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WWII On This Day: June 27

What happened on June 27 during World War II? This date brings together 3 events from 1942 and 1944, with period photographs and links to the full operations documented across WW2 Theatres.

1942
Heavy seas breaking around HMS Sheffield while she escorts Arctic convoy JW 53 toward Russia in February 1943.
Royal Navy official photographer · Imperial War Museums A 14890 · Public domain
The Arctic Convoys

PQ 17 sails with the most valuable Arctic convoy yet

Thirty-five merchant ships left Iceland for Arkhangelsk carrying a large concentration of Allied war material. Close escorts surrounded the convoy, a cruiser force followed, and a distant battleship-and-carrier force stood farther west to meet any sortie by Tirpitz and the other German heavy ships in Norway. German aircraft found the convoy on 1 July and U-boats began closing on its route. The tactical problem was now explicit: the convoy needed its close formation against aircraft and submarines, while the Admiralty also feared that a German battleship force could destroy the…

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1944
Brigadier Mike Calvert gives orders after the capture of Mogaung in June 1944.
Brigadier Mike Calvert gives orders after the capture of Mogaung in June 1944. Imperial War Museums, MH 7287 · UK Government public domain Source
The Arakan and the Chindits

The 77th Brigade captures Mogaung

The 77th Indian Infantry Brigade captured Mogaung on 27 June 1944 after roughly four weeks of fighting. The position was then handed over as Calvert’s exhausted brigade prepared to withdraw from the immediate battle area. The National Army Museum records that about half of the brigade had been killed or wounded during the struggle. Disease and exhaustion added to the burden on survivors who had already operated behind Japanese lines since March. Mogaung was a tangible battlefield success at the end of this phase of the campaign. It also showed…

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Immediate aftermath of the Vitebsk pocket: Aleksandr Vasilevsky and Ivan Chernyakhovsky question captured Major-General Alfons Hitter on 28 June 1944, the day after Vitebsk fell.
Immediate aftermath of the Vitebsk pocket: Aleksandr Vasilevsky and Ivan Chernyakhovsky question captured Major-General Alfons Hitter on 28 June 1944, the day after Vitebsk fell. Unknown photographer · 28 June 1944 · Public domain (Commons PD-Ukraine) Source
Operation Bagration

Vitebsk and Orsha collapse as Bobruisk is encircled

By 27 June the Vitebsk pocket had been destroyed and Orsha had fallen, opening the Moscow–Minsk road and railway to the Soviet advance. Farther south, 1st Belorussian Front closed the ring around Bobruisk while Fourth Army was retreating from the Mogilev sector toward the Berezina. Three separate German armies were now losing their principal eastern positions at the same time. The Soviet mobile groups did not stop to reduce every bypassed pocket. They pushed toward Borisov, the Berezina crossings and the approaches to Minsk, leaving rifle formations to finish encircled…

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