World War II calendar
What happened on June 3 during World War II? This date brings together 4 events from 1940, 1942 and 1944, with period photographs and links to the full operations documented across WW2 Theatres.
Destroyers, passenger vessels and smaller craft entered the harbour for the last scheduled night of Operation Dynamo. French troops moved through the shrinking perimeter toward the East Mole while German artillery and aircraft continued attacking the port and approaches.
Continue in Dunkirk: Operation Dynamo →
Carrier aircraft struck Dutch Harbor in the Aleutians, and Japanese troops occupied Attu and Kiska. It is usually described as a diversion intended to draw the American fleet north. The Japanese records do not support that reading. Operation AL was a separate objective running to its own timetable, and it consumed two light carriers and a substantial escort that would have been more useful four hundred miles from Midway.
Continue in The Battle of Midway →
A PBY Catalina flying a search arc out of Midway reported the invasion transport group approaching from the west. B-17s attacked from Midway that afternoon and hit nothing, which was the first of many attacks from the atoll that hit nothing. The transports were not the target that mattered. The carriers were still four hundred miles to the north-west and had not been seen.
Continue in The Battle of Midway →
Group Captain James Stagg told the commanders' conference that a depression was tracking towards the Channel and that 5 June would bring high winds, heavy cloud and a rough sea. His three forecasting teams, at Dunstable, at the Admiralty and at the American unit at Widewing, had reached sharply different conclusions, and his task was to give Eisenhower one answer rather than an argument. Convoys from the more distant ports were already at sea, some sailing on the assumption the operation would run on the 5th.
Continue in Operation Overlord →