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WWII On This Day: August 13

What happened on August 13 during World War II? This date brings together 3 events from 1940, 1942 and 1944, with period photographs and links to the full operations documented across WW2 Theatres.

1940
A Heinkel He 111, designed for close support of an army and used as a strategic bomber.
A Heinkel He 111, designed for close support of an army and used as a strategic bomber. Imperial War Museums MH 6547 · Public domain Source
The Battle of Britain

Eagle Day opens the main offensive

Adlertag, Eagle Day, opened the planned large-scale assault after weather and confused signals disrupted the timetable. German formations struck airfields and installations across southern England while fighter units sought to engage the defending squadrons. Not every target was part of Fighter Command and not every attack arrived with the intended escort. That mattered because the purpose of the offensive was cumulative: repeated attacks had to reduce the organisation faster than Britain could repair aircraft, restore stations and replace crews. German intelligence continued to interpret repeated RAF interceptions as the last…

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1942
A German tank commander in southern Soviet territory in June 1942, shortly before the opening of Case Blue.
Bundesarchiv Bild 101I-218-0528-30 · CC BY-SA 3.0 DE · Source
Case Blue and the Drive to the Caucasus

The advance enters the Kalmyk steppe

On the eastern side of the campaign German motorised forces reached Elista in the Kalmyk steppe, extending the front toward the lower Volga and the distant Astrakhan routes. The advance encountered comparatively little organised resistance at first, but every mile east increased the length of the flank and the distance from the useful rail and road system. The movement created frontage faster than it created a strategic result. Elista therefore illustrates the danger of measuring Case Blue through maximum distance reached. Territory in the empty steppe could be occupied with…

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1944
Remains of the Borgward IV demolition carrier that exploded at 3 Kiliński Street on 13 August 1944.
Remains of the Borgward IV demolition carrier that exploded at 3 Kiliński Street on 13 August 1944. Jerzy Świderski · Public domain (Poland) Source
The Warsaw Rising

The Borgward charge explodes

On the evening of 13 August insurgents brought a captured German Borgward IV demolition carrier into the Old Town after it had been abandoned near a barricade. The vehicle carried a detachable heavy explosive charge that had not been recognised by the crowd gathering around it. The charge detonated on Kiliński Street, killing almost 300 soldiers and civilians according to the Warsaw Rising Museum chronology and wounding many more. Later memory often called the vehicle a Goliath, but surviving photographs identify the wreck as a Borgward IV.

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