Astor - released.
Georgina Hale born in Ilford.
Claire Sutcliffe born in London.
Ernst Lubitsch's Heaven Can Wait - starring Gene Tierney and Don Ameche - premiered.
Arthur Lubin's Phantom Of The Opera - starring Claude Rains - premiered.
Michael Curtiz's This Is The Army premiered.
Operation Crossbow began when the RAF bombed the Peenemünde V-2 rocket facility.
The Fallen Sparrow - starring John Garfield and Maureen O'Hara - premiered.
The first episode of The Charlie McCarthy Programme - starring Edgar Bergan - broadcast on The Forces Programme. Percy James Patrick Kent-Smith born in Dunoon.
Ashington miner Jackie Milburn, recently signed on amateur forms, played his first competative game for Newcastle United in a two-defeat at Bradford City in the Wartime Northern Championship. Although his official first class debut would not come until 1946, he would go on to play three hundred and ninety nine games (not including wartime fixtures) for The Magpies in a career that lasted until 1957 when he left to manage the Irish club Linfield. He would scored two hundred and one goals for the club (a record only supassed in 2006 by Alan Shearer), win the FA Cup three times during the period and also represent his country on thirteen occasions.
Watch On The Rhine - starring Bette Davis and Paul Lukas - and Holy Matrimony - starring Garcie Fields - premiered. George Formby's 'On The HMS Cowheel'/'Bunty's Such A Big Girl Now' released.
Kirsten Lindholm Andreassen born in Odense, Denmark.
The Sky's The Limit - starring Fred Astaire and Joan leslie - premiered.
A secret Italian Armistice was signed and Italy dropped out of the war. Mainland Italy was invaded when the British Twenty Third Corps, under General Montgomery, landed at Reggio Calabria. Johnny Come Lately - starring James Cagney - premiered.
George Roger Waters born in Great Bookham.
The Americans landed in Italy at Salerno. So Proudly We Hail - starring Claudette Colbert, Paulette Goddard and Veronica Lake - premiered.
The first episode of The Home Service's Appointment With Fear strand - John Dickson Carr's Cabin B Thirteen - broadcast.
Mussolini was rescued from a mountaintop captivity by German SS troops led by Otto Skorzeny. Mussolini was then set up by Hitler as the head of the puppet 'Italian Social Republic.'
British forces landed on various Italian-held Greek islands in the Aegean Sea, beginning the Dodecanese Campaign. British and American troops linked up near the Salerno beachhead.
Roy William Neil's Sherlock Holmes Faces Death - starring Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce, Dennis Hoey, Arthur Margetson, Hillary Brooke and Halliwell Hobbes - premiered.
An adaptation of The Pit & The Pendulum broadcast in the Appointment With Fear strand.
Into Thin Air broadcast in the Appointment With Fear strand and Helen Spalding's A Nice Girl broadcast in the Twice Told Tales strand.
David Anthony Gubba born in Manchester.
Eric Allen's The Jinx broadcast in The Home Service's Twice Told Tales strand.
Anna Abigail Gyarmathy born in Budapest, Hungary.
The people of Naples, sensing the approach of the Allies, rose up against their German occupiers.
The Danish resistance helped physicist Niels Bohr and his wife, Margrethe, escape by sea from Nazi occupied Copenhagen to Sweden. The next day, Bohr persuaded King Gustaf V of Sweden to make public Sweden's willingness to provide asylum to Jewish refugees.
Ian Raymond Ogilvy born in Woking. The Body Snatchers broadcast in the Appointment With Fear strand.
Graham Bain's Dress Rehearsal> broadcast on The Home Service.
An adaptation of Edgar Wallace's The Squeaker broadcast in the Saturday-Night Theatre strand.
Churchill appointed Lord Louis Mountbatten the commander of South East Asia Command. Louis Jordan & His Tympany Five recorded 'Is You Is Or Is You Ain't (My Baby)?' for Decca Records.
John Dennis Bindon born in Fulham.
Niels Bohr arrived in Scotland on a de Havilland Mosquito operated by the British Overseas Airways Corporation.
