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WWII On This Day: August 7

What happened on August 7 during World War II? This date brings together 4 events from 1942, 1944 and 1945, with period photographs and links to the full operations documented across WW2 Theatres.

1942
Red Army soldiers carrying a Soviet flag through the ruins of Stalingrad in 1943.
Bundesarchiv Bild 183-R76619 · CC BY-SA 3.0 DE · Source
Battle of Stalingrad

Sixth Army closes a pocket west of Kalach

Sixth Army attacked the Soviet bridgehead west of the Don in early August and brought armoured and infantry formations around substantial elements of 62nd Army and 1st Tank Army. German mobile forces were again operating in terrain that favoured encirclement, using the river and the contracting Soviet position to limit withdrawal routes. The battle produced tens of thousands of prisoners and heavy Soviet equipment losses, but it did not remove the forces defending the entire Stalingrad direction. Soviet units escaped east of the Don, new formations continued to arrive, and…

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1944
American armour moving through the ruins of Saint-Lô during the breakout, July 1944.
American armour in the ruins of Saint-Lô, July 1944 · US Army Signal Corps · NARA · Public domain · Source
Operation Cobra

The counterattack that made Falaise possible

Hitler ordered a counterattack west at Mortain to cut the corridor at Avranches and isolate the American forces that had passed through it. Kluge objected and was overruled. It failed within two days against air attack and prepared defence, and it pushed the remaining German armour further west into a salient with Allied forces on three sides. Everything about the Falaise pocket follows from that decision.

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An Airspeed Horsa glider of the type flown to the Orne bridges and Merville.
An Airspeed Horsa glider of the type flown to the Orne bridges and Merville. IWM H 37694 · IWM Non-Commercial Licence Source
Operation Overlord

Operation Lüttich, the Mortain counterattack

On Hitler's direct order, four panzer divisions attacked west towards Avranches to cut the corridor through which Third Army was pouring south and east. Ultra decrypts had given warning. The attack was stopped within two days, largely by the 30th Infantry Division holding Hill 314 above Mortain, surrounded for five days and supplied by air, and by rocket-firing Typhoons in clear weather.

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1945
A converted cable ship laying pipeline across the English Channel, 1944.
Pipeline laying in the Channel, 1944 ·
Operation PLUTO

Pumping stops

The DUMBO pumps were shut down to release personnel and equipment after the end of the European campaign. Recovery later reclaimed most of the lead and steel, while sections embedded in sandbanks or difficult seabed remained in place.

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