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WWII On This Day: August 18

What happened on August 18 during World War II? This date brings together 6 events from 1940, 1941, 1943 and 1944, with period photographs and links to the full operations documented across WW2 Theatres.

1940
An RAF station under attack, 1940. The airfields were the target that was working.
An RAF station under attack, 1940. The airfields were the target that was working. Imperial War Museums · Public domain Source
The Battle of Britain

The Hardest Day tests both air forces

On 18 August the Luftwaffe mounted major attacks against Fighter Command targets including Kenley. Low-level and high-level attacks, fighter sweeps and interceptions produced some of the heaviest losses of the campaign on both sides. Kenley's operations facilities were damaged and aircraft were destroyed on the ground and in the air. The fighting also demonstrated the growing vulnerability of the Ju 87 when British fighters penetrated its escort; Stuka units were subsequently withdrawn from the main daylight battle over Britain. The day's significance was not that one side had reached a…

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1941
Searchlights and anti-aircraft tracer over Cologne during Operation Millennium, 30–31 May 1942.
Royal Air Force official photographer · Imperial War Museums C 2615 · Public domain
Area Bombing Begins

The Butt Report puts a number on the accuracy problem

David Bensusan-Butt circulated his statistical review of Bomber Command's night bombing photographs. He examined roughly 650 usable images from June and July 1941 and compared the photographic evidence with crews' reports that they had attacked their assigned targets. Of aircraft recorded as attacking, only about one in three had come within five miles of the aiming point; over Germany the figure was about one in four and over the Ruhr about one in ten. The report was more severe than those ratios first appear. A five-mile radius enclosed more than…

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1943
A Tiger tank of the SS panzer corps during the battle of Kursk, July 1943.
Bundesarchiv Bild 101III-Zschaeckel-206-35 · CC BY-SA 3.0 DE · Source
Battle of Kursk 1943

Operation Kutuzov eliminates the Orel salient

By 18 August German forces had completed their withdrawal from the Orel salient to shorter positions farther west. Western, Bryansk and Central Front attacks had forced a sustained retreat and recovered the territory from which Ninth Army had launched the northern pincer. Kutuzov achieved its territorial objective through a costly series of frontal attacks and armoured commitments. The northern campaign had moved far beyond the limited ground gained by Ninth Army during Citadel, while the southern Soviet offensive was still fighting for Kharkov.

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1944
U.S. Navy LCVPs on a Baie de Cavalaire invasion beach during Operation Dragoon, 15 August 1944, with German prisoners passing behind them.
Baie de Cavalaire invasion beach, 15 August 1944 · U.S. Navy / Naval History and Heritage Command 80-G-59475 · Public domain · Source
Operation Dragoon

The Nineteenth Army Receives Its Withdrawal Order

At 11:00 on 18 August, Army Group G commander Johannes Blaskowitz received the part of the German withdrawal directive ordering the Nineteenth Army north from southern France. Toulon and Marseille were to remain as fortress garrisons while the field army tried to escape through the Rhône corridor toward the Dijon area. Allied intelligence was receiving the same change through ULTRA. By early afternoon Seventh Army knew the substance of the order, allowing Patch and Truscott to plan against a retreat that the German command had only just begun to organize.

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Operation Dragoon

VI Corps Pushes Mobile Forces Into the Interior

Task Force Butler left its assembly area on 18 August as VI Corps exploited through Haute-Provence. The improvised mobile force under Brigadier General Frederick B. Butler included reconnaissance, armor, armored infantry, artillery and tank-destroyer elements and initially moved north toward the Grenoble approaches. The German withdrawal changed the priority. On the evening of 20 August Truscott ordered Butler to turn west toward Montélimar and the Rhône, where a relatively small force might interrupt the principal escape route before the Nineteenth Army completed its passage.

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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

Rol-Tanguy orders general mobilisation

Colonel Henri Rol-Tanguy, commanding the FFI in the Île-de-France, had posters printed calling every Parisian capable of bearing arms to mobilise. His command post was in a disused tunnel beneath the Place Denfert-Rochereau, connected to the surface by the city telephone system the Germans never cut. The order was issued without waiting for agreement from de Gaulle's delegates, who wanted the rising held back until the Allies were closer. That disagreement ran through the whole week.

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