Lassie Come Home - starring Roddy McDowell and Elizabeth Taylor - premiered. The Customers Like Murders broadcast in the Appointment With Fear strand.
John Vivian Drummond Nettles born in St Austell.
Will You Make A Bet With Death? broadcast in the Appointment With Fear strand.
Viktor Bánky's Makacs Kata - starring Emmi Buttykay, Miklós Hajmássy, Béla Mihályffi and György Dénes - premiered.
Michael Reeves born in London. Elaine Regina Taylor born in Hemel Hempstead.
John Harlow's The Dark Tower - starring Ben Lyon, Herbert Lom, Anne Crawford and David Farrar - premiered.
The Devil's Saint broadcast in the Appointment With Fear strand.
Princess O'Rourke - starring Olivia De Havilland and Robert Cummings - premiered.
Ronald Haines's Deadlock - starring John Slater, Cecile Chevreau, Molly Hamley-Clifford and Hugh Morton - premiered.
Fire Burn & Cauldron Bubble broadcast in the Appointment With Fear strand.
Margaret Ann Nolan born in Hampstead.
In the Philadelphia Experiment, a story widely believed to be a hoax, the destroyer escort USS Eldridge was supposedly rendered invisible to human observers for a brief period and (in at least some versions of the story) even teleported from the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard to the US Navy shipyard in Norfolk, Virginia and back, with the result that several of those on-board were seriously injured, went insane, or were killed. The story would be popularised by the bestselling 1974 book The Bermuda Triangle, by Charles Berlitz. In 1979, Berlitz and William L Moore wrote a more detailed account in The Philadelphia Experiment: Project Invisibility, by which time the Navy had a standard response: 'As for The Philadelphia Experiment, the ONR has never conducted any investigations on invisibility, either in 1943 or at any other time. In view of present scientific knowledge, our scientists do not believe that such an experiment could be possible except in the realm of science fiction.'
Herbert Jansch born in Hampstead.
The North Star - starring Anne Baxter - premiered.
Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder's Millions Like Us - starring Eric Portman, Gordon Jackson, Patricia Roc, Basil Radford, Naunton Wayne, Moore Marriott, Joy Shelton, Megs Jenkins and Terry Randall - premiered.
The Red Army liberated Kiev.
Michael Byrne born in London.
William Clemens's The Falcon & The Co-eds - starring Tom Conway, Jean Brooks and Amelita Ward - premiered.
John Dickson Carr's Cabin B13, the first episode of Appointment With Fear - featuring the sepulchral-voiced Valentine Dyall as The Man In Black - broadcast on The Home Service.
Sahara - starring Humphrey Bogart and Lloyd Bridges - premiered.
Valerie Therese Leon born in Hampstead. Julie Ege born in Sandnes, Norway.
Malcolm St Clair's The Dancing Masters - starring Laurel and Hardy and Trudy Marshall - premiered.
Heinrich Himmler (he had two, but they were very small) ordered that Gypsies and 'part-Gypsies' were to be 'put on the same level as Jews and placed in concentration camps.'
Norma West born in Cape Town, South Africa.
The Cairo Conference: Roosevelt, Churchill, and ROC leader Chiang Kai-shek met to discuss ways to defeat Japan.
A sentence of eighteen months' imprisonment and twelve strokes of the birch was imposed by Justice Charles at Surrey Assizes on John Henry Bethell, nineteen, a Grenadier Guardsman, for robbing with violence a seventy-year-old woman. The Judge told Bethell: 'You acted like an utter blackguard,' adding that if he had been a little older he would have 'been ordered the cat.'
The Tehran Conference. Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin met to discuss war strategy; (on 30 November they established an agreement concerning a planned June 1944 invasion of Europe codenamed Operation Overlord). Stalin at last had the promise of a Western Front.
The first episode of Richard Fisher and Peter Creswell's adaptation of Broken Swords - starring Eric Portman - broadcast. Maurice Elvey's The Lamp Still Burns - starring Rosamund John, Stewart Granger and Godfrey Tearle - premiered.
The Piper Of Sloane Street broadcast in the Twice-Told Tales strand.
