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WWII On This Day: March 11

What happened on March 11 during World War II? This date brings together 2 events from 1942 and 1945, with period photographs and links to the full operations documented across WW2 Theatres.

1942
Lieutenant-General Arthur Percival and the British surrender party walking to the Ford Motor Factory in Singapore on 15 February 1942.
British official photographer / Imperial War Museums HU 2781 · UK Government public domain · Source
The Fall of the Southern Empires

MacArthur Leaves Corregidor

MacArthur left Corregidor on the night of 11 March under orders to proceed to Australia. He departed with his staff by PT boat, leaving Jonathan Wainwright to command the forces remaining in the Philippines. The decision removed the senior American commander from a position whose isolation could no longer be reversed locally. For the men on Bataan and Corregidor, nothing material improved: rations, disease and Japanese pressure continued. For Allied strategy, MacArthur’s departure transferred a commander to the area from which a future return to the Philippines might be organized.…

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1945
B-29s of the 500th Bomb Group drop incendiaries over Yokohama on 29 May 1945.
B-29s of the 500th Bomb Group drop incendiaries over Yokohama on 29 May 1945. United States Army Air Forces · Public domain Source
The Bombing of Cities

The urban incendiary campaign spreads across Japan

After the March attacks on Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka and Kobe demonstrated the destructive potential of the new method, urban incendiary bombing expanded across Japan. The United States Strategic Bombing Survey records 104,000 tons of bombs directed against 66 urban areas. B-29 units also continued attacking aircraft factories, oil facilities and other industrial targets and undertook a major aerial-mining campaign against Japanese waters. Target priorities shifted as the war approached its final months. By summer the destruction of urban housing and small industry was extensive across the major cities and many…

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