PACIFIC WAR TIMELINE

APRIL 1943


14 April: New Guinea: Major bombing attacks launched by Yamamoto against US bases at Milne Bay and Port Moresby. Japanese pilots report great victories but little damage is done.


Burma: General Slim replaces General Irwin as commander of the Fourteenth Army on the India-Burma frontier.


18 April: Bougainville: Admiral Yamamoto assassinated by 18 P-38 fighters, which intercept his flight to the south of Bougainville Island.


19 April: Poland: Jewish Warsaw ghetto uprising.


22 April: Japan: Japan announces that captured Allied pilots will be executed.


MAY 1943


12 May: America: TRIDENT Conference. Churchill and Roosevelt meet in Washington. Admiral King, Commander in Chief United States Fleet, wins go ahead for thrust through the central Pacific in spite of MacArthur’s objections.


General Chennault and Chiang Kai-shek win Roosevelt’s support for the build up of the 14th Army Airforce in China to 500 planes by the end of November 1943.


Operation CARTWHEEL for the two pronged attack on Rabaul is approved at Trident: MacArthur up the east coast of New Guinea and Halsey advancing north through the Solomon Islands.


19 May: America: Strategic Plan for the Defeat of Japan presented by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Economic blockade, bombing of Japanese industrial infrastructure and finally invasion.


31 May: America: US forces complete recapture of the Aleutian Islands.


JUNE 1943


30 June: New Georgia: US troops invade New Georgia Island at its southern tip Segi Point and neighboring Rendova Island.


New Georgia: Win/loss ratio in air battles rises to 13:1 from 3:1 in April.


Poland: The liquidation of all Jewish ghettos in Poland is ordered by Himmler.

Next Section >