Cap & Bells - starring Frances Day, John Clements, Richard Murdoch and Noele Gordon - broadcast.
The first Bevin Boys were selected from conscripts to work in the mines.
Us broadcaster Edward Murrow delivers his 'Orchestrated Hell' broadcast for CBS Radio describing an RAF night bombing raid on Berlin.
Susan Wright born in Warrington.
Niels Bohr arrived in Washington, DC from London, where he met with the director of The Manhattan Project, Brigadier General Leslie Groves. He subsequently visited Albert Einstein and Wolfgang Pauli at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and then travelled to Los Alamos in New Mexico, where the nuclear weapons were being designed. He did not remain at Los Alamos for long, but paid a series of extended visits over the course of the next two years. Robert Oppenheimer credited Bohr with acting 'as a scientific father figure to the younger men', most notably Richard Feynman.
Roy William Neil's The Spider Woman - starring Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce and Gale Sondergaard - premiered.
Mervyn LeRoy's Madame Curie - starring Greer Garson, Walter Pidgeon and Margaret O'Brien - premiered. George Formby's 'Bell Bottom George'/'If I Had A Girl Like You' released.
Christopher De Lerisson Cazenove born in Winchester.
Keith Richards born in Dartford.
Roger Michael Kelly born in Salford.
Jacqueline Pearce born in Byfleet.
Henry King's The Song Of Bernadette - starring Jennifer Jones - premiered.
Fernandel's Adrien - starring Paulette Dubost, Huguette Vivier, Dorette Ardenne and Roger Duchesne - premiered in Paris.
New Judgment: Preistley On Dickens and Joyce Grenfell and Stephen Potter's How To Give A Party broadcast.
Dorothy L Sayers' He That Should Come broadcast. Busby Berkeley's The Gang's All Here - starring Alice Faye and Carmen Miranda - premiered.
We Are Advancing broadcast on The Home Service.
Edward Sackville-West's adaptation of The Pilgrim's Progress starring John Gielgud and with music by Vaughan Williams broadcast on The Home Service.
Highlights of Irving Berlin's touring show, This Is The Army broadcast.
The Starmaker broadcast in the Twice-Told Tales strand.
John Betjeman appeared on Personal Choice.
J Jefferson Farjeon's Christmas Eve Adventure broadcast.
The Allies Greet New Year broadcast on The Home Service. Destination Tokyo - starring Cary Grant - premiered.
DG Bridson's The Builders broadcast.
Eric Linklater's Socrates Asks Why broadcast.
William Ellis born in London.
Edina Maria Ronay born in Budapest. Valentino Musetti born in Pontremoli, Tuscany.
Frederick Leslie Fowell born in Liverpool.
Alfred Hitchcock's Shadow Of A Doubt - starring Joseph Cotton - released.
The Casablanca Conference of Allied leaders began. Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt discussed the eventual invasion of mainland Europe, the impending invasion of Sicily and Italy and the wisdom of the principle of demanding 'unconditional surrender.'
Michael John Attwell born in Watford.
The start of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Besieged defenders of Leningrad linked up with relieving forces. Lawrence Huntington's Women Aren't Angels - starring Robertson Hare, Alfred Drayton, Polly Ward, Joyce Heron and Mary Hinton - premiered. Paul Freeman born in Barnet. Paul Angelis born in Liverpool.
Neville Alfred Morris Buswell born in Prestubry, Cheshire.
The last German airfield at Stalingrad was taken by Red Army forces, ensuring that the Luftwaffe would be unable to supply German troops any further - not that they had been doing a particularly good job up to that point; Hitler, nevertheless, still demanded that Friedrich Paulus continue the - by now, hopeless, fight. Ian Gordon Arthur Collier born in London.
Marlene Kathryn Kringstad born in Robbinsdale, Minnesota.
During the night of 29 to 30 January, Eddie Chapman - the legendary double agent - with MI5 officers faked a sabotage attack at the de Havilland aircraft factory in Hatfield, where Mosquito aircraft were being manufactured. German reconnaissance aircraft photographed the site and the faked damage convinced Chapman's German controllers that the attack had been successful. MI5, to reinforce this story, also had a story published in the Daily Express. Chapman's wartime exploits later inspired the 1966 movie Triple Cross and Ben Macintyre's award-winning book Agent Zigzag. Terence Sidney Lewis born in Woking. Anthony Kenneth Blackburn born in Guildford.
