Chronology of World War II

July 1945

Monday, July 30th

Air Operations, CBI

CHINA

2 341st Medium Bomb Group B-25s and more than 40 14th Air Force fighter-bombers attack numerous targets across northern French Indochina and southern and eastern China.

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Air Operations, East Indies

XIII Bomber Command B-24s attack the Kota Waringin airfield on Borneo.

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Air Operations, Japan

The government of Japan rejects the July 26 Potsdam ultimatum.
Task Force 38 and Task Force 37.2 carrier aircraft attack Kobe and Nagoya.
More than 60 FEAF B-25s and 319th Medium Bomb Group A-26s attack the Omura airfield on Kyushu, 4 medium bombers attack the Izumi airfield on Honshu, and escorting P-47s sweep the area.
FEAF B-25s and P-51 escorts unable to locate shipping targets off Korea sweep the Sendai area.
More than 80 P-47s bomb Sendai.
80 FEAF P-47s attack the airfield at Shibushi and various military and commercial targets at Karasehara, Miyazaki, and Tomitaka.
FEAF P-51s reconnoitering southern Kyushu attack trains and small craft.
VII Fighter Command fighter-bombers based on Iwo Jima attack rail lines, airfields, and tactical targets between Kobe and Osaka.

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Air Operations, Philippines

XIII Bomber Command B-25s and XIII Fighter Command P-38s attack various targets on Luzon.

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Air Operations, Ryukyus

A VMF(N)-533 F6F downs a G4M 'Betty' bomber near Zampa Misaka at 0206 hours.
At 0306 hours, a fabric-and-wood kamikaze crashes into a US radar picket destroyer, killing 17 and wounding 75. This destroyer, which is moderately damaged, is the last of 368 Allied ships damaged during the Okinawa Campaign, mostly by kamikazes. A total of 30 naval ships have been sunk off Okinawa, mostly by kamikazes and other air attacks. The cost from these attacks has been more than 4,900 sailors lost and nearly 4,900 others wounded or injured. US and British land and naval air units have lost 763 aircraft during the Okinawa Campaign, both to enemy action and in operational incidents.

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Japan, Home Front

Food shortages have become so acute in Japan the government calls on the civilian population to collect 2.5 million bushels of acorns to be converted into eating material. The average Japanese has to survive on a daily intake of 1,680 calories, or 78 percent of what is considered the minimum necessary to survive.

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Japan, Policy

Japan rejects the Potsdam ultimatum. Nonetheless Gen Marshall gives instructions to Gen MacArthur and Adm Nimitz to co-ordinate plans in readiness for an early surrender by the enemy.

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New Guinea

The Japanese 18th Army makes a last stand at the village of Numbogua. Gen Hataso Adachi orders his troops 'to die in honorable defeat'.

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Pacific

There is renewed air bombardment of airfields and industrial plants on Honshu Island by aircraft from the US 3rd Fleet.
TF37 and TF38 planes sink 11 ships in the harbors of Kobe, Nagoya and Maizuru.
2 British midget submarines enter Singapore harbor and sink the Japanese heavy cruiser Takao by attaching limpet mines to its bottom. Midget submarines are also used to disrupt communication cables linking Singapore, Saigon and Hong Kong.
(30th?)The US cruiser Indianapolis (CA-35), returning to the United States after delivering the atom bomb to Tinian Island in the Marianas, is torpedoed and sunk by the Japanese submarine I-58. It is not recognized that the Indianapolis (CA-35), with a crew of 1,196, is overdue for three days and many of the 316 survivors rescued are not found for several days after this.
The US submarine Bonefish (SS-223) is reported as presumed lost in the Pacific Ocean area.
The Japanese destroyer Hatsushimo is sunk by a mine in the Sea of Japan. The Japanese frigate Okinawa is sunk in the same area by US carrier-based aircraft.