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WWII On This Day: August 9

What happened on August 9 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
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

Maikop is captured and unusable

German troops entered the Maikop oil district on 9 August after Soviet demolition teams had removed equipment and wrecked wells, power installations, pipelines and processing facilities. Technische Brigade Mineralöl began a technically difficult restoration effort. Small quantities were eventually produced, but the field never became a strategic source of fuel for the German armies; the limited output could not be turned into a useful supply stream before withdrawal. The distinction is essential to the campaign. Germany captured an oil-producing region on the map without capturing functioning oil production. The economic…

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Dmitri Shostakovich in a 1942 portrait published in Krasnaya Zvezda on 12 April 1942, four months before the Leningrad performance of his Seventh Symphony.
Dmitri Shostakovich in a 1942 portrait published in Krasnaya Zvezda on 12 April 1942, four months before the Leningrad performance of his Seventh Symphony. Unknown photographer · Krasnaya Zvezda, 12 April 1942 · Public domain Source
The Siege of Leningrad

The Seventh Symphony is played inside the siege

The Leningrad Radio Orchestra performed the symphony with surviving musicians and players recalled from military units. Soviet artillery fired a counter-battery preparation, and the performance was broadcast through the city and toward the German lines.

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1944
OSS officers with Draža Mihailović at Pranjani on 6 September 1944 during Operation Halyard.
Unknown photographer · Pranjani, 6 September 1944 · Public domain (PD-Yugoslavia)
Operation Halyard

Four C-47s land and the first forty-eight airmen leave

Six C-47s of the 60th Troop Carrier Group left Italy on the evening of 9 August. Two turned back with engine trouble; four reached Pranjani and landed on the marginal strip. Weight and runway length limited each aircraft to twelve evacuees. Around midnight the transports departed with the first forty-eight airmen, proving that the improvised airfield could support the rescue.

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1945
The atomic cloud over Nagasaki on 9 August 1945, photographed by Charles Levy.
The atomic cloud over Nagasaki on 9 August 1945, photographed by Charles Levy. Charles Levy / U.S. Government · Public domain Source
The Bombing of Cities

Nagasaki

At 11:02 on 9 August 1945 the B-29 Bockscar dropped the plutonium bomb Fat Man over Nagasaki after cloud and smoke prevented a clear attack on the primary target at Kokura. The explosion devastated the Urakami district and damaged industrial and residential areas across the valley. Nagasaki's geography limited some blast and thermal effects compared with a flatter city, but the bomb still destroyed large areas and exposed survivors to radiation. The city's shipyards, arms works and military facilities shared the urban landscape with homes, schools, hospitals and churches. Nagasaki…

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