The first episode of Wrapped in Velvet - starring Adelaide Hall - broadcast on The Forces Programme.
Rosemarie Frankland born in Rhosllannerchrugog, Wales.
German forces finally capitulated at Stalingrad. The German public was informed of this catastrophe, marking the first time that the Nazi government had actually acknowledged a failure in the war effort.
Howard Hawks's Air Force - starring John Garfield - premiered.
Essen was bombed, marking the beginning of a four-month attack on the Ruhr industrial area. Edward H Griffiths' Young & Willing - starring William Holden, Eddie Bracken, Robert Benchley, Susan Hayward, Martha O'Driscoll, Barbara Britton, Mabel Paige and Florence MacMichael - premiered.
Gayle Hunnicutt born in Fort Worth, Texas.
The Chindits (a long range penetration group) under General Orde Wingate began an incursion into Japanese occupied territory in Burma.
Guadalcanal was finally secured; the first major achievement of the American offensive in the Pacific war.
Susan Hanson born in Preston.
Journey Into Fear - starring Orson Welles - premiered.
Rommel launched a counter-attack against the Americans in Western Tunisia; he took Sidi Bouzid and Gafsa. The Battle of the Kasserine Pass began: inexperienced American troops were soon forced to retreat. Donald Sumpter born in Brixworth.
In a speech at the Berlin Sportpalast Joseph Goebbels declared 'a Total War' against the Allies; the Nazis arrested the members of The White Rose Movement, an anti-Nazi youth group.
Michael Leigh born in Welwyn Garden City.
Harry Watt's Nine Men - starring Jack Lambert, Gordon Jackson and Frederick Piper - premiered.
George Harrison born in Liverpool.
Lance Comfort's Squadron Leader X - starring Eric Portman and Ann Dvorak - premiered.
The Human Comedy - starring Mickey Rooney - premiered. George Layton born in Bradford.
Roy Boulting's documentary Desert Victory premiered.
Nora Golding born in Sarina, Ontario. Lynn Rachel Redgrave born in Marylebone.
Karditsa in Greece became the first city in Europe to be liberated from Nazi occupation, after a campaign fought by ELAS, the Greek People's Liberation Army.
Lynda Titchmarsh born in Newton, Lancashire.
Frederick Wehrly born in County Sligo. Magda Konopka born in Warsaw.
The first reports of The Katyn Massacre in Poland appeared in the West; reports suggest that more than twenty two thousand prisoners of war were killed by the NKVD. The Soviets eventually attempted to pin the blame for the horror on the Germans. One or two people even believed them. John Francis Christopher Ducker born in Leicester.
Victor Anthony Stanshall born in Oxford.
Albert S Rogell's Hit Parade Of 1943 - starring John Carroll, Susan Hayward and Gail Patrick - premiered.
Fritz Lang's Hangmen Also Die! premiered.
Richard Henry Simpson Stilgoe born in Camberley.
Eric Idle born in South Shields.
Carole Joan White born in Hammersmith.
George Sweeney born in London.
Jonathan Lynn born in Bristol. Peter Henry Benson born in Wallasey, Cheshire.
The only large-scale escape of Allied prisoners-of-war from the Japanese in the Pacific took place when ten American POWs and two Filipino convicts broke out of the Davao Penal Colony on the island of Mindanao in the Philippines. The escaped POWs were the first to break the news of the infamous 'Bataan Death March' and other sick war crime atrocities committed by the Japanese to the world.
Dennis Leslie Amiss born in Birmingham.
House Of Wax - starring Vincent Price - premiered.
Anthony Asquith's We Dive At Dawn - starring John Mills and Eric Portman - premiered.
Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, chief architect of Japanese naval strategy, was killed when his plane was shot down by American P38's over Bougainville.
In occupied Belgium, partisans attacked a railway convoy transporting Belgian Jews to Auschwitz.Jacques Tourneur's I Walked With A Zombie premiered. Susanna Pulford born in London.
