World War II Database

• Home
• » Events
• » WW2 Timeline
• » 5 Oct 1943

• USS S-28 traveled through the Onekotan Strait in the northern Kurile Islands. ww2dbase [S-28 | CPC]
• Germans completed their evacuation of Corsica, France. ww2dbase [TH]
• Remy Van Lierde shot down a German Ju 88 heavy fighter (his fifth kill) and destroyed another aircraft on the ground. ww2dbase [Remy Van Lierde | CPC]
• Manila Bay was commissioned into service. ww2dbase [Manila Bay | CPC]
• Submarine U-869 was launched. ww2dbase [U-869 | CPC]
• Joseph Stilwell ordered Sun Liren to launch an offensive in northern Burma, but Sun hesitated. ww2dbase [Sun Li-jen | CPC]
• Minesweeper USS Assail was transferred to the Soviet Union under the Lend-Lease Act. ww2dbase [AC]
• Ensign Robert W. Duncan of US Navy Squadron VF-5 became the first F6F Hellcat fighter pilot to shoot down two Japanese Zero fighters in a single engagement. ww2dbase [F6F Hellcat | AC]

• Gato-class submarine USS Silversides departed Brisbane, Australia on her seventh war patrol in company with submarines USS Growler and USS Balao. ww2dbase [Silversides | Brisbane | DS]

• Barbers Point Naval Air Station: Fifteen officers and 78 men of ARGUS-10 on board. ww2dbase [Barbers Point Naval Air Station | Ewa, Oahu | DS]

• German 16th Panzer Division nearly wiped out the British bridgehead on the Biferno River near Termoli, Italy; the British bridgehead was saved by the arrival of Canadian and British tanks. ww2dbase [Advance to the Gustav Line | Termoli, Molise | CPC]

• American carrier aircraft bombed Wake Island as surface ships, including USS New Orleans (New Orleans-class), shelled the island ww2dbase [New Orleans | CPC]
• USS Wahoo sank freighter Konron Maru in the Sea of Japan off Tsushima, Japan, killing 544. ww2dbase [Wahoo | Sea of Japan | CPC]

• USS Ray departed the Panama Canal Zone. ww2dbase [Ray | CPC]

• 1,196 Polish Jewish children originally from the liquidated Bialystok ghetto in Poland were transferred from Theresienstadt Concentration Camp in occupied Czechoslovakia to Auschwitz Concentration Camp in occupied Poland. ww2dbase [Discovery of Concentration Camps and the Holocaust | Auschwitz Concentration Camp | Oswiecim | CPC]

• USS Yorktown (Essex-class) began two days of air strikes on Japanese installations on Wake Island. ww2dbase [Yorktown (Essex-class) | J. J. Clark | Wake | DS]
• Task Force 19 consisting of Essex-class carriers Essex, Lexington, and Yorktown with light carriers Cowpens, Independence, and Belleau Wood escorted by cruisers New Orleans, San Francisco, Birmingham, Nashville, Santa Fe, and Mobile and destroyers Hull, Hazelwood, Bancroft, Caldwell, Coghlan, Braine, Halford, Kidd, Bullard, Chauncey, John Rodgers, Harrison, Murray, Ringgold, Sigsbee, Schroeder, Dashiell, Conner, Burns, Boyd, and Bradford began two days of strikes against Wake Island. So intense was the bombardment that island commander Rear Admiral Sakaibara Shigemitsu was convinced it was a prelude to an invasion and he ordered the execution of all 98 remaining POWs that had been there since 23 Dec 1941, many of whom had been civilian contractors at the time of their capture. ww2dbase [Yorktown (Essex-class) | Independence | Cowpens | San Francisco | Essex | Nashville | Hull | Birmingham | Lexington (Essex-class) | New Orleans | Wake Island | DS]

5 Oct 1943 Interactive Map