WWII On This Day: August 15

August 15, 1940 · 12:00 · The Battle of Britain

Luftflotte 5 discovers that the north is still defended

Luftflotte 5 attacked from Norway and Denmark against northern England on the assumption that Fighter Command had stripped the region to reinforce the south. British squadrons were still present and intercepted the raids. The German formations lacked the escort conditions available to raids crossing the narrower Channel approaches. Losses were severe enough that Luftflotte 5 did not repeat a comparable daylight effort over Britain. The raid exposed a persistent intelligence failure. Fighter Command's group system allowed Dowding to reinforce the south without leaving the rest of the country as empty…

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August 15, 1942 · Malta: Air Siege and Convoy War

Ohio reaches Grand Harbour

The crippled tanker Ohio reached Malta on 15 August supported by destroyers after torpedo and bomb damage had stopped her engines and weakened her hull. Four other merchant vessels from the fourteen-ship convoy also reached the island over the preceding days. Nine merchant vessels were lost. Pedestal delivered food, ammunition and fuel at the point when stocks were critically low. Ohio's aviation fuel was especially important because Malta's recovered fighter and anti-shipping forces depended on it. The convoy extended the island's endurance and allowed offensive operations to expand again. A…

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August 15, 1942 · Operation Millennium

What Millennium proved

Operation Millennium proved that Bomber Command could organise a mass stream and place a destructive concentration over a major German city. It strengthened Harris's position and influenced the later development of bomber-stream tactics. It did not prove that area bombing could quickly break German morale or production. Its political and organisational success was clearer than its strategic result.

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August 15, 1944 · Operation Dragoon

The First Airborne Task Force drops at Le Muy

Around 5,000 American and British parachutists dropped inland to block the roads by which reinforcements could reach the beaches. Fog scattered part of the drop, though far less badly than in Normandy, and the gliders came in through the morning. Le Muy itself was cleared during the day. The task force under Major General Robert Frederick held the road junctions behind the landing area throughout.

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August 15, 1944 · Operation Dragoon

The commandos take the flanks

French naval commandos of the Groupe naval d'assaut de Corse under Commandant Bouvet landed at Cap Nègre and climbed the cliffs to take the battery above and cut the coast road on the western flank. The First Special Service Force, an American and Canadian formation, landed on Port-Cros and the Île du Levant to silence the batteries covering the western approach. The guns on the Levant turned out to be wooden dummies.

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August 15, 1944 · Operation Dragoon

The bombardment opens

Battleships, cruisers and destroyers opened on the coastal batteries and beach defences, joined by 1,300 aircraft from Corsica, Sardinia and Italy. The preparation lasted a little over two hours. Unlike Normandy the coast here had never been heavily fortified, and much of what existed had been stripped of guns and men through July to feed the fighting in the north.

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August 15, 1944 · Operation Dragoon

H-Hour at Alpha

The US 3rd Infantry Division under Major General John O'Daniel landed in the bay of Cavalaire and on the Pampelonne beaches below Ramatuelle, with Combat Command 1 of the French 1st Armoured Division under General Sudre following. Resistance was light. Two landing craft were lost on mines. The division was several miles inland by midday.

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August 15, 1944 · Operation Dragoon

H-Hour at Delta

The US 45th Infantry Division under Major General William Eagles came ashore at Sainte-Maxime on the Nartelle beaches, in the centre of the assault frontage. Saint-Tropez was taken the same day, in part by the Resistance and by scattered parachutists who had come down near the town, before the regular troops reached it.

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August 15, 1944 · Operation Dragoon

H-Hour at Camel, and the beach that was refused

The US 36th Infantry Division under Major General John Dahlquist landed at Le Dramont below the Esterel. The eastern sector at Fréjus was the only one seriously defended, with mines, underwater obstacles and guns still in position. The naval commander of the assault group judged the fire too heavy and diverted the landing to Le Dramont rather than press it. The decision was taken on his own authority against the plan and it saved the division a costly frontal landing.

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August 15, 1944 · Operation Dragoon

Wiese has no reserve to send

General Friedrich Wiese commanded the Nineteenth Army along 300 miles of coast with divisions that had no transport, no armour except the 11th Panzer, and in several cases battalions of eastern European conscripts who surrendered readily. The 11th Panzer Division was west of the Rhône and could not cross quickly because the Allied air forces had destroyed the bridges. It took four days to reach the battle.

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August 15, 1944 · Operation Dragoon

The roads and railways are cut

Carrier aircraft and fighter-bombers from Corsica ranged far inland attacking trains, road columns and river crossings across the whole south. Aircraft of VOF-1 caught trains as far west as Carcassonne. Combined with the Resistance campaign against the rail network, this left the Nineteenth Army trying to withdraw an army along roads it could not use by day.

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August 15, 1944 · Operation Dragoon

End of the first day

Around 60,000 men and 6,000 vehicles were ashore, with casualties of a few hundred. Every objective for the day had been taken except at Fréjus, and the beachheads were joined within 48 hours. Set against Omaha ten weeks earlier, the comparison is stark. The difference was not the plan or the troops. It was that the Germans had moved almost everything they had to Normandy.

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August 15, 1944 · Operation Overlord

Operation Dragoon lands in the south

A second Allied invasion of France came ashore between Toulon and Cannes: US VI Corps and French Army B, against defences stripped to feed Normandy. Marseille and Toulon were captured within a fortnight and became the Allies' most productive ports in France. The French First Army driving north up the Rhône would meet the Normandy armies near Dijon in September, closing a continuous front from the North Sea to Switzerland.

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August 15, 1944 · 05:00 · The Liberation of Paris

The police strike

Around 20,000 Paris policemen stopped work rather than be disarmed by the Germans, who had begun seizing weapons from precincts they no longer trusted. The Métro stopped the same day and the postal workers followed. A police force on strike is a police force with weapons and buildings and nothing to do. Four days later it would take the Préfecture.

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August 15, 1944 · 09:00 · The Liberation of Paris

The last train leaves Pantin

Around 2,200 prisoners were taken from Fresnes, Romainville and the Cherche-Midi and loaded onto a train at Pantin bound for Buchenwald and Ravensbrück. It was the last mass deportation train to leave Paris. Between 1942 and August 1944 about 76,000 Jews were deported from France, most of them through the camp at Drancy on the northern edge of the city. Fewer than 3,000 returned.

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August 15, 1945 · 12:00 · The Bombing of Cities

The city-bombing campaigns end with the war

American conventional bombing continued into the final days before Japan announced acceptance of surrender terms. By then the home islands had also been subjected to naval blockade, aerial mining, destruction of transport and industry, two atomic bombings and Soviet entry into the war. Post-war surveys tried to isolate how much each form of pressure contributed to the surrender decision. The surviving evidence instead shows a rapidly collapsing strategic situation in which several shocks arrived together and Japanese leaders weighed them within the same crisis. Across the wider war, city bombing…

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