William Beaudine's Clancy Street Boys - starring Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Bobby Jordan and Noah Beery - premiered. The probable premiere date of Gilbert Gunn's Tyneside Story, made by the Ministry Of Information to highlight the contribution to the war effort of Tyneside's shipyards and featuring a cast drawn from Heaton's The People's Theatre.
Gay Hamilton born in Larnakshire.
Operation Mincemeat commenced. The Navy released a body - actually, a homeless Welshman, Glyndwr Michael who had died in tragic circumstances but appearing to be the (fictitious) Major William Martin of the Royal Marines - bearing false military documents in the Mediterranean. Later, the body washed up on the Spanish coast and was discovered by a local fisherman. The documents mislead the Germans about the site and timing of the forthcoming Allied invasion of France. The story of the deception, subsequently, became the basis for the 1956 movie The Man Who Never Was. Roy William Neil's Sherlock Holmes In Washington - starring Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce, Marjorie Lord and Henry Daniell - premiered. Meurig Wyn Jones born in Bangor, Wales.
William Wellman's Lady Of Burlesque - starring Barbara Stanwyck - premiered.
Billy Wilder's Five Graves To Cairo premiered.
Michael Edward Palin born in Sheffield.
Tunis captured by British First Army whilst the Americans took Bizerte. George Formby's 'Home Guard Blues'/'(When The Lads Of The Village) Get Crackin' released.
Jacques Tourneur's The Leopard Man and William Wellman's The Ox-Bow Incident premiered.
Virginia Wetherell born in Farnham.
Remaining German Afrika Korps and Italian troops in North Africa surrendered to Allied forces. George Stevens's The More The Merrier - starring Jean Arthur and Joel McCrea - premiered.
John Symon Asher Bruce born in Bishopbriggs.
Operation Chastise (the 'Dambuster Raid') took place: Six One Seven Squadron used bouncing bombs to breach German dams in the Ruhr Valley. The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising ended.
The Germans launched their fifth major offensive against Tito's partisans in Yugoslavia. David John Townsend born in Chippenham.
Hilton Stewart Paterson Valentine born in North Shields. Action In The North Atlantic - starring Humphrey Bogart - premiered.
Michael Curtiz's Mission To Moscow premiered.
Priscilla Maria Veronica White born in Vauxhall, Liverpool.
A BOAC plane on a scheduled passenger flight from Lisbon to Bristol, was shot down over the Bay of Biscay by German Junkers; all seventeen persons on board, including the actor Leslie Howard, were killed. There has been - entirely unproven - speculation that the downing was an attempt to kill Winston Churchill, as the Germans may have had (inaccurate) information that he was aboard.
Kevork Malikyan born in Diyarbakır, Turkey.
Colin Baker born in London.
Michael Vivian Fyfe Pennington born in Cambridge.
Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's The Life & Death Of Colonel Blimp - starring Anton Walbrook, Deborah Kerr and Roger Livesey - premiered.
Malcolm John Taylor born in Horsforth, Yorkshire.
Val Guest's first film Miss London Ltd - starring Arthur Askey, Evelyn Dall, Anne Shelton and Richard Hearne - premiered.
Judith Barker born in Oldham.
The Constant Nymph - starring Joan Fontaine and Charles Boyer - premiered.
Maureen O'Brien born in Liverpool.
Germany launched Operation Citadel and attacked Soviet forces around the Kursk Bulge, one of the largest armoured battles in history. For the Germans, the battle was the final strategic offensive that they were able to launch on the Eastern Front. Their extensive loss of men and tanks ensured that the victorious Red Army enjoyed the strategic initiative for the remainder of the war. The Soviet government had foreknowledge of German intentions, provided in part by the British intelligence service and Tunny intercepts from Bletchley Park. Aware in advance that the attack would fall on the neck of the Kursk salient, the Soviets built a defence in depth designed to wear down the German armoured spearhead.
Gary Waldhorn born in Paddington.
Walter Dornberger briefed Hitler on the development of the V-2 rocket, who approved the project for 'top priority.'
