Battle of Leyte Gulf, Philippines: 37 ships sunk (30 Japanese and 7 American), 10,000 Japanese soldiers lost their lives, 2,800 Americans; the largest naval battle of all time; kamikazes appear for the first time; the Yamato, the largest battleship in the world (later sunk), fires monstrous 2-meter-long shells; the American Admiral Marc Andrew Mitscher, a living legend for his ruthlessness, and the Japanese Admiral Ozawa face off; Task Force 38 commanded by Mitscher – composed of 17 aircraft carriers, 6 battleships, 13 cruisers, 60 destroyers – from 29 January to 27 October 1944 sinks 795 Japanese ships and destroys 4,400 Japanese aircraft.

American cryptographers are beginning to be able to crack the new Japanese codes with the new codebook (N), the additive tables (62 and 63), and the operating system. JN-25 is once again interpretable by Washington.

The Battle of Aachen ends: 5,000 Allies and 5,000 Germans killed, 5,600 Germans taken prisoner; Aachen (former capital of the Holy Roman Empire aka First Reich) is destroyed.

Ted Hall, of the Manhattan Project, during a 15-day vacation period decides to spontaneously go to the Soviet consulate and simply make a written statement in which he reveals several secrets about American activity at Los Alamos.

Tsunami in Nachi River, Japan, with a 200m high wave

Gothic Line: Modena partisan Mario Ricci “Armando” and his partisan brigade enter Lizzano in Belvedere.

John von Neumann, as a consultant for the ENIAC project, pushes the concept of having the program stored in the same memory where the data is also located.

6.43pm: Two typical supersonic booms are heard over London and immediately afterwards two enormous sinkholes tear through the ground at Chiswick and Epping causing 3 deaths and 17 injuries: these are the first V-2s over London.

Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA. The decision to use the Jornada del Muerto area in New Mexico for the first-ever nuclear test becomes official.

Baron von Stauffenberg led a conspiracy of German officers against the Führer; the assassination attempt was carried out in the heart of Hitler’s headquarters, the so-called Wolf’s Lair, in Rastenburg (now Ketrzyn in Poland) and was dubbed “Operation Walkyrie”: the bomb, contained inside a briefcase, was placed near Hitler by von Stauffenberg himself, but was moved a few meters away by someone; this fact, together with other fortuitous circumstances (due to the intense heat, the meeting was held in a building with open windows and not in the bunker, where the explosion would have been vastly more devastating); Stauffenberg had originally prepared two bombs, but due to his disability (he had only three fingers on his left hand, and was missing his right hand and eye), in his haste he managed to arm only one; the meeting table, built of solid oak, further cushioned the force of the explosion), caused the assassination attempt to fail. Subsequently, as planned, the Baron immediately flew to Berlin to take control of the military high command headquarters on Bendlerstrasse. However, Hitler survived the explosion almost unscathed, and Stauffenberg, Beck, Olbricht, von Tresckow, Chief of Staff Colonel Albrecht, and other conspirators were arrested by the SS and Gestapo, as were all those who had somehow come into contact with them. Those arrested were tortured to extract revelations, then murdered, often without even a trial.

The port of Ancona is captured by Poles of the Second Polish Army Corps. Veterans of the Soviet Gulag, who had passed through Iran, Palestine, and Egypt, had raised the Polish flag on the ruins of the monastery at Monte Cassino a few weeks earlier.

The Americans take St.Lo and complete the capture of the Carentan peninsula with the port of Chebourg

Rommel signs the ultimatum to Hitler; he wants to let the Anglo-Americans pass and get them to Berlin before the Russians.

Finland. After the end of the Continuation War, the third and final Finnish-Soviet conflict of the 20th century, Finland, in order to comply with Soviet demands, must put its Prime Minister and entire government on trial. President Ryti, Prime Minister Rangell, Foreign Minister Linkomies, four other ministers, and the ambassador to Berlin must all be convicted. They will serve their sentences in special prisons in Finland, after which they will be re-elected to important positions. This is just one of the many burdensome compromises Finland has had to make because of its cumbersome neighbor.

Manhattan Project: Arrival of the first plutonium sample at Los Alamos. A new way to detonate the bomb is designed: a subcritical mass (not capable of triggering a reaction) is taken and surrounded with traditional explosives. The explosion compresses the plutonium mass, which, due to its density, triggers a chain reaction. The compression occurs so rapidly that fission doesn’t have time to defuse. The input will be free neutrons in the air. The bomb is theoretically ready.

At least 3172 V-2 (Vergeltungswaffe-2 or Agregat 4) were launched by the Nazis, of which 1664 on Belgium: Antwerp (1610), Liège (27), Hasselt (13), Tournai (9), Mons (3), Diest (2), 1402 on England: London (1358), Norwich (43), Ipswich (1), 76 on France: Lille (25), Paris (22), Tourcoing (19), Arras (6), Cambrai (4), 19 on Holland: Maastricht (19), 11 on Germany: Remagen (11).

In Italia e Civiltà, a magazine published by the Salo Republicans, an article states, “Let Roosevelt, Churchill, and their cronies know that the most aware fascists have always recognized communism as the only living force opposed to their own. They have always identified the true enemy, not in Russia, but in plutocratic England and plutocratic America. Fascists have always disagreed on various points of communism, yes, but they have also agreed on many others. And precisely on what both do not want: the old liberal, bourgeois, capitalist society. Let them know, therefore, that if victory does not fall to the Tripartite, most of the true fascists who have escaped the scourge will go over to communism.”

Fortitude Plan: At 1:30 the Fuhrer changes his mind and revokes the order to implement Case IIIA and blocks the 500 tanks and 50,000 men already moving towards Normandy: the Fortitude Plan has worked and Hitler believes in the simulation of the preparations for the Calais landings.

Fortitude Plan: Shortly after midnight between June 8th and 9th, Spanish double agent Juan Pujol Garcia, alias Garbo to the Allies, alias Arabal to the Nazis, began transmitting a long message to the Nazis describing the preparations for the Calais landings.

Fortitude Plan: In the evening, the Allied military radios in the South-East of England, which had been transmitting continuously, suddenly went silent, just as the military radios in the South-West of England had done before the Normandy landings. At the same time, Roman Czerniawski, alias Brutus, considered by the Nazis to be one of their best agents thanks to the patient work of the British intelligence services, transmitted to the Nazis that he had heard Patton give the order to begin the landing at Calais of the non-existent 1st United States Army Group.

The 168th Infantry Regiment of the 34th Division captures the 280mm K5 Leopold and Robert guns that had been pounding the American lines since the Anzio landings.

6:30 am: H time at Omaha Beach and Utah Beach for the XXIX, IV, I div.USA

1:30 a.m.: Hans Von Luck and Bayerlein, commanders of the XXI Panzer Div. and the PanzerLehr, gather their men and start their engines, but will wait for the order to depart until evening (the German headquarters of the Seventh Army thinks it is facing a diversion thanks to Operation Fortitude).