This Day in WWII 16 March 1939 - 1945 *1935

[Donster]

United States Steel Ad - March 1943

1939: Germany occupies the rest Czechoslovakia.

1940: The Luftwaffe attacks the British Fleets anchorage at Scapa Flow in the Orkney Islands. This raid causes the death of a British civilian, the first of the war.

**Elaine Shepard

1941: The Kriegsmarine loses two of its most successful U-boat commanders, Kretschmer (U-99) and Schepke (U-100) to British escorts from convoy HX112.

1941: British troops from Aden, land at and capture Berbera in Italian occupied British Somaliland.

1943: Wolfpack 'Raubgraf' attacks convoys HX-229 (37 ships) until the 19th March, sinking 12 ships for 86,326 gross tons damaging 4. Another wolfpack, named 'Stürmer', attacks SC122 and over a period of four days and nights sinking 11 ships (54,740 tons) for the loss of just one U-boat, U-384 (Oblt. von Rosenberg-Gruszinski).

Elaine Shepard

1944: Oswald Job, a British subject, is hanged for spying at Pentonville Prison.

1944: The British Eighth Army continues to batter itself against Monte Cassino.

U.S. Rubber Company Ad - March 1945

1944: A Japanese advance through Burma isolates the British garrison at Imphal. During the three-month siege, 150,000 men had to rely entirely on air supply for their survival. More than 400 tons of stores had to be flown daily into a heavily guarded valley, with only three squadrons of Spitfires available for air defence and six squadrons of Hurricanes for attack.

1944: The 'Chindit' 'White City' base at Mawla severs Japanese communications in northern Burma.

Elaine Shepard

1945: The US 8th Air Force launches a massive attack (675 bombers) against the HQ complex of the OKH at Zossen 20 miles south of Berlin, but with minimal effect.

1945: The German Heavy Cruisers Schlesien and Prinz Eugen give supporting fire forces of Heeresgruppe Kurland in their defense of the Kurland pocket.

Elaine Shepard

1945: Two fresh Soviet armies of the 3rd Ukrainian Front counter attack the German offensive towards Budapest.

1945: Iwo Jima is declared secure by U.S. forces although small pockets of Japanese resistance still exist.

*1935: Adolf Hitler orders a German rearmament and violates the Versailles Treaty.

Elaine Shepard

**Elaine Shepard was born on April 2, 1913 in Olney, Illinois. She was a Broadway and film actress in the 1930s and '40s. She was also the author of "The Doom Pussy", a semi-fictional account of aviation in the Vietnam War.

Shepard's first film appearance was in the 1936 Republic serial "Darkest Africa", in which she played Valerie Tremaine, the heroine of the film. This was followed with a series of leading roles in other minor films. She then had several minor roles in major films, including playing a secretary in "Topper" and uncredited roles in "Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo" and the 1946 "Ziegfeld Follies". A more prominent role came in "Seven Days Ashore", a musical in which she plays the principal love interest for the band of sailors on shore leave.

Shepard also had some minor appearances on Broadway, including a part in the 1940 Cole Porter musical "Panama Hattie".

Shepard abandoned acting and turned to freelance journalism. She is best known in this role for her Vietnam War coverage, which became the basis for her 1967 book "The Doom Pussy", recounting her experiences with aviators in the early part of the war. This book is commonly cited as originating the phrase "the whole nine yards", though it is likely the source is older.

Her presence in the press party for a 1959 European tour with President Eisenhower provided the occasion for a libel suit against Dorothy Kilgallen. Kilgallen wrote that a female member of the press on the trip had had an affair with a member of the White House staff; Shepard, however, was widely known to be the only woman on the trip. The suit dragged on for years.

Elaine Shepard died on September 6, 1998 (aged 85) in New York City, New York.

U.S. Rubber Company Ad - March 1945

[Snoopy]

Yeap, I'd hit it.