The Allied invasion of Sicily began.
Lawrence Huntingdon's Warn That Man - starring Gordon Harker, Raymond Lovell, Jean Kent and Finlay Currie - premiered.
Sam Woods's adaptation of For Whom The Bell Tolls - starring Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman - premiered.
Leslie Goodwins' Mexican Spitfire's Blessed Event - starring Lupe Velez - premiered.
The Allies bombed Rome for the first time. Bethan Morris born in Gorseinon, Wales. David Griffin born in Richmond, Surrey.
Wendy Emerton born in Middlesbrough.
US forces under General Patton captured Palermo, the capital of Sicily.
Hamburg was heavily bombed in Operation Gomorrah, at the time the heaviest aerial assault in the history of aviation. British and Canadian aeroplanes bombed the city by night and American planes followed during the day. By the end of the operation - in November - nine thousand tons of explosives would kill more than thirty thousand people and destroy over two hundred thousand buildings. For the first time, the British forces used 'Window', aluminium strips dropped to distort radar images, against the German anti-aircraft defence.
Michael Philip Jagger born in Dartford. American-born poet Ezra Pound was indicted for treason for making radio broadcasts from Italy for the Axis powers; also indicted were Robert H Best, Fred W Kaltenbach, Douglas Chandler, Edward Delaney, Constance Drexel, Jane Anderson and Max Otto Koischwitz. Attorney General Francis Biddle said that any of the eight, all indicted in absentia, would be brought to trial when caught.
Future US President Lieutenant John Kennedy's PT-109 was rammed in two and sunk off the Solomon Islands. Kennedy's subsequent actions to save his surviving crew made him a war hero in America. Paul Greenwood born in Stockton-On-Tees. Sandra Gough born in Manchester.
Jules Dassin's Young Ideas - starring Susan Peters, Herbert Marshall and Mary Astor - released.
Georgina Hale born in Ilford.
Claire Sutcliffe born in London.
Ernst Lubitsch's Heaven Can Wait - starring Gene Tierney and Don Ameche - premiered.
Arthur Lubin's Phantom Of The Opera - starring Claude Rains - premiered.
Michael Curtiz's This Is The Army premiered.
Operation Crossbow began when the RAF bombed the Peenemünde V-2 rocket facility.
The Fallen Sparrow - starring John Garfield and Maureen O'Hara - premiered.
The first episode of The Charlie McCarthy Programme - starring Edgar Bergan - broadcast on The Forces Programme. Percy James Patrick Kent-Smith born in Dunoon.
Ashington miner Jackie Milburn, recently signed on amateur forms, played his first competative game for Newcastle United in a two-defeat at Bradford City in the Wartime Northern Championship. Although his official first class debut would not come until 1946, he would go on to play three hundred and ninety nine games (not including wartime fixtures) for The Magpies in a career that lasted until 1957 when he left to manage the Irish club Linfield. He would scored two hundred and one goals for the club (a record only supassed in 2006 by Alan Shearer), win the FA Cup three times during the period and also represent his country on thirteen occasions.
Watch On The Rhine - starring Bette Davis and Paul Lukas - and Holy Matrimony - starring Garcie Fields - premiered. George Formby's 'On The HMS Cowheel'/'Bunty's Such A Big Girl Now' released.
Kirsten Lindholm Andreassen born in Odense, Denmark.
The Sky's The Limit - starring Fred Astaire and Joan leslie - premiered.
A secret Italian Armistice was signed and Italy dropped out of the war. Mainland Italy was invaded when the British Twenty Third Corps, under General Montgomery, landed at Reggio Calabria. Johnny Come Lately - starring James Cagney - premiered.
George Roger Waters born in Great Bookham.
The Americans landed in Italy at Salerno. So Proudly We Hail - starring Claudette Colbert, Paulette Goddard and Veronica Lake - premiered.The first episode of The Home Service's Appointment With Fear strand - John Dickson Carr's Cabin B Thirteen - broadcast.
Mussolini was rescued from a mountaintop captivity by German SS troops led by Otto Skorzeny. Mussolini was then set up by Hitler as the head of the puppet 'Italian Social Republic.'
