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WWII On This Day: August 6

What happened on August 6 during World War II? This date brings together 3 events from 1942, 1944 and 1945, with period photographs and links to the full operations documented across WW2 Theatres.

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

Armavir is taken

German mobile troops reached Armavir on 6 August, threatening the western oil district and the routes leading from the Kuban into the central Caucasus. Soviet forces continued to trade ground while demolition teams worked on the oil infrastructure and transport system. The retreat was now serving two purposes: preserving field formations and denying the advancing army an intact economic prize. For Army Group A, Armavir was another rapid geographic success that increased the urgency of the next bound. The oilfields could only matter strategically if they were captured before destruction,…

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1944
Warsaw Uprising: Two medics and a soldier (right) from "Parasol" battalion after coming out of sewers at Warecka Street near Nowy Świat (North Śródmieście district). In the center Maria Stypułkowska-Chojecka "Kama". On the right Krzysztof Palester "Krzych".
Warsaw Uprising - Soldiers from Parasol on Warecka Street 1 September 1944 · Jerzy Chrzanowski · Public domain · Source
The Warsaw Rising

The east–west corridor is reopened

By 6 August German forces had forced a route eastward through Wola toward the city centre and the Vistula crossings. The corridor restored movement between the western approaches, German-held central strongpoints and the river axis. Its reopening reduced the western insurgent area and left the Rising as a series of separated districts. Sewer routes and short exposed surface passages increasingly carried communications between areas that could no longer reinforce one another directly.

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1945
The atomic cloud over Hiroshima after the bombing on 6 August 1945.
The atomic cloud over Hiroshima after the bombing on 6 August 1945. U.S. Army Air Forces / National Archives and Records Administration · Public domain Source
The Bombing of Cities

Hiroshima

At 08:15 on 6 August 1945 the B-29 Enola Gay released the uranium bomb Little Boy over Hiroshima. The weapon exploded above the city and produced blast, thermal radiation and ionising radiation across a densely populated urban area. Hiroshima contained military headquarters, communications and war-related industry as well as a large civilian population. The destruction extended far beyond individual military installations, and the effects of radiation continued after the fires and blast injuries of the first day. Hiroshima City estimates that approximately 140,000 people had died by the end of…

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