May 1, 1943
Today in World War II Pacific History
Day by day chronology

SATURDAY, 1 MAY 1943

AMERICAN THEATER OF OPERATIONS (Eleventh Air Force) Sixteen attack missions on Kiska and Attu are flown by 16 B-24's, 15 B-25's, 35 P-38's, 38 P-40's, and 4 F-5A's. Kiska targets include the Main Camp, hangar, submarine base (where a fire is started), Kiska runway, radar, ship, North Head, AA guns and Gertrude Cove. Attu targets include east Attu, Holtz Bay and Chichagof Harbor installations.

CBI CHINA (Fourteenth Air Force) The forward echelon of the Fourteenth Air Force, under Colonel Clinton D. Vincent and Lieutenant Colonel David L. "Tex" Hill, moves into eastern China along the Hengyang-Kweilin line. This brings US aircraft within range of all major Japanese held bases from north China to Indochina and Thailand, and makes shipping in the South China Sea more vulnerable to U.S. air strikes.

SOUTHWEST PACIFIC THEATER OF OPERATIONS (Fifth Air Force) B-24's bomb Nabire Airfield and hit a vessel off Manokwari.

10th AF: Lost is B-24D pilot Kavanagh (MIA / POW) force landed into a rice paddy roughly 25 kilometers northeast of Bassien (Pathein).

RNZAF: Lost on a traning mission is P-40E Kittyhawk NZ3031 (KIA).

USN: USS Pogy (SS-266), in attack on Japanese convoy, sinks gunboat Keishin Maru off Iwaki, Japan, 37°04'N, 141°06'E.

USN: PBY Catalina rescues eight survivors from U.S. freighter Phoebe A. Hearst, torpedoed and sunk by Japanese submarine I-19 about 240 miles southeast of Suva on April 30, 1942.