British forces landed on various Italian-held Greek islands in the Aegean Sea, beginning the Dodecanese Campaign. British and American troops linked up near the Salerno beachhead.
Roy William Neil's Sherlock Holmes Faces Death - starring Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce, Dennis Hoey, Arthur Margetson, Hillary Brooke and Halliwell Hobbes - premiered.
An adaptation of The Pit & The Pendulum broadcast in the Appointment With Fear strand.
Into Thin Air broadcast in the Appointment With Fear strand and Helen Spalding's A Nice Girl broadcast in the Twice Told Tales strand.
David Anthony Gubba born in Manchester.
Eric Allen's The Jinx broadcast in The Home Service's Twice Told Tales strand.
Anna Abigail Gyarmathy born in Budapest, Hungary.
The people of Naples, sensing the approach of the Allies, rose up against their German occupiers.
The Danish resistance helped physicist Niels Bohr and his wife, Margrethe, escape by sea from Nazi occupied Copenhagen to Sweden. The next day, Bohr persuaded King Gustaf V of Sweden to make public Sweden's willingness to provide asylum to Jewish refugees.
Ian Raymond Ogilvy born in Woking. The Body Snatchers broadcast in the Appointment With Fear strand.
Graham Bain's Dress Rehearsal> broadcast on The Home Service.
An adaptation of Edgar Wallace's The Squeaker broadcast in the Saturday-Night Theatre strand.
Churchill appointed Lord Louis Mountbatten the commander of South East Asia Command. Louis Jordan & His Tympany Five recorded 'Is You Is Or Is You Ain't (My Baby)?' for Decca Records.
John Dennis Bindon born in Fulham.
Niels Bohr arrived in Scotland on a de Havilland Mosquito operated by the British Overseas Airways Corporation.
Lassie Come Home - starring Roddy McDowell and Elizabeth Taylor - premiered. The Customers Like Murders broadcast in the Appointment With Fear strand.
John Vivian Drummond Nettles born in St Austell.
Will You Make A Bet With Death? broadcast in the Appointment With Fear strand.
Viktor Bánky's Makacs Kata - starring Emmi Buttykay, Miklós Hajmássy, Béla Mihályffi and György Dénes - premiered.
Michael Reeves born in London. Elaine Regina Taylor born in Hemel Hempstead.
John Harlow's The Dark Tower - starring Ben Lyon, Herbert Lom, Anne Crawford and David Farrar - premiered.
The Devil's Saint broadcast in the Appointment With Fear strand.
Princess O'Rourke - starring Olivia De Havilland and Robert Cummings - premiered.
Ronald Haines's Deadlock - starring John Slater, Cecile Chevreau, Molly Hamley-Clifford and Hugh Morton - premiered.
Fire Burn & Cauldron Bubble broadcast in the Appointment With Fear strand.
Margaret Ann Nolan born in Hampstead.
In the Philadelphia Experiment, a story widely believed to be a hoax, the destroyer escort USS Eldridge was supposedly rendered invisible to human observers for a brief period and (in at least some versions of the story) even teleported from the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard to the US Navy shipyard in Norfolk, Virginia and back, with the result that several of those on-board were seriously injured, went insane, or were killed. The story would be popularised by the bestselling 1974 book The Bermuda Triangle, by Charles Berlitz. In 1979, Berlitz and William L Moore wrote a more detailed account in The Philadelphia Experiment: Project Invisibility, by which time the Navy had a standard response: 'As for The Philadelphia Experiment, the ONR has never conducted any investigations on invisibility, either in 1943 or at any other time. In view of present scientific knowledge, our scientists do not believe that such an experiment could be possible except in the realm of science fiction.'
Herbert Jansch born in Hampstead.
The North Star - starring Anne Baxter - premiered.
Sidney Gilliat and Frank Launder's Millions Like Us - starring Eric Portman, Gordon Jackson, Patricia Roc, Basil Radford, Naunton Wayne, Moore Marriott, Joy Shelton, Megs Jenkins and Terry Randall - premiered.
Michael Byrne born in London.
William Clemens's The Falcon & The Co-eds - starring Tom Conway, Jean Brooks and Amelita Ward - premiered.
John Dickson Carr's Cabin B13, the first episode of Appointment With Fear - featuring the sepulchral-voiced Valentine Dyall as The Man In Black - broadcast on The Home Service.
Sahara - starring Humphrey Bogart and Lloyd Bridges - premiered.
Valerie Therese Leon born in Hampstead. Julie Ege born in Sandnes, Norway.
Malcolm St Clair's The Dancing Masters - starring Laurel and Hardy and Trudy Marshall - premiered.
Heinrich Himmler (he had two, but they were very small) ordered that Gypsies and 'part-Gypsies' were to be 'put on the same level as Jews and placed in concentration camps.'
Norma West born in Cape Town, South Africa.
The Cairo Conference: Roosevelt, Churchill, and ROC leader Chiang Kai-shek met to discuss ways to defeat Japan.
A sentence of eighteen months' imprisonment and twelve strokes of the birch was imposed by Justice Charles at Surrey Assizes on John Henry Bethell, nineteen, a Grenadier Guardsman, for robbing with violence a seventy-year-old woman. The Judge told Bethell: 'You acted like an utter blackguard,' adding that if he had been a little older he would have 'been ordered the cat.'
The Tehran Conference. Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin met to discuss war strategy; (on 30 November they established an agreement concerning a planned June 1944 invasion of Europe codenamed Operation Overlord). Stalin at last had the promise of a Western Front.
The first episode of Richard Fisher and Peter Creswell's adaptation of Broken Swords - starring Eric Portman - broadcast. Maurice Elvey's The Lamp Still Burns - starring Rosamund John, Stewart Granger and Godfrey Tearle - premiered.
The Piper Of Sloane Street broadcast in the Twice-Told Tales strand.
Cap & Bells - starring Frances Day, John Clements, Richard Murdoch and Noele Gordon - broadcast.
Us broadcaster Edward Murrow delivers his 'Orchestrated Hell' broadcast for CBS Radio describing an RAF night bombing raid on Berlin.
Susan Wright born in Warrington.
Niels Bohr arrived in Washington, DC from London, where he met with the director of The Manhattan Project, Brigadier General Leslie Groves. He subsequently visited Albert Einstein and Wolfgang Pauli at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and then travelled to Los Alamos in New Mexico, where the nuclear weapons were being designed. He did not remain at Los Alamos for long, but paid a series of extended visits over the course of the next two years. Robert Oppenheimer credited Bohr with acting 'as a scientific father figure to the younger men', most notably Richard Feynman.
Roy William Neil's The Spider Woman - starring Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce and Gale Sondergaard - premiered.
Mervyn LeRoy's Madame Curie - starring Greer Garson, Walter Pidgeon and Margaret O'Brien - premiered. George Formby's 'Bell Bottom George'/'If I Had A Girl Like You' released.
Christopher De Lerisson Cazenove born in Winchester.
Keith Richards born in Dartford.
Roger Michael Kelly born in Salford.
Jacqueline Pearce born in Byfleet.
Henry King's The Song Of Bernadette - starring Jennifer Jones - premiered.
Fernandel's Adrien - starring Paulette Dubost, Huguette Vivier, Dorette Ardenne and Roger Duchesne - premiered in Paris.
New Judgment: Preistley On Dickens and Joyce Grenfell and Stephen Potter's How To Give A Party broadcast.
Dorothy L Sayers' He That Should Come broadcast. Busby Berkeley's The Gang's All Here - starring Alice Faye and Carmen Miranda - premiered.
We Are Advancing broadcast on The Home Service.
Edward Sackville-West's adaptation of The Pilgrim's Progress starring John Gielgud and with music by Vaughan Williams broadcast on The Home Service.
Highlights of Irving Berlin's touring show, This Is The Army broadcast.
The Starmaker broadcast in the Twice-Told Tales strand.
John Betjeman appeared on Personal Choice.
J Jefferson Farjeon's Christmas Eve Adventure broadcast.
The Allies Greet New Year broadcast on The Home Service. Destination Tokyo - starring Cary Grant - premiered.
