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WWII On This Day: August 17

What happened on August 17 during World War II? This date brings together 5 events from 1943 and 1944, with period photographs and links to the full operations documented across WW2 Theatres.

1943
Troops of the British 51st Highland Division unload stores and vehicles from landing craft on the Sicily coast on 10 July 1943.
Lt C. H. Parnall / Royal Navy / Imperial War Museums A 17916 · UK Government public domain
Operation Husky: The Invasion of Sicily

U.S. troops enter Messina after the Axis evacuation

American troops of the 3rd Infantry Division entered Messina on 17 August, with British forces arriving soon afterward. The German and Italian rearguards had withdrawn across the strait, leaving the city and its approaches to Allied control. The Sicily operation ended with the island and its airfields in Allied hands. Axis commanders had transferred large numbers of soldiers and vehicles to mainland Italy, giving them forces available for the coming battles in Calabria and farther north.

Continue in Operation Husky: The Invasion of Sicily →
B-17F Flying Fortresses over Schweinfurt on 17 August 1943 during the combined Schweinfurt–Regensburg mission.
B-17F Flying Fortresses over Schweinfurt on 17 August 1943 during the combined Schweinfurt–Regensburg mission. United States Army Air Forces · Public domain in the United States Source
The Combined Bomber Offensive

The double strike

The Eighth Air Force dispatched 376 B-17s against the Schweinfurt bearing plants and the Regensburg aircraft works. The Regensburg force continued to North Africa after bombing. Weather delays separated the two wings, allowing German fighters to recover and attack them in sequence. Sixty bombers failed to return.

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A German Messerschmitt Bf 110 attacks B-17F Flying Fortresses of the 91st Bomb Group over Europe in January 1944.
U.S. Army Air Forces / National Archives, NAID 204888701 · Public domain in the United States · Source
The Combined Bomber Offensive

Operation Hydra

Bomber Command attacked the German rocket research establishment with 597 aircraft and used a master bomber to control marking over the target. Forty bombers were lost. Damage, deaths among specialist staff and the decision to disperse work delayed parts of the programme, but key research installations survived.

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1944
Mulberry B beginning to operate as a harbour, Arromanches, 25 to 28 June 1944.
Mulberry B beginning to operate as a harbour, Arromanches, 25 to 28 June 1944. IWM A 24678 · IWM Non-Commercial Licence Source
Operation Overlord

Falaise taken and Kluge dismissed

Canadian troops entered Falaise as the pocket tightened. Kluge, out of radio contact for a day while pinned under air attack and suspected by Hitler of trying to negotiate a surrender, was relieved and replaced by Model. He took poison on the road home two days later. Model's first act was to authorise the withdrawal east that Kluge had been forbidden, days too late for most of the two armies inside the pocket.

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Tanks and half-tracks of the French 2e Division Blindée pass the Arc de Triomphe through crowds on the Champs-Élysées, 26 August 1944.
Jack Downey, US Office of War Information · Library of Congress · Public domain · Source
The Liberation of Paris

Vichy and the German administration leave

Pierre Laval was removed to Belfort and the Vichy apparatus in Paris dissolved. German civil administration began burning files and loading lorries, and the Gestapo offices on the avenue Foch emptied. What remained was a garrison without a government, in a city where the authority of the occupier had visibly ended before its army had.

Continue in The Liberation of Paris →