Air Operations, Bismarcks

V Bomber Command B-17s and B-24s attack the Vunakanau airfield at Rabaul while other B-24s mount individual attacks against the Rapopo airfield at Rabaul.

Air Operations, Europe

• 290 aircraft, including 181 Halifaxes, 107 Stirlings and 2 Lancasters, are sent to bomb the Schneider armaments factory and the Breuil steelworks at Le Creusot.
• The plan calls for the Pathfinders to drop only flares and the Main Force would identify their targets by the light of these flares. The Main Force is to make 2 runs over the target dropping a short stick of bombs between 5,000 and 10,000 feet on each run. At this stage of the war, the bomber crews are used to bombing target indicators and many have difficulty identifying their targets. Lingering smoke from the large number of flares used is blamed for most of the difficulty. Bombing photographs show that all crews drop their bombs within 3 miles of the target, but only about one fifth actually hit the factories. Many bombs fall on nearby residential properties. There are no details from the ground as to the extent of the casualties.
• 2 Halifaxes are lost.

Halifaxes preparing to depart the home airfield for Le Creusot.

Halifaxes Preparing for the Mission

Personnel Gather to Wave-off Halifaxes

• 26 of the H₂S-equipped Pathfinders are to fly on to drop flares over the electrical transformer station at Montchanin. By the light of these flares 26 more Lancasters from No. 8 Group are to attack this second target. Most of the crews, however, mistake a small metal factory for the transformer station and bomb it instead. A few crews do correctly identify the station, but there are no direct hits.

• 6 Mosquitos are sent to Colgone, Duisburg and Düsseldorf, and 12 Lancasters of No. 3 Group lay mines in the Gironde River.
• 1 Lancaster is lost.

Air Operations, Marshalls

During the night, VII Bomber Command B-24s based at Funafuti reconnoiter and photograph Jaluit Atoll.

Air Operations, New Guinea

• 3rd Light Bomb Group A-20s attack a village and heavily damage a trail.
• B-24s mount individual attacks against Finschhafen.

Atlantic

The Italian submarine Barbarigo is sunk in the Bay of Biscay.

Landing Men and Supplies on Attu, 19 June 1943

Britain, Home Front

In Horse Racing, Dorothy Paget's 'Straight Deal' wins the Derby.

Germany, Home Front

Goebbels boasts that Berlin is now 'free of Jews'.

Italy, Home Front

The authorities give the populations of Naples and towns in Sicily a matter of weeks to evacuate their cities.

Hans Frank (center), Governor of Poland

Hans Frank, in the center, had been responsible for the repression of the Poles since 1939. On the 19th June 1943 the Governor of what remained of Poland, Hans Frank, met with Hitler to discuss the situation in the country. He brought with him a briefing document which was to prove important at the post war War Crimes trials. There was ample evidence of the suffering that the Nazis had brought to the whole of the Polish population. Quite apart from the murderous actions directed against the Jewish population, non Jewish Poles had suffered from an extraordinarily repressive regime. Frank himself had openly acknowledged as much in a 1940 interview: In Prague, big red posters were put up on which one could read that seven Czechs had been shot today. I said to myself, ‘If I had to put up a poster for every seven Poles shot, the forests of Poland would not be sufficient to manufacture the paper.