Air Operations, Europe
RAF BOMBER COMMANDEvening Ops:
- 10 Mosquitos are sent to the Scholven/Buer oil plant, 8 Halifaxes and 4 Stirlings lay mines off the Biscay coast, 8 Mosquitos are on flying bomb patrols and 7 aircraft are involved on Resistance operations.
- There are no losses.
| 
]Air Operations, Far East
Yahata iron and steel works and several other key military industrial targets are hit by the second B-29 raid in three weeks. The US bombers are using air bases in China.
[ | ]Allied Command
Chiang Kai-shek agrees in principle with Roosevelt's request that Stilwell should have operational command of the Chinese army, but he asks for a personal representative of the President to be sent to China.
[ | ]Argentina, Home Front
Juan Perón is appointed Vice-President by Pres Julián Farrell. From this moment Perón rapidly becomes virtual dicator.
[ | ]Britain, Home Front
1,750 barrage balloons are put in position south of London to combat the V-1.
Capt F. J. Walker, an 'ace' U-boat hunter, dies at the age of 50.
[ | ]Burma-China
On the Salween front 5 Chinese divisions surround Teng-chung.
With the commander of the Japanese Southern Army, Field Marshal Count Hisaichi Terauchi, having sanctioned the abandonment of the Imphal operation, the Japanese 15th Army is ordered to retreat across the Chindwin. It is the final acceptance of defeat by Mutaguchi in the battle of Imphal-Kohima in which the Japanese lsot 53,000 men out of the 85,000 committed.
[ | ]Eastern Front
Advancing north of the Pripet Marshes, Rokossovsky's men take Baranovichi, midway between Minsk and Brest-Litovsk.
CENTRAL SECTORMore than 60,000 men of the German 4th Army have fallen during repeated break-out attempts, the majority of its 40,000 survivors being captured by Soviet forces. The 4th Army has effectively ceased to exist.
The 1st and 3rd Belorussian Fronts continue to push west. Elements of the 65th Army, together with Group Pliev and part of the 28th Army, take Baranovichi after a furious battle with remnants of the German 9th army.
Operation BAGRATION has succeeded in destroying Army Group Center. The Stavka and Red Army have successfully broken the individual armies in small-scale encirclement operations before trapping the remnants in a larger cauldron thrown around Minsm. For the Ostheer the defeat eclipsed even Stalingrad, some 20 infantry, 1 security, 3 panzer grenadier, 1 panzer and 2 Luftwaffe field divisions being destroyed and 350,000 ment being lost. The German front in the central sector simply no longer exists.[
| ]English Channel
The British frigate Trollope is bady damaged by a German motor torpedo boat off Cap d'Antifer, France with the loss of 63 of her crew.
[ | ]Guam
For the next 12 days a squadron of US carriers and destroyers under the command of Rear-Adm Charles T. Joy begins a series of daily bombardments of the defenses of Guam. On the 14th Adm Walden L. Ainsworth's battleships will join in this work of demolition.
[]Hungary, Politics
With the Red Army fast approaching, Hungary's leader, Adm Miklos Horthy, orders a halt to the deportation of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz concentration camp.
[]Italy
With the capture of Rosignano the American 34th Div is able to speed up its advance on Leghorn. The 88th Div occupies Volterra and the heights north and east of the town. Units of the French Expeditionary Corps mount an offensive in the direction of San Gimignano, west of Poggibonsi, and capture Height 380, about 2 miles north of Highway 68.
[ | ]Mariana Islands
On Saipan having overcome Japanese resistance in Harakiri Gulch, the Americans advance all along the line towards the north of the island.
[ | ]Occupied Soviet Union
Because the Soviets are approaching Kovno, the German begin to move Jews in the ghetto to concentration camps in Germany. Many Jews take refuge in undergroung hideouts that they have prepared, only to be flushed out with dogs, smoke grenades and grenades. Around 2,000 Jews die of asphyxiation as the ghetto is razed to the ground; a further 4,000 Jews are transported west.
[]Western Front
In the course of an attack from the west by the 78th Div, the Americans of VIII Corps overrun La Haye-du-Puits. The 8th Div only just arrived from England, goes into the line in the sector between the 79th and 90th Divs. Units of the VII Corps continue their difficult advance along the Carentan-Pèriers road, while the XIX Corps, reinforced by the newly landed 35th Div, continues to advance on St Lô.
In the eastern sector, at 4:20a.m. and after a 'Titanic' artillery barrage, the British I Corps launches its offensive, Operation CHARNWOOD, against Caen with, from left to right of the line, the 59th and 3rd British and 3rd Canadian Divs. Advances up to 5 km are made. The first Allied troops enter the city from the northeast.
[ | ]Images from July 8, 1944
British Troops Herd Cattle Past a Morris 'Quad' Artillery Tractor and 25pdr Field Gun, Normandy, 8 July 1944 |
 |
Soldiers from a 81mm Mortar Squad Sit in a Bomb Crater, France, 8 July 1944 |
 |
Marines Take Cover behind a M4 Sherman Tank |
 |
A Handley Page Halifax of No. 4 Group Flies over the Suburbs of Caen |
 |
| A Handley Page Halifax of No. 4 Group flies over the suburbs of Caen, France, during a major daylight raid to assist the Normandy land battle during Operation CHARNWOOD. 467 aircraft took part in the attack, which was originally intended to have bombed German strongpoints north of Caen, but the bombing area was eventually shifted nearer the city because of the proximity of Allied troops to the original targets. The resulting bombing devastated the northern suburbs. |
Infantry Pass Sherman Tanks |
 |
Priest Self-propelled Gun Passes a Humber Scout Car |
 |
Sherman Tanks of 33rd Armoured Brigade |
 |
V-1 Damage at Montford Place, Kennington Lane, Kennington, 8 July 1944 |
 |
A Priest 105mm Self-propelled Gun of 3rd Division in Action near Caen, 8 July 1944 |
 |
A Stuart and Sherman Tanks |
 |
Gun Crew Man a 40mm AA Gun, Saipan, 8 July 1